Playing with Christmas Presents

Light Saber fights.
Lego building.
Puzzle building.
Princess Sparkley looking at her new fancy cupcake decorating book.
Little Guy being a super hero and jumping off the 2nd step.

2010 Ornaments

On Christmas Eve Eve we open ornaments. This year only the kids got new ornaments because our tree is small and we own A LOT of ornaments already. I've done a bad job recording and marking the ornaments each year so I figured the best way to remember what the kids get each year is to take pictures of them with their ornaments.


Princess Sparkley- a snowglobe-esque snowman.
Buddy - a soccer playing snowman.
Little Guy- a Santa flying a glittery airplane.

Tree Pillow

Sorry, couldn't post this until after Christmas presents had been opened
... presents made with love for Grandparents.


Grandma and Grandpa L
(button tree = top two right hand corner pictures)
Idea from here.
The big kids helped sew on some of the buttons while Little Guy dumped all the buttons out, sorted them and handed them all to me. I think for my kids' ages and abilities, we should have done something more like this or this. Or just made a smaller tree with less buttons. I didn't realize how out of hand and heavy the fabric would get with all the buttons.

Grandma and Grandpa M
(embroidered tree accented with fabric markers)
Princess Sparkley started this as a project at Activity Days at church. She designed it herself, embroidered it, and colored in some of the intricate details she'd designed with fabric markers. Then we were out of town for Thanksgiving the week they finished it and I never heard back from any of the leaders on what to do... so we just made it into a pillow our way.

Candy cane pillow. Idea from here.
We made a set for each set of grandparents. Each kid drew me a candy cane that I used as the template for one pillow per set. PS's candy cane is the red ho-ho-ho one. Buddy's is red and white striped. Little Guy's is red, white and green striped. Buddy and PS and even Little Guy helped stuff the first set of candy canes. Then they lost steam and I finished up that set and the second set.

Christmas Morning

Waiting on the top step to drink a glass of orange juice (B's family tradition) before going down to see the Santa presents.




Top left corner. With some Mod Podge stuff, scrapbook paper, and a weekday pill organizer, I made Princess Sparkley a necklace organizer.

Little Guy hugging a soccer ball pillow (which wasn't actually a Christmas gift) while wearing THREE soccer ball whistles, which were high on his Santa list. (The one he actually wanted is just like one Buddy has and is shaped like a soccer ball, but we found a three pack of whistles with a soccer ball on them for $1, and that was perfect for him.)

PS with an Our Generation Doll. She got one from family and one from Santa!

Buddy opening a giant box. He was super excited about how big it was. Inside... a giant container of cheese balls!

Buddy with his Lego airplane from Santa.

Little Guy with a short cape I made him. The big kids have capes that they wear now and then and have been wearing lately. So I made him one but the inside fabric is trucks and tractors and had to be a certain direction and I only had 1/2 a yard in my fabric box... so he got a short cape. But I customized it with an L for him. He liked the idea until I buttoned it on him.