Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!

Gingerbread Houses

This past weekend we visited my Sisters family for a full day of Christmas activities. In the evening we went to her Church's Christmas program. But, during the day the kids decorated homemade gingerbread houses! OMG, I have got to find a pan similar to this! My sister cooked and assembled the houses before we arrived. We brought along some candy for decorating but nothing was sweeter than watching the kids play along side each other while decorating their houses.

Show us your muscles Zach!!

To Zachary's delight, we got a little silly with the frosting

We all had a marvelous day! And, all the gingerbread houses were so creative!! I'm quite impressed with their designs. Happy Christmas Eve!

Christmas at our local mall

This past Friday evening we went to one of our local malls to look at all the window displays, Christmas decorations & lights. We enjoyed ourselves & lucky for us the crowds had not yet arrived for the evening.

Zach has this little toy camera that came in a McDonald's kids meal (from awhile back) and he has recently started using it to take "pictures" of anything that catches his attention. I love this picture of him taking a picture of Daddy taking a picture of us.

As the night continued we started playing a game of "I spy". The objective was to call out a color or an item and when Zachary spotted it he took a "picture" with his camera.

While Matt was eager to pose with The Grinch (this one was an animated doll-- the green guy, not Matt), Zachary wanted NOTHING to do with the oger (again the green guy, not Matt ).

Christmas Program

At the beginning of December, our first Christmas festivity, we visited Poppi's church to watch their Christmas program. We had a grand time listening to the choir. Christmas was in the air!

Handprint, footprint art work

Happy Christmas Eve! This season has just flown by. As does most of the year. However, I have found this year, for the first time ever, that I want to slow the clock down and savor every moment. Having our son home I want to experience holidays (and every day events) to their fullest. Because of this I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the beginning of December...motherhood by itself certainly brings plenty of reasons to feel over whelmed. For some reason, this Christmas season just seemed to start with me already running around chasing my tail. I was determined to get it all done. And, though I didn't get it ALL done, I certainly achieved as much as I possibly could. The bright side to this has been many memories and new traditions have started in our household! I have always admired artwork made from children hand print, foot print (& thumbprints). Whether that is on paper, in clay, on glassware or canvas, anywhere where a moment in time is captured and preserved!! As most of you know, now a-days there are stores where you can paint on canvas or paint a plate, etc. It's hard to get out of the house and go to these places when you have a toddler in tow. So, I thought I would find some projects that I could do at home. I found canvas on sale at my local craft store 2 for $8. And, after choosing colors in the paint isle I spent several days at my kitchen table painting away. It maybe obvious but from left to right the feet are: Matt, Julia & Zachary. And, a little ornament adorns the top right corner with "The Millers, 2012". I had so much fun doing this that I'm already planning making one for Easter too.

After painting the canvas I just couldn't stop. I saw this idea on pinterest of making a cloth banner. The fabric is very cheap but the outcome seems priceless to me :)I couldn't help but pull out my sewing machine and add a little extra trim. I love love these!

Gynmastics Recital & Blue Ribbon Day

Recently Zachary had his first gymnastics recital. Mom was out of town but Dad and Poppi went to watch Zachary perform his routines.

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At the end of his rectial all the children were given individual medals of achievement. Little boys raise one arm to acknowledge their award. While little girls raise both arms (I'm not clear as to why)

Zachary was also acknowledge after a weekday class with a presentation the gym calls "Ribbon Day". On Ribbon day teachers award blue ribbons to the kids & give parents papers of accomplishment. Which detail the skills the children have mastered. Mom was excited to be able to witness Zachary standing on the block & raising his arm!

We are so proud of our son for his hard work & persistence in the gym!

More Elfin Magic

The Elfin Magic continues to be abundant in our household...this must mean that Zachary has been a good little boy!! Yesterday we went downstairs to see Elfie in a Hot air balloon, notice Zachary's underpants!

And, this morning Elfie dropped by with an email from Santa! Zachary LOVED it!! It's from a free online Santa Email (portablenorthpole.com) program where Santa says Zachary's name & pulls out a book from his libray with information about Zachary (his age, what he's accomplished this year, what he does during the day, what he wants for Christmas, etc.) He walks around the toy work room and shows the Elfs making gifts for all the children around the world. Zachary answered Santa's questions and responded right back to Santa...too cute!! Email from Santa

Crazy Elfie...

If the weather holds up we plan on driving around our local neighborhoods searching for Christmas lights, drinking warm coca' with our glow sticks in hand! We love Christmas!!

I have a LOOOONGGGGG list of crafty "to do's" all thanks to my love of the internet site called pinterest. I have been very very busy trying to get all this done. We have had so much fun with all these projects!! Cinnamon Applesauce Potpourri Can I say, "OMG OMG" well, yes OMG OMG!! This is so easy, smells absolutely delicious & Zachary LOVED to cut the shapes. We will totally be doing this again! All it is: 1 C Applesauce, 1-1/2 C Cinnamon & 2Tb ground nutmeg. OMG OMG!! so so fun!!

Stringing Homemade Garland We have never taken the time to do this before. I think as a child I remember stringing something one time but I'm not sure what it was. I thought the popcorn would be easier than it ended up being- the pop corn cracked and it was very easy to poke yourself. Obviously we didn't want our 3 year old to string with a real needle so I just made a faux one with tape on the end of a string. And, we had a lot of debate over what type of food he could string easily...we initially looked for dry noodles but couldn't find any that were colored so we stuck with the good ole favorite cereal fruit loops. Zachary would string one and eat three. Cranberry

Zach's "needle" fruit loop string

upclose & personal

Mantel

Focus on the garland

Gingerbread House Poppi gave us a gingerbread house at Thanksgiving. We sat down one evening to decorate it. Zachary absolutely loved this!! It sits in the center of our kitchen table and we have a lot of discussion over who maybe inside (Elfie is the big favorite). Zachary looks so proud in this picture :))

Snowman Door. This decoration was so easy, and it's one of those ideas where I think to myself, "why did I not think of this?" I made this with just card stock & punches. And, I hand cut out the carrot nose. Zachary helped put the buttons on the snowman and after we were done he said, "our house looks like Christmas" Now that, is what I wanted to hear :))

Thanks for stopping by! Have a very Merry Christmas!!

Elfin Magic

Happy Holidays! We have been busy at the Miller household decorating & looking out for Elfin magic to show up around the house. This was our first year with Zachary's Elf (named Elfie). We thought we would share the Elf activity going on in our home. Day one, we found Elfie taking a cotton bubble bath in Zachary's bathroom sink.

One morning Zachary found Elfie making shapes out of q-tips! And, Elfie made the letter Z too!

Zip-lining!! OMG, Zachary was amazed to find Elfie had tied a jump rope from the shower to the sink and was zip-ling across the bathroom!

Elfie loves books, just like Zachary! We found him reading a book to some of Zachary's stuffed "pets" (Zachary's name for his stuffed animals)

While I was out of town on a girls trip Elfie brought Zachary a Christmas tree for his bedroom!

It was a nice surprise for Zachary!

We caught Elfie in our pantry sipping syrup straight from the bottle! And, he brought Zachary his first gift from Santa! Jake The Neverland pirate ornaments for his tree!

Elfie was a little behind on bringing the advent calendar to our home. But, Zachary enjoyed searching for 1-12 numbers and indulging in 12 pieces of (very mini) chocolate!

Elfie brings festive coloring pages...

We quickly inserted Zachary's Festive Artwork in the special frames in our hallway:

We hope you all are enjoying this beautiful, magical time of year!