Happy Hanukkah!!!

Last night was the first night of Hanukkah. Aiden is such a hoot this year because he understands what the holidays are this year, Christmas included. He is so excited about all the lights on everyones houses when we drive around. The funniest thing is that this afternoon after I picked them up from daycare. Everyone wished him a Merry Christmas and he responded " and Happy Hanukkah too!" And he gets soo excited when we get ready to light the candles at night. He constantly asks when we can light them. He's such a ham!

 Getting ready to light the candles.

 "Can we light them now?!"

 playing dreidels

 Lighting the candles

 opening presents

 "Oh I want to play with that too!"

 Building the ramp.

 "look at 'em go!!!"

 Loading into the elevator.

25 Days of Christmas- Days, 19, 20, 21

DAY 19

 DAY 20

 DAY 21

25 days of christmas- Days 16,17, & 18

DAY 16

 Making Christmas cookies

DAY 17

Hanging candy canes on the tree

DAY 18

Love my snowman!!

Follow up to my craft fail- SUCCESS!!

So I get up this morning and I look at my miserable excuse for tile coaster,s and to my surprise, 99% of the bubbles were gone. GONE!!! I was so excited! I guess I don't have to find something else after all. That makes my life so much easier. Anyway. On to the next step. Adding in the felt on the bottom so they don;t scuff up your table or counter.

The original instructions had just regular cut up felt for the backing, but I like the felt pads better. I think it adds more cushioning. And it makes the coaster look like its floating. The pads are sticky, but I added glue around the outside of it to help secure it better to the tile.

Wrap your holiday ribbon of choice around the set. Slap in a gift bag and you're good to go. However I will say that the final step in the creation process is adding a top coat of clear acrylic to the coasters to help with the final seal and to give them a nice gloss. It dries really fast and but it says not to handle for an hour. That is fine, but the the acrylic has an odor that it gives off for a while. Causes quite the head ache and mess up the whole room in seconds. Good thing I made these early so that they can air out before I have to give them away. 

DIY Craft-FAIL!!!

So since its the holidays and I am going through my list of people that I still ned to get things for it came to my attention that I neglected to put Aiden and Rebecca's teachers on my list. Crap!!! Now I have two sets of daycare teachers to buy for. So while trying to think of something I was reading another blog and in the post there was a DIY coaster craft. Plane tiles, scrapbook paper, modge podge, ribbon. Perfect!! I have something that I can make for cheap and is useful for the teachers, my hair stylist and I even decided to make a set for my uncle. Off to Michael's I go to pick out my paper and other needed supplies. Lowe's is where I picked up the tiles.

So my tiles are layed out. I'm cutting out the paper to go on each set of 4 coasters. I start to glue them down with the modge podge. I put the top coat on. This is a breeze and then I see this.

 and this....

 and this!!

Freaking bubbles in the paper!!! Seriously!!! If you are going to post a craft on your blog and you are going to spout that it is super easy to do you need to have the specific details of what to do. Yes it is pretty simple to do and it was all going really smoothly until this. Now there is no fixing these. I've tried to spread out the paper and it's not helping. Money straight down the toilet and I still need to get gifts for them now. The only ones that did not bubble were the set that I used very heavy paper.

I mean would it have helped if I put saran wrap over them while the modge was drying and then I could have layed something on top to help keep the paper flat? Maybe I should have sprayed it with some sort of polyurethane first to help seal it better to the tile before putting the modge on so that it would have prevented the bubbling.  I don't know, but I also now have to deal with Seth taunting me in the oh so loving way he does about my epic craft fail. Either way I am pretty annoyed that it all turned to crap.

25 Days of Christmas- Day 15

 Nothing like a nice hot chocolate on a cold December night.

Happy 10 mos Rebecca

So now its down to the wire. We've reached 10 mos and at this point I should be starting to plan your first birthday. Ok I have the decor down, but the problem I am running into is where is that decor going to be set up. I have called a number of places and none of them are available for the weekend of her birthday which leads me to believe that since it is the weekend before Valentine's Day that a lot of places must have some sort of shindig that they throw. FUN!!! Either way her are her shots.

25 Days of christmas- Day 14

DAY 14

the giant lollipops!!