Christmas Eve Traditions

So over the years we've kind of had an irregular tradition of spending Christmas Eve with our friends, the Fluckigers. It started when we were kids and we'd be gone for Christmas and so Mom was alone. So graciously, the Fluckigers would have Mom there for Christmas Eve. Then a few years ago, I was invited to go over there. Dinner was the bribe to get us to help wrap the kid's Christmas presents. And it worked. :)

This year, they invited our whole family over so we had quite the party.

Dinner was delicious and we had a fabulous time hanging out. Listening to the Christmas story and "A Pirate's Night Before Christmas" complete with Sean making pirate noises. :) It was pretty awesome and hilarious.

We had a wonderful time with lots of laughter and awesome food. And lots of excitment because Caitlin was due yesterday. Michelle was just WAITING for Cait's water to break in the middle of dinner. I think when it didn't she was mildly disappointed and relieved (har har!).

Michelle insisted that Caitlin use the Santa Snuggie because it fit over her belly perfectly. :) Caitlin wasn't so Jolly about it.

'Nuff said.

I made cream puffs to share with the family. Everyone was so excited. And they were Ahhhhmazing!

Sean and Alyssa. Colin is hiding behind Alyssa.

Erin, Steven, and Mom chillin'.

Colin did have his head on Alyssa's lap and it was really cute, but then Alyssa saw that I was taking a picture and moved and so Colin tried to duck out of the picture. Punks.

While we were there, someone doorbell ditched a beautiful charm bracelet off for Michelle. No one knows who it's from.

Mom, Lys, Michelle, Caitlin, & Sean watching A Christmas Carol.

Nick came over and was cuddling with Caitlin and had his head on her stomach and it was super cute. Then he realized that I was trying to take a picture so he moved. Punk.

Rachel started kicking and moving around and so everyone took turns feeling her move. It was funny to watch Kevin. He was a bit disturbed. He had never felt a baby move and so it kind of freaked him out. Caitlin forced him to feel it. He might have had nightmares that night. Bwahahaha!

So that was our Christmas Eve. And it was perfect. :)

Family Christmas!!!

Happy day! We got off early today at work! Wahoo! And that is why I'm posting in the middle of the afternoon...because I can! :) Anywhoooo....

Due to certain circumstances outside our control (ie: Cait's baby situation, ya know, coming any second, among others), Christmas was bumped up a bit! We celebrated today! December 22---The new Christmas! (That reminds me of the Modern Family Christmas Episode this year--they celebrated on December 16.. Bwahahaha!)

We had dinner and opened presents. The food was pretty good, if I do say so myself, though aparently my new-ish crockpot is broken. Half of the meat was way undercooked. :( I have yet to master the art of cooking roast. Maybe someday.

I kind of liked having Christmas a little early this year. It gave us time to hang out and have some down time to enjoy our new presents (books! lots of books!) and have the decorations up longer. At least it felt that way.

Here are some fun pictures from our little party.

Presh!

Steven's Pirate Stocking was a perfect fit. ;)

Nick got to open up Rachel's Baby Scrapbook that I re-gifted. It was even done this time. Obviously, he was quite happy about it. :)

See! Cait is so excited to get a picture of the stocking she gets next year. Nick, well he wasn't so excited...

Erin was so excited to get a chocolate orange (a tradition in our family), but when she opened it, it was a Rock. Because she wanted a "rock" aka a diamond from Jim, her fiance. She did get one from him, and one from Santa. Except Santa's was a real rock. It was hilarious! hehehehehe!

 

One of my favorite parts is the mess afterwards! Seriously! I love all the bright, colorful paper strewn about and the smiles on everyone's faces. Except for some reason in the above picture---no one is smiling. Huh. Well, I assure you there were lots of smiles and laughter that night. :) And the great thing was that everyone loved their stockings. And Cait, Nick, and Baby Rachel are excited to get their's next year. :)

It was fun because a little later, some family friends of ours stopped by for a little visit. It was fun to hang out with Keith, his wife Dani, and Scott and laugh about all of Steven's mis-adventures as a child. (Steven and Keith have been BFF's for-ev-er.) :)

Definitely a fun night. Merry Christmas to us!

The Big Reveal: Christmas Presents!

Yay!! I'm so tired of keeping this secret. It's been killing me. Ok, slight exaggeration, but it has been annoying. Well, now the secret is out! We had our family Christmas tonight, so now I can share what I've been working on!

This year, as I've been hinting, implying, or outrightly stating, I've been working on really hard & very time consuming Christmas presents for my family. And I'll be honest. I didn't get them all done like I planned, but I did get 7 of 11 (or 12) done!

For the last couple of years, as a family, we've exchanged names and just did presents for one person each (which was my idea). Well...I found these last year and really wanted to make them, so I decided to ignore our new-ish tradition.

When we were kids, my Auntie Liz made us each an adorable stocking that we used our for entire childhoods. Well, now we're all adults and our stockings are old, so I thought new ones might be in order, especially since people keep getting added to our family! And because I can never do anything small or simply, I thought it would be fun to make Monica and her family stockings too.

The stocking kits are from Bucilla. They are felt stockings and everything is hand stitched. The only machine sewed part is the lining that I put inside the stockings and that is hand stitched to the stocking. Hopefully I stitched everything together well enough that these will last a long time. :) Oh, and I do have to give credit to Cait, she did pay for half of them as a joint Christmas present from both of us. :)

So, without further adieu, here they are!

Monica's (which took me three months alone):

Stephen's (Monica's husband):

Jesse's (Monica's son):

 All together now:

Mom's:

Erin's:

Nana's: (I have to give credit when it's due. Caitlin was a big help and actually made Nana's stocking all by herself. Thanks, sis!!)

Steven's (my personal fav!): This stocking is why I wanted to make everyone stockings. I saw this online and KNEW Steven NEEDED this in his life. It may or may not have anything to do with the fact that Steven has a alter-ego (one of several--including Napoleon: Seriously.So.Funny.) that is called "Pirate Steve" so naturally he needed a Pirate Santa stocking. :)

--
And here are the ones I'm going to make this next year, hopefully by next Christmas (I'm crossing my fingers):

Caitlin's:

Nick's:

Rachel's & Mine (we'll have matching ones--Cait's choice, not mine. :)) :

Oh, and I *might* have to make another one, depending on if/*coughwhencough* a certain baby sister of mine gets hitched. ;) Oh, wait, that WILL happen, so now I need to find a fun one for Jim....hmmm.........

Fa La La la-la La LAAAAA!

Tuesday my mom and sister, Erin came into town. One would think it would be for Christmas, but it's not. They're here because: 1) Caitlin is due in two days (though, everyone is convinced that the baby will come late) and 2) Erin wanted to show off her BRAND NEW ENGAGEMENT RING!

Oh yeah, my baby sister who is 7.5 years younger than me got engaged last weekend. To a guy that is 9.5 years (to the day) OLDER than her.

Not that I'm upset by that at all...

Actually, I am excited for Erin. Really. But it's just weird. Caitlin and I are going to be her fake bridesmaids because she isn't having any. Yeah, we're going to go get cute outfits and make our own flower arrangements to hold. That's how we roll.

Anyway. Last night Nana flew in to visit as well. (She decided that she wanted to fly and not sit in a car for 8.5 hours. Must be nice. :) ) So we had a little family hang out party at Cait's and played Mario Party.

This is Caitlin's Christmas Tree:

Awesome, right?

Here's a close up of the "tree topper"--it's one of Nick's work hats. :)

This is Caitlin, with her "distinguished/snobby" face on. 3 days shy of her due date. I'm not bias or anything, but I think she's got to be one of the cutest pregnant women. Ever. Just sayin'.

And her "not distinguished" face on. :) She hates the fact that I'm document all of this. Mwuahahahaha!

I love my family. :) And I really hope (though, not as much as Cait) that I get to be an auntie this Christmas!

Rachel's Baby Book :)

I've finally finished another project on my everlasting checklist of projects I need to actually finish. I think I finished this one because I actually had a deadline.

Here is my project:

This is Caitlin's baby scrapbook. For her baby. Which is due Christmas Eve. Yay!

For Caitlin's baby book, I used the same design as Monica's baby book that I made over the summer. Except this time:

1) It was for a girl so that meant lots of ruffles, ribbon, purple, yellow, and pink, and flowers. And glitter! LOTS of Glitter!

2) Cait paid for the book so I got to get more fun stuff for it, including really cute super girly paper! :)

3) I knew what I was doing so I was able to bust the book out a lot faster. Like five weeks instead of eight. :) Caitlin decided she wanted a butterfly theme (which is really cute, and has family significance), so I took that and ran a marathon with it.

All the pages are inked with Tim Holtz's Distress Ink in Dusty Concord. For adhesive, I used my ATG and Photo Splits both by Scotch. Most of the paper is from the DCWV Garden Party Paper Pack, and some is by SEI--Chocolate line. And there was lots of glitter, ruffles, stickers, butterflies, and flowers. :)

Ok, on to photos!

So those are a few of my favorite pages from the book. There were over 75 pages total. Hopefully Caitlin gets a lot of use out of it, and hopefully her little girl will love it when she gets older. :)

The Title Page

So there you have it. That's a bit of Rachel's Baby Book. Hopefully it'll be awhile before I have to make another one. :)

Awesome Quote Project

So awhile back, I happened upon this blog post from one of my favorite blogs. I really like Allison's version, but I didn't have access to barn wood and I wanted different colors, so I adapted it to what I did have on hand: a blank 12"x24" canvas. :)

I used my (Cait's) handy-dandy cricut and laptop to design the look of the canvas using a font I liked. And now I can't remember what it is. Sorry.

I painted the canvas with most of it being yellow and then just the bottom portion where the word "awesome" is in bright green.

I didn't have any vinyl, but I had contact paper and I figured that would probably work just as well, right? Yeah, wrong. I tried using a bit of mod-podge to stick the contact paper down so I could just paint over it with the dark grey (so the wording would be yellow & green). Problem: the mod-podge dried and acted as glue. So then the letters were glued to the canvas. Not the look I was going for.

Fortunately, I only did this for the first two letters on the first word. I was able to get the paper off with a bit of elbow grease, water, and an exacto knife. I learned my lesson and just traced each of the letters. Which made for a lot more work and time.

When I was all done tracing, I started the most time consuming part. I painted the cobblestone grey color around each letter. The grey was not as opaque as I would have liked and so it took at least 3 coats to get the solid look I wanted.

And then it was done:

It's now hanging in our hallway so you see when everytime you come out of the bathroom. And it makes me happy. :)

Santa Steve

Can I just say that I love my brother, Steven!?! He is so cute and sweet. :)

This is a prime example of the above.

This morning he played Santa for Lincoln First Ward's Christmas Party Breakfast (which was delicious, by the way). The last few years he's played Santa for Loomis First Ward (our family ward), which has been really cute. The first year, he knew a bunch of the kids and so he was able to "prove" that Santa was real because none of them knew it was Steven.

As an aside that year, one kid, Ethan, was convinced that Santa wasn't real but then he talked to Santa Steve and by the end as he walked away, he said so happily that only an 8 year old can be, "Santa IS real!" That warms my heart!

So this year the tradition continued, but for Lincoln where no one knew him. We have some friends in this ward (hello Fluckigers & Duffs/Hansons!). Michelle was supposed to be helping with the Christmas story portion of the program and so I went to cheer her on and hang with her kids. Michelle was called into work, but my friend Fallon stepped right in and did a fabulous job. The kids were so adorable as she read the story. :)

Then Santa came to town. The kids were enchanted by him. :) The first picture is if Einstein and Santa had a baby :) :

The ward also gave out little mangers with straw. Starting December 1st, for every good deed you do, you put a piece of straw in the manger and try to fill it up so that when baby Jesus comes on Christmas, the manger is full for him. Cute, right? I thought it was really sweet.

It was a fun party and it was especially fun because I got to hang out with my kids and the Duffs. :)