It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.......

Soon the bells will start..... sigh I love Christmas carols don't you? 

If you are new to Kozy Kabin in the Koots, Welcome! I am linking up with The Nester's 2012 Christmas Tour of Homes and The Inspired Home's Christmas Home Tours

Ahem,  and we're back to our irregularly scheduled program.  I'm finally going to share with you our Christmassy house, although I'm still tweaking and refining a few things. If you are curious what our house looked like last year, you can check that out here.

When you first walk into our house this is the little vignette that welcomes you, 

Our Favorite Christmas Books

We love Christmas books (OK we love books in general!) but we love the Christmas ones especially because they only get seen for a short time each year. I usually keep them in storage the rest of the year so that they are extra special when they come out around the end of November.  We keep them in this basket by a good reading chair in the living room so that we make sure to share and enjoy them together.

A little house update

      I love frame walls and I've been dying to create one in our home, but our last house had log walls ( real round logs) so there wasn't really anywhere to do a frame wall. So, when we moved to our new place, and I saw this beautiful big empty wall I immediately thought "frame collage!!"

Christmas fun

This weekend we did something fun together as a family, we made a gingerbread house! We don't usually do these things (gasp!) but we got one of those kit thingies last week ( thanks Gramma Bev!) and Gabe has been pestering asking me all week to make it. So on Sunday we had nothing going on (for once!) and we decided Gabe had pestered waited long enough. It was actually pretty fun once we got through the arguments of who's being fair and who's hogging all the candy :) We even had my sister here to help.

Ordinary Days

Playmobil playing, pancake making,hot chocolate and nachos, Lincoln logs building, family time, potluck with friends, Christmas decorating and reading favorite Christmas books. That was our weekend in a nutshell, how was yours?

Shhh don't tell my kids.....

OK, I mentioned here that I'd share some of the things my kids may be getting under the tree this year :) Starting with Mr. Gabe, he is a Lego fanatic like his dad, as well as loving anything to do with firefighting, so this just might make an appearance under the tree,


                                            
                                                                        source

I also hope he finds something like this under there too. We have come across these things a few times and every time Gabe plays with them, it keeps him quietly entertained for a good long while :)

Raspberry Cream Muffins

These muffins are by far our families favorites. They are the one kind that everyone eats, even my most picky eater. So here we go and hope you enjoy some with your family :)

Rasberry Cream Muffins

2 cups                  All purpose flour ( you can use whole wheat flour if you want, I do!)

1 tsp                     baking powder 

1/2 tsp                  baking soda

1/2 tsp                  salt

1/4 tsp                  ground cinnamon

1/2 cup                 butter or hard margarine, softened

2/3 cup                 granulated sugar

2                           large eggs

1/2 cup                 sour cream

1 tsp                     vanilla

1 cup                    coarsely chopped frozen raspberries ( they should definitely be frozen otherwise they just                 squish into mush)

Measure first 5 ingredients into a bowl and stir well.

Beat butter and sugar in medium bowl. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Add sour cream and vanilla. Beat to mix. Add flour mixture. Stir just until moistened .

Fold in raspberries. Fill greased muffin cups almost full. Bake in 350F (175C) oven for 30-35 minutes until golden. Let stand 10 minutes. Remove from pan to cool on rack.

Makes 12 large muffins. 

Something to Ponder

via

Christmas gift ideas for kids

      OK! Are you all ready for Christmas yet?! No? Well get with the program!  Just kidding :)  I am certainly not ready for Christmas, but I have been starting to get organized and accumulating some things in preparation of that big day.  As I was thinking of that I thought maybe I would share with you some of our best gift ideas from years past. Just to warn you, there are a lot of pictures :) Oh and I will try and provide links to amazon or Toys r us but also know that I fully support our local toy stores and buy a lot of things from them but the links will give you an idea of price :)

     This is a picture from two years ago, and though it doesn't look like from the expression on his face, this was one of Gabe's favorite trucks ever! (still is to this day and he still plays with it all the time )

                                                                     (Link)

Banana chocolate chip cookies (or Erin's cookies)

Hi! Today I'm sharing with you one of our absolute favorite cookie recipes. I got this recipe a few years ago from my wonderful friend Erin and I just have to share it with you because these cookies are sooooo yummy and soooooo easy! :)  They may not look all pretty and all but they taste like little cakes, nice and soft and sweet. So here we go!

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

2/3 cup butter or margarine ( I always use real butter in my cookies, tastes so much better)

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/4 cups flour (I use whole wheat flour)

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 cup mashed banana (about 3, I almost always make these with frozen bananas and I just throw them in when they defrost without mashing)

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Mix all ingredients together with a mixer and spoon onto greased cookie sheet. Bake in 375 degree oven for 10-12 minutes. Best stored in fridge. Freeze well.

Enjoy!

Halloween 2012

Hope you had a great time, I know we did!

Boo to You!!

Well since I don't have any current pics of my kids' costumes yet (they have to bring their costumes to school for later instead of wearing them all day) I thought I'd share some fun from the past.

                                                                           2009
                                             

A Tour de House part 2

     Last week I showed you the main floor of our new place and today I'm going to show you the upstairs and the basement (I know you all have been secretly waiting to see my spectacular basement lol ;)
    So, we last left off here,

A Tour de House Part 1

Now you can easily find part one and part two of the tour in the tab called "Kabin Tour" above! It also has some fun tours of our previous "Kabins"

So here we go finally :) A tour of our new place, you can find out more information from this previous post. Last time, I left you with this teaser photo of the exterior,

Plum Crazy

Remember a few weeks ago in this post I was telling you about all the plums we had to pick? Well one of the things we ended up making was some homemade HP sauce that my mom had a recipe for. It turned out really yummy so I wanted to share with you the recipe for it. So here goes...

First you need some freshly picked plums (the purple kind)

Happy Thanksgiving my fellow Canadians!

                                                           {image source}

Hope your day is blessed with family, friends and good food.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy 5th Birthday Gabe!

I can't believe our "baby" is 5! Time has flown by so fast and every year it seems to go faster and faster doesn't it? I had such a great time this morning going through a bunch of old photos for this post. I think that is my favorite part of doing birthday posts because it forces me to go back to older pictures and enjoy and remember. 

Dear Gabe,

 You are such a sweet little boy and always have been. We knew we were lucky to have such an easy baby for our third, especially with all the craziness that went on in your first year. You were born  less than one week after we moved to our new place (the old Kozy Kabin) on thanksgiving weekend. Then when you were about 6 months old, mommy decided to open an at-home daycare and you were so good with having new kids around all the time. 

It feels like fall

I canNOT believe it is October already! It's amazing how fast September always flies by isn't it? Or is it just me?

Nyla and Cadence had planted pumpkin seeds in the spring and were so excited to reap the rewards of watering and weeding (well the weeding part kind of got forgotten, thankfully pumpkins are pretty tough even with weeds in their way :) Oh, and Gabe had planted cucumber seeds and got to pick his couple of cucumbers in the summer :)

They were pretty proud as you can see :)

No More Baggies!

         This year, for the beginning of school I started a new tradition. I was getting so tired of feeling guilty about sending little plastic baggies in my kids' school lunches ( I do use reusable containers but once you add up a container for a sandwich, a container for cookies/muffin, and sometimes a container for fruit )it starts to add up and then they don't fit in the kids cute lunch bags. Pretty soon you're buying a huge honkin' lunch bag as big as their backpack and where do they put their agendas and homework or library books?! Well, my solution in the past has been to pack their cookie or muffin or other snack item in plastic snack baggies. But no more!

        My new tradition is going to be to let each of my kids pick out a cute reusable snack baggie! And this year as I was ordering up the snack bags I decided to add a set of reusable sandwich wrappers as well, because honestly a lot of times I would just wrap their sandwiches in plastic wrap or throw them in a plastic sandwich baggie because it was easier/fit better than containers. Aren't they cute?!

Our New (to us) House

        So, a bunch of you were wondering what our plans were for the winter as we still haven't found a place to buy yet. Well, let me introduce you to our new place for the winter that we will be renting.  :) Since our home for the summer was going to be a little crammed during the long winter months ( five people and a not-so-little dog in a 100 sq ft travel trailer!) and we hadn't found our "perfect" home we quickly realized we needed  to find an abode fast. Luckily we live in a  pretty tight knit community and we had a lot of people with their eyes and ears open, helping us to find a place. And lo and behold we found one. It has been really great so far and it is a really neat house and property. A nice big yard for the kids and dog, a nice big kitchen for mom :) and even a hot tub! It feels like we're living in a vacation home for the winter except with our own things (even our things feel like new cause they've been packed away for 3 months). We are somewhat close to our old place which works out great for several reasons including the fact that the kids get to stay at the same school (well new to Gabe as he's in kindergarten :) and Pat is even closer to his fire hall.

So, I guess you are curious about what this new place looks like? Without further ado, I give you our winter 2012 rental place:

What do you think? Pretty nice eh? I'll be back soon with a tour of the inside of our humble abode :)

A Quick Trip

On Friday I mentioned I would be away for the weekend and the reason I was away was to go to a barbecue supper for my sweet cousin Rebecca  abd her new hubby Tristan (that's her in the middle holding their cute baby Avin, and that's their sweet dog Donny in between).  The guy on the left is my other cousin Jake (who coincidentally is Rebecca's big brother :) He is also a wonderful musician and he sang their wedding song ("Home" by Phillip Phillips) They had a very quiet nuptial ceremony during the week before with just their immediate family and the barbecue was kind of their reception to celebrate with more family and friends. It was a lovely evening and I was so thrilled for them, they are the sweetest couple!

The reason I was gone all weekend was because the party was about 8 hours away, so two of the days were mostly travelling time (we got back last night). I hitched a ride with my mom and Al and Pat stayed home and took the kids to soccer on Saturday (almost done, 1 more game weekend, whew!) and did various other things needing to get done (like finding firewood so we don't freeze this winter!)

Anyways, although it was a quick trip I had a wonderful time seeing relatives I hadn't seen for a long time. And also meeting some of the newest members of our large extended family.

How about you, did you go on any 8 hour drives this weekend? 

P.S Fun Fact: Rebecca was my maid of honour when Pat and I got  hitched :)

We have a house for the winter!

Just popping in real quick to let everyone know we have moved into an actual house for the winter! It has been a whirlwind and I'll let you all know more about it next week. For now I am getting ready to go on a very quick trip this weekend. Should be fun, I get to visit with some family I haven't seen for a long time :)
Have a great weekend!

What's Your Style?

This morning I was doing my usual blog browse and I was reading one of my favorite DIY blogs Young House Love. They had a "fab freebie" post yesterday and although I can't enter the giveaway (it is only for people in the USA and I'm in Canada :) I was curious about the super easy, fun quiz they were talking about. So I went on over to the HomeGoods website and clicked on stylescope to start the fun quiz. It is really easy and fun, all you have to do is pick out the five images that "speak" to you and you're done. Easy as that! Do you want to know what my "stylescope" is? Oh and there are a bunch of different styles you could be, with fun names like Boho, Vegas Baby, Spa Life, Set Sail, New Country, etc...
So what was I? I was Farm House Glam of course! This is what that looks like,


                                                                 { source }


with a touch of New Country which looks like this...



                                                                  { source }

Personally I think I'm more the other way around (I even have a bunch of the things similar to the picture above like horse pictures, the lotus candle holders, barn star, not a guitar, but I do have a fiddle :) but who can argue with the experts eh? Anyways it's a fun little quiz and there a bunch of beautiful images to get inspiration from, so you should check  it out!

So, did you go check out the quiz? Do you agree with the analysis or do you feel they are totally off the ball?  Are you like me and feel like the second option is closer than the first? Tell me what you think in the comments below and we can discuss! :)

P.S. Just so you know, I haven't been paid or "perked" in any way for this post and the opinions expressed are entirely my own :)

Happy 10th Birthday Nyla!

Dearest Nyla,

We cannot believe it has already been ten years since our first little girl came into this world! Nyla you literally changed our lives when you came along and we were so happy and nervous (and scared!!) to be parents for the first time :) You do your best to be patient with us parents as we always say that since you are the first, you are our "experimental child" :) You are such a wonderful big sister (most of the time). 

You are an amazing reader and a huge lover of animals. We love you very much sweetie and are so proud to be your parents. We hope you have a wonderful day,
Love Mom and Dad
xoxoxoxo

What a busy, fun weekend!

Last weekend we had a busy fun time and it felt like the beginning of the weekend was still summer and by Monday it felt like fall. Ah well, such is life in the great white north :) Actually one of the reasons I love where we live is that we get the best of all seasons. We have the beautiful fall foliage and falling leaves of autumn, of course we get snow in the winter (enough to ski at the ski hill 25 minutes away without the use of snow machines), the crocuses and daffodils of spring and the hot beautiful days of summer. But I digress! 

Our kids (all three of them) were invited to a friends birthday party on Friday after school. Since that friend and her family have a gorgeous house and property on the lake and since it was a gorgeous hot Indian summer day, the friends took all the kids who wanted to go, on a tube ride. Well Gabe and Cady were all over that! (Nyla decided to stay and watch from the dock) 

They had a blast! The friend also had a piñata for everyone so that was fun too. And of course there was the requisite cake and ice cream :)

Thank you to the Alexander family for such a wonderful fun time!

This weekend the kids were back into soccer games on Saturday morning. Thankfully it was a lovely day again. Cadence got a little bored while watching her brother play :)

On Saturday afternoon I decided to take the kids to a beach since it was still so gorgeous and warm out. Pat was doing a course so it was just me and the kiddies. Isn't this view gorgeous!

We decided to pick up some friends to come with us,

sometimes you need a brave friend to help motivate you to jump in ( and holding hands never hurt either :)

I just love the picture above :) Those five have been friends since Gabe was about a month old and they always have a great time together.

Sunday, I forgot to take pictures, but we went to a fall fair with my mom and did another special thing for Nylas birthday (which is actually tomorrow)including a picnic. Then on Monday, when the girls were done school, we went to my moms and helped pick  plums off their tree because a bear had decided to climb the tree the day before and broke a few big branches off. We didn't want the bear to still be attracted to the tree so we had to pick them all :)

Notice how bundled up they are? Well Monday brought autumn with a vengeance and it was windy and freezing! This tree did so well this year, there were TONS of plums.

Stella did her best to help "supervise"  :)

The kids helped a ton, partly cause they were small enough to climb the tree without breaking branches :) You can see in the picture above one of the branches broken by the bear :( I love how it looks like a big alligator mouth trying to eat Nyla in this pic :)

I can't believe this week is almost over and we're almost to the weekend again! We have another busy weekend with soccer games, another birthday party to go to, and another fall fair on Sunday. Maybe this time I'll remember to take pictures :) 

How about you? Has fall come to your corner of the world? Are your weekends crazy busy as well? Do you have any resident bears breaking branches in your yard?

Something to Ponder

I'm Back!!

Hi!  It feels like it has been a long time since I blogged last. I guess it hasn't been that long but the last post I did on my phone which isn't quite the same :) I finally brought our computer in to be looked at and they must have fixed it cause it's working great now. AND I have Internet service! Amazing I know :) I had planned to do way more posting over the summer, but most of the places we stayed didn't have Internet service, boohoo :(

But, now we are back to normal (ha ha whatever that is!) and I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things around here :) I'm planning to give a tour of our current living space and update y'all on what's been going on lately as well as sharing some recipes and various other excitements.

First things first though, I wanted to share with you a book that I read this past week called "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas"

This was an amazing book and although it isn't very lengthy it is incredibly thought provoking. 

The caption on the back reads,

 "If you start to read this book, you will go on a journey with a nine-year-old boy named Bruno. (Though this isn't a book for nine-year-olds.) And sooner or later you will arrive with Bruno at a fence.

Fences like this exist all over the world.

We hope you never have to encounter one."

This book was written a few years ago and maybe I'm behind the ball with it ( I got it at our local thrift store, never heard of it before) but I just had to share my thoughts on it. I think everyone should read it :)

Have a great week!

Have you heard of or read this book yourself? Or maybe you saw the movie? I'd love to hear what you thought of it.

First Day

And they're off to a brand new year of school. We have one in Grade 5, Grade 2 and one in Kindergarten :) Everyone was so excited this morning, especially little mister Gabester! I will try and be back later this week and by then my computer should hopefully be fixed.
Hope you all have a great week!

Homemade Raspberry Jam

From the vine...

to the freezer :)