Declare Your Love - Christmas Shows

It's that time of year. The time when you look forward to (or dread) all the Christmas shows that are on during the month of December. So I thought I would declare my love for:

A Christmas Story

This is hands down my favorite Christmas movie. The family is so disfunctional that I can totally relate... And even though the plot is so crazy, it could happen to anyone. I can't wait for the 24-hour marathon to come on, on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. It's the highlight of my Christmas season.

What about you? What is your favorite Christmas show or movie?

As an aside, the giveaway for the $30 Barnes and Noble gift card ends at midnight (EST) tomorrow night. If you haven't already entered, go ahead, what do you have to lose?

30 days until 30 years... GIVEAWAY!

I can't believe I'm going to be 30 in a month. It seems like the last 10 years of my life went by entirely too fast. But in spite of all of that, I'm going to take 30 by the horns and enjoy it as much as I can. I mean, I've got a lot going for me. I have a great husband, two wonderful little boys (as requested, no girls allowed, j/k, haha) and a very loving dog. I have a full time job that pays well and is relatively secure. I have a car, a place to live and food to eat. I've accomplished most of my goals, in life. While there are a few remaining, like buying our own house and having my own business, I figure Rome wasn't built in a day. As our pastor once pointed out, Susan Boyle was 48 when she had her dreams come true... So I figure I have at least 18 years left to hope...

In honor of my upcoming birthday, I decided to celebrate with a giveaway... And as it turns out, my birthday is two days before Christmas, so 30 days before sounded like the perfect time for it. Don't you agree? I'm giving away a...

$30 Barnes and Noble Gift Card

One of my favorite places to go, because, I don't know about you, but I love me some books. Classic books, kids books, mystery books, E-books, history books, magazines, cookbooks... You name it, I love to read it... When I have the chance to read.

Here is how to enter:

Chance #1 - Comment with the title of your favorite book
Chance #2 - Post about the giveaway on your blog or on facebook and comment with the link

Comments will be closed on November 30th at 12am(midnight) EST. I will post the winner on December 1st, so be sure to check back. This is open to everyone, everywhere, since you can use it online too.

Thanks for stopping by and good luck!

Elijah's room - The Finished Product

It's been a year and five months since I started talking about remodeling Elijah's room. I will fully blame the fact that I was pregnant for 9 months for not updating about this for about a year. However, with all that in the past I can finally show you a semi-clean, almost completely done remodel of his room. You can see the previous posts here

This is what it looked like before:

It was definitely just a room to sleep in.

But now it's a room he likes to play in

I'm sorry for the lighting, it was a very bright day out. A little update on things we decided on... We went with a regular boring old, cheap, lamp from Ikea. Joe's parents gave Elijah the TV for Christmas and we bought a super cool arm mount from Costco, so no matter where the bed is moved, in the room, the TV can be turned towards it.

We ended up buying the curtains that I linked to in a previous post, because they were 70% off, on sale. I went with shorter curtains too, so he wouldn't get the urge to play in them.

This is what you see when you come into the room. For the clothesline I just used two eyelets, screwed them into the wall, then strung twine across it. The things are held on by binder clips. You can see the "ELIJAH" poster we bought him from the fair last year. It has Elmo on it, cause at the time, he loved Elmo. We call the beanbag chair and the Cars chair his "sitting area", so he can entertain people and have places for them to sit. (cause, you know, he's sooo popular)

We keep the chalk for the chalkboard wall in an old Lego container (the Legos are stored elsewhere) and the bed, is the end of the tour. It was laundry day, that is why all the linens are off his bed. It was the only time I was at home that I remembered to take pictures, so I figured no one would care.

You know what is ironic about this post and these pictures? His bed was soon going to be exchanged for a twin size bed, cause Caleb needs the mattress for his crib. So, this past weekend we moved Elijah into a new bed and Caleb into Elijah's old crib. Everyone seems to be adjusting pretty well...

Until next time...

Leaves...

Elijah got to experience one of the joys of childhood, for the first time, this year. He got to play in a pile of leaves.

At first he didn't know what to do

But he got the hang of it really fast

Then Penelope joined in the fun

And Charlotte too

You can see the joy on their faces

They had so much fun that they did it again this past weekend

In a -huge- pile of leaves, this time.

Even Daddy/Uncle Joe joined in the fun

Caleb "jumped" in too.

He was not thrilled...

Then the kids got put to work, picking up all the leaves

They did a great job.

And seeing how my in-laws still have a bunch of leaves on the tree, that have yet to fall, we might be able to have one more playing session before the season is out. Gotta love fun in the great outdoors.

Until next time...

Harvest Party...

This year we wanted to get more involved with our church, because, as I've said before, there are a ton of people who attend and it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. So when I received a little card inviting me to try out this thing called MomsConnect, I did. MomsConnect is a group that meets once a month. Everyone in the group is a mother of at least one child 5-years-old or younger. I went the first week and had so much fun that I plan to continue to go until they break next summer.

In addition to the monthly get togethers, they have random fun stuff to do a few times a month, that is completely optional. Most of the things we have to miss out on because I work, but we got to attend the Harvest party they put together.

It was at the church on a rainy Saturday morning. It was very warm, cozy and fun.

Elijah got to do a few crafts

In her hand is a handprint turkey with feathers and a googly eye

(a better picture is below)

Then we made a scarecrow out of some of Elijah's old clothes

One little boy had a great idea of putting hay inside a baby sleeper

(like Caleb's size)

I will have to remember that for next time.

Elijah got to hang out with some of the kids.

I think he knew some of them from childcare

Then he made a thankfulness wreath

Caleb hung out the whole time

Can you believe this is one of the only pics of him in his costume?

The parachute (I think that's what it's called) was a big hit

When we got home we hung up his artwork on the clothesline in his room.

Which, by the way, is pretty much done, so stay tuned, because in the next week I will be showing off the rest of Elijah's made-over room.

Until next time...

Fall Photos...

I made the mistake of thinking that taking photos of the boys and Azalea would be easy. So we set out to go to the park near our house that has a big field that hardly anyone uses. We ended up having to take two cars, cause we brought Azalea and the wagon to transport everything. Because all of that would not would not fit in Joe's Toyota Corolla. I'm pretty happy with the results though. Nothing spectactular, but some nice pictures to bring back memories years down the road.

We started walking to the field, Caleb being held and

Elijah helping out by holding the pumpkins and

making sure they stayed in the wagon

We got to the field, set up and realized this was not the best idea.

How was I going to get some good pics with three non-cooperating subjects?

But we rolled with it and it ended up turning out fine.

Caleb was content and ready to go.

Unfortunately he was more interested at looking

everywhere else besides the camera

Azalea was also distracted by a dog that was playing off camera

She did the best she could to stay put.

Then Elijah decided to talk to Caleb for a few minutes

Which was fine with him, cause Caleb loves studying Elijah's every move

Everyone was pretty bored

Then they saw something in the sky

(I have no idea what it was)

So I actually got a pic of them looking in the same direction

Azalea was itching to play, so we let her go

This is one of my favorites

I gave up on the group shots at that point

And decided individual pictures would be the best thing

Even Azalea decided to take a break and pose for a picture

After Elijah and Azalea wondered off Caleb was

left all alone... with just his pumpkin to keep him company.

Pumpkin Painting...

Over the weekend we decided to squeeze in little art project, before Halloween. We decided to paint some pumpkins, since we felt like carving would be more complicated and not as much fun for Elijah to participate in.

First we gathered together the pumpkins and

let Elijah pick the image to stencil

I cut out the stencils using my Cricut

(an Owl from Create a Critter and Happy Halloween from one of the font cartridges)

I taped them onto the pumpkins and tried to tape the inner part of owl

to the pumpkin also, so it couldn't come up when painting

We bought a 24 pack of acrylic paint from Wal-Mart

to use on different projects throughout the year,

so we used black and white on the pumpkins

He got to work, painting away, filling the whole area

Caleb supervised the project

He did a great job

After the bigger pumpkin was done

He moved to the smaller pumpkin

He filled in the whole little pumpkin stencil too

Later, after he went to bed I peeled off the stencil and this is what we had.

I think next time I am goin to dry the paint out with a hairdryer

so it's not so wet when I'm trying to peel the paper off.

But, of course, I love the results anyway, because Elijah painted it

*Now that you've seen the results, I just want to say that I wasn't doing this for it to look perfect. Actually I was just doing it for something Elijah could help with, to decorate for Halloween. If I were to do this for my own benefit I would have done a few things differently. I would have used removable adhesive to hold down everything and I, also, would have used a stencil brush. I feel like that in conjunction with using a hairdryer to dry out the paint before peeling off the stencil would make this project look a lot better.

Did you do any projects for Halloween?