Winter Dance Recital 2012

Megan and Marisa had their dance recital last week. I had to post some of the
cutest pictures I got. 

Here they are up on stage doing their ballet number....to the tune of......I want a Hippopotamus
 for Christmas....Meg loves to sing it around the house....

I made them pose around the tree before we left the house. They both have glitter in their hair and
 make-up on. They loved it! 

They are both in the same dance class this year. 

Just about to start dancing....no stage fright here! 

Cutie pies....

Here they are in their tap dancing outfits....they take ballet and tap.....
cute little hair fancies....

I loved it. They are 2 cute little ballerinas! 

Christmas Parties 2012

 Christmas morning was fun seeing the little faces of my granddaughters as they opened gifts they liked.

Even my 30 year old seemed to like something he got. That is rare for me to get something right. lol.

Darling Josie girl...so cute! 

I had to show some of my cute kitchen and dining room decorations......

This was the little kids' table and I had just bought some new Snowmen plates and cups from Shopko. 

this was one of my favorites....my little Pottery Barn Christmas Tree on the wall. Each pocket is for a little candy. Sweet! 

I got this $70.00 Pottery Barn tree for only $17.00 because it says Merry Christmas in  Portuguese . Who cares?  I love it anyway! 

Not as sweet as this little girl though.....she was cute in her little red shoes. 

Part of my Nutcracker collection.....

The girls and me posing right before all the chaos begins....

Wendy, Josie and Jeff's Christmas picture....

Formal Dining Room decor....

Living room desk decor....

Entry table decorations....

Grandpa playing Santa at the Family party...Mrs. Claus in back....

Thanks for a fun party guys! 

We always act out the Nativity...here are my grandkids playing shepherds...with cute little stuffed lambs....

 Singing as a group as the Nativity scenes are acted out....

These kids are both in their twenties....but they are good sports playing Joseph and Mary anyway....

My son and his cute daughter... I loved this little red sweater.....

 I made a chocolate bundt cake for the party and here it was. Too bad the sides got smashed a little on the drive up. Check out the recipe HERE at my other blog Weekday Chef.

My cute daughter and her hubs. He is the eye doctor at Lenscrafters in Southtowne Mall if you need your eyes checked. He's a very nice guy. I love buying him presents for Christmas because he is so appreciative and gets excited. That's rare in peeps over 30. 

My brother in law, his son and my hubs on the right....The 3 Kings hahaha.....

Some YUMMY Chex Munch made by my sister-in-law. Her blog recipe can be found  at Sugar-n-Spice Gals.

It was a lot of Christmas fun this year.  Now I just have to get some energy to take everything down again!! EEK!
Happy New Year everybody! 

I'm am FINALLY all done wrapping presents! WaHOOOOOO! I hated just having the gifts all sitting there and now I'm soooooo glad it's all done. Thanks to the hubs we cranked it all out in an evening. 

You know how you have to set all the piles around to be sure it is kind of fair? Well, those piles sat around like that for a week. But I was babysitting Saturday so I had to get it all done Friday night! 

Whew, I wonder what this will be like if our family gets any bigger! EEK! 

 I came across a few ideas that I liked for keeping it all in a theme.  How about using thread for ribbon and attaching adornments? How cute is that? They just used plain colored papers too. Sometimes that is the most striking! Black and red paper! 

From Design Sponge HERE.

This cute wrapping idea is from Older and Wiser blogspot.  LOVE IT!  

My daughter-in-law stamped everybody's name on their gifts and then added an
ornament for embellishment....these are just wrapped in brown paper!  Cute!  

Labels from My Sweet Prints
This is a cute idea for package labels I found and you can download and print them off free! 

I love this idea using some old music paper and gold ribbon with jingle bells! I have TONS of old music books....maybe next year I'll do a music paper theme with different colors of ribbons....

Cute Kid Wraps from Martha Stewart.

Anyone who is a teacher will love this gift wrapping idea.  I love the hand printed capital letters on paper with different colors of marker. Kids would LOVE to decorate paper with their own printing. Great Idea! 

mishmashmake.com and Christmas Labels by Paperjack, Etsy

I've always loved Red and White. My wedding 
colors were red and white. You can't go wrong here
 using just dots and checks with different
 kinds of ribbons.....

Doilies on brown or red paper is cute too!  From Knicky Knack

   Here are my boring packages. I got coordinating paper from Costco and wrapped everything up
in one of these 3 styles of paper adding embellishments to a few.

Just red and white and green foil papers with candy cane embellishments....

Easy and cute I say....Love love love Costco!  

 Happy Wrapping! 

Santa Handprint Cards and Letters to Santa

 We wrote letters to Santa. And we made Santa Handprints.

The 2nd graders had lots of questions for Santa in their Santa Letters....HERE  is some cute writing paper from Activity Village to use for Letters to Santa. .

 We have all been trying to be "pretty good this year"......

We painted palms pink, fingers white, and top of our hands with red paint to do a handprint  Santa. 

Santa is awesome......yes he is! 

Then we added some glitter glue to our Santa Hand prints....

We had some replies already to our letters! The school secretary raced into our classroom with the freezing cold envelope we'd sent to the North Pole!!!  It was marked "return to sender". And guess who had written us back? 

 Each of the kids got a reply to their letters to Santa!!  Santa's elves made time to write personal letters to each of the students. Super cool Santa!!

 So I hope everybody gets what they wanted for Christmas!!

Lots of electronics on the gift list this Christmas! 

 Hope you get everything you wanted from Santa Claus too!