I can be crafty!

***I apologize for the length of this post.  I thought I had moved on from the trauma this caused me, but once I started I realized I'm still scarred.  

I would not consider myself to be a crafty person.  I like the idea of crafting, just not the actual process.  I like getting everything organized and sorted out and lists made of what all I am going to need.  Because I'm a list person.  But I really dislike the clean-up.  Even if it is just me, having to get everything cleaned up when I'm tired and grouchy after doing the craft is a pain.  Not to mention the fact that I have never once had a craft go according the plan.  Ever. 

As for doing crafts with the girls, kill me now!  I wish I was the type of Mom who loved to do crafts with my children.  My girls certainly like doing them.  But I can not stand doing it with them.  Not only do they make a huge mess, regardless of what it is we are actually making, they very rarely do it correctly.  Imagine that, a child not being able to flawlessly execute a craft that I myself can not seem to make look right.  And even though my head knows this, my oh-so-carefully-kept-under-control control freak nature is driven absolutely nuts when my 8 year old does not evenly space the jewels she is gluing to the paper.  Now, before you think I'm a completely awful person, I have never taken a project away from my child to do it for them because theirs doesn't look right.  But I secretly want to. And it makes me twitch that I can't.  So you will rarely see me sitting down to craft. 

Despite all this, for some inexplicable reason, I decided that I would make a large majority of the Christmas gifts to give out to family this year.  I blame Pinterest and my friend B for guilting me into joining.  She knows who she is.  Most of them turned out OK.  None of them turned out as planned.  And I have already instructed Hubby to remind me of everything I went through to make all this stuff next year if I should happen to temporarily lose my sanity again.  Here are a few of the things I made.

Cinnamon applesauce ornaments.  They're kind of cute, they smell really good.  Baby Girl #3 was able to help me with them.  However, once done I wondered if they had any true functionality.  The thought was to have them for several years to help the house smell good.  I gave several away to different people and I still have quite a few.  If they still smell good next year it will have been worth it.

Multi-colored crayons.  Made for Baby Girl #4 and the two cousins that are close to her age.  You basically melt down several pieces of different crayons.  Turned out OK.  Uglier than I thought.  This is probably due to the fact that I was so desperate to not have to peel the paper off 100 crayons that I recruited Baby Girls #1 and #2 to do it for me.  They apparently decided that all the gray, black and brown ones should be done first.  They were probably conspiring against me because I won't do any crafts with them.

Cute, right?  WORST CRAFT EVER!!!!!!!  It seemed like the simplest craft.  Cut some cord and some old t-shirts up, braid them together and then glue a magnet on each end.  I was even going to have #1 and #2 help with this one.  Only to discover #2 doesn't know how to braid.  News to me!  #1 has known for a while and #3 just recently taught herself as well.  I just assumed #2 had taught herself as well.  That was not the case.  Also, the lady whose blog I read on how to do this simply stated, "Glue a magnet on the end with tacky glue".  Did she mention that tacky glue takes forever to dry?  Or that if you try to put it down after 30 minutes thinking it is dry enough that the magnet will fall off because it is not, in fact, dry at all?  Did she mention that the magnets themselves are a real pain to find in a craft store, or that the size of the magnet matters?  Did she mention that if you try to order magnets online because you can not find the right size in 5 different stores that they might not be strong enough to actually hold the ends of a bracelet together?  Or that if you try to switch to a hot glue gun because you have wasted hours of your life and only finished one stupid bracelet that it will not work if you already put tacky glue on the bracelet?  In case you have missed the sarcastic tone, no, she did not mention any of that.  I could go on with several more things that went wrong.  Suffice it to say, I made several of the bracelets for my girls and their friends.  I don't know if any of them can be worn.  And I don't really care at all.  If I never see those bracelets again I'll be fine with that.

This was my favorite.  It didn't turn out as planned either, but at this point I didn't care at all.  I made one for my Mom and made one for myself at the same time.  I really liked it and it's a little awkward to ask someone to make something for you. In case you're wondering, my Mom and I both have a tendency to snort when we start laughing really hard.  I love it when my Mom does it, it makes everyone else laugh even harder.  It's not so cute when I do it, but I'm usually laughing too hard at that point to care what other people think about my laugh.

That's all the pictures I have.  I made some other things--sugar scrubs that turned out OK, rice bags that you can heat up, bath crayons for the little girls that are basically colored soap, some seek and find bags.  I don't know how much everyone will use what I made for them.  At this point I just hope they lie to me and tell me they use it all the time.  Until next December when they admit that it has just sat in their home not being used so that I can quell any desire to make anything for anyone.  EVER AGAIN!

Our Christmas

The majority of my family was able to get together on the 29th for our family's Christmas gathering.  Hubby didn't come with the girls and I because I was going to be at my parents' for two weeks.  My older brother and his wife spent Thanksgiving with us so they were with her family for Christmas.  Everyone else was there though, even my sister's fiance who drove 10 hours round trip just to be able to spend a few hours with us.

My family is not huge on traditions.  We decided several years ago as more of "us kids" were getting married that we would plan on celebrating Christmas whenever the most of us could get together.  One of my brothers is a State Trooper and he works a lot of holidays.  Hubby usually isn't going to be taking off any time around the holidays because he's expected to be at home for the congregation.  So we work around everyone's schedules to include as many as we can. We figure as long as we're together, the actual day isn't as important.

The one tradition we do have?  We have a scavenger hunt every Christmas.  Mom and Dad started doing one, I don't even know how long ago.  We used to have it just around their house, but the in-laws started complaining that it wasn't really fair since they hadn't grown up there and how were they supposed to know where the dog was buried?  Whiners!  Anyway, this year Mom and Dad went all out and actually gave items to several church members, gave us the addresses and we had to map it out on GPS and then figure out who had what.  It was a lot of fun. Although the driver in my car was the Trooper brother, and I'm not crazy about what a stickler he seems to be for the "laws of the land" such as the speed limit.  Anyway, it's the one thing we have all decided needs to be done every year.  I sometimes think my parents wish they hadn't ever started this tradition, but we all tell them they have no one to blame but themselves!

After the scavenger hunt we opened gifts and ate a laid back meal of enchilada pie.  If you've never had it, you've missed out!  I gotta say--my family is loud when we all get together!  Even when there were 8 of us living in the the house when my siblings and I were all at home my parents' house seemed plenty big.  (Most of the time!)  However, when there were 17 of us talking, opening gifts, and eating it seemed a little cramped!  But you know what?  I wouldn't change it.  I'm so thankful I was able to spend time with all of them.  And let's be honest--anyone who knows me knows that I'm not what you would normally term a quiet person.  We're all pretty loud, and I love it!

Who has time to write a blog post?

I am back together with all my girls!  The littles and I headed up to my parents' house on Thursday and Friday.  Let me just say that I am so glad that my brother and his family live almost exactly halfway between my house and my parents.  I could have made the 10-14 hour trip (if you have little ones you understand why the trip time could be either 10 or 14 hours) by myself, but I'm really glad I didn't have to.  We stayed the night Thursday night at my brother's.  When we got up Friday morning and ate breakfast I was washing our dishes and Baby Girl #3 asked if I had to wash the dishes.  I explained to her that when you visit someone's home it is always nice to leave the house as nice or nicer than when you got there.  That way if you ever want to visit again they will look forward to you coming instead of dreading it.  Then I told my brother about the conversation and informed him that I intend to be visiting a lot, whenever we travel back and forth to see the grandparents!  Luckily we all get along and our visits are always fun!

I miss Hubby a lot, but it is nice to be back with my parents and be getting ready to enjoy the week with my family.  Hubby told me a little while ago that one of our elders told him today that he should come up here this week so that he could be with us for Christmas even though technically he doesn't have the vacation time to be able to do that.  Unfortunately, Hubby has a funeral to do in Houston this week so he couldn't come up anyway, but it means so much to us that our elders offered to let him take the extra time.  It's nice that they feel that way even though we've only be there for about 4 months.  This move has been tough on us, but things like that make it easier to feel like we're really a part of the congregation. 

So now I have all the presents wrapped, goodies made and bag unpacked.  All that is left is to unwrap all the gifts and enjoy spending time with family.  I'm looking forward to not having to do anything that I don't actually want to!  I hope all of you have a wonderful week filled with love and laughter.  To any of you who are having a difficult time due to a loss or dealing with any depression, I may not know exactly who you are or what you are dealing with, but I will be praying for you. 

A tree that actually smells!

We finally got a Christmas tree that smells like a Christmas tree!  We had an artificial tree for several years.  That was for me.  So much easier to just pull it out and have the lights already on there and we had one that looked pretty good.  Until last year when Hubby informed me that he really preferred real trees because he liked the smell.  I had not known this up to that point so we decided to get a real tree last year.  We went all out--drove an hour to a Christmas tree farm, played on the toys, cut the tree down ourselves, the whole shebang.  Only to get it home and realize that it had no smell to it whatsoever.  Nothing!  We spent $90 on that stupid thing, and that doesn't include the gas to and from. 

That is not the case this year!  I am sitting in front of our gorgeous tree and enjoying the smell of it permeating the entire house.  This thing is strong!  And I have to admit I'm loving it!  The best part?  We drove maybe 3 miles to pick it up and paid $40 for it.  And it is just as pretty, if not more, so than our tree last year! 

No decorations yet--we got home too late.  Tomorrow!

 I also have the rest of my Christmas decorations up.  Usually I don't have everything up this early.  In fact, I have a little light that you can count down how many days until Christmas and I didn't realize before today that it went above 25 days.  But since Baby Girls #1 and #2 are going to the grandparents next week I wanted to get everything up before they left so they could enjoy it for a little while.  And they enjoyed being able to help me set everything up.  And let's be honest, it is so much easier to get everything out without a 2 year old wanting to help. 

They're a little hard to see, but I love snowmen!  I have a lot of them, but I always want more!

I seriously love these Hallmark things that sing!  I only have two, mainly to help Hubby's sanity.

My attempt to keep the more breakable items out of reach of Baby Girl #4.  I'll let you know how that goes!

You can't see it, but these are right next to Hubby's homework table.  It's because he loves them sooooo much!

 That last picture is a singing village of Disney characters.  My grandparents put them up for so many years in their home at Christmas time.  My Grandpa took a lot of time to get them situated just right on their organ.  I remember as a kid just sitting and watching them for the longest time.  About 5 years ago when they were downsizing Grandma asked me if I wanted it.  I said yes, not really thinking at the time that I would use it that much.  But I've put it up every year and it makes me smile every time I see it because it makes me think of Grandpa and Grandma's house.  And I love to watch my girls sitting in front of it listening to the songs, just like I used to.  And I remember how big Grandma smiled when I told her how much my daughters loved it.  I like having a piece of her in my home like that.