A Few Fun Treats

Only one week until Christmas day! I am a little behind on publishing the posts that I've been composing in my brain, so I am going to just fling a few treats your way right now and let myself off the hook ;) Ok, Exhibit A: Our Christmas card! It turned out cute right?Exhibit B: Surprise! I want to share my template for the girl's Elf Stocking shirts.In case you wanted to make some yourself, because as you can see, babies love to wear them ;)

My Christmas gift to you - have fun with it!Exhibit C: A last minute home made gift idea - personalized tags! I designed these in Microsoft Publisher. I used Google images for the clip art, and dafont.com for free awesome down loadable fonts. I used colored card stock from the scrap booking section in JoAnn's for printing, and then I used a tag shaped craft punch from Michael's, last I added garden twine ties. In total, this project cost under $3.00 to make 27 tags! I know this is not a great tutorial, but if you are already familiar with Publisher, you can do this! Just go into "Page Setup" and select the "Custom" option for your page dimensions, then simply enter the dimensions for the size of your tag punch. Good luck!Exhibit D: Last minute shopping for little girl's anyone? Here are a few of my favorites things that I spotted online :) These are not necessarily the gifts my kids are getting, just things that I loved!

A) Bake Shop from FAO Schwarz

B) Mini Anenome Mermaid from Chasing Fireflies

C) Wooden Tiered Cake from FAO Schwarz

D)Mermaid Costume from Chasing Fireflies

E) Tripple Doll Stroller from FAO Schwarz

F) Joella Dress from Olive Juice

G) Olivia Dream it Be it Set available on Amazon

H) Charlie and Lola from FAO Schwarz

I) Learn to Sew Kit from Kayce Hughes

J) Steiff Teddy Bear Princess from FAO Shwarz

K) Ribbon Initial Necklace from VM Designs

L) Fancy Nancy Sticker Book from FAO Schwarz

Exhibit E: A new tradition! This might surprise you (especially based on some of my previous posts) but we actually do not "play Santa Clause" at our house with our kids. Why? Well, my answer is really simple - simply because the fact that Jesus came to Earth is everything to us and we don't want a fictional character to over shadow that. Now, with that said, our kids are interested in Santa, and we encourage that interest in the same way we would interest in any other fictional character. My girls love Mickey Mouse, and so of course they love Santa too. Evie has been really fascinated by Santa this year and has been asking tons of questions about him and the stories that surround him. Now remember that I am a history nerd, so I of course wanted give Evie some historical background on the "character". I decided to look up and read some kid's web articles on the real St. Nicholas with Evie. We first read about how St. Nicholas loved Jesus so much that he devoted his life to loving and serving the poor in remembrance of Christ, and second we read about how his legacy is celebrated world wide - of course one of those ways is leaving out shoes for "him" to fill with treats. I immediately remembered the adorable wooden shoes from Holland that my brother sent to the girls for Christmas last year, and I thought of a way to hopefully inspire the girl's to love Christ and to love His people the way that St. Nicholas did in His honor. Instead of filling their shoes with treats, I selected a child (one for each of the girls) from our church's Angel Tree for Evie and Anabelle to select a Christmas gift for. It was really an honor to do this with the girls. It was great for me to see such genuine compassion coming from them. It's so hard to keep the holidays in perspective and it's so easy to loose focus when, as a mother, I have been Christmas shopping since June!

Exhibit F: Lastly, this one is for Aunt Kelly. Here is a photo I thought you should see... your girl doin' a little karaoke with the Clause's old lady ;)

P.S. It was late and I was totally exhausted when I wrote this post - beware of errors ;)