My one hundredth post and finally my Chistmas house tour

Hi everyone! Whew, I cannot believe this is my one hundredth post! And just in time for the New Year too :) But, since I don't reveal my resolutions (I think it's bad luck) I figured this would be a good time to wrap up the rest of Christmas stuff (I think) and finally post some pictures of our house at Christmas. I ran around on the 23rd snapping pictures as soon as our showing was done and while the house was still tidy :) So here we go! 

Kitchen

                                             Dining room, kitchen is to the left...

 
The Santa below is a vintage decoration from Pats grandma and the house on the left opens up and plays "Santa Claus is coming to town" and has a Christmas scene set up inside with moving parts. It's hard to explain, but it is pretty cool to watch. My mom gave it to us a few years ago and it's definitely one of the kids' favorite decorations :)

Just realized how dusty those logs are, yikes, have to get on that!

Christmas cards from family and friends hanging in the window :) So nice to see how much everyone is growing up in the pictures we received.

The picture garland hanging on the banister is one of my favorite parts and the newest addition to our decor this year. I made it after seeing similar ones on both the Clover lane blog and the Sunny Side Up blog. Both of those blogs can give you a tutorial on how to make one so I won't go into detail here (but if you want to see more details of mine or ask me a question feel free to email me or leave a comment and I'll be happy to respond!)  I'll just say that I'm 99% finished them, I just want to add each year to the back some how nice and pretty.

Our stockings :) We can't hang ours on our mantel because our mantel is a bit too wobbly (will explain why in a future post ) Mine is in the front, can you believe my mom made it? I love it :)

And of course Stella has to have a stocking too!

Living room ( there are a few projects in that room I want to tackle soon, including that ugly chair!)

Fireplace and mantel...

I love the picture on the mantel. I was going to take it down for Christmas because it's been up there for awhile ( it's just a cheapo poster from Ikea) But then I looked at it again and thought it looked like the little kids in the photo are watching for Santa, so I left it :)



"Snoodles" our elf (remember him from this post?) had a blast finding new hiding spots, but I think this was his favorite :)

The main floor bathroom which has our snowman collection...

That bathroom will hopefully be seeing some changes in the new year (hint: I certainly didn't pick salmon pink as a colour for the walls)

And last but not least is our entry, where everyone is greeted with a nice photo of all of us, a joyful angel that Nyla made last year and a few other other happy things.



That's it for the main floor. One of these days soon, I plan to do a full house tour, so you can look forward to that in the new year!
I hope everyone has a fun and safe weekend and a very Happy New Year!

See you next year!

Christmas Aftermath

Whew! What a weekend! We had a wonderful Christmas full of family and food and fun.

First, we went to Grandma and Tim's farm, they live about an hour from where we live, so we stayed there the 23rd. We had a super fun time especially because we got some new snow and were outside all day playing in it. We got to be pulled on a toboggan behind Tim's quad, and the kids got to try snowshoes :)

We enjoyed visiting with Grandma and all their dogs :)

We made our way home on the 24th with a stop at Pat's aunt and uncle's house for supper and a visit with more family (forgot to take pictures there oops!) It's an annual get together that we couldn't miss, even though Nyla's been battling the flu all week, poor girl. When we got home, the kids were allowed to open one present ( a tradition of opening new pj's from mom and dad) except Gabe was a little excited and opened the wrong one :) That was ok because it was from auntie and uncle and all the cousins and he got to wrap himself in it as well as his new pj's. :) He loves his new cozy cars blanket and it was perfect for cuddling with daddy when things got a little overwhelming :)

The kids put out treats and eggnog for Santa and then off to bed..

Next morning was Christmas! Gabe discovered the multitude of joys found in a stocking including chocolate :)

The kids received a bunch of new DVDs for special movie nights,

Even Stella got some treats in her stocking :)

My girls :)

My guys :)

We eventually had breakfast, with my mom and sister,

My dad visited during the day and then we had Pat's dad and stepmom over for Christmas dinner where we had some fun enjoying Christmas "crackers" Love the crowns and "earrings"

And this is the beautiful mess were left with that night :) What a lovely, relaxing, enjoyable Christmas. How was yours? 

Yesterday, instead of cleaning up, I got hooked on reading this book,

                          source

SO GOOD! I couldn't put it down! I read from about 8:30 in the morning till about 7:30 last night and finished it! I can't wait to read the next two.
How was your weekend? Busy, relaxing, happy, sad ? Love to hear from you!

Merry Christmas

                                                                           source

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.    Isaiah 9:6

Christmas Card 2011

Well here it is, we had such a fun time with our friend and photographer Cindy on our photo shoot and I honestly had the hardest time deciding which photo to use on the cards because there were so many great shots to choose from.

Front

and inside.

Some of you received yours already and some of you are getting them a bit late (oops sorry about that, lost a bit of card making time to study for exams time) and this whole month has flown by so fast I cannot believe in one hour it will be Christmas eve!

I know I said I would share Christmas decor with you today and that just didn't happen as we had a house showing (to sell it) and right now we're actually at my husband's mom's place for a pre-Christmas celebration. I did get a bunch of good pics of the house today though so be sure to check back next week for those to appear :)Thank you so much to all of you who do take the time to check out my little blog, I so enjoy blogging and sharing some tidbits of our lives and it's nice to see other people enjoying it as well. 

 I wish you all a safe and happy holidays and a very Merry Christmas!

Did you figure it out?

It's..........Almond Roca! Yum!

Cady was my little helper as we made some yesterday :) She was the official taste tester :)

If you want to make some yourself, here's the recipe,

Almond Roca

1c butter

1 c sugar

1   4oz pkg sliced almonds

6oz semi-sweet chocolate, white or dark

Cook sugar and butter for 6-7 minutes on medium high heat, stirring constantly. Add almonds and boil another 6-7 minutes until mixture is caramel coloured and nuts pop.

Remove from heat and pour on  a cookie sheet.

Coat top and side with melted chocolate, sprinkle with nuts when cool.

Turn over and coat other side.

Then when all that is done, you break it all into pieces and enjoy! Or maybe share.

I cannot believe how fast the last couple of weeks have gone by, can you?! The countdown is on and I only have a few more things to wrap and I think I can say I'm ready for the big day :) How about you, are you ready? I'm going to try and be back tomorrow and share our holiday decor.

Christmas Treats

Last week, the kids and I made some special treats for the girls to give to their teachers. I had some hard working helpers :) Lucky thing I have three kids as there were three jobs to do.

Gabe worked on his colours as his job was to sort the m&ms into separated red and green piles :)

Cady's job was to unwrap all the Hershey's Hugs, she did really well although hers ended up being the bottleneck so I helped her out a bit :)

Nyla got to sort the pretzels and only put non broken ones on the cookie sheet :)

After everything was sorted and nicely put together, we stuck them  in the oven for a couple minutes so the hugs could get a little melty,

Oh and Rudolph helped a bit too :)

Then we took out the slightly melted pretzels and hugs and added some Christmas colour....

And voila! Some super easy, fun Christmas treats called Pretzel-hugs :) They were pretty yummy too, kind of like chocolate covered pretzels with extra chocolate. I got the idea to make these from one of my favorite blogs to read and you can see the original post here. Unfortunately ours don't look quite as perfect, fortunately, I'm pretty sure they TASTE as good :)

This is a little snapshot of MY favorite Christmas treat to make and eat (or the ingredients for anyways) Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint, it's my sister, Charlotte, and I's favorite thing to make and eat this time of the year :)

Four simple ingredients to yumminess. Well, you'll just have to come back tomorrow to find out and get the recipe!