Woops

Topper - I'm packaging up your tea towel and will get it in the mail to you asap!

The class parties went really well this afternoon, but my head is pounding. It's either a lack of food, or lack of sleep or both! GR and the kids are catching up on Survivor ... tonight they're watching the last challenge and tribal council where Matty gets voted off. We won't have time to watch who wins tonight. We're going to skip the "interrogation" hour ... there is nothing said there that the kids need to hear, and skip right to the reunion show where the winner is announced.

This is what happens when I have too many irons in the fire ...



An entire bag and half of Rolo's turned in to garbage ... I tried to salvage them, but only a couple came off the waxed paper ... Grrrrrr! Note to self, 10 minutes at 300 is way too long!

We have a winner!

We took this picture last week ... it was the last in the series of "impromptu" pictures we took. Its not too shabby, and although it's not my ideal picture, it will more than do for this years picture. I ordered 100 photo cards online today, hopefully they arrive in time to at least have them postmarked December 24th. I went through the address list - good heavens a lot of you have moved in the last year!



Tomorrow are all the "Winter" parties at school. First I'm sending 19 gingerbread boys to Sam's class for the Gingerbread party, I'm hoping to make it a few minutes of his party, but I'm prepping him for me not being there at all. Then from 11:45 - 1:45 I'm helping in Emily's class room for the 1st and 2nd grade pod party. Our room is making "snowman soup" (aka Hot Chocolate). I'm leaving Emily's party early so I can spend the last hour of the day in Rebecca's room running her class party.

Yesterday, I starting making Santa Cookies. Monday night as a family we made a list of friends we wanted to make sure we delivered cookies too. It's looking like this will be the first year we'll actually get a few friend and neighbor plates made up and delivered! It will take us a few days to get them all made up and delivered, but I'm hopeful we'll get them done.

The "Cleaning Out" Christmas Giveaway

My visiting teaching appointment for this morning canceled, giving me time to make this post instead.

Remember my tea towel crafting craze? Three Christmases ago I lined up the kids and made foot/hand print Reindeer tea towels to give the grandma's and aunts. It seams only one got finished and gifted ... earlier this week I found three three unfinished ones in the craft room cupboard ... woops ... I think we'll try to finish these up this week. Alex and Anna's finger prints can be the ornaments, star and trunk of our Christmas trees.

When Rebecca was in 1st grade, I thought it would be nice for the kids in her class to make a gift for their parents during the winter party -- I don't do anything this complicated anymore, thank you Alyson! Using the Reindeer tea towel as my inspiration, I came up with this adaptation:



To make it possible for 20 kids to do this quickly, I pre-stamped the towels with a reindeer face, glued on the nose and drew on the eyes, so all we needed to add were "antlers." For the most part the project was successful and the kids enjoyed it, but as you can guess, it was way to much to pull off in the 50 minutes we had for the party.

Anyway, I found three of these pre-stamped tea towels in the craft room, ready for you to personalize with your childen's hand prints (you'll need brown craft paint, too) that I'd like to send off to three dear readers. The three I have to send only have the reindeer face, no polka-dots. They are simple enough to add, but most of you have multiple children/grandchildren so you'll probably need the space on either side of Rudolf to add hand print Christmas trees so everyone is represented. Just comment here if you'd like me to send you one of these towels. I'll chose the three winners Friday evening, say around 5pm CST - with all the school parties Friday I'm not going to make it to the post office until Saturday morning, hopefully it will still arrive by Christmas Eve.

If you won't be at the address I have for you and want me to mail it somewhere else, just let me know in the comments (don't put the address there, I'll email you for it if you're a winner, but you've gotta reply quickly so I can still mail it out Saturday AM) so you can do this project while it's still "Christmas." If you don't think I have your snail mail address, leave your email address in the comments so I can get your snail mail address by Saturday AM ...

Let's see ... tips for doing this at home either from the beginning, or using one of my "kits:"

* The nose is a large pom pom from the craft store, hot glued on. You may want to put a few stitches through the nose so when the glue finally gives way in the wash, the nose doesn't get lost.

* The eyes were drawn on using a Sharpie.

* Plain acrylic craft paint works really well for this project. Some say to use fabric paint, but it is expensive and hard to find in the same colors as acrylic craft paint. Craft paint is permanent and washes well - it will fade a bit with lots of washes, but not so much that it's worth the extra bucks for fabric paint.

* Use a thin sharpy to label each hand print once the paint has dried, and put the date down in the corner so many, many years from now you know what year you made it.

* If you want, add a couple rows of red and green ric rac to the bottom of the towel for some added festive cheer.

Our Annual Christmas Brunch

The weather cooperated beautifully this year, and we had a really nice turn out. Diane and I both estimate that about 70 women came, which was really nice. Everyone who came seemed to want and need the time to sit and talk and enjoy the warmth of good friendship. Every year, Diane sits back and chuckles when she watches the little chatting groups that form, and this year was no different. We had the "Methodist" room and the "Mormon" room with a few who didn't fit in either category bridging the gap.

Each year I have good intentions of taking pictures, but I never get to it. This year to insure I had a better record of the event, I asked my friend Lori to bring her camera and take a few casual shots. Thanks to her, I can show those who live far away, a little glimpse of what the brunch is like. Thanks Lori!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

I am coming to accept the fact that we will always have leftovers, no matter how carefully we plan the menu and calculate quantities, that's just part of the tradition of having the brunch. But this year we found a wonderful use for some of the extra platters of food. A friend who has taught for many years suggested taking a couple plates to the kids school and putting it in the teachers lounge. That was a fantastic idea! We took a large platter of sweet breads and two cheesecakes with us Monday morning and the teachers were thrilled! The kids have already had recipe requests for Grandma Mum's Magic Marshmallow Puffs.

A special thanks to those who came and shared their Saturday morning with us, and to those who couldn't you were definitely missed.

- - - - -

While the women were at the brunch, GR took the kids to IHOP for breakfast. He called a couple of friends with kids about the ages of ours who's wives were coming to the brunch to join him ... four dads and twelve kids. The joke among the mom's was that if anyone drove past and noticed police cars in the parking lot or the roof blown off, we didn't want to know about it until at least 12:30. Thankfully everyone had a good time. The kids all ate their breakfast and the dad's are actually talking about doing it again next year!