Our New House

Hey Readers if you want to check out our new house head on over to our family blog and take a tour.   Hope you enjoy our new pad.  Stay tuned for decorations, new paint and lots of organization tips.

So come on in and take a tour!

Girls night

This weekend I had a few new friends out for a little Christmas girls night, even though we had the boys with us to, it was still a girls night.   We started the night off with a yummy feast.  My friends brought some delicious shrimp and noodles and we made homemade baked chicken wings a this new appetizer. 

They are called poppers and they were so delicious.  I will for sure be making them again for our Christmas gatherings this year. 

After supper we did a craft together making these paper trees.  I saw the idea from one of my friends blogs (scrap and doodle) and thought I would give it a try. 

They turned out very nice.  I am so happy with the paper pack I picked up that day at Winners.  It was an American Crafter pack called Jolly.  All the paper is so beautiful and I can't believe that it was so cheap.  I didn't realize how good of deals you can find at winners on scrapbooking stuff.

Christmas Cookies

Last week or maybe it was two weeks ago we had a big snow storm here so we decided to take the day and decorate the house for Christmas.  And how can you really decorate without any Christmas cookies to snack on!  

Hubby is the best at rolling out the cookie dough so that is his job.  

This year Jaelyn got to help out by making her own cookie.  Daddy gave her a little piece of the dough they patted it out together and then put the cookie cutter on it. 

Once the dough was all rolled out Daddy and Eben worked on cutting the cookie out.  They do such a great job of making use of all the cookie cutters.

Now all we need is some pictures of the finished cookies but they still aren't iced yet.  Maybe we will get that done this weekend.

DIY Christmas Cards

It seems early to be thinking about Christmas cards but I like to have mine done early that way when there is a 10 cent sale at a local print shop I can be ready to print them out.  For the past 4 years I have been doing our own Christmas cards.  Here is our Christmas card from last year.  I simple took a picture that my talented friend Kait took and used a free Christmas card template.

This year to find my templates I did a search in Pinterest and found some great templates.  Here are 3 that I really like from one site called Simple as that. 

Now all I need to do is find the picture that I really like.  So that you wonderful friends and family can stare at our pretty faces all year long! hehehe  Enjoy making your own Christmas cards this season!

Movemeber

Our whole family is getting into the Movember mode as we work together raising money for prostate cancer.   If you would like to donate to our family please visit my hubby's Mo space HERE.   

Now on to the crafty part of this post.  I made these cute little stach's using a template from easy makes me happy blog.  She suggested using stiff felt but since I didn't have any I just used black card stock.  For the stick I used a small skewers with the sharp tip cut off and to attach it all together I used a glue dot cause I can't find my glue gun.  

We had lots of fun laughing together yesterday as we took these shots.  Here is Eben and daddy.

Lady J showing us her stash

We even got the photographers on the other side of the camera and got them involved as well.

Don't forget to give some cash to someone for their stash!!!

Sweet and Salty Cookies

I love love love sweet and salty things so when I saw this on Pinterest I knew I needed to try them.  I was not disappointed.  They were as delicious as I knew they would be.  If you like sweet and salty things head on over to Sugar Cooking for the recipe.  I didn't add the peanut butter chips but added more pretzels instead.

Shutter mail holder

Summer is a time for weddings and like every other summer we had a few weddings to attend.   Weddings are always such a fun time for gifts and I always use the excuse to make or create new projects. 

I love the idea of using a shutter to hold mail.  I first saw this creative idea back in 2005 we I was planning my wedding and was hoping to make one for the wedding to hold wedding cards in.  I didn't find any shutters so my idea was put on hold.  Then about 3 years ago at a 50% off sale at value village I scored this shutter.  I can't believe I had been hanging on to this gem for that many years but I have been so finally this summer I got it out and made my project.  First I painted it up, sand papered it and then I applied the couples Monogram on it using vinyle and my Cricut. 

And here is the finished product, hanging on the couples wall, complete with the shelf hubby added to it and the key hooks.