The day I have been waiting for WEEKS happened. Finally! And a day early. I am a mess for dates right now.
Christmas happens to be my most favorite time of the year. I love having some family time, some Christmas cheer, Christmas baking, going to church. And I LOVE the music. LOVE.
This year Christmas is going to be a little harder. For the first time we have no family visiting. My sister and family is clear across the country. So I am a little sad, and lost. I love to cook for the holidays, and suddenly have not too many too feed. I love to bake… but who is going to eat it? So this year I am a little scared of Christmas.
I decided to focus on the kids, and try to come up with something that would still let our kids feel close to their cousins. I had seen elf on the shelf last year and thought my kids would love it. So I ordered 2, one for us and one for my nephews.

The elf is basically a go between from the kids to Santa. He uses magic every night to go back to the North Pole and tell Santa everything that’s going on. Every morning he returns but in a different place than he was left. And some elves cause trouble…. it’s totally cute. The kids get to name the Elf, tell him their secrets and it just plain old rocks.

So Jenny and I were going to do a big surprise North Pole breakfast together so the kids could talk about it, and it would be a Christmas bonding tradition. Well… all was well and good until I accidentally did our breakfast ON THE WRONG DAY!! Ugh I am still sick over it! We were going to start Dec 1, and I did it Nov 30! I’m telling you… I am a hot mess for dates right now!

So I was up at 5:15 (to beat our real alarm clock Kade. Who wakes us all up at 6am on the dot.every day.) and set up the surprise breakfast. Egg mcmuffins (thanks Pinterest), green and red milk with marshmallows in a rudolph cup (by far the biggest hit), some Christmas donuts, and a little rudolph toy. Kade was COMPLETELY awed. She said ‘Our house is FULL of MAGIC!!!!’ That right there made it totally worth it Ro was and is more skeptical (people remember to take the tags off the doll. Seriously. Now I have to explain the tag thing to him lol) but he was up at 6 today ready to go find the elf!!!

After a day of thinking… our elf has a name. Bruno. So Bruno… welcome to the family.

It’s such a fun family tradition that I think can go on forever. If my parents had done it, I probably would still go to their house wondering where they put it! I love it!

I wanted to take some amazing pictures through our Elf journey, but the thing is it’s pitch black out when we get up. So I just have to go with it. lol.

The spread…..

Daddy reading the note from Bruno

Daddy reading the book!

Some pretty happy and excited kids around here!

Ro helping Kade get her special milk

Now to see if my nephews Elf has arrived!!!!!

Pinterest. I signed up forever ago and didn’t really get it. Didn’t want to put in the time to figure it out either.
A few weeks ago I started pinning… then ran out of time again.
It is a HUGE time sucker!!!

But I love it. Pinterest makes me want to get married (yes we have been together for almost 10 years, have 2 kids and have been engaged for 5 yrs lol), be an amazing photographer, do ALL the crafts with my kids I can find, build my dream house, louse weight, become a baker, a chef, and interior designer. BUT, here I am stuck on the computer because I can’t stop looking at pins, repinning, and liking!!! Time is also wasted by me calling Dion over a thousand times a day ‘YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!!!!’.
Pinterest is a creative, imaginative person’s dream. And nightmare. You just can’t stop!

Today Kade and I had a Pinterest day. We’ve been having a rough couple of days with this child…. she’s overtired and throwing tantrums. Like massive meltdowns where I can’t even physically drive Ro to school because she keeps unbuckling herself in the car. It’s been rough. So today I wanted to shake things up for her. See if I could snap her out of it.

We baked. It’s my favorite thing to do. Music and baking is bliss. And everything we made was off Pinterest.

On the list:
chocolate chip cookies
lemon bars
chicken parmesan bake
homemade garlic toast

And it was AWESOME. Lemon bars still hate me. I WILL CONQUER YOU ONE DAY. But today was not the day.
Everything else was a hit. Rohan ate his whole supper (unheard of) in minutes. Telling me how good it was, and still talking about it at bedtime! The garlic bread was incredible…

If you want the recipes, look me up on Pinterest under my name If you’re not on there, send me your e-mail addy and I’ll send an invite! It is an awesome place!

Anyways…. here’s my girl. The girl I love. Who loves spending time with her mama. And we have matching Christmas aprons

‘Reading’ the recipe to me

Being cute

I LOVE this pic