Christmas, Crafts, & Cookies

Only a couple months late. Here's another catch up post:

Sometime before Christmas the Relief Society in my ward had a Christmas craft night with dinner. It was really fun and delicious! I haven't done anything crafty in awhile due to our living situation, so I really enjoyed it.

You could only pick two things to do (they had about ten options), so I picked things where you just show up and they provide everything for you instead of having to bring something. The less work the better!

^ These two shadow box frames were really cute, but I didn't make them. They were part of the crafts where you had to bring something with you. I just took pictures for my own future reference. The one on the left would be a cute Christmas decoration. The frame on the right would be cute on a kitchen.

^ This was a frame I made (not the actual frame, it's from IKEA). All we did was spray glued a piece of burlap to the plexiglass that came with the frame and then you could hot glue the clip on the front. I couldn't decide if I wanted to permenantly have my frame be vertical or horizontal sooo...

...I bought magnets at Walmart (the clip was already a magnet) and then depending on if I want it to be vertical or horizontal I can change it. I liked the idea of clipping a recipe up when you're cooking or changing out different photos or whatever else you can think to clip on there.

^ The pic on the left is of the clear plastic ornaments that I made (again, I didn't make the actual ornaments). I did wrap strips of Christmas paper around a pencil and then packed the coils through the top of the ornament. Those are actually our first Christmas ornaments.  On the right are the Christmas cookies I made. They're actually called Candy Cane Cookies, but my visiting teachers had given me a little Christmas gift and one of the things with it was a snowman cookie cutter so I thought I'd use it with the dough (the consistency is similar to sugar cookie dough).

candy cane cookies

preheat oven to 375 degrees.

mix together:
1 cup butter or shortening
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla

then add:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt

at this point you can divide the dough in two and put red food coloring in one of the doughs.  roll out some dough from the white and from the red like worms. twist them around each other and curve the top so it looks like a candy can.

bake about 8-9 minutes.

when cookies are still warm sprinkle with mixture of 1/4 cup crushed peppermint candy cane and 1/4 cup sugar.



*side note: My husband said I should've put frosting on them. He can make them next time.

Nannying 101

Another catch up post:

From the end of November to just before Christmas (basically, a month) I nannied for these two cute little girls. Tessa is 5 and Sayde is 3. Their nanny was going to visit her home in the Philippines for a month and they were looking for a fill in nanny while she was gone. I was the filler. I wasn't starting my regular nanny job until January, so it worked out perfectly.

These girls looooove crafts! So we did a lot of them (thank you pinterest)! Tessa and Sayde have tons of personality and with that personality comes a lot of happy and laughing and sometimes some tantrums and tears. But when I look at the pictures of some of the things I did with these girls I smile and miss them.

 We made salt dough ornaments. Once they dried the girls painted them. I love on the right, Sayde's pinkie sticking up.

 On the left, Sayde enjoying her Christmas cookie. On the right, she's making snow fall from the branch as we head to preschool.

 Since Sayde just had preschool two days a week and Tessa went to kindergarten everyday, Sayde and I got to do some crafts, just the two of us. On the left, we made snow flakes for the front windows. On the right we painted cheerios and glued them to a cut out tree. (She wanted to make a Christmas tree like Tessa had done at school with Fruit Loops. This was our version and she was really excited to have her own cereal Christmas tree.)

 I built this Christmas lego village that their parents had bought and they played with it all the time!

 We painted bread which they thought was really cool. They loved dressing up! On the right is Tessa dressed as Jessi from Toy Story.

 We built a snow family in their front yard. This was the first one we made.

 On the left I cut out paper gingerbread girls that the girls colored and decorated and then began to play with like they were real dolls. On the right we made a gingerbread house. This was actually the first I've ever done, so we did have some issues with keeping the roof on, but somehow it stuck there.

 We went to Chinook mall to get pictures with Santa. They loved waiting in line because there was all kinds of stuff to look at and buttons to press. They mailed their letters to Santa. At one point Sayde said, "I didn't think this place would be magical, but IT IS!" Obviously, you can tell from the look on her face on the right.

 We made snow women from paper plates, construction paper, popsicle sticks, and cotton balls. We went to IKEA for lunch.

We went to Petland to look at the animals they had and they loved it, but they were over the moon when one of the employees asked if they wanted to hold a bird! They were in love with the thing and wanted to get one. I told them to ask their parents. Haha!


This was a good test run to start me off in my nanny career. I'm into my third month with the new family I nanny for. These two girls really broke me into the world of nannying!

Streeeetchhhhh

Two days ago Mark suggested I do some yoga to release tension in my muscles. I looked into how much it was at the YMCA and moved on quickly to thinking I'd go buy a dvd at walmart and then suddenly thought, "Helloooo! Pinterest!" I was almost sure I had pinned some kind of yoga something or other so I went looking yesterday. When I got home from work I found this video, which just links up to youtube. It was only 14 minutes long so I figured I can do that. 

On almost a daily basis I end my work day with neck and shoulder pain and tension and often add a headache to that as well. This video has a couple stretches for that exact problem. The guy is seriously granola and probably from California (holla!) given the no shirt, no shoes, long hair look, BUT he shows some great stretches and it seriously has helped me feel better in my neck and shoulders. Not perfect, but better.

Midnapore House Renovation After

I haven't written a post in a long time. It's partly been because I haven't had a lot of time because of nannying. Partly because I couldn't figure out how to get pics from my new phone to my computer. Partly because my husband's favorite hobby is looking at used cars for sale online, which often monopolizes our one laptop. Partly because I don't know if anyone really reads this blog. I guess I wanted to keep posting more for me. I haven't written in a journal in awhile and a blog is a good way to record life, especially when you can put in pictures.

I had a post a couple months back with pictures of a house that Mark and I and his parents were renovating. It was so much work! More work than I realized it would be. But it was rewarding to see the outcome. We sold it in a couple days, so I guess we did a good job!

Here are the after pics of the house...

front hallway

front entryway

                                    

                                front room (looking from the dining room)

                                    

                                dining room

upstairs bathroom

upstairs master bedroom (most of the rooms look
similar so I didn't include all of them)

          

basement bathroom

basement rec room

garge

backyard hot tub

other side of garage

A Message For Girls Everywhere

I've been absent from the blogging world for months because I started nannying, which means I work around 10 hour days, so I've been a little preoccupied and tired.

This video is what's forcing me back into blogging. It's too good not to share.

Last night I went to a Stake Relief Society event called Be You tiful...  We got to have dinner and then go to two blocks of classes. In each block there were about five or six classes to choose from. Both the classes I chose were great!

The second one was called Beautifully Healthy where Jenn Low talked about nutrition and exercise and it got me motivated to take some "baby steps" (What About Bob?) to try to be a little healthier in my life. Which means I'm going to exercise after finishing this blog post.

The first class I chose to go to was called Be-You-Nique and the teacher was Columbia Carter. She was born with one of her arms not fully developed and she shared what that was like for her growing up and things she discovered about herself. Something she learned was that nobody will accept you if you don't accept yourself. Another thing she learned was that you need to use what you got. She decided that instead of people thinking of her as "the girl with one arm" she wanted people to think of her as "the girl with the big smile". Every Sunday at church Columbia always has a huge smile on her face. She is one of the friendliest people I've met. In her class she shared this video at the end. This nine year old knows what he's talking about.

Listen. Learn. Now go be be-you-tiful!


(and if the video doesn't work on here you can just go to youtube and type in "a message for girls everywhere" and that should work)

Halloween and the Freezing Cold

 I feel bad for the kids in Canada when it's Halloween. Yes, they do dress up. Yes, they do go trick or treating and get lots of candy. However, they must do all of this in the freezing cold and snow. Mark told me that he was always hopeful that it wouldn't be like that one year, but pretty much every year it was and this year was just the same.

Rocky and Crew came over to get bigger candies from Grandma's house. For some reason Crew took off some of his ninja costume, but I got Rocky in his spiderman. He's actually more puffy than normal in it because they put him in warm clothes underneath his costume. Most kids that came to out door had on winter coats and snow boots over their costumes.

 (On the right, Rocky is "webbing" and he totally did this pose and the serious face...he's not just dressed up as spiderman...he IS spiderman!)

 Doxy was a skeleton for Halloween.

 Then we decided to make Blue try on Doxy's costume.

This past week on Thursday, I think, it started snowing again...A LOT...again! It never stopped snowing that whole day. Then it snowed some more the next day. This time I actually took some pictures of all the beauty...well, except for the bottom right photo of our car's CA license plate...that just ain't right!!