time for new snowpants??

They're a 4T! The poor kid. He's been out playing in them multiple times already this year and his crazy mother didn't even realize that his snowpants were so small. :)

Cinnamon Roll Day 2009

Last Christmas, I made Cinnamon Rolls. It was so much fun, that this year I decided that it needed to be a tradition. My sister and niece came over, my mom stopped by and so did my friend, Sarah and her daughter, Grace. The day started with much butter. Don't worry, we didn't use all of this butter. Just most of it. :)

We decided to triple the recipe. Why make just a few pans of Cinnamon Rolls when you can make a LOT of Cinnamon Rolls? That's my philosophy in life.

The little girls enjoyed shaking the cinnamon onto the dough best.

Lily was great with brushing the pans with butter and doing other various tasks.

And my Gracie played the crucial role of painting the counter with butter, cinnamon and flour. We couldn't have done it without her. :)

We ended up with over 15 pans of pure heaven...I mean... Cinnamon Rolls.

They were SO yummy! Buttery, cinnamony, sweet. SO good!

We enjoyed some right away, kept some for the daddies, froze some for Christmas morning, and the rest got packaged up for friends and family.

The best part was the lingering scent in my house. For the next two days, the house smelled heavenly! Mmmm... Cinnamon Rolls!

happy winter, I'm going to embrace it this year... I think :)

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that starting today, the daylight hours begin to increase.

Oh yes, and "Happy Winter!"

her future is in interior design

While I was tying some ribbon onto presents, Gracie sat right next to me and the second there was an extra scrap of ribbon that was unusable, she grabbed it and dashed down the hall to the playroom. I was too busy to notice what she was doing, but later when I checked on her, I found this.

"I deco-wated my kitchen for Cwismas!"

Somedays she reminds me so much of my sister, it's scary!

Christmas bowling...it's becoming a tradition

Last year, we went bowling with another homeschool group. This year, we decided to plan our own Christmas party with the homeschoolers from our church. And it was a blast! We had a good group and it was even better than last year!




I was enjoying myself too much to take many pictures. But my kids got a hold of the camera and left me with a few stellar ones like this...




We had a lot of fun and are looking forward to some more activities with our awesome homeschooled friends. :)

Christmas craft co-op

A few weeks ago, my sister hosted a few homeschooling families for a fun craft co-op.

The kids made and painted salt dough ornaments. We ended up with enough of these to decorate an entire tree. :)

The cinnamon ornaments smell heavenly! Again, we have a bunch.

And the sweetest craft was decorating Rice Krispy "gingerbread" houses! The kids LOVED this part.


And I'm convinced that all four households were sugared up for several days thereafter. :)

Thanks, Katina!

whose smile is bigger?

Hhmmm...can't tell.

these are a few of my favorite things

An Amazon box (or four) on my porch makes me smile. These were filled (mainly) with gifts for others. It's sickening how much I adore books delivered to my doorstep. :)

Christmas at our house

I wasn't planning to blog a Christmas Tour of our home this year. I've been too busy enjoying this month to take the time to post about it. But I know how much I like looking back at what things looked like in our house a year earlier, so here goes...

This is our family room...the heart of most of our Christmas celebrations. Please ignore the left third of the mantle garland that decided to not be lit a few days after I put it up. I am too lazy to restring it right now.

Our ornaments are my favorite part of our Christmas decorations. They're a hodge-podge of sentimental ornaments and things that I mostly picked up after-Christmas on clearance. My favorites are the "Baby's 1st Christmas" photo ornaments and the ones that the kids made in Jr. Church.

Here's the tree today after I added a few more red glass ball ornaments...looking slightly more sparkly-reddish. :)

My sister gave me this berry tree years ago, and this is my favorite place yet that it has resided. I think it looks nice with our cabinets and curtain.

This wreath used to hang on our front door at our old house. But now it hangs in our kitchen.


This large glass urn/vase(?) used to have mini pumpkins and gourds in it, but the day after Thanksgiving I added the sparkly glass balls (the rest of which were finally added to the tree).

My nativity found it's new Christmas home on top of our entertainment armoire. I thought it was going to be too tall to display the nativity, but it looks great up there!

The kids have tinsel trees in their room that they decorate and re-decorate however they want! Their Jesse Tree ornaments are going on these each night.




We have a few other lighted garlands hanging around...nothing too fancy. Here is my Lily and the banister garlands.

I hung up some mistletoe this year! I like kissing and decided there needed to be more of it in our house. :) Who knew that this was going to be the bomb?! The kids LOVE the "whistletoe!" We decorated the day after Thanksgiving, which was nice because Granddaddy (Scott's dad) was still visiting with us at that point. The kids kept waiting under the mistletoe to ambush us. I love it!

We put candles in the windows and did a tiny bit of outdoor lighting this year...a first for us. We had no outdoor outlets at our old house. :)

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a lovely, Christ-centered Christmas!

Visit The Nester for more Christmas-sy homes.

Silent Monks and The Hallelujah Chorus

The toe-signs toward the end cracked me up. Very clever!