My Blog Has Had A Facelift!!!!!!

Thanks to Kyla at homeschoolingbytheyard! I love it. She just started to do all this digital stuff that I know nothing about but she is really great! Some of the elements were used from a kit from here  but the most was made from Kyla and her awesome creativity. I even have a button now, YAY!!!! So if you are looking for someone to touch up your blog or make you a button you have to get in touch with her. She will make sure it is exactly what you want and listen to every silly question you may have LOL. I love my new blog and Kyla is one of the sweetest, nicest people I have ever had the honor of meeting in real life. So if you need some blog touchups you know where to go!!!

Merry Christmas to all !!!!!!

Santa has come oh boy!!!! The kids are all asleep at this time and the presents are set. The cookie has been bitten and Santa has left! I can have a little bit of quiet before they jump up at the crack of dawn lol. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!!!!!!!!!!

Countdown Day 24

Hot chocolate at grammas and granpas! We read The Night Before Christmas and gave the grandparents their presents. The kids got their Christmas pajamas just like every year past. My mom has bought them new pajamas every Christmas from the time Devlin was born so on Christmas morning they open their gifts wearing new ones. Our Little Elf left yesterday with a promise to come again next year. He left the kids a card and candycanes and his spelling has gotten better!  So the counting down is over tomorrow is Christmas and I am kinda sad to see it go but of course I am already making plans for next year! I hope everyone has a wonderful day.

Countdown Day 23

We read Christmas In The Manger and put together this sweet littke nativity. (Ignore glue drop in front of baby Jesus). I only had one and thought they could do it together BIG BIG BIG mistake. They were all a bit miffed that they did not each have their own lol. I don't have a nativity set for whatever reason. Each year I say I will get me one a real pretty one and for some reason I just never do. So I guess I can once again say well...next year. This one is cute though and in years to come I will have the memory of Fox fussing, Skyler playing with baby Jesus and Damian putting enough glue on that star to choke a horse! Tomorrow they get PJ's from gramma and we will set out cookies and read The Night Before Christmas.

Countdown to Christmas Days 22 and the latest from Little Elf!

On the 22nd we read Gingerbread Land and it is a very cool book!! I love books with moving pieces. Jack bought this for me last year at an after Christmas sale so it has pretty much been on a shelf forever. This book is really great I just can't say enough about it. The Description for it from Amazon...

Product Description

In a snowy and faraway land, the Gingerbread people live in a secret world where life is always sweet. Nestled against majestic sugar dusted mountains and crisscrossed with chocolate rivers, Gingerbread Land is a fantasy come to life.

A whimsical land made of candy and gingerbread comes to life in this deliciously designed book. Featuring photographs of three dimensional gingerbread scenes, Gingerbread Land is a delightful book sure to enchant the entire family.

Scenes include ice skaters on the frozen pink lemonade pond, a Ginger family cutting down a lollipop Christmas tree, dancing couples at the Spun Sugar Ball, and much, much more!

If you are looking for a unique book with a Christmasy theme this is it! For our craft we made mini gingerbread houses. Sadly Fox broke his and we couldn't get it to hold together no matter what. They sure had fun though eating the pieces lol.

Well we found the elf in the fridge. Thinking he must have locked himeself in there some how!!

 This is our villiage. I think they got tired of waiting for the icing because the candy just started vanishing. Oh well it was fun and that is all that matters!

Countdown Days 19,20 and 21

Well once again I am so behind. Oh well things happen! For the 19th we read Jolly Old Santa Claus. We made icicles out of aluminum foil and painted them with glitter paint. Very quick, very easy, very little to clean up! YAY. We once again read The Legend Of The Candy Cane for the 20th. We have read that book several times but it was still nice. We were suppose to make little Christmas people for our craft but my kids were not into it at all. They were little kits I had bought at JoAnns. A snowman, an elf and a santa. They did nothing but whine and complain so I said OK forget it then. Why bother if they were so against it right? We read A Wish To Be A Christmas Tree and we had never read that before so it was new

and fun!! The craft we made on that was actually a gift for gramma so, mom if you are reading stop now and go on bout your business:) We made candle holders. We mod-podged them and used tissue paper to make them pretty! Each child also added a little sticker so she would know who made which one. Three of the kids was happy with Christmas theme paper but not my Devlin. She always has to stand out! Hers is blue striped, no sticker. I really can't remember when she became so into herself? Of course she will always be my lil girl though. Tomorrow we are building a gingerbread villiage YAY!!! Cannot believe the countdown is almost over and Christmas is just about here. This has been a year, a very full year

to say the the least! This will be our first Christmas in our new house. Our first real tree since Devlin was a new baby, our first time hanging our stockings on a fireplace, so many changes since last year. I hope everyone is haveing a blast with their countdown activities and, yes I have already pretty much planned next years :)

Little Elf is up to mischief again!!

Little Elf has been up to no good. Stealin my Edy's ice cream and eatin in his bedroom! "Shame shame"!!!!!!

Christmas Countdown Day 16,17,18 (gotta a bit behind)

Well due to life I suppose we got a bit behind in our crafts. We tried to catch that up a bit this weekend! Of course we did the Lowe's Build and Grow to finish the final piece of the train. It is so adorable. There have been two sets of stickers for the train one was Christmas the other western type. Damian was my only cowboy kid LOL. Lowe's was technically day 18. For day 16 we read All You Need For A Snowman and made little snowmen which turned out so cute! They really turned out alot better than I thought they would so I was pretty proud :). For the 17th we read Snowflake Bentley which we have read before. It is a wonderful book so it was no issue reading it again. What I like best about this book is that it can really span the ages so to speak. There is a simple text for the younger crowd as well as on the side a more deeper explanation for older kids. The pictures are all just as sweet as can be. We made paper snowflakes for that one. Which directions can be found here. There is no way I could explain it, way too much detail for me. So worth the outcome though because they are beautiful. I wish I could have made them all with cardstock but each flake calls for 7 sheets of paper so I had to get cheap and use construction. They are still beautiful though. Hopefully tomorrow we can do day 19 and 20 so we will be caught up! Here are some wonderful pictures that I hope everyone can enjoy because we enjoyed these crafts very much! The snowflakes especially they are just beautiful. Wish I had some spray on glitter for them to make them sparkle, but they are still just awesome.

Christmas Count rolls on...Day 15

We read Night tree tonight and the kids really liked it. They thought it totally cool that people decorated a tree for animals on Christmas. So our craft was making wild animal treats. We took stale hotdog buns and covered them in peanutbutter and dumped them full of birdseed. We had some left over crossaints from dinner and some apple chunks and outside we went to spread our treats!

This was really after lastnights well, disapointing story and craft lol. Oh well live and learn right!

WOW!!! We finally found what Little Elf has been making with all that paint!

Well imagine our surprise at finding this in the kitchen this morning! We had no clue what it was. We all kinda looked at it for a minute wondering out loud. Fox said it was a present, Skyler said a new house for her hamster or maybe a bed for the cat. Well only one way to figure it out right? So we opened it up to find.....

A little house fit for an elf! What an adorable mess he made he made this time!!!! Took him two days to make this and leaving paint out for me to clean up but oh so sweet. Skylers reaction was totally priceless.

Asleep and snug in his bed!

What a sweet little tree

His stocking is hung on his little fireplace. What a sweet little home for Little Elf

So she asked if he would get candy in his stocking? I said well honey he will most likely be gone home on Christmas. Which my sweet little girl teared up and chokingly said, Can he take his little house he worked so hard on? I told her he would most likely have to leave it but we could keep it saif for him to come back next year. So a wonderful friend gave me the coolest idea ever!! Why not leave his house out all year and on some holidays or special days Little Elf maybe stops by and leaves a little note or maybe a small present? I like that idea. I think Skyler who is so attatched to Little Elf will feel much better instead of just packing it away for a year. So I guess Little Elf will become a part of our whole year instead of just Christmas. Oh well it will remind them of Christmas spirit all year hopefully! I really hope everyone else is having just as much fun with their elf as I am with mine.

Wordless Wednesday

Countdown Day 14

Well we read The Shortest Day and made mini wreaths this evening.

They were not fond of this craft as the bells were hard to get on the pipe cleaners and then they would not all face the same way LOL.

Pipe cleaners are also hard to tie into bows as well. The wreaths were a bit cockeyed LOL. They were also not fond of this book at all. It was kinda dry and fact like so really no interest there. They still did all right so that is the best thing I can hope for I am sure the other stories and crafts will be great for them as the ones we have already done were!

OK What is he up too now??

Yesterday it was red paint, today green. What is this elf up too? Again we searched and cannot find anything he has been painting. Upon further investigation we realized he has been in the craft stuff too, the stickers mostly. Well we know he is creating something but we have yet to find out. This has gotten so fun and my kids are just lovin it!!

Countdown Day 13

CRAFTS CRAFTS AND MORE CRAFTS!!!!!!!!!!! Well an innocent library trip led to two and a half hours of crafts for the kids YAY!!! I had no idea the library was holding a Christmas Craft Shop today but little Skyler with her big blue eyes saying I wanna make sumpin too mommy sucked me in. At first the boys wanted nothing to do with "baby stuff" but the fun remarks and the other kids creativity soon won out and a crafting they were going! They did make some really cool stuff though so it was worth it. Needless to say by the time we got home, had dinner, I was in no mood for stories and more crafts tonight so the countdown plan was changed just a bit. The flexibility of homeschooling is so wonderful. While I didn't get to take pics of craft time I certainly got some at home for your viewing pleasure!!

These stockings are super cute!!! They took forever to lace up but so worth the time. They turned out adorable. In order from left to right is Skylers, Fox, Damians. Skylers is very unique. There were alot of left over pieces the librarian gave her so she went to town decorating. Very geo. Fox lost interest half way through the lacing and asked me to finish but he had fun! Damian had to make his just like the picture of course, but that is all right too!!

These little robot ornaments are so cute. I have never seen anything like these and for once it was something totally boy as it seems most crafts nowadays are pretty girlie. In order left to right- Damian Fox and Skyler.

These are just little pins they beaded together. There were other designs but they all wanted penguin charms.

These little trees were again something I had never seen before. They were solid green and the kids scratched designs into them with little wooden sticks. I thought that was nifty. And for the end of craft time PRESENTS FOR ALL!!!!!! They all got wrapped presents which of course they opened and they all got a new Christmas book. They all really liked getting a brand new book.

So tonight I was suppose to read Christmas Mouse and make trees out of pipe cleaners and decorate them but after all that I was too crafted out for the night!!!

Little Elf again making a mess

Well this is what we woke up today.. Not quite sure what exactly is going on. He has surely painted something, but what??? We are all on pins and needles trying to figure out exactly what that crazy little elf is up to now. We looked all over the house and cannot find anything he painted, the kids say he is a very good hider!!! Maybe tomorrow will bring us new hints?

Countdown Day 12

I can't believe I am so behind. Well OK just one day but still! Blogger was so very slow lastnight loading pics that I said Forget This. So here is lastnights post today! We read Santa Mouse and made little clay mice. Clay and play dough type stuff is something I forget all the time. I know I know they love it but I hate the mess. But I let them lastnight and as soon as their mice were made they went on to use every last piece of clay I had lol. I think I need to remember this type of activity more! Well here are some pics to highlight our night, ENJOY!!!!

Neither boy was happy reading a boardbook or a baby book as they call it but it is one of the few my library carried about a mouse at Christmas! They still thought it funny though.

Oh look he actually don't have his eyes all wide and crazy!

Yes I helped her. She made me though :)

He did not like it at first. The clay is different than play dough. But after a minute he came around and his little mouse is as cute as can be!!

Countdown Day 11

Today we went to Lowes to build the middle piece to our train, the passenger care! They were pretty thrilled to add that to other piece. I cannot believe I forgot to post yesterday, I have been making such a point EVERYDAY to post our countdown. Oh well, guess we all forget sometime LOL!!!!

Well due to bloggers very slow uploading tonight that is all the pics I am posting LOL. We had fun that is all that mattered! :)