Craft Day

When I was a kid my Mom and my Aunt Melanie (Mooie) would have my sister and I and all my cousins make cookies and crafts together. We all loved it. Now that we are on the next generation my Mom is continuing the tradition. Last year she had the kids as well as their cousins from West Union and some friends come over to make crafts. We did it again this year the Sat. after Thanksgiving. The kids had lots of fun and I thought I would share a few of the crafts…..

First, we made little snowman ornaments. I made these one time for gifts when I was in high school.

You need: small wooden spools, small woooden round balls or “heads”, black plastic top hats, snow-tex paint, scraps of cloth for the scarves.

Use hot glue to glue the “body and head” together.

Paint with Snow-Tex and let dry.

Hot glue the hat on.

Use a sharpie to draw on the eyes, mouth and buttons and an orange one to do the nose. You can use cream blush or lipstick or a pink marker to smudge on the rosy cheeks. Tie string around his neck for the hanger and then cover with a small strip of cloth for the scarf. Stay tuned for some more pictures from our craft day tomorrow!

Homemade Donuts (sort of)

I told the kids we could make donuts after we got the tree up. I made these once before Caroline was born….not sure why I have waited so long to make them again because they are GOOD!

You just use canned biscuit dough. We used the Grands with butter. I rolled each one a little but so they were a little flatter. Then I used a biscuit cutter (which belonged to my Great-grandma ;) to cut them.

 

Since my cutter doesn’t have a hole in the middle I just used a paring knife to cut out the center.

 

I had heated up some oil on the stove. I ran out of vegetable oil so I used half olive and half vegetable…..it worked! Then you just drop in the donuts. It worked best for the oil to be on medium low once it was hot. They won’t get done in the middle if it’s too hot. It took us a little bit of trial and error on this part.

Then I put a cooling rack over a cookie sheet lined with paper towel to catch the grease.

Then the fun part…..decorating! We used a bowl of powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar and some melted chocolate squares with sprinkles on top. The kids kept eating them as we were going….imagine that!

YUMMY!!!!

Decking the Halls

I have been in the Christmas Spirit since before Thanksgiving. I couldn’t wait to put the tree up. We did it the weekend before Thanksgiving. The kids had fun putting their own ornaments on. Caroline was saying all of them were her favorites until she saw the Tinkerbell ornament Ma gave her last Christmas, after some squeals of glee, she said “ACTUALLY, this is my favorite”! It was fun to have them help this year. I wanted to put up 2 trees so we could have one with John Deere ornaments. Mark didn’t want the mess…..I won!! I will put up pics in another post of the decorations. Here is us decorating the tree.

Trick or Treat

Before I left to go to Delaware I decided we better carve our pumpkins in case we didn’t get home before Halloween. My Mom got the kids the Mr. Potatoe head parts to do their pumpkins.

 

Mark carved what Caroline called the “princess castle”.

In the process of packing to go to Delaware I luckily remembered to grab the Halloween costumes, just in case we were still there. It was a good thing because we were. Mamaw’s funeral was Saturday morning and Sat. night we all went to Aunt Mooie’s to Trick or Treat. It was a fitting way to spend the evening and was so nice to be able to be together as a family! Caroline dressed up as a Cupcake “with a cherry top”. Grayson was supposed ot be the Lone Ranger and Grant Tonto. Well, Grayson insisted he was going to be Batman about a week before Halloween. Soooo, Mamaw Lisa had ordered him Batman PJ’s for Christmas and he got them early and wore them as his costume. Grant wore my cousin Landen’s Pumpkin suit from last year. We had a great time and the kids were so excited!!

 

This is my grandma’s best friend Becky, she is as beautiful as my grandma was.

Little Tiger Landen

Mark carved these foam pumpkins while we were there!

Trick or Treat

Here comes Batman…

Sorting the booty…

“I want some candy too!!”

Pumpkin Butt!

Mama Sue

On October 27 my maternal grandmother passed away. I have so many wonderful memories of her. We lived close to her my whole life and her house was one of my favorite places to be. She used to do fun things with us like making dough out of flour and water to sculpt all sorts of things. She would let us give our dolls a bath on her front porch with a little bowl of water and a cut up sponge. When we would play dress up with her hats and scarves (and sometimes wigs,which I used to call mugs??) she would say to us “Hooray for Hollywood”. I remember sitting in church and having to sit still so I would play with her wedding rings and her jewelry. Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. We always went to Mamaw’s house and had spaghetti and then went trick or treating in her neighborhood. She had 5 children and my grandpa was in the Air Force. They were away from all their family, her mother died when she was 19. She had her first child at 18 and did not have a driver's license until she was in her late 20's. I can't imagine being on my OWN with my kids with my husband gone and unable to drive!! She was so classy in the way she dressed and was a self taught decorator. She liked to paint ( I have a painting of a basket of daisies she did in my bathroom). When I have a bad day with the kids I remind myself of all I have that she didn't and I know I can do it! I miss her smell, her hands, her elegance,her voice saying “Hi, Jenn” like she was so glad to see me. Her funeral was on Halloween and it was really fitting because she loved Halloween and it was one of our favorite memories of her. Here just a few pictures I had on my computer of her. I haven’t taken many pictures of her in the last few years because she hasn’t felt well and didn’t look well. I am so glad my kids got to meet her and know her a little bit. I only hope they remember her a little as they grow.

 

Here are both of my grandmothers together at my Mom’s 50th birthday. I am so glad I have had both of my grandmother’s and have so many happy memories!!

I'm Back!

I haven't posted in over a month! My Grandmother passed away at the end of October and I was in Delaware for about 10 days. We have just been busy and I haven't been on much. I have been behind in even reading the blogs I follow! I am ready to get back to posting and reading. I am in the Christmas mood early this year! We already have our trees up. I have lots of cleaning up to do today after the busy Thanksgiving weekend!
We went to Mom's house for Thanksgiving and the kids and I stayed the night down there. Mom and I got up at 3:45 and went shopping. I pretty much finished all my shopping!! It wore me out though, I have been trying to catch up all weekend! We had "craft day" at Mom's on Saturday. I took pics for some mini tutorials of the crafts we did. I will try and get them up this week. Here are a few pics of the last few weeks. Stay tuned for more posts to come :)