Christmas Crafting

I cannot believe Christmas is just around the corner! (and that I forgot to do any Thanksgiving posts)

I have been working on making presents lately and I am SOOO excited about them.

This is from paint night with my niece. Her painting below blew me out of the water.

Can you believe that crap. She was looking at a tiny picture on my tablet and busted this bad boy out. All free hand and that is acrylic paint not water paint.

But I made this MASSIVE D20 for my step-dad for his birthday.  I think it is safe to assume he has the biggest one in the family - the one in his other hand was his 'big' die before he got his present.

I also made this Dapper T. Rex (Theodore Rex III to be exact) for my sister. She has a bit of a dino obsession. This makes me so happy I was attacking Da'Hubby with Theodore.

I may have shown this one off, at least I think I did on insta. This is an Owl bracelet I made for my brother's sweet girlfriend. She has an owl obsession but who could blame her.

This is another one I may have shown, this is my 'Mirror, Mirror on the desk who is the best?' gift for my niece. She loves all things Disney. 

Disclaimer: I know that is the wrong face in the mirror but, this face is more memorable than the usual man in the mirror.

Lastly some messy holiday nails.

I took this while it was still wet and I had not cleaned them up yet, I forgot to take a clean picture before I cleaned them off for birthday nails.

So are you doing any fun holiday crafts?

There are only 85 days until Christmas!!!

We all know that I started my Christmas shopping at the beginning of the summer and now I am getting to the hard to shop for. I love my family but man some people are just so impossible to shop for.

Da Hubby - easy peasy lemon squeezy - he wants Detriot Lions, Star Wars, Legos, Futurama, and tools
The Princess - Hello Kitty, Sharks, Disney,crafty stuff
My Dancing Niece - Ballerina or Disney
Anyone under the age of 10 fun educational toys or crafts, Disney if it is a girl; football for boy
Brother in laws - Longhorn or Baylor
Real Brother - Guns, Zombies, or Jeep stuff

Aunts - NO FREAKIN CLUE!!!

I am doing pretty good this year with making presents but with my aunts I have no clue. I could etch some pyrex for when they make casseroles for the church or etch drink glasses, but that is all that I can think of.

I am at such a loss what do you get for people who like to party and wear blingy clothes? I am not one of those shiny people so I do not know what to get them.

But seriously here are some of the presents I have made so far:

I absolutely wanted to steal this so bad! I made 3 more bracelets like this. 

I saw one like this on Wanelo, when I followed the link they had no more :( 

I am making a few more gifts but I am worried about posting them until Christmas or I could just not put they are gifts (you know if I wanted to be cleaver).

 

How is your Christmas Shopping/ Crafting going? How does your family celebrate?

Merry (belated) Christmas!

I hope that y'all had a wonderful Christmas! I know that I was so happy to spend time with my family and eat great food. I had to bounce from house to house and we had horrible weather Christmas day but it was so worth it!

I had festive nails all December (I missed taking pictures of 2 different nails a snowman set and lights)
We played with the Princess' wigs. Watched her in the church performance. Made some horrible gingerbread houses. let The Mister do my make-up (horribly if I may say so my self). The Princess pretending to be Rudolph. And The Princess opening presents Christmas morning. ( Learned that our parents do not like to be woken up at 5 am to open presents, they sent us back to bed. or me back to the Princess bed and she cuddled with our snoring parents.{I was so happy to speed in my own bed at home the next night let me tell you!!})

I wish I would have taken out my camera at all of our stops but I was so tired after being woken up at 5 am. But I want to know how y'all's Christmas' were, and if you do not celebrate how did you spend your weekend?

Style File Friday: Christmas!

Cozy Christmas by jesslsteele featuring zipper jeans

I am back into the Christmas spirit! It could be because I have my office Christmas lunch today, or that Christmas is right around the corner but I love this outfit! I wish I could find a sweater like this(and not spend an arm and a leg)! Anywho are you getting all festive in your clothing choices? 

Pin-xperiment Christmas Nails

I am loving the holiday nails I am finding on pinterest. I decided to try my hand at one. 

The Pin

Source: bluetapeandnails.blogspot.com via Marilyn on Pinterest

The Result

I used a different glitter polish, because I like a colorful tree. I did mess up a bit. I think I will try it again later in the season. (or maybe I can have The Mister do the taping part.)

In case you missed the last Pin-xperiment post here is my rating system:

Grading :

♥ -  Poor

♥♥ - Needs some tweaking

♥♥♥ - Pretty good

♥♥♥♥ - Will have to do more often

♥♥♥♥♥ - New love

♥♥♥- I like the idea but I think I need help to achieve it myself. 

Best Ice Cream - Blue Bell

Now I know that Blue Bell Ice Cream is a Southern thing but it is seriously the best ice cream ever. I love homemade ice cream but Blue Bell tastes just as good (if not better) and is so convenient. Over the weekend The Mister and I were getting groceries and we found the 'cream of the crop' (see what I did there) of ice creams...

(image from Blue Bell's site)

Spiced Pumpkin Pecan ice cream! Um yes sir, I will take the whole thing please. We had to get this and let me tell you we fell in love! I usually go for Pecan Praline but I have absolutely found my new favorite. The Mister and I have been eating this with a bit of eggnog as dessert after dinner and it make me so happy to not be lactose-intolerant. 

If you do not have this in your local grocery store you can order it from Blue Bell's website or make your own but I highly recommend trying this amazing ice cream. 

What is your favorite ice cream holiday or not?

P.S. I hope y'all had a Happy Thanksgiving. I enjoyed my time off with family. 

Christmas Wish List

Have you started making your Christmas Wish List? I have a few things that I want and a few things that I love but am not sure if I would ever really get much use out of them.



1. Butter London's Winter Collection!

The first one is the one I would use the least but the other I could use all the time!

2. Full Course Load Bag on Modcloth

Tote bag (see more zippered tote bags)

3. The Non-Planner Datebook found on ModCloth

This thing looks AWESOME!!! I am so unorganized and I love to doodle (horribly). I think this would be the perfect gift. 

4. Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 (picture from amazon)

This thing is awesome! I love my Galaxy S3 and I would love this bad boy to go with it.

5. Some Pretty Dresses!!

Christmas wishes by jesslsteele featuring a floral print dress
Most of these are from Modcloth but I do love the Fit-N-Flair dresses!

Have you made your Christmas wish list yet?

They put Pumpkin Spice in what????

Now I am a BIG fan of pumpkin spice. If I drank coffee like I use to I would have a Pumpkin Spice Latte everyday. But I don't so I am always looking for new drinks that can contain my tasty, tasty pumpkin spice. While grocery shopping with The Mister yesterday we found the magical potion we had been searching for!

This stuff is awesome! it is thinner than most eggnog and it tastes like you are eating pumpkin pie while drinking eggnog. We also found sugar cookie eggnog but we felt that having 3 different types of eggnog in our fridge would be a bit too much, because you know we had to get classic eggnog too.  

Have you tried any new seasonal treats this year?

Trials with HP

So I have learned that HP is an incredible company. They have the absolute best technical support I have ever experienced. For Christmas The Mr. bought me a HP e printer. 

This one to be exact. (it is now discontinued) I love this bad boy. The tablet (zeen) is removable and I can have it in any room and print from it check the status of the printer and use the apps to print coloring sheets and such. I also like that it has an e-reader ability, I read a few books on it. 

In February the zeen started acting funny, I would try to turn the page and it would skip ahead like 20-50 pages so we called technical support and they sent us out a new one. We got it in 3 days and sent back the broken one and it has been great! 

Skip ahead to about a month ago I walked into the craft room to see what kind of ink the printer takes to get more black ink and all of the lights were blinking and it could not connect to the internet. Now I thought it was just our router being on the complete opposite side of the house and the signal was not strong enough (we have had this issue with other devices), so we moved it the bedroom next to the router and it still could not connect. 

We called HP tech support and we tried to fix the problem to no avail. We were told they would send us a new printer and do a swap and since we were unable to get the ink out of the printer they were also going to send us a new set of ink. Again I find this to be amazing. 3 days later we received the printer tried to set it up and the support people called us to set it up. We were not home the day it arrived so the next day they called us again. We tried to set it up with their help but the Zeen would not connect so they said that they would replace that as well. Again 3 days later we received the Zeen and they called us to set it up. I love how they called us, they knew when the package would show up and they called to help us. We didn't have to deal with being on hold going through transfers and being tossed around to get the issue solved, they called us!

Our printer is still not fixed and they are not sure what it is. Like I said earlier the printer we have has been discontinued, so to help us out with future problems they are sending us a different printer. I like the idea of the Zeen but I have a net book that I use all the time and another tablet device so we didn't use the Zeen all too often besides me reading on it occasionally when I didn't have any books in my Amazon account. (Zeen uses Barnes and Nobles). So we are getting this guy...

I love how they offered us this replacement, extra ink, and a 2 year warranty. I like the extra ink part the best of all because the ink alone is around 90 bucks for all 5 cartridges. We are getting extra ink plus the ink they sent us for not being able to get ink out of the original printer and the ink that comes with the printer. If you add the ink costs together it is the cost of a whole new printer.       

I love that HP has made us feel during the process of the broken printer. They have gone above and beyond on helping us resolve the issue. I made sure to thank them for all of their help and they way they did not forget about us like many large companies do. They made sure to call us and did everything they could to fix the problems we had. Based on my experience I will always have an HP printer and if The Mr. does not build my next computer it will be an HP. 

I suck at titles

So how was everyone's Christmas (if that is what you celebrate)? Mine was AWESOME! I learned that I am truly spoiled by my mister. I thought I got him great loot but compared to what he got me I was put to shame. I was happy to get to spend time with my family and the mister's family and loved the time off from work. I failed to get any pictures on Christmas day or eve but I can leave you with some of the Lil' Pumpkin.

Procrastination

I thought I was doing good on my Christmas gifts until this week. I have a Christmas party tonight and I have not finished crafting presents for tonight!!! I have to rush home from work and get to crocheting to finish the presents before the party at 6. After that I have only one more present before Christmas day to craft. Sorry I haven't been here much I have been in my sewing room working up a storm! I have pictures of my crafts after the big day...Spoilers

Christmas Questions

Source: flickr.com via Denise on Pinterest

Egg nog or hot chocolate? Hot Chocolate! But my favorite is Loco Cocoa from a local coffee shop YUMM!

Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Well the Elves do but yes presents from Santa are all wrapped

Colored or White lights? White on the tree(this year) and blue outside...The Mister likes blue icicle lights

Do you hang mistletoe? No, but I think we might start ;)


When do you put up your decorations? The weekend after Thanksgiving...if I can hold out that long

What is your favorite holiday dish? O that is hard... I love deviled eggs! but a REAL dish I would have to go with is the seafood Gumbo my Dad makes on Christmas Eve

Do you remember your favorite gift? O absolutely! my Silhouette last year from the Mister!


What is your favorite holiday tradition? The annual white elephant gift swap at my Step-dad's house with family friends, followed by game night.

Whats on top of your tree? a twinkly star

Which do you prefer giving or receiving? I honestly love getting gifts & I like seeing people open their gifts but I SUCK at keeping what I a secret I want to tell them the day I buy it.

Candy canes yum or yuck? What flavor? Jelly Belly gross others Yumm(well not the bacon kind on our tree I am afraid to try that)

Favorite Christmas movie? Elf, Holiday Inn, Christmas Comes but Once a Year,A year with out Santa

Favorite Christmas song? Baby it's cold out side, I'm gettin nuthin for Christmas

♥♥♥♥

I would love to see what y'all's answers are, but not to step on any toes Q&A came from Carrie's Little World blog

Trimming the Tree and Large Families

This weekend was HECTIC I do not have a better way to explain it. I had 2 sets of family pictures taken.
 Sat at 10 we had family pictures with my Dad, Step-mom and that side of the family siblings. Everything went off with out a hitch! The pictures look great, we played at the park then went to my Dad's for shrimp etouffee and tree decorating.See that cluster in the last picture? Ya that was little miss's area, that is where she put all the decorations. After some YUMMY food The Mister and I headed out for game night at the step-dad's house... By the way have y'all played The Logo Game before? I just got it for a birthday present and I love it!!! Anyhoo we finally walked across the street to go to bed around 12 or 1 which is late for old fogies like us.

Sunday I wake up and go to my Granny's for my birthday lunch at noon (the whole family goes every Sunday but the Sunday before your birthday is cake day) ready for pictures and all is good! Pictures are at 3 with all the grand-kids and if you are counting it is 5 just for my step-dad's side, 6 from my Uncle Don and 3 from my Aunt Tracy...13 in all not counting parents (because they were not in the pictures, but were present) we had ages ranging from 9 months to 28 in the pictures! Talk about CRAZY! Well by 2:30 on our way to the photographers house we find out 2 cannot make it, and 3 of the people there work shift work and the freak occurrence of having them all off at the same time will not happen again until AFTER Christmas! So we are all uber stressed out by now, oh did I mention the rain too? Yes our plan for outdoor pictures squashed because of rain! Well pictures were taken minus 2. Praise the photoshop gods for being created and helping us out! the missing 2 are being photoshopped in later just in time to be framed and wrapped for Christmas time.
I am SOOO glad that I am finished with working out the family picture situation. While we were there some Aunts were saying we should get a full family picture with the grandparents, parents, kids, and grandkids!!! Ya I decided to NOT help head up that party. I am tapped out. Well I hope y'all had a good weekend.


Does your family have trouble getting together? How easy would it be to have 3-4 generations photo taken for your family?