Snow what fun!

Whew I've been a busy bee this last couple weeks painting up a storm and I can't wait to share with all you. I just need to finish up some of the "after" photos so hopefully next week I'll be all set to share with you all that. 

We've also been busy, enjoying the white stuff that finally decided to show up! 

A Fun Family Weekend (Canadian Style :)

We had such a great weekend this weekend past (it was a long weekend where we are) and I just had to share some of it with all of you who are still checking in on me here ;) 

On Saturday it was gorgeous and sunny and my hubby had the great idea to check out a local park on the lake where we heard it freezes when there is a long cold spell (which there has been!) I decided to bring the good camera to play around with ;)

Outside my window....

there was all this white stuff on the ground ;)

The first couple snowfalls are my favorite, it always makes me want to break out into Christmas carols and drink eggnog and bake a bunch of cookies. ;) Two of those things have already happened and the third is gonna happen this week. Bet ya cant guess which ones!

Have great week!

Christmas 2012

Hello blogworld :) It's been a little while since I was around here, but rest assured I haven't forgotten about my little speck of blogland here, I've been working on a bunch of "behind the scenes" stuff and trying to get my computer to work well again. Thank you to all of you interested and wonderful enough to stick around and see what I have to (eventually) say and share :)

I know most blogs are done with Christmas, but I have to post this as it was supposed to go up around the 27th, but you know what they say about the best laid plans :)

I should warn you before we go further that there are a LOT of pictures, so pull up a chair and maybe grab a cuppa tea or coffee (whatever your "thang" is) and enjoy the highlights with me :)   

Here's the sweet kiddy's near the start of the opening frenzy, all decked out in their new Christmas PJ's (the hat on Cady is new as well :)

A favorite quote

" Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: It is the time for home."

~ Edith Sitwell, British poet



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!

Dashing through the snow, in a two horse open sleigh.....

Yes, you read that right and no its not a  mistake :) How was your weekend? Ours was pretty wonderful, despite all the kids having colds (some worse than others) my mom invited us for a surprise outing on Sunday, and what a wonderful surprise it was! This lovely gentleman named Herb took us in his horse drawn sleigh...

 The girls got to enjoy sitting up front for awhile and listened to Herb's stories about not being able to go to school until he could ride a horse and so his parents got him one for his sixth birthday, then he had to ride it to his one room school house. I love having my kids exposed to stories like that and for them to enjoy some old fashioned fun. When we finished I asked Cady if she liked it and she said, "yeah it was fun, a little slow though."

Pat, my mom, and Gabe enjoying the ride :)

When we were done the kids were allowed to give the horses some apple treats :) The black one on the left is Annie and the brown on the right is Jess. They were lovely and Jess and I made ourselves friends :) I love love love horses always have and I can't wait for the day when I can get one for myself :)

Jess sure liked those apples! And Cady sure enjoyed giving them to her!

All in all a good weekend and thanks again mom!

Now that I'm finished my classes (yippee!) I will be back more often this week to update on Christmassy stuff going on around here :) Decorating and baking and crafting oh my!

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas around here...

First off was this little guy making his first appearance on December 1st. He apparently decided the fireplace mantel was a good place to start his observations :)

On Sunday we went out and found our Christmas tree. Behind our backyard is all crown land, a whole mountain of it, so we just hiked up there and found our trees. Yes, I said trees :) this year we decided to have a few, one big family tree and a few mini trees for the bedrooms. Should be interesting....

The kids found a nice little sledding hill to slide down on our way :) We have so little snow right now, I sure hope we have a few good dumps of it before Christmas.

Pat, Cady and Gabe cutting down one of the mini trees :)

Gabe helped daddy cut down the family tree...

And here it is in it's new home. Isn't it nice and straight and pretty? I picked it out :) Trees are so deceiving in the outdoors, they look way smaller outside and then we usually get them inside and they are huge! But after four years here we've got our system down pretty good and this years is a good one (in my humble opinion).

Monday when the girls got home from school we decided to decorate it. Pat has been working tues-saturday so he gets monday off instead and we all had a good time rediscovering all the ornaments. There were lots of exclamations of, " I remember this one! I made this one in grade ....." or " So and so gave us this one!" Our tree doesn't have a theme or colour scheme really, but if I buy ornaments I try and keep it to red or silver. The tree is full of decorations made by the kids, myself, ornaments given to us as kids (some of them are 30 yrs old!) a real mish mash of everything, but I love it. It has such a personal feeling to it. Don't get me wrong, I love the themed and colour coordinated trees I see, but for us, this works.
 

Sorry this one's so blurry, but I just love the look of concentration on Gabe's face as he tries to hang one of the ornaments.

And here it is in all its decorated glory! Well, actually it looks a lot more sparse in pictures than in real life. hmmm have to try and remedy that.

The stuff under the tree is actually our playmobil nativity set. I was looking around for a good surface to put it on and must have got distracted cause next time I looked, this is where I found it. And you know what? I think it's perfect there :) I love hearing the kids play with it, I hear things like, "hey let's have a birthday party for Jesus and invite some friends over for him!"  Looks like there's an outdoor party going on cause no one's home at the stable :)

And of course Dora's watching all the comings and goings from her "hangout" in the tree :)

How about you? Are things looking a little Christmassy around your place? Do you buy a tree or go out and find your own? Check back later this week and I'll be sharing lots more Christmas fun! On December 15th at the Nesting Place I'm planning to link up for her Christmas home tour 2011 so if you want to see more home decor from around here, that's the time to check it out.

Let it snow, Let it snow, Let it snow!

Well, winter is here I guess :)  This is the sight out the window beside me, although it has calmed down a bit. I love the first snowfall, it always feels Christmasy and I love the Christmas season.

Someone was really excited to see the white stuff and couldn't wait to get his "winter pants" on and get out there and play :)

He's still having a blast out there in the 1/4 inch that has fallen today :) He was excited to make tracks with his bike.

I'm staying inside where it's nice and warm, battling my bad cold with tea and rest. It's kind of nice to have an excuse to not do much as we have been so incredibly busy lately. I can't believe it is the middle of November already! I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but I've been going to school since September to do upgrading (Math and Chemistry, yuck!) so that, as well as keeping up with the regular day to day stuff, has kept me hopping. There has been some other stuff going on as well which I would love to share, but I can't yet, but hopefully by early next week I will have a big announcement to make :)

Hope your day is warm and toasty!

Weekend Fun

      Did you have a good weekend?  We did! On Saturday we had Cady's birthday party here at home. She invited six of her little kindergarten friends and of course there was cake and ice cream and presents. She had a good time but was a little overwhelmed ( it was her first party with friends, we usually have a party with all our family and relatives before they are in school.) so thankfully I had planned on it only being two hours long. They had a great time, Nyla helped out a lot and Gabe, well Gabe didn't quite understand the concept that all the presents were Cady's and he wanted to open them all! He was quite upset and would go into a corner and cry pitifully, it broke my heart! We had a nice long snuggle after the party, he and I, while the girls played littlest pet shops for a bit.









     Then daddy had the idea to go down to the park close to our house and check out if the lake was frozen. So, we bundled up, hopped in the truck and went down there to check it out, little realizing how freaking cold it was out! It wasn't so bad on most of the trail that was in the trees and bushes, but as soon as we were in the open and especially down by the water, it was super windy and FREEZING! Seriously, I think it was about -26 out. It was pretty neat seeing how much everything was frozen (our lake doesn't actually freeze over, as there are a few dams further down.) there was a good portion that was frozen solid close to the shore as you can see in the right side of the picture below.








    On Sunday, Pat took the girls up skiing while Gabe and I had a quiet day at home, which was really nice. I had one of those days where I could think of a million things I COULD do, but alas got nothing done. Well, not really nothing, I did a few loads of laundry and read a few chapters of my current book ( I'm reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon) That is definitely my favorite part about winter, snowflakes falling outside, nice warm fire inside, curled up in a cozy blanket, drinking a cup of tea (or hot chocolate if you prefer) and reading a good book. What's your favorite part of winter? Do you have fresh snow too?

Happy Birthday Pat!

Last week we celebrated Pats 30th birthday. Happy Birthday honey!  I keep teasing him that he's my old man but I'll catch up in a couple months :) That cake looks pretty pathetic but rest assured we loaded it up with whipped cream on top. It was a chocolate oatmeal cake and it was yummy!

Here's our sick Nyla, she was sick all last week and now Gabe and Cady are feeling it too.

Last week the younger two were feeling fine and they enjoyed all the fresh new snow we got :)

And they were so cute snuggled up reading "Brown Bear" together.

While I got some more organizing and scrapbooking done. Here is one of the four pages I did, it's about making cookies with Nyla in 2005!! Now, some might say that is pretty far behind, but last year I took an online course called Library of Memories with Stacy Julian and it was fantastic! I will have to do a post about that soon, but the basic idea is, you are not behind and you don't have to "catch up" with scrapbooking if you are organized properly.

How is your winter going? Are you enjoying some new snow? Or are you (like me) enjoying the excuse to be indoors and get some crafty things done? Do tell!