Projects

I think the week between Christmas and New Years is my favorite! All the craziness is over and it feels relaxing. I love the kids being busy with all their new stuff. I'm dying to get this place cleaned up and de-Christmasfied though. I went to Thatcher for a couple days and did some fun projects. And here is a picture of the fun aprons I've been making over the last few weeks:

This one is Emily's. I got the perfect model for this, huh?? How cute is she?? I'll be making a few extras to have in my salon to sell, so If you want one let me know. They are reversible and there is SO much cute fabric to pick from out there. The top is gathered and they are nice and long. I am going to make myself one to match my kitchen. What that is exactly, I'm not too sure yet.


Em wanted to see how to make cake pops but we couldn't find sticks in Thatcher so we settled for cake balls. Of course, just as delicious, I can't decide if they are easier or harder than the pops. Hard in a different way I guess.

We got to see Nick and Hannah and the kids home for the holidays from BYU Hawaii, the kids had a ball.

Nick took the whole crew- cousins and cousins-in-law to track deer and run around in the desert.

We also made another really cute project, but I can't show it because it is a surprise for 2 of my other sisters :D

And finally, I had a chance to work on some fun fabric flowers I had been wanting to try. This is one type:



Hopefully soon I can work on the other types of fabric flowers I wanted to try, there are just too many things I want to try all the time!! There are some really elegant ones that I want to make, these are the more fun and easy ones.

I hope everyone had a fun and relaxing "off" week, I'm staying home with the kids for New Years (Cade has a party) and we will be here ringing it in and looking forward to a productive new year with new challenges and hopefully good new personal changes.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! MWAH!

Christmas 2009-Picture overload!!

Well there goes another one down in the books. I can safely say that it wasn't my best performance this year, I checked things off my list as the time got closer, but it was because I had to start eliminating things that weren't essential. That was kind of a bummer. The kids won't ever know though, right?? They could care less if I had the laundry done or the carpet spot cleaned, or put together a new program for us to do on Christmas Eve. I didn't quite finish decorating, or cleaning. No neighbor gifts. No Christmas cards. Barely any baking. Ugh. I had to just let a lot of things I normally get done just go and be OK with it. I was up early every day and crashed late every night for weeks (except 1 monday I took "off") and there is only so much time in a day so its OK.





Christmas Eve we had my MIL Dianne over and she spent the night here which is a fun tradition. We had a late Mexican dinner and a nice Christmas devotional where we read scriptures, sang songs and watched this:


if you have a minute, it is pretty good. I made it a couple years ago. Just, ya know, pause------------------->


Life Of Christ





I love this guy!!





Nothing on this earth is more cozy than new Christmas Jammies that the elves brought!

FINALLY its time to go to bed so Santa can get here already! Dayton thought he should leave Santa a special message on the white board outside. All on his own, he included Wyatt. He didn't even tell me about it, I just happened to see him doing it. I'm not sure what it all means, but it was very important I'm sure :D Adorable!

Looks like Santa got the message, and was hungry for the pumpkin pie and Coke!

Christmas morning started with this:

Running and leaping down the stairs to see what Santa brought

We were so lucky Santa was good to us. Cade got his Patriots Wes Welker throwback Jersey, Sadie got a Hamster, Cooper got the Lego set he was DYING for , Wyatt got 12 inch Snake Eyes ands Storm Shadow (GI Joes) and Dayton got the Batman Imaginext. Everyone was so thrilled! I got Mark a power mat to charge his many many devices (which is not going to work out so it has go back :( and he got me a new camera!! YEAH! Coopers other highlight was getting New Orleans Saints Jersey, when he opened it he pretended to faint, which was too funny.

We had the nicest, calmest day, it was really fun and peaceful! The kids were so involved in their new things, we got to rest and take naps. Moments after this was snapped, I was crashed on the other empty couch:

We watched Christmas story (again) and Christmas Vacation.

Then my whole family came over : Mom, dad, grandma, Emily, Katie and Kam, Jason and Ava, and my cousin Adam and his gf Jaime. We had curry dinner and rolls and all the usual yummy stuff. Then it was time for presents again! Woo hoo! I got to give out all the APRONS I had been making over the last month or so. Finally!! We all got more fun stuff and then we all crashed! Especially me.

The party continued today, everyone came back over and we did hair, then had some leftovers, and went to do family pictures (which are going to be FABulous, I'm so excited!!) and then we came back and played Settlers. The kids all wanted to go with my mom back up to Thatcher, so we packed them all up and everyone took off except Cade, Katie and Kam, so we went out to dinner at Applebees, it was so good. Mark had to work, bummer.

Although there was lots I didn't get to do, there was lots that we did, and it was all pretty great! I am so grateful for ths season we have to celebrate the birth of Christ and make so many fun family memories and traditions. I am looking forward to setting some great new goals, and this year will hopefully be a great new start and much more successful that 2009. Do you have any goals that you are setting for yourself ?? I'd love some great ideas!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Its finally time.......

To start enjoying Christmas!! My mom came today and helped me get things back on track at home. I've been working so much I needed a clone and she was the next best thing! Tomorrow I will be chilling all morning while the kids (and I) enjoy they're last half day of school and then it will be full on fun stuff that they want to do. Fun baking, looking at lights, delivering neighbor goodies, Shopping for each other, and playing games. That will be the goal, anyways.

Wednsday night I had the chance to take our acheivement day girls ( ages 8-11) to drop off donations they had collected from our church and neighborhood to the Child Crisis Center. Its where kids are able to go when they get taken from their parents for any number of sad reasons. We had SO much stuff! It was incredible. The donations go straight to that center, and I know we really made an impact for the kids, and the girls were really impacted as well. We could tell how good they felt inside as they were loading the big rolling bins in and stacked the bags and boxes. It was a great thing to do for the Christmas season, and a lot of people worked hard to make it happen.

Tonight we had a party for the kids who live(d) on our old Elgin street. It was great. One of hte best parts was talking to Jill and Noah and the kids on Skype. We still miss you guys terribly!! There is a definite hole that can only be filled by you!! We had a really fun time, the kids made Christmas trees with upside down sugar cones, and had a dollar store toy gift exchange, and the moms had an ornament exchange. These kids(and moms :) just really enjoy each other. After the party we had Cade and Sadie babysit the Rogers and Krassows and us and the adults got some dinner down the street. Hooray for big kids!! They did a good job keeping them entertained. I love this new tradition. Its my turn to host next year, so plan on it!!!

I hate blogging with no pictures, and these are not great flattering shots, but heres a little of my decor this year. I'm still adding and finishing stuff. I still have so much I'd like to do!

Having a hot chocolate break with some kids on the new street :D

I hope everyone can feel at least a little bit of Christmas magic in the middle of this hectic and stressful season! hugs!

Staying ahead of it

It is a week full of fun and work! I figured I better recap every other day or else theres no way I can remember it all!

Saturday our ward put on a live Nativity for the entire community. We got the sets and costumes from the Easter pageant! There were live animals too. It was a fun experience (because I just had to be in the choir) Sadie was a singing Shepherd. I had someone (a neighbors sister from out of town) take our picture, but then I didn't copy it off her card right and now I can't see it. I'll have to wait until all the real pics come out and hopefully we'll be in there somewhere. A lot of people worked VERY hard to pull it together, so thank you!! It was great!


Sunday Mark and Cade went with a bunch of youth down to a place called Randolph. It was a great experience. It is a home for the mentally ill and disabled. From what I hear the kids did an amazing job with the people, they were really caring and had a great time with them. They had sacrament meeting there. Some funny things happened at church, I can't post about it you will just have to ask me later :D Then Sunday night Mark had some friends over to watch the UFC fights. Ug. I took Cade to my brother Jasons in Mesa to hang out and play with my dad and they learned some Christmas songs. I am so grateful to Jason, he is going to give Cade this guitar thing of his that Cade wants SO bad for Christmas that Jason never uses. How nice is that?? Love it! He is gonna be so thrilled!

Monday I did hair and then Mark and I did a little more Christmas shopping. It was fun but then I had to cram a day worth of errands and dinner between 4 and 6:30, so that was stressful but we made it to our caroling activity. We ended up with a really big group and it was a total success. The kids were wild (not mine so much-others) but we survived. After that, more hair to do and then I crashed.


I decided the best way to cope with this week is to just take ONE day at a time, and about an hour prep for the next day. I have lots of popcorn to make for baskets and orders, lots of hair to do and parties and a concert. Mark is actually going to have to make popcorn for me today, how crazy is that?? I'm glad though. One day down, 10 more to go!!!

Keep on truckin'

Another crazy week down in the books. I really need full time housework help! I really feel at this point I would be better off working full time at a job I could leave every day and concentrate on home stuff when I'm home. Doing 2 home businesses (in addition to the family) are tough!! And I feel guilty about so much that I'm not doing my best at! Really though, every mom has the rampant guilt, right?? And I have no shot at slowing down soon due to ADDITIONAL time cuts at work for Mark, so add on the pressure to work harder and smarter. I guess I'm feeling a little bummed and guilty that we are a week into the Christmas season and despite my great intentions I have yet to do anything fun and Christmas-y with my kids. I did the decorating, but popcorn has killed any desire to additional baking (and I certainly am short on patience for "helpers" or extra dishes to do) and every night I'm so beat and my legs and feet are throbbing. Its sucking all the Christmas out of me!! GAH! I feel so bad I totally missed the fun ladies Christmas party/ornament exchange tonight!! I had been planning on it all week and I completely blanked it out! Today was really stressfull and I guess it just used up all my brain power. I just long for the days where I could clean my house and spend time doing cool decorate-y things and fun Christmas activities and just focus on making the season magical. Right now I'm thrilled that the pizza I got lasted 2 days and I didnt have to cook or do dishes on top of today. Pathetic!



Well lets ditch the pity party and focus on something less dreary, huh?? I don't have as much scheduled this coming week as I did last week (yet) which actually worries me a little because I need some hair appts but anyway, so I'm thinking Tuesday I can take a rest day. That is something good to look forward to! I already have tomorrow nights dinner going, so that is wonderful (roast in the crock pot for shredded BBQ beef sandwiches) and I think I can get a good start on my AWESOME Christmas presents project. Also, my mom was in town this weekend from Montana and we made these:







And I got to spend time with my other mom and my sister who was down from Flag for a little while tonight. And now.......It is 9 o'clock and I am freezing cold so I am heading to my bed with 4 layers of quilts and fleece to wipe this week off my brain and start fresh tomorrow!!

Thanksgiving Fun

We had such a great weekend! My sister Emily surprised us from BYU and that was great. It was so nice having the extra help to get ready for the big meal, too. Em stayed with me and we cleaned and got ready for my moms birthday. Em made a death by chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting:

It was REALLY good and rich. YUM!


We also tried out some treats from Bakerella. These were good! Not as pretty as hers, but yummy.




Thursday was a great day, dinner went off well and even though it was a lot of work as usual I think it was a huge success! Here are the guys getting ready for some Turkey Bowl. They had a great time!



Emily and Sadie helping get things ready. I made homemade Cranberry sauce with cinnamon and mandarin oranges...it was really yummy!! I'll be doing thisn one again! Em and Sadie the crazy girls are frying up the giblets (GAG) to eat. BLEH!!



After dinner we played a few games of Settlers and my awesome MIL took the kiddos to see a movie while we cleaned up (and played more Settlers :) and then........ my mom and Em took all the kids up to Thatcher (Mark had to work Thurs night-BOO), SO I had the house all to myself. It was really what I needed to decompress a bit after it all. I had to do some popcorn work Friday morning then I headed up to Thatcher myself and helped my mom start getting Christmas set up. It was hard becasue we were all still pretty tired, and we kept getting distracted with our crafting :D but we at least go the outside done and the tree up, lighted and decorated. Heres a couple fun things we made:
Sign for Emily's dorm room

Fun Clipboards!!

Gift for a friends grandbabys room



I SO wish I could show all the other fun things I've been working on, but I can't spoil any Christmas suprises.
On the way home from Thatcher I stopped to show the kids these ADORABLE sheep and lambs. There were hundreds of little babies bleating and hopping around by their mommies. It was just too stinkin adorable!! We got back Sunday morning and it was back to reality. I actually did a little extra sleeping and recharging to get ready for the rest of the week which is shaping up to be really action packed.



Christmas Progress:
Presents for kids about 75% done and all wrapped and securely hidden.
Tomorrow I will be gathering supplies for a massive popcorn order and sampling I have scheduled for Saturday, and supplies for finishing up more projects that are orders and/or gifts.
Then I have a meeting, then.....DECORATING!

Holiday Prep and NEW MOON

Obviously, I've been in a bit of blogging slump. Really, a bit of a slump in general. However, I have made the concious decision to count my blessings!! I won't lie, it has been a daily battle! I put my tree up early with a Thanksgiving theme as a beacon and a reminder to remember my GOBS of incredible blessings and remember how blessed and fortunate I am every day. So far it has been working, and I had no idea how much I would need this glaring reminder! I love it, though, and it is helping me feel more festive and ready to tackle the holidays.

I was able to put this tree together with almost nothing I didnt already have, minus a few bushes on clearance at Hob Lob and donations from my mom :D Yep, that is a turkey on the top! It looks really pretty in real life :) I have loved having it up, and I will be making this a new part of our holidays!


My main focus this year is to hand make a lot of gifts, keep things minimal in order to keep stress minimal, and most importantly to do the really meaningful activities with my family that "make" the season, and I am really looking forward to all of the fun things we have planned that have become our traditions.

I am unusually ready for Christmas this year. Mark and I went today and got some of the stuff for the kids that are the must-haves, that the younger ones are counting on Santa to bring. I get nervous, because I want to be sure that Santa can find just the right thing. So far we are in good shape. We are also starting early in order to spread the spending out over a longer period of time since things are tight this year as usual. I basically will continue to trickle things in as I do hair/popcorn. I have been very blessed with lots of work over the last few weeks!

And of course, I have to recap NEW MOON!!!!

Honestly, I really want to go see it again!! LOL It was really good and we had so much fun! Sadie and I went with Casey and Hayley to the midnight show. I know the girls were loving a super special night out with their cool moms that let them stay out till 3 am! We got our seats at 8 so we went over to native and got some fries and killed some time. Our shirts were so cute, I can't believe we didn't take pics of them! I'll take one of Sadie in hers later I guess. Sadie and I put lots of Goth-y eyeliner (heh-sort of) and got all fixed up. It was a fun night and the movie being so good really made it awesome. Thanks Casey and Hayley, it was super fun! We'll do it again in June!

How adorable are these girls! SO grown up!!

Ahh! Mutant arm!!! LOL!!

Halloween Fun (?)

OKok, I will admit that this year was not my most fabulous Halloween. Meh. I completely forgot to take pictures of the kids!!! Sorry, Grandparents! I guess I won't be getting mom of the ear after this weekend after all. HA . Mabye I can get them back in their costumes for a photo op later. It dosen't help that last year was pretty stressful as well. I think what went wrong this time was that I got a big popcorn order on Thursday afternoon and I had a few hair appts (which I was grateful for) and it all just was a little much. I really only got....um....witchy when it was the hour or so before each event. For some reason trying to get the kids ready with their costumes was just super difficult this year. I helped with Coopers class party, we had trunk or treat on Friday night and I was rushing around at the last minute to get Cooper a mask, candy, Sadie was stressing over her costume so I made a Goodwill run that came up empty, stuff like that. Why does the tape always disappear just when its needed so desperately? Needless to say, I got a little "shouty". The kids were just bouncing off the walls, it got a little nuts. We did get to trunkortreat and by then things had calmed down and I got to be a chili judge and the kids had a great time. We had a cool car with extra pumpkin lights and spooky music, and everyone had fun, even me :D

Saturday I spent 7am till 1 baking, bagging, labeling and delivering popcorn and then I took a stab at doing some caramel apples, so I could mabye add some to some gift baskets. It was a test run, and I think I need a different recipe. The one I did is yummy, but didn't set up hard enough. The ones I made for the Ostrich Festival last year were amazing, so I think I need to just use that particular caramel.

After that we carved our pumpkins and get ready to go trick or treat, but of course my house and kitchen were completely demolished, so that was a bummer. Long story short, the pressure was on again after another loooong day and I accidentally got a little bit "shouty" again. OOps. Sorry family :D

Jason did the Scream pumpkin, I did Ava's "traditional" pumpkin. Thats what she wanted.

My brother Jason was over with Ava so that was a big help, he helped clean up after pumpkin carving (since it was his idea- he even went and picked up a couple extras for me) and he took the kids around to trick or treat, while Mark and I chilled at the house and handed out candy. Cade was actually not interested in trick or treating, but he had big plans. He laid by the sidewalk up to our door and scared all the kids. He had quite a few really good ones! Some people got so freaked out, even adults. It was great!! It was all his idea.

It looked reallly dark and creepy without the flash :D



At one point, he had about 10 teenage girls screaming their heads off and then later a bunch of older teenage guys. He did a great job. Sadie went babysitting after she had gone trick or treating (it was stake conference adult meeting) and had a great time.

Today I slept in, went to Stake conference, did massive amounts of dishes from last night, and took a nap. I think I was able to decompress pretty well. I'm looking forward to Turkey day already!! And I'm proud of myself I have already started my Christmas shopping, to try to avoid last minutes stress later, right??

Super fun weekend part 1 of 2

We had a huge family weekend and it has been so fun! We kicked it off with a UFC party Saturday night, my BIL/SIL were here in town from MO, and we had some friends over for chili and cornbread. During the party I had to make my desserts for the blessing luncheon Sunday, so instead of sitting around and relaxing and eating I was working :D Everyone was curious to see me make the treats anyway and I love how they all turned out:



I think the Jack the Pumpkin Kings are my fave

On Sunday we had the big shindig. My BIL did a nice job with the blessing and then the group converged at our house for some delicious food and catching up. I really loved it. We have such a cool family! It was so neat to see the "younger generation", (the ones that were little kids when we got married) there with their little kids. Life is buzzing by way too fast!




All of us Lamb sisters: Jenn (married to Marks brother John) Me:D MIL Dianne, Marks sis Denise and SIL Maureen (married to Marks brother Brent) We havent all been together in a long time! It was so great!
Playing 42 of course.

Mark looking fit :D Hey Babe!!

Dig in, peeps!! The food was so good! Denise and her MIL did the food, I did dessert.


I love having a house full of people I love, this is what life is all about!! And I think this was my favorite moment of the day: Cute little Jace Raisor who is a dancing maniac! We kept making Cade play the guitar so he'd dance (sorry the quality is so bad, it was just on my regular camera)