2014 Kozy Kabin Christmas House Tour

Hello!

Welcome to my corner of blogland. For any of you who regularly stop by, thank you for doing that and I apologize for leaving you hanging from my last post. I guess I'm just not cut out for daily posting (plus truth be told i only took 3 pictures that whole weekend...oops) Anywhooooo, on to the tour!

This is definitely my favorite time of the year, I love touring around all the houses on show, seeing what creative people have done to put some extra sparkle in their homes, so enough rambling grab a cup of eggnog or hot chocolate (or my personal favorite eggnog latte!) and lets move on with the tour! 

 I have to say I'm particularly proud of that picture above (although not so proud of the orangey look of the walls, what is that?!?!)  as I found that vintage chalkboard at the thrift store! I've been dying to get one of these but they're just not in the budget this year. So I made my own :)

Christmas Aftermath

Hello strangers! I hope you all had a lovely holiday, we enjoyed lots of family time and relaxing together time (partly because we were all sick and partly because we just wanted needed to relax.) Yesterday I spent most of the day cleaning,sorting,organizing as the New Years organizing bug hit me full force. Do you get that feeling? New year, new you? Well maybe not *new* but scrubbed up anyways. :)

It doesn't feel like a new year here on the blog until I close out the old one by sharing some post Christmas pictures, so bear with me as I relive it a little bit.

Here are the kiddies in their new Xmas PJ's setting out cookies and eggnog for Santa. I can't believe how big they're all getting!

Merry Christmas

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!


                                                                                 (source)

Christmas Home Tour

I am linked up at The Nesting Place 2013 Christmas Tour of Homes so for anyone joining me from there, Welcome!

It's that time of year again, Christmas home tour time!

I'll be honest and say this is not a Perfect home tour in fact its anything but, (moving six people into a smaller house takes awhile to get things Perfect ) Good thing I'm not striving for perfection! And like one of my favorite bloggers, the Nester, always says, It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful.

So without further adieu, here is the tour!

Our tree was incredibly easy to find this year, we actually found it in our back yard! It is set up right in the middle of our great room so it can be seen from the kitchen, living room and dining room.

Favorite Christmas Books (a repost)

This is a repost from last year, you can check out the original post with a lot more links HERE

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.

Although I have to admit that this basket is getting pretty stuffed!

Onto the books! First we have our Nativity themed books: The First Christmas,  the top one is a nice pop-up story about the Nativity and the bottom one is a "changing picture book" so both are a bit interactive. You can get the bottom one HERE.  The two on the right Room For a Little One and A Child was born I actually ordered through book orders for the kids school and Room is my absolute favorite I just love the gorgeous illustrations and it is such a sweet story. My kids love it as well as the story is told more from the point of view of all the animals in the stable and they love searching for the little mouse :)

And on to Santa books :) We got I Believe in Santa Claus last year for Christmas and though it looks boring it is a really great story about the similarities between Santa and Jesus. Another favorite is Santa's Magic Key (this version is a kindle version, not sure where you can get a hard copy).This is extra special because we got it from my Grandma and as she is friends with the author, it is a signed copy :) This is a fantastic story and has really helped me answer Gabe's question of how Santa gets in the houses of people without fireplaces (we don't have a fireplace anymore :(    As soon as he asked I pulled out all the Christmas books to find this one :) Anyways, the other two are fun, It's Santa! is a lift the flap fun one and My Christmas Treasury is filled with a bunch of different stories including Twas the Night Before Christmas :)

Snowman Books: I guess they aren't necessarily Christmas books (well The Annual Snowman's Ball and Snow What Fun are) But I like to include them in the mix :) We got these from various places, most were gifts though. The kids love Snow Bear as all the pictures of the bear are fuzzy! (Especially great for the younger set)

Since we're Canadian, we had to get the Porcupine in a Pine Tree! We got this one last year as well I think (I'm just realizing we got a lot of books last Christmas!) and we really enjoy this fun adaptation of the Christmas carol, The twelve days of Christmas. Some highlights~ Eight mounties munching, Five Stanley Cups, Four calling moose....:) it's a lot of fun. Then we have I Spy a Candy Cane~ my kids love I spy books and this one is for the 6 and under crowd. I'd love to get the bigger one as the kids are all getting bigger. And next is Teddy's First Christmas (I think Gabe is the only one who reads that one anymore :) Mortimer's Christmas Manger is a cute story and then we have The Elf on the Shelf.  Snoodle (that's our elf's name :) has been kicking around here since Dec. 1st  although he might have gotten lazy once or twice and stayed in one spot for a few days :) This is a fun tradition with kids especially if you start it when they are really young and your elf isn't lazy (or forgetful!) like ours is sometimes :) I checked on amazon but they are super expensive there so I would google other sources if you are interested and I think I saw them at Chapters/Indigo too.

And last but not least, we have The Christmas Hat and Disney's Christmas Storybook . I left these for last cause they have been around the longest :) Nyla got these from us when she was a baby her first and second Christmases and they are enduring favorites (they are well used as seen by the damaged spine from one too many drops from little hands :) I think more from all the memories of Christmas past than anything else. They are both good books though and the Christmas hat one is fun because the pages are all embossed so they feel neat.

Oops!

Such sweet beautiful illustrations.

Well I hope you enjoyed seeing our favorite books, if you want more ideas for Christmas books you can check out Memories on Clover Lane blog or The Sunny Side Up blog which are two places I have gotten ideas from in the past.
Have a great day!

Christmas Inspiration

I've been getting my Christmas inspiration on!

Picked these up last week,

and of course I've been pinning away. I just love the simple red and white looks, like this;

(SOURCE)

although now that I look at it again I realize there are pops of blue in there too! I love it!

and there is this

                                                                    (SOURCE)


                                                                            (SOURCE)

*sigh* I love this upcoming season!
          I'm not the only one in our family who is ready to crack open the bins of Christmas decorations (if we can find them in the crawl space!) the kids have been asking when we can get started on decorating :) Especially Gabe, that boy is a decorating maniac, for every holiday he begs to start decorating weeks and weeks beforehand. This morning I took down our basket of Christmas Books (it was in our closet as I don't want them getting wrecked somehow in the crawlspace) because Gabe asked if he could bring one for his sharing at school, so I guess our decorating has already started!
     How about you? I know a bunch of you from the States have Thanksgiving to get through this week first, but are you dying to get out the tinsel and lights? Or is it something to be put off as long as possible?
Have a fantastic week!
Update: You can check out my post from last year about our Favorite Christmas Books by clicking the links above highlighted in blue!

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 :)

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, 

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.

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 :)

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)

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!