And the Stockings Were Hung By The Chimney With Care

Let's be honest, if you stop by my house right now, with all the creative chaos going on, you would see that most of my house looks just like my kitchen table. YIKES! And I can't even show you any of my cute projects yet because it would spoil some surprises. But I can show you something else that I'm excited about, these stockings!

My first Christmas married, my mom asked me what kinds of Christmas decorations I was going to start collection; did I have a favorite theme or color (all snowflakes or stars, etc.). I told her that I really wanted to stick with red and silver, and not just any red, a deep, true red not orangy or pinkish, like the raw silk she used to my skirts for my bridesmaids. She happened to have extra silk left over and she made stockings for Larry and me and mailed them to us along with the extra fabric. I LOVE these stockings so much. I was supposed to use the extra fabric to make a tree skirt, but it's too precious so I've been hoarding it. This year I mailed it to my mom and she made one for Creed. She just mailed it to me and I love seeing all three stockings lined up along my mantle. Thank you mom!!!!!! The pictures don't really do them justice because I had bad light, but I was too lazy to fix the color in Photoshop.

And oddly, she made three more and included them along with the pattern. Hmmmmmm . . . what could she be trying to tell me?

What's in the bag?

Larry works really hard so it was so fun to see him so excited about this gift from a patient. All the Internal Medicine residents are required to spend time working in the clinic, which can be pretty rough. Most of the patients do not follow their doctor's instructions, they often don't show up to appointments, and many of them are clearly drug-seeking. That said, Larry has met some really great patients there that have just fallen on hard times.

This week one of Larry's patients presented him with this gift bag holding five pounds of chocolates. He said that every year, he and his wife save up their money and choose one person to give a present to. They discussed who made the biggest difference in their life this year and they both agreed it was Larry. Larry was totally touched. He told them that he was going to bring it home to show his wife why it was worth it to work late some days.

Baby Update

Creed's growing up so quickly, and I just wanted to report a few of the things he's been up to lately. This is the site I see at least 75 times a day. He crawls over to me and tugs on my pant-leg when he wants me to pick him up. He's usually standing, but for safety I made him kneel down while I took this picture.At my baby shower, my friend told me to make sure to have two of whatever stuffed animal or blanket he gets attached to. Too bad I didn't follow that advice, and he's chosen a favorite friend on his own. It's a stuffed duck named Wadsworth that Jessica knitted for Creed, and while it couldn't be cuter, it's already taken quite a beating. Creed is always dragging Wadsworth around with him while he cruises around the house. Looking back, Wadsworth is present in several of our pictures from the last few weeks.

The other day I didn't realize that Wadsworth was up out of Creed's reach, peaking over the arm of the couch, and Creed climbed up a boxed Santa suit that we had leaning against the couch to get to it. Who knew he could even do that? I was spotting him and he actually climbed up until he was leaning over the arm of the couch, not holding on because he was playing with Wadsworth. Scary!

I looked at the entertainment center, and what did I see?

Look closer

closer . . .

A Brazil nut!

Ok, only my family will think that's hilarious.

You see, we have a slightly embarrassing family tradition involving Brazil nuts (come to think of it, it should be REALLY embarrassing)

When I was little, every Christmas among other stocking stuffers, Santa always left us a few handfuls of mixed nuts, still in their shells, which we did not enjoy and really only used to throw at each other. If any of us was interested enough to even try to crack open the nuts, we never could get the rock hard brazil nuts to open so they were always left sitting around. And we thought they looked a little like . . . well . . . ummmm . . . ok, they look like poop. And since we didn't know what they were called, we called them poop nuts. We used to throw them in each other's beds or onto chairs when anyone stood up and we would exclaim things like, "Oh, gross! Look what so & so just did!" Hilarious stuff when you're eight-years-old.

Anway, this went on for years, and when Candice was the first to get married she was mortified during Mark's first Christmas with the family when he stood up and the poop nut appeared and Eli said, "Mark, that's sick!" That same Christmas Mark created a family board game that the Borups play every year on Christmas Eve. It has all sorts of spaces that remind us of memorable family events or quotes, and in the middle of the board was the poop nut space. If you land on that space, you cannot continue in the game until you do a skit with a poop nut. That first year my mom landed on that space and refused to encourage our behavior or embarrass herself so she would not do a skit with the poop nut and she stayed on that space for the rest of the game, and it was a really long game. In the years since, as everyone else has conformed, I'm pleased to report that she has come around.

So when I looked up at the entertainment center the other morning and saw this, I couldn't help but laugh. Larry actually went to the grocery store and picked one Brazil nut out of the mixed nuts and purchased it for five cents and left it to surprise me. Now we have our own family poop nut. Great . . .

Do you think that I'm wearing Larry out?

Notice the lovely drool trickling down his hand.

And here's how he put on his hoodie the other day
He didn't even notice that it was upside down until I said something.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

Well, snow will be here tomorrow, but we made some snowflakes Wednesday night. I was glad that I had something to look forward to after dropping Marissa and Logan off at the airport. My friend Reba is moving away next week and she requested a snowflake cutting party for her going away party. She's the guest of honor at the head of the table. I reviewed how to make a six-point snowflake with everyone and then Amy taught how to make eight-point snowflakes. We also got to try out making 3-D snowflakes and they turned out so pretty. You can find a tutorial here. Of course the best party of the evening was just visiting with friends. The party was bitter-sweet because I'm not ready for Reba to move on.

We Need a Little Christmas, Right This Very Minute!

Even though Creed's not old enough to really get Christmas, we're excited to share Christmas traditions with him. First, we ordered a Little People Nativity set so that we had one in the house that he could play with.

There are a lot of nativity set for kids out there, but we liked this one because not only is it cute, but there are no small parts that Creed can fit all the way in his mouth. He loves this set because when you push on the angel, the star lights up and plays a song. If you're interested in getting one, they are not sold in stores. You have to buy them online and the best price is straight from the Fisher Price site. We also bought a mini set with shepherds to go along with this one. And did you know that Fisher Price sells other special holiday sets like the Mayflower along with a Thanksgiving Feast? I think that this nativity set would be a great gift for any family with a new baby. And speaking of great family Christmas gift ideas, Gabrielle at DesignMom just received a whole set of costumes for their family nativity pageant. Brilliant! Check it out here.


We also had to take advantage of Logan being in town to get a picture of the boys meeting Santa for the first time.

If you're in central Ohio and want to visit with Santa, note that Tuttle Mall "strongly prefers" that if you visit with Santa, you buy one of their photo packages that starts at $16.00, while Easton only charges $5.00 for a photo and "welcomes" you to take a picture with your own Camera. Unfortunately, we were already at Tuttle and The Santa was so cute and Creed was actually in a good mood so we went ahead while we were there. But isn't this face priceless?
We took our friend Jason's advice to get a good picture with Santa. Creed has a little stranger anxiety so we didn't let him see Santa and backed Creed onto his lap and took the photo right away. It worked pretty well for us.

And if you're looking for a tradition to help your kids focus on giving instead of receiving, my friend Anna had a great idea. This year, each year her family is giving service to someone else everyday. They do little things like scrape their neighbor's windshield. She says that her son Spencer has started asking her every morning, "What are we going to give today, Mom?" Wouldn't you love to hear that?

C is for Christmas and COOKIES!

After a lot of Christmas shopping on Monday, we decided to make sugar cookies.

We decorated all of them because we intended to give some away, but we ended up eating all of them over the next few days (which is funny because none of us alike to extra candy so we ended up picking all of it off again). Can you guess who made these two cookies? They were my favorites, although I wouldn't say they were Christmasy.

Tuesday we stuck around the house and spent a little time enjoying the warm weather.

Then that evening we made a gingerbread house, but since none of us are big gingerbread fans, and we had a lot of cookie dough the evening before, we made a sugar cookie house. I totally free-handed the shapes of the walls and roof so I wasn't too confident that it would all fit together, but it did!

And here's the final product.

I had a few requests for my sugar cookie recipes so I'm posting it here. It's from my friend Amy Hall and it is the BEST sugar cookie recipe because you don't have to chill it and it's still delicious! It makes a TON of cookies so you could probably cut the recipe in half, but we made the whole recipe because we used part of it to make our gingerbread house.

No-Chill Sugar Cookies

1 pound butter

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

6 - 7 cups of flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add dry ingredients. Roll out 1/4 inch thick and cut. Bake at 375 degrees until edges just start to get golden brown. Makes 8 or 9 dozen cookies and frost with buttercream frosting.

Note: The recipes calls for baking SODA, not baking POWDER as I assumed the first time I made this recipe (are you really surprised? You know I'm a disaster in the kitchen). I'd already thrown in the baking powder before I realized my mistake and then without thinking I threw in the baking soda too so I was prepared for disaster when I pulled the cookies out of the oven, but they we fine.

Time flies when you're having fun

Thanks to $10 Skybus tickets, the Garners are here (well, they are all supposed to be here, but Mike had to work over the weekend so Marissa and Logan came on their own). They arrived Friday night and we've been having fun ever since. Saturday we spent the afternoon visiting with the Erneys and then we spent some time viewing Wildlights at the Zoo (out advent activity for the day). It was really cold so we bundled up. Doesn't Logan look cozy?I need to get some pictures from Riss because you can't even see the lights in my pictures. Creed loves lights these days so he was having fun looking around.We took a lot of breaks indoors to warm up so here we are in the gift shop. Don't worry, these freaky masks did not come home with us! Sunday our advent activity was driving around to see the streets lit with luminaries during Village Lights in German Village. It was fun to see the booths with free cider, and the musicians on the corners, and the homes all decorated for the holidays. We had to take full advantage of the minivan rental so we picked up Eva and Kirk and brought them along. The only picture that I have is all of us enjoying chocolate banana bread at Kirk and Eva's afterward because it was too cold to actually get out of the van to take pictures.

We've also been reading a Christmas book every day. It's so much fun to have family around at Christmas.

Merry Freakin' Christmas

So far this month is not going well for the Borups and the Fords. There was our car accident, and then Candice's computer died, taking all of her photography files with it, we found out my grandma is sick and is undergoing testing to find out how serious things are, Monday Creed had a nasty case of diarrhea which required both of us to change several times (that was lovely) and we also got the news that we need to spend a small fortune to replace our back door, then Wednesday I get a call from Larry telling me he got rear-ended by someone who couldn't stop in the snow on his way to work (yes folks, that's two car accidents for us this week, one in each car although this one was a lot less serious). Things were getting so bad it was almost comical. Then after I talked to Larry about his accident, I put Creed down for a nap and sat on the couch with our computer and looked up just in time to see our Christmas tree FALL OVER. Seriously?!?!?! I don't even know why it fell, there wasn't even anyone moving in the whole house. At least the fireplace caught it and it didn't fall all the way to the ground, we just lost a couple ornaments.

Anyway, that night I was commiserating with my mom, when she broke the news that Hobbes, our family dog was diagnosed with cancer that day after the groomer nicked him and they took him to the vet because it was a mess. So sad! Here's a picture that Candice took of him two months ago.

So that's when my mom said, "Merry Freakin' Christmas!" Which made me burst out laughing because if you know my mom, that's just not something you would expect her to say, and I told her that I had to blog about it even though she was embarrassed that she said it.

So I guess I shouldn't have been shocked when I woke up this morning to this, huh?

I really think we may be cursed! How can that happen a second time? Creed's pants-less in the excersaucer because I rushed to change his poopy diaper and then put him in there while I mopped up the water (since of course the last thing we did before we went to bed last night was fill the base with water) and started picking up glass shards. And you wouldn't believe how many more ornaments fell off as I picked the tree up. NICE! Luckily Jessica came over to help with the cleanup and she brought her much better base so there better not be anymore Christmas tree disasters this year!

I have to admit, I've had some really low moments this week. I mean, this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, right? But then I started thinking about it, and I guess if all of this stuff has to happen to you, Christmas time may be the best time of the year for it to happen because everyone is in loving and generous moods and there are so many reminders around of the Savior and what's really important. And we have also had some really lovely moments this week. Like the other night when our advent activity was reading Christmas picture books under the light of the Christmas tree.

Creed seeing snow for the first time.And Wednesday, as I Creed was napping and I was shoveling the driveway with the monitor clipped to my jacket, my twelve-year-old neighbor Connor came over with shovel in hand to help. We talked as we shoveled and Connor said besides playing football, he really likes to spend his time helping people and sometimes he volunteers at the soup kitchen. And oh yes, this kid is totally for real. Then we're talking about Christmas and I know his sister wants an Ipod for Christmas so I ask him what he wants and he says, "Well, my dad is a chef and he has to work at an event Christmas night, so that's what I want for Christmas, I just want to have my dad home all day long."

It makes it seem like the world is not all that bad, doesn't it?