Where Have I Been?

I wanted to try to post more often once Christmas was over, but I've been busy. Just after New Year's, I saw a house come up on the market and it looked like maybe something Chris and I would want. We have always known that our stay in this house would not be long, 5 years maybe, because we wanted more room outdoors for the boys. Lately Chris has really been getting the itch to get out of this house. He doesn't like the area (he thinks this is the city, which makes me laugh, it is country to me) and he wants room to get out and roam around.

We went out and looked at the house. We went back and looked again. We looked at our checkbook and tried to figure if we could swing it. We went back and looked one more time. We decided to go for it. We qualified for the mortgage without even selling this one yet (though the payments are scary), and so we made an offer. There was a previous offer on the house, but those buyers couldn't get financing without selling their first house, so their contract was conditional. The sellers decided to take our offer, even though it was a little lower, since we could close right away. So, barring the previous buyers actually coming up with money by Wednesday, the house is ours! Now the worries about how the heck we are going to pay for it, and of course selling this one, begin!


Our new house (?)

Belated Merry Christmas (to us!)

My dad sent a check to help us upgrade our sad little 19" tv. When he was here to visit at Thanksgiving, and saw what we were watching, I think he cried a little for us LOL. We had already been thinking of getting something bigger, but we hadn't really decided on what we wanted. The cabinet we had would not hold anything that much bigger than the one we had. In the end, we decided on a 32" LCD tv, so then we had to get a new cabinet too. So shopping for a new tv, and a new cabinet to put it in, took us a while. It was a lot of money, even with a generous dad/father-in-law/grandpa, and we wanted to be careful how we spent it. Both the tv and the cabinet ended up being on sale. I think we did ok, though obviously we have room in the new cabinet to upgrade again LOL. We only just got it all hooked up and plugged in tonight, so I can't review the tv yet; I hope all the excitement and anticipation was worth it!

A Closer Look

Even with the individual pictures of the Days of Christmas, it was hard to see the details on each of them. I told you the pipers and drummers were my favorites, here they are, even closer:



Each color is a separate piece of paper glued on, none of it is colored in. Even the tassle on the hat, the tags on the socks, the plaid on the kilts, the eppaulettes, the buttons on the coat fronts and cuffs. I used an Exacto knife to cut almost all of it out. One of the things I like best about these are that cutting each piece out by hand one at a time made each figure unique. None are exactly alike.

Christmas Cookies

So, a few days after Christmas, I finally got around to rolling out some dough and cutting out some cookies! This is the first time I've tried cut out cookies, and they weren't all that tasty because they were too doughy and I had to keep adding flour to stiffen them. Samuel, Micah, and Caleb decorated them, and they had fun with that. For all that they were not the best tasting sugar cookies I've ever had, they were eaten up pretty quickly!









They ate the cookies so quickly that I didn't have a chance to get a picture of them eating them!

12 Days of Christmas, Construction Paper Style

I was asked to show a closer view of my 12 Days of Christmas cutouts. My sister and I started these in high school, as a locker decorating project. We never did get them finished before we graduated, but I finished them in college. They are made from cutting out pieces of construction paper in different colors, kind of like quilting but with paper and glue instead of fabric and thread. I drew up a picture, then cut it into pieces for each color, traced it onto the construction paper, cut them out, and glued them onto the background square. Our inspiration was a holiday ad for some sort of liquor like Bailey's or something. I did adapt the images, and I am most proud of my pipers and my drummers.

On the first day of Christmas:



On the second day of Christmas:


On the third day of Christmas:


On the fourth day of Christmas:


On the fifth day of Christmas:


On the sixth day of Christmas:


On the seventh day of Christmas:


On the eighth day of Christmas:


On the ninth day of Christmas:


On the tenth day of Christmas:


On the eleventh day of Christmas:


On the twelfth day of Christmas: