Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Josh and I have loved creating special family traditions for Christmas.  Our sweet kids will only be this little once and we want to make sure that we take every advantage of using this time to make memories as a family of 4, as well as using these tradition to teach our children the true meaning of Christmas. We decided this Christmas to have a “Happy Birthday, Jesus” party. I think this was an easy way for them to understand what Christmas is all about!

Our cuties ready to bake!

Brody loves to help bake and Jillian loves to supervise.

We made Christmas colored cupcakes by using  food coloring to dye the batter green and red. I layered the colored batter in the cupcake tins similar to the rainbow cupcakes we made earlier this year.

We sang “Happy Birthday” to Jesus and let Brody blow out the candle! I still had an extra candle left over from celebrating a first birthday, so we used it. :)

Enjoying his cupcake!

Brody told me a couple of weeks ago that he thought Jesus was probably turning 3 and would like a Diego present for his birthday. Love it!

Merry Christmas Eve!

2011 Christmas Card

I finally put our Christmas cards in the mail on Wednesday, so I thought I would share them with all of you! I really love the way they turned out!

Merry Christmas to all our wonderful blog friends! We are so thankful for each one of you!

Christmas Train Ride

Yesterday morning, the four of us went for a ride on the Christmas Train!

It was a 45 minute train ride, which was the perfect length for us since we have two small children.

This was Brody’s first train ride and we did not tell him about it until we got to the train depot and he saw the train. He was SO excited! This is a picture of him making train noises while we waited for it to depart.

They served hot chocolate on the train and Santa walked through all the train cars to visit with the kids.

Brody sat like this most of the ride…just watching out the window and taking it all in!

Jillian had a great time as well! She liked chatting with the family sitting behind us! :)

Last night, we made our first gingerbread house as a family. Brody loved every minute of the fun and so did Josh and I!

I put the house together and then we let Brody do the rest.

He did a great job decorating! I loved watching him place every single candy on the house. It took almost an hour, but he sat the entire time and never lost focus. Pretty impressive for such a busy boy!

So proud of the finished product! He asked me to take some pictures of it! :)

I love this picture…he is admiring his work and smiling as big as he could!

What a fun day we had making memories with our sweet kids!

Easy to make Teacher’s Gift

I couldn’t decide what to do for our kids’ Mother’s Day Out teachers for Christmas, so I searched on Pinterest until I came across this cute gift idea for Starbucks gift cards!

What did we do before Pinterest? Seriously! All my great ideas originate from Pinterest these days!’

 Here is the original blog post that details how to make these cute little gifts. I printed the “Thanks a latte for all you do” at Sam’s Club on photo paper. I uploaded the image online and had them printed as a 5x7 photo. Then, I glued them onto cardstock.

This project uses baker’s twine. It’s really hard to find locally. I found this post from my friend, Sarah, about how to make your own baker’s twine. It worked perfectly for this project!

Super easy and super cute!

Picture with Santa

Last Thursday evening, we took Brody and Jillian to have their picture taken with Santa. We were both interested to see how Jillian react when she saw Santa. You can tell from the picture that he didn’t scare her, but he also didn’t really impress her! :) Brody, on the other hand, loved Santa! He practically talked his ear off!

I cannot believe how big our babies are this year! Look at our boy’s cheesy smile! Ha!

This is last years picture…Jillian was right at 3 months old and Brody was 26 months old.

Brody in 2009- He was 14 months old. This may forever be my favorite Santa picture! He posed like that and we laughed until we almost cried!

This was in 2008- Brody was only 2 months old! I feel like this picture was taken just the other day! It’s crazy how quickly time flies!

I love having these sweet pictures to look back on each year and see how our sweet kids have grown from year to year.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Winner and White Elephant

The winner of the fresh entity 2012 scripture calendar is Melissa! Congratulations!! Thanks to all of you that entered the giveaway! Make sure you all visit Kimmie’s Etsy shop if you would like to purchase a calendar for yourself or someone else on your Christmas list!

Josh and I are going to a Christmas party tonight and are taking white elephant gifts. We are supposed to find something around our house to re-gift or spend very little on buying a  gift. I have a few ideas, but I am open for suggestions!

Tell me the best white elephant gift you have ever given or received!

Have a great Friday!

fresh entity 2012 calendar giveaway

This is such a great giveaway and just in time for Christmas! One of my sweet, sweet college friends, Kimmie, who blogs at Fresh Entity, is giving away one of her 2012  Scripture Calendars. These calendars are beautiful and would be a wonderful Christmas gifts for anyone on your list!

This 2012 calendar printed on watercolor paper can be used as a desk calendar or a wall calendar. It fits any 5x7 frame for those of you who would enjoy it in your workspace. Or if you prefer, you are also able to use the little clip to hang it from a nail or hook anywhere in your house. Each month has a unique design and encouragement from Scripture. These would also make great teacher gifts!! They can be ordered from her Esty store for only $15!

To enter for you chance to win the calendar, please leave a comment! The giveaway will end tomorrow night and the winner will be announced on Friday morning!

Have a great afternoon!

Freezer Meal Swap

In October, I blogged about doing a freezer meal swap with some of my friends from playgroup/church. Friday, we did a second freezer meal swap. This time there were 6 of us that participated (we each made 2 different recipes for the swap), so we each ended-up with 12 freezer meals for the month!

We all made different recipes for this swap, so we have a completely different set of meals than we did last time. Between the 12 meals, Christmas, and an occasional night eating out, I don’t think I will have to cook the rest of the month! Woo whoo!

Here are the meals for this month:

Poppy seed chicken (I shredded the chicken, not cubed it. Serve over rice)

Cowboy Chili

Chicken Roll-Ups

Chicken Enchiladas

White Chicken Chili

Oven-Baked Chicken Chimichangas

Pulled Pork

Taco Soup

Chicken Broccoli (This might not be the exact recipe, but I think it’s pretty close)

Baked Ziti

Chicken Spaghetti

Baked Spaghetti

I also linked the recipes from our last freezer meal swap on this blog post if you are interested in seeing other meals we have made and swapped.

Have a great afternoon!

Our Weekend

We had a fun, busy weekend!

We made a quick (less than 24 hour) trip to see Josh’s parents this weekend. They live 3 hours from us, so we got down there Friday night and spent the day with them on Saturday.

Josh’s dad will be 70 on Monday, so his mom hosted a birthday party for him at their house on Saturday afternoon.

We had lots of great food and were able to visit with a lot of his parents’ friends that we had not seen in a while!

The party was during part of the kids’ naptime, but they both woke-up in time to enjoy part of the party! This girl had a great time! Can you tell?

She is walking all over the place now, so she made her way around the party yesterday and  begged for food off of guests’ plates! :)

My very talented friend, Holly, decided she would just teach herself how to decorate sugar cookies a month or two ago. She does such a great job and every single cookie I have seen that she has made is SO stinking cute! I had her make some cookies for party favors. Aren’t these great? They taste as good as they look, too. If you are local, you need to order cookie from her for your next party!

I put the cookies in little bags and tied them up so that each guest could take one home with them.

Brody had a great time at the party, too! I think he loved having lots of people to talk to during the party.

As soon as the party was over, we hopped in our car and headed to my dad’s extended family Christmas. I always enjoy spending time with this side of my dad’s family.

Brody had a great time with my grandma!

He was completely amused by the blow-up Grinch!

My dad and all his cousins all had girls, so there were 7 girls 10 and under there last night and Brody! He is definitely outnumbered with all his girl cousins!

Sarah, Avery, Adeline, and Jillian

My grandma ended the night by painting finger nails…Brody skipped out on the fun! :)

We left Christmas and drove 3 hours back home. We got home around 10:30. We had such a great weekend with all of our family! I am so thankful for such great family to celebrate with this time of year.

Hope y’all had a great weekend!

Bliss Cupcake Cafe

The kids and I went to a fun little blogger/Twitter meet-up at Bliss Cupcake Cafe yesterday morning. Bliss is on the square in Fayetteville and is such a fun little place to visit! Our family loves any excuse to stop at Bliss for a cupcake! What is even more fun for us is that some of our friends own Bliss, so we love getting a chance to support their wonderful business.

These were all the yummy flavors they offered on Friday that we got to sample…Chocolate Milkshake, Red Velvet, Lavender Honey, Pumpkin Spice, Carrot Cake, Neapolitan, and German Choc Cake. They also had a Gluten Free Blueberry that Brody loved!  They post their cupcake selection each day on their Facebook page and on Twitter.

Jillian Kate was trying to reach the cupcakes! She knows the good stuff when she sees it!

Rebekah was helping Brody choose a cupcake

Can you tell he was enjoying his cupcake? :)

Stella, Cilla and Brody- Loves these 3 cuties!

And how cute is Cilla’s outfit? Perfect for a morning eating cupcakes with friends!

Miles and Brody go to the same MDO and are a month apart in age. They had a great time together! Miles is such a sweet boy!

Jillian loved her Bliss cupcake!

Melissa and Grayson

Sydney and Stella

Shannon stopped by to visit for a few minutes and grabbed a cupcake to go!

Taylor and Grace- Brody had a great time playing with Grace!

Jillian and Emily-Emily went to college with Josh and me and I have loved that she is up here and I get to see her more often! She is so sweet!

Kelly, Hollis, Jillian and me-Notice how Jillian is eyeing Hollis’s bow…

She would not stop trying to take it off her Hollis’s head! Seriously!! She was being a little toot!

I think she was just jealous that Hollis had a bigger bow on than she did! Hollis-we are sorry that you were tortured by Jillian! :)

If you live in NWA, you have to stop by Bliss soon for a cupcake! You will not be disappointed!