Speaking of Valentine's Day

Every year, I look forward to holding a Valentine's exchange with a few of my friends.  This year I questioned holding it because there's so much other work to do around here, but I love this special time with my friends and decided that it could not be skipped.

In the past, I've had an exact head count and told guests to make a Valentine to exchange with each person attending.  This year I simplified things and told each guest to bring 12 valentines.  That way people weren't stuck making 20 valentines, but I missed having a chance to chat with each and every guest and seeing what each of them made (we exchange Valentines speed dating style and have two minutes with each person).  I wish I could share them all with you, but most of the photos that I took were a blurry mess so here's what I could salvage along with a few photos snagged from friends' blogs.

Susan brought along some of her homemade tattoos (I was secretly hoping she would!)

 Melissa made some bobby-pins and brought along some sweet treats.

Lisa brought some of her stoop waffles and they were amazing as always.

 Karisa handed out pencils engraved with "when this you see, think of me"

 Wendy had cinnamon pancake mix with frosting.

 Holly brought some of her homemade chocolate, (which I did not share with my family because they were too good)

 Melissa W. made little rosebud earrings that she packaged in little flowerpots.

 Nicole made candy mustaches on a stick for everyone, but she made a special set for Creed with a princess, castle, and carriage.

Kristin from Sycamore Street Press brought a card she designed

And that's apparently all I will post because Blogger doesn't seem to want me to upload any more pictures. I'll try to post what I gave out soon and maybe I'll even make it to other party details or that two week vacation that we went on . . .

I'm feeling pretty fab

Do you shop at Fab.com? It seems there's something to tempt me every single day.  Today, I was pleasantly surprised to open my email so see some products from Sycamore Street Press (Eva mentioned the sale was coming up, but I forgot about it)

Happy shopping!  The sale lasts until Tuesday morning at 11AM E.T. Let me know if you need an invite or you can find one on the Sycamore Street Press blog.

Creed's Valentines

Creed's Valentines turned out so well this year, but I was in such a rush to get to his class on time that I only have a few hastily shot photos. They are so bad that I am seriously tempted to re-do the whole thing, but let's be honest, I'm two months behind in blogging so that will probably never happen so here they are in all their messy glory :)

Every since Creed spotted some heart-shaped balloons last year, he has been enamored with the idea of handing out heart-shaped balloons as his valentines, totally impractical for a thousand reasons, but I decided to make it work. So one day last week we stepped out on the porch and took a few pictures of him jumping with his arm in the air.

 I was inspired this valentine (Created by one of Larry's ex-girlfriends, Alissa, who I actually think of as one of my blogging friends.  Is that weird?) and thought we could do something similar only stick the balloon string through the card to make it look like Creed was holding on to the balloon and floating away.

I just cut little slits with an exacto and slid the balloon string through them

 I tied a heart-shaped sucker to the bottom of the string so no balloons would float away, but it actually wasn't necessary, the card was enough to weigh it down. If you use 4" x 6" photo paper and balloons like this, you could probably just tie a knot to keep the string from sliding through, but we didn't want to disappoint any preschoolers and we went with the suckers on the bottom just in case.

You should have seen how excited the preschoolers were.  A note of advice if you plan to try something similar, the balloons got really tangled up with our windy weather so next time I would bring a bundle of balloons to your final destination a little early and then add the cards or treats on the spot.  Luckily, we ended up getting them untangled in time with help from another parent.

VAlentine's Day may be the cutest holiday around!

I couldn't resist instagraming a few photos of the boys hard at work on their valentines

 Creed goes to preschool two days a week and two days a week we do a neighborhood preschool taught by the moms of the group so he'll know a few kids when he starts kindergarten next year.  Last minute the neighborhood preschool decided to do a valentine exchange so thank goodness I saw this free printable on Lily Jane Stationery and was able to throw these together the morning of. Their are only seven kids in teh group so it was nice to be able to do something a little special.

 Preschool handwriting is the sweetest!

 I happened to have bakers twine, craft paper, and red spoons on hand so we just picked up the tiny boxes of cereal and wrapped them up.

So simple and the kids all loved them.

So when you happen to be a stationery designer, there's a little pressure to come up with a good Christmas card because it feels a little like you're sending a business card to all of your friends (or maybe that's just in my head), but you've spent all year designing stationery so at times it can be hard to come up with something new.  Luckily, this year I had an new idea in my head that was original and easy to execute.

Step 1: Take a cute family picture.  Easier said than done.  We decided to forgo the professional shoot knowing Ollie would never cooperate. Instead, we woke up to snow one morning and quickly bundled up and snapped a few shots in the first snow of the year. Simple and cute.  I opted to add some simple text in Photoshop, but it would have been just as cute without it.

Step 2: Shove the picture in a paper CD sleeve and add some fake snow to make snowglobe to mail to all of your friends and family (or don't get around to mailing some of the most important ones like your dear friends the Hudsons, who will get theirs in February)

 Honestly, the execution as a little bit sloppy (dang you busy Costco photo people who printed this so dark when I didn't have time to reprint it), but I still loved how it turned out.  I used to extra space on the photo to print the snowglobe base and the wrap-around label, which also printed such a weird color, but oh well.

 I tried the fake snow you can buy at craft stores and cutting up my own snow from cardstock, and we liked them both equally so we went with the easier method and added about a teaspoon of fake snow to each envelope.

They were so fun to shake, and easy to slip into normal envelopes and mail out.  The back of the wrap-around label said, "Good tidings we bring to you and your kin."

I know I go a little overboard with Christmas cards so I almost skipped them this year, but these were so easy to put together. I think it's always worth the effort to let your family and friends know that you are thinking of them.

More to the story

There's so much want to remember about this Christmas (What? Christmas is long-gone and the last thing on your mind? Shocking!)

The way we made simple nativity scenes with the Activity Days Girls at church and Creed (forever thinking he is one of the 8 to 11 year-old girls) insisted on making his own (we only decorated the people and lucked out finding the stables at Target for $2.50)

 The way Creed's Mary looked starred eyed to say the least (I guess she just gave birthday afterall) and we carried those little people around all through the holidays.  I will forever treasure these sweet hand-drawn faces.

 The way Creed had to have this Rudolph hat, and I secretly had to have it too, because who can resist this?

 The way he proceeded to wear the hat all over.

 The way he was a dashing little wiseman in the live nativity at church

 The way it was the sweetest nativity I've ever seen.

 The way the reverence was smashed when they ushered all the cast onto the stage for a the last song and Creed desperately needed to use the potty.  I was wrestling with Ollie in the back so this is the only photo that we have, but oh, I wish you could have seen him hopping and holding his crotch through the whole song while earnestly singing with a look of desperation until Larry rescued him and ushered him to a bathroom the moment the song ended.

 The way both boys fell in love with their annual new Christmas ornament (Creed is oddly obsessed with the short cartoon Mickey and the Clock Cleaners, and watch are the chances we would come across this ornament?)

 The way he was not so thrilled in many of the holiday photos I took, and already has the look of a teenager obliging his crazy mom.

 The way Ollie knew which ornament was his and we found it in a new spot every day because he couldn't resist holding his Santa.

 The way the boys and I had a few adventures on our own like going on a scavenger hunt to find all the creepy elves around Gardner Village (Creed loved it so much that I swear he is already planning our trip back next year)

 The way their annual new Christmas books were loved to pieces.

 The way we came home with a million, zillion cookies that we planned to giveaway after my bookclub's annual Christmas dinner/cookie exchange and then we ate almost all of them ourselves.

 The way Creed glowed at his preschool Christmas program.

 And the way they still make four-year-olds sing the most random Christmas songs you've never heard of with a few classics mixed in.

 The way Creed was bursting with so much excitement as he left out cookies and milk for Santa that I thought he'd never sleep and he was out almost instantly.

 The way Christmas was on Sunday so we saw what Santa brought and looked through our stockings and then went to church without opening a single present and there were no complaints.

 The way Creed was thrilled to get exactly what he wanted.

 And ollie was happy to sit by bemused and not open a gift.

 The way we went to my parents' and met up with all my siblings families to open our presents and we could only get Ollie to open one.  After that if you approached him, he'd yell, "No presents, no!" and push them away so this bin of his gifts sat in our kitchen for the next two days until he got interested.

Christmas has always been a wonderful time of the year to me, but Christmas with kids is the best!

What I did wrong this Christmas

You know I love advent calendars.  This year we pulled out an advent calendar that I made a few years ago by adding numbers to a set of Ikea gift boxes and using command velcro strips to stick them on the wall in our entryway.

We usually just add a slip of paper to each day stating the Christmas related activity we'll do that day (drink hot chocolate and watch how the Grinch Stole Christmas, drive around the neighborhood to look at Christmas lights and leave an award for our favorite house, attend a live nativity etc.). After Christmas last year, I picked up a bunch of little Christmas things on uber clearance to put in our advent calender this year.  I had a few things that didn't make the picture, but I didn't have a trinket every day. Each box always had an activity listed in it (and i love having them in containers that I can sneak open and switch up, in fact, I filled each box the night before we opened it so I didn't have to worry about peeking) and sometimes it had a small treat or one of the trinkets.

 Sometimes the paper and trinket were just waiting in the box, but often Creed had to do some kind of activity to find it. Like follow quickly scribbled clues on a treasure hunt around the house to discover our activity for the day.

 Or follow a piece of yarn winding through the house.

 Which made it easy to gift items too big to fit in the box we opened that day.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't an epic fail, Creed loved the whole experience and was eager to open a box each day, and he was grateful and gracious and sweet, but the more I thought about it, the more I think I was going about things the wrong way.  Yes, it was fun, and I think Creed will remember it, but I think it set the wrong tone for our holidays.  There's already so much focus on the material side of Christmas, the last thing Creed and Ollie needed was to be getting more gifts each day up until Christmas.  How can I expect them to be focused on giving and to not have a case of the gimmes when I'm giving them gifts every day?  Ollie was oblivious and Creed actually handled things really well, but I think it would be so much better to put a part of the Christmas story in the advent every day or maybe every day should have some service or small item that the boys will have to help me figure out how to GIVE that day.  A few of the activities in the advent involved giving, like picking out toys for a sub-for-Santa program, but it wouldn't be hard to think of something small the boys could be involved in every day (Drive around on a cold day to find a Salvation Army beller ringer and drop off change and give the ringer some hand warmers, shovel a neighbors driveway, make teacher Christmas gifts, etc.). At any rate, it was sort of a missed opportunity to help the boys focus on the true meaning of Christmas, and I pledge to better next year.

I tell myself the boys are little and Larry and I have more time to figure out this parenting thing while they are too little to remember our mistakes very well, right?

Thursday night, we arrived home after a two week vacation.  I have way too much to fill you in on from the last month, but let's start with how we arrived home just in time for a snowstorm (finally, this has been such a warm winter). of course we had to build a snowman right away.  

 Creed has been talking to me about how snowmen come to life sometimes (maybe it was all those readings of Snowmen at Night by the Beuhners and The Snowman by Raymond Briggs).  So after our upside-down snowman melted, I snuck out and rebuilt him right-side-up.  Creed was amazed when he saw it.

That snowman is now surrounded by much more snow and I'm tempted to go out there and surprise Creed again by adding a snowdog.

Hello?

Dear readers,

Rest assured that I have not forgotten you, I've just forgotten where the charger for my camera battery is (or, more accurately, Mr. Oliver Danger decided to take the charger on a trip to a mysterious land and it has not returned yet). And what's a post without pictures?

We have all sorts of holiday loveliness and I pledge to share it with you when the new charger arrives, but I only got around to ordering it today so I'll see you back here in a week or two when it arrives!