Santa's Beard Advent Calendar

Kid's love to glue and tape...so when I saw this Santa Advent Calendar, from here, I though, how cute!

I did not want to go buy scrap booking supplies to construct this version but I liked the idea so much I "borrowed-ish" it. In the Christmas spirit I though I'd share it with whoever wants to print and stick 24 cotton puffs to some paper...and call it a day.

My version (with a slightly modified poem) is two 8.5" x 11" prints that you can download and print it from here. They look like this:

Disclaimer: I have no idea if 24 cotton puffs will fit on Santa's beard.
You may have to transplant some to his eyebrows. Good luck!

Cruising through the holidays

39 days until Christmas.
It's a lot of time and a little time, all at the same time.

I  want to have a festive, relaxing and memorable Christmas. That's what I want so I'm working hard this year to give that gift to myself.

Last year we put up our tree on December 1st and by December 23rd I was ready for "it" all to be over. That didn't feel so great. In fact, it super sucked! I blamed it all on having put of the tree too early (sorry tree) but I really think that my state of disorganization > which lead to chaos, which leads to having nothing to wear to festivities, bad hair days, running around all over the place trying to pick up things, and so on, made the entire Christmas season feel like one big last minute rush.

Here's the truth, lots of women make Christmas happen. Lots. As my dear dear friend put it, "We are the Christmas Makers." It's an honour and a duty all at the same time. I didn't fully appreciate all the work my Mom did until I had children of my own. What? Christmas doesn't just happen by waving a sparkly glitter snow wand over your house and voila? Mom, thank you.

So, I need help over the holidays. Maybe you are ok, good to go and have little to no anxiety about gift shopping, decorating, meal planning, visiting, hosting, wrapping, eating too many cookies and having fun - I am so happy for you and one day hope to join you on the "other side."

But for now, if you're even A LITTLE like me, could use some guidance, need a planner to work through, have trouble delegating, get overwhelmed at the thought of being the Christmas Maker...maybe you could use this free FlyLady Cruising Through the Holiday Control Journal, maybe.

Other FlyLady control journals, here.

P.S. The Fly in FlyLady stands for "finally loving yourself," nice, isn't it?

Halloween 2012

I know it's long past Halloween, but can I have more post? I feel like I ran out of time and didn't do the holiday (?) justice. I still have to redress my kids in their costumes because I didn't get a very good shot of them all dressed up!

Here are a couple of ideas of mine and some that some of my friends managed to get done for Halloween - good work!

Food from a Friend's Party for the kiddies:
Zombie bread (stuffed with spinach dip pizza dough)
Veggie Skeleton (modified by a Dad at the party, can you spot the new addition?)
Our front step & the extent of my decorations but I like it (dollar store reflectors)
A friend's front door in Edmonton (so good, right?)

A craft I brought to a play date for kids ages 2 - 5 1/2
Cut egg carton cups into singles
Hole punch 4 holes on each side
Cut pipe cleaners in half
Paint egg carton cups black in advance if you don't want extra mess and to save time
(Spray paint doesn't work, I tried, use acrylic)
(The girls wanted to paint theirs pink and purple anyway, so you could skip this step)
Let kids string legs through spiders
Glue on google eyes, fangs, bows, glitter, whatever
(You can see the girls painted over the eyes, so maybe paint first,
but then they have to dry in between glueing - hairdryer?)
Get the kids to repeat this phrase, "You get what you get and you don't get upset!",
with regard to colour of spider legs, I separated them before hand into sets of 8
Place in the centre of table over little gourds and around a halloween candle/vase filled with candy

Now, I better get upstairs. My husband took the day off today and I'm pretty sure he didn't plan on me updating my blog with Halloween fun while he parented along all morning. Christmas posts coming soon! xo