It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I have been so excited for the Christmas season to arrive and it is finally here. I always look forward to this time of year but have anticipated it even more this year since we get to experience it with Neal for the first time. I pulled out all the Christmas boxes and stared decorating a few days after Thanksgiving. Neal was very interested in everything that was in the boxes. The boxes have never been unpacked so quickly :)



His favorite discovery was the little jingle bells that he found and played with for the next 30 minutes.




We have the garland up on the mantle and stairs and Neal loves to look at the lights. This year I purchased a small 4 foot fake tree that we set up in the living room. Since we will be in Seattle this year for Christmas I decided that a small fake tree would work best. We will use this small tree on the years that we are out of town for Christmas so we can enjoy a tree for a little while and don't have to worry about taking it down before we leave.

When I pulled out the tree and set it up Neal was so interested in all the lights and ornaments it was impossible for him to ignore. He eagerly crawled over to the table and pulled himself up on his feet to admire the lights and touch any and all ornaments that he could reach. After I let him explore the tree for a bit Tyler and I decided that we best move the tree to a higher location so he can't pull it down on top of himself - Having a small tree up high has ended up being a perfect tree for Christmas this year with a curious, crawling infant.



Though there are a lot of decorations that Neal is not allowed to play with I do have a fun little wooden nativity set in front of the fireplace that is for Neal to play with. He loves the colorful figures and the two little sheep. His favorite thing to do is crawl over to them and swipe his arm across all of them making them topple over. He gets the biggest grin on his face as he hears them clatter to the ground.


There have been a few new decorations added to our home this year - only this year I have actually made them all. First Neal needed a stocking. I looked for a long time to find a cute little stocking and then found one that I really liked however, it was out of stock. After looking at it for awhile online I decided that I could easily make the same stocking and so I did. I love how it turned out and am excited to fill it with lots of fun toys.


I also have been wanting a Christmas tree skirt for the past 5 years. My in-laws all have beautiful quilted tree skirts and I have been meaning to make one for several years but have never found the time. This year I decided I needed to get started. I was on a friends blog and she had posted a picture of a patchwork tree skirt she made and I loved how it turned out, so I decided to do the same for our small little tree this year. I had lots of random scraps of Christmas fabric so here is what I put together for our little tree.


I will be making a larger skirt for our full size tree, that we will get most years, and using the log cabin quilt skirt pattern from my mother-in-law. I did purchase some fun Christmas fabric online and am looking forward to using this collection of fabric for either a large tree skirt or a nice festive Christmas quilt.


I am really excited about this fabric collection and can't wait to see how the tree skirt or quilt will look once put together. I'll have to post some pictures in the future when the project is finished.

Happy Holidays everyone!!


(don't you just love the excitement and joy that radiates from this little guys face - Christmas is just that exciting to him already)

Thanksgiving 2010

Well I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a great time out in Palmer with Tyler's family. Though we were missing some of the family there were still lots of us to celebrate the holiday. We had about 21 people for dinner and enough food to feed twice that many. It is always so fun to get together with family and friends and share a meal and Thanksgiving has to be one of my favorite holidays (besides Christmas of course).




Since this is our first year with a kid I have been thinking about what type of traditions we will want to start for the holidays with our family. I don't have many ideas yet but one tradition that we have is Thanksgiving morning cinnamon rolls. I thought this was a tradition until the night before Thanksgiving I told Tyler that I didn't think we were going to have cinnamon rolls in the morning 'cause I had just gotten over the stomach flu and wasn't in the mood for baking. Tyler responded, "What? We've never had cinnamon rolls on Thanksgiving morning." I laughed and couldn't believe that the last 5 years of Thanksgiving cinnamon rolls was not remembered. So, in order to make it a true tradition (one that Tyler will now hopefully remember) I got up and made some cinnamon rolls for the morning. Yes, they were delicious and the perfect start to our Thanksgiving. Neal even got to try a small bite and one bite was not enough for him :)



This was Neal's first Thanksgiving and unfortunately he didn't really get to enjoy any of the Thanksgiving food. Neal has been sick (stomach flu) the past few days so eating a Thanksgiving meal on a recovering tummy was not going to work for him. But that didn't stop him from having a great time with the family and sitting at the table with all of us enjoying his saltine crackers and juice. I did end up giving him a little bread dipped in gravy and he devoured it like it was candy.




I think he is really going to like Thanksgiving next year 'cause I can't think of one dish that we had that he wouldn't love. Sadly I think he paid for that delightful gravy on the way home. We left the house and not more then a mile down the road Neal threw up in his car seat...poor guy. Thankfully we were close enough that we turned around and were able to go back and clean him all up at GiGi's house. It was a much nicer drive home with a clean baby, car and car seat. He seems to be doing good today but we are sticking with the saltine crackers and juice for now :)

New toy for Mom and Dad

So Tyler just purchased a new Camera for his company. It is a Canon EOS 7D and takes video and still shots. This type of camera is used by "the professionals" and was even used to film an episode of our favorite show "House" (so it's a great video production camera). I was pretty impressed that a hand held camera could take such good video. The best part about this is that I get to use the camera at home when it is not needed at the office. I am so excited to learn how to use this camera and all the different features and things that it can do. We have been playing around with it the last few days and have already been really impressed with the photos we have gotten. These are some of our favorite ones:







Now remember these have not been altered or anything so they could be even better but I am so excited about how they turned out without any real knowledge on how to do photography. Needless to say this is only the beginning of our soon to increase photo skills. I am looking forward to great "professional" looking photos right from home in the future. Oh and here is a sample of a video...again better ones to come as we learn more. (quality of the video went down a little when we changed the formate for posting but it's still cute)



I think I should look into some good photography and photo shop tutorials online - or maybe someone I know could show me a few pointers...know anyone you could suggest?

Crafting

We have been doing a lot more activities indoors lately with the cold weather outside. Cooking, baking and quilting are my favorite indoor projects. We had our friends Rob and Melanie over, with their son Eli, for dinner last weekend and Melanie and I got to create a great Sushi dinner. It was fun to be creative with the sushi rolls we decided to make and the dinner turned out delicious. The sushi not only tasted delicious but looked so colorful and authentic.




It took quite a bit of time to put everything together but made for a fun day and great dinner to share with friends.

Since Neal and I are home together all day I didn't want him to miss out on any fun activities. However, baking and quilting are not activities for a 9 month old, or a boy for that matter (baking maybe later if he wants to be a Chef). So we decided to make a fun kiddo craft together. This was Neal's first craft project and he did a great job. He is really quite the artist :)


He loved the feel of the wet, cool paint on his hands and even held relatively still while I got his hand print. We managed to finish the project with very little mess and no paint in the mouth.




This is a one of a kind piece of art work with a limited number of originals so keep your fingers crossed 'cause you may be the lucky recipient of one of these limited addition original paintings. :)

New Favorites

New things are happening every day around here, including the arrival of the winter snow. When you look outside everything is covered in a fresh layer of snow. Because of this we are staying indoors much more but that hasn't stopped Neal from his adventures. He is getting around everywhere and thus discovering so many new toys and other things to play with and explore. Here are some of his now favorite things:

1 ) Playing in the tupperware drawer:


2) Playing with and eating his new wood blocks:


3) Eating pasta with butternut squash sauce...


I got this sauce from Costco and it is Neal's absolute most favorite thing to eat. He shovels it in his mouth faster then any other food. We were eating dinner one night and he crawled right over and starting eating the pasta and sauce right off of my plate. I am going to have to go buy some more of this since it was such a hit. :)



4) "Standing" on his knees


5) Sending picture message to Daddy while he is at work:

Halloween Party

This weekend my friend Brandy and I put together a Halloween party for the kids. This is the first Halloween with kids for most of our friends up here so we wanted an excuse to get all the kids dressed up and hang out together. It turned out to be a fun evening full of lots of great food, friends, pumpkin carving and happy and sad kids. Poor Neal was not feeling very well that night so we hardly got any pictures of him smiling. I think he is working on another tooth which is why he was so teary eyed that night but maybe he just really didn't like being a monkey :)



As you can see below we had a very hard time getting all the kids to stay still for a good photo shoot on the sofa. We tried our best and at least you can see all their cute costumes.



Here is Neal with his friends Kaleb, the puppy and Luke, the cow.



We had so many yummy snacks/desserts. It was fun to have an excuse to make some fun fall/Halloween desserts. Brandy made some cupcakes and decorated them with icing pumpkins and I made a spiderweb cheese cake topped with a candy spider. My mom gave me this guacamole recipe that I tried for the first time also and it was a hit. She told me it was the best guacamole she had ever had and I would have to say I agree, it was the best guacamole I have had so I will be keeping that recipe and making it again in the future.



Neal was so tired that half way through the party we actually put him down for a nap in Jonathan's room and he slept for almost an hour. After his nap he seemed a lot happier and even played some with Kaleb before we left.


We got home that evening in time to pass out a little bit of candy to the few trick-or-treater's that came by our place. It was overall a fun evening. We always have a blast with our close friends and really who doesn't like a party right? By the time we got home Neal felt just good enough to smile for a few "First Halloween" pictures. Doesn't he make the cutest monkey you've ever seen?