Mommy Date

My kiddo’s are officially on Christmas break! Yeah! Lots of time for mommy dates with the kiddos. I can’t wait to pack in all the last minute Christmas plans and events. Our house is over the top excited. The trees are trimmed, presents are wrapped and sweets are all lined up ready to be made.

We needed a quick breather before all the craziness was in full swing. Annika loves Mommy dates, and today was one of those the perfect days to steal a special moment together. One of her favorite Mommy date places is the coffee shop. I love that girl! She even knows what she wants, a Vanilla Steamer. Yummy!

What date would be complete without a fun drawing game:) I love her concentration face. Annika almost always has a notebook with her, today was no exception. I wish I had a picture of the amazing purse she borrowed from Bree for today’s outing. I love having girly girls;)

This was our first Christmas drawing. My favorite is the cute caroler singing in the corner. Just like here, we took turns adding special touches to the picture until it was deemed complete.

We then moved on to creating the most amazing ornament. I really wish that we could reproduce this beautiful drawing into a special ornament that could be hung on our tree. Hmmmm…I will have to keep thinking. Does anyone have any great suggestions to make this happen?

Our entire date was only an hour, but Annika loved it. With the craziness of the holiday season upon us, make sure that you are taking time to slow down and enjoy your kiddos. It only takes a few moments to make them feel loved and special.

If you don’t want to miss out on any of the fun we are having at Housing A Forest, make sure to follow us on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

Candle Sconces

DIY Candle Sconces ~ Chippy Distressed Painting Technique

Here is a sneak peek at what I am creating over at Inspired Home Style. I love turning something discarded into something new. I found these little shutters in the trash…and could hardly wait to turn them into Candle Sconces.

Hop on over to Inspired Home Style to see how we made Chippy Candle Sconces!

Here are a few of my favorite posts from Inspired Home Style:

Coffee Sack Art

Burlap Birds Specimen Art

10 Creative Container Gardens

10 Unique House Number Ideas

Snowflake Ornaments

I have a bunch of the super cheep plastic glitter snowflakes from Target. They are no where as cool as the hand made snowflake ornaments my Mom and Grandmother crochet me, but I still like them. These plastic wonders have graced our family tree for a number of years. You know the ones that come in a bunch of different colors and are around $2 for a pack.

This year I decided that they were a bit too uniform. No two snowflakes are the same in nature, yet my tree was covered in a bunch of clone snowflake ornaments. So I tried altering them a bit, and I am so glad I did. I love the new look!

Since they are cheap plastic, it was simple to snap off any of the bits that I did not want. I did not bother to cover the raw end of my white snowflakes, but if you were trying this with a colored one, you may need to use paint to hide the raw area.

You can create many interesting shapes, depending where you snap the snowflake. I chose to keep each of my snowflake ornaments symmetrical. I also changed all the silver string, to simple twine which fit my decor much better.

I love my new snowflake ornaments. Why I did not do this sooner is beyond me, but I’m glad I did it now. I kept a few of them the original shape and altered the rest. SO much better!

If you don’t want to miss out on any of the fun we are having at Housing A Forest, make sure to follow us on Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

We just had twins!

When the kids got home from school the chickens had a sweet surprise waiting for them. Two little pullet eggs waiting in the same nest. This is the first set of eggs that the girls have given us, and two eggs in one day was perfect! I love the look of surprise on Annika’s face. She will now be running to the coup to gather eggs every spare moment.

Kaleb told us that he thought that the chickens were saving their eggs for a Christmas present to us. They were so happy to get an early Christmas present.

Chickens all lay a slightly different shade of egg. One way to tell what color egg a chicken will lay is to look at her earlobe. Yep chickens have earlobes, who knew! A hen with a white earlobe will always lay white eggs, whereas hens with red earlobes will lay either brown, blue or green eggs.

Since we only have 6 chickens with a small amount of detective work we should be able to match each chicken with their specific egg color. Four of our chickens will lay brown eggs (Buttercup, Ruby, Marty and Salt) and two of them will lay green/blue eggs (Cocoa and Chippy)

Now we just have to decide what to make with these special little gifts.

Wrapped with Love!

I just finished wrapping the kiddos Christmas presents! I love that feeling. Everything is snug under the tree and I have no fear of kiddos peeking at the stash of gifts. There was cute talk today that they knew where the gifts were hidden, but no one peeked. Funny kiddos. I don’t think that they actually looked at anything, but I’m glad to remove the temptation. I remember the year I found all my gifts. I loved the Christmas presents I received but Christmas morning was disappointing. All the surprise was removed! I would hate for my kids to have the same experience!

Over the years we have developed a simple wrapping system that works for our family. We like to keep the kids guessing which gifts are for them. I buy 5 different, coordinating wrapping papers and wrap each persons Christmas presents only in one color of paper. This way I don’t have to make name tags for the gifts. It also builds the kiddos excitement. They like to guess which wrapping paper is theirs. I love hearing them speculate. Tomorrow will begin the chatter about who’s color is who’s. Unfortunately the kids helped me wrap Chucks gifts so that narrows down the choices.

Wrapping gifts always reminds me of my Dad. Growing up we wrapped all the extended family presents together. Dad has an amazing skill to keep the patterns of the paper all lined up, edges square and looking store wrapped . Mom wrapped too, but her specialty was making all the gifts pretty with ribbons, cards and extra touches. Ken I think your skill leaned more to garbage bags and packing tape:)

As I was sitting on the floor with a pile of slightly wonky gifts surrounding me, I was giggling. If Dad was watching the chaos in my living room, he would be giving me pointers or at least bringing me the right box to fit the gift in. I’m pretty sure the wonky, wrapped with love look of my gifts is because I was to lazy to find boxes. I think that is the best way to describe the gifts…wrapped with Love!

On a side note, this might be the first post that have done without pictures. You will all have to wait for Christmas morning! How do you wrap your gifts for kiddos; do you have a fun system? I’d love to hear your wrapping traditions and memories.