Felt Food

Sugar cookies, pumpkin rolls, and cherry turnovers weren't the only things I made for the holidays. For Christmas, I made these little treats for my niece Kate.
Side note: I. Love. Felt. Food. Oh, and in case anyone is curious, I made up all my templates by looking at lots of pictures online.

Breakfast:

Pancakes, bacon, fried eggs

Lunch:

Hamburger and fries

Dinner:

Ravioli, peas, and strawberries

Dessert:

Cherry Tart, Oreo, Donut with sprinkles

Wishing I could go to Kate's Cafe with you, Kate.

xoxo, Love Aunt Rachel

A Few Christmas Pictures

Christmas morning started out right, with these tasty treats:

Madeline opened her kitchen, it was wrapped up in nice green and red paper. She really loved it and we've already played with it for hours! Yay!

Ethan with his Toby (and a face that says, "please no more pictures Mom, I just want to open my presents in peace!")

Madeline got some new sunglasses, and doesn't she look, oh so cool:

(23 months old on Christmas Day)!

And the awesome Thomas blanket is revealed! Thanks Mimi!!

Later in the day we went to Todd's grandparent's house. And yes, Madeline is still wearing her sunglasses! (But gasp . . . not her brown hat! But for those of you who are wondering, she does still wear it every single day - she just got too distracted on Christmas to notice it wasn't on)

Thanks Great Grandma and Great Grandpa for the fun new presents!:

You can never have too many babies! Madeline LOVES her new baby!!

We had a wonderful day. It was so fun to spend it with so many people that we love. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas too!

Christmas Eve

The fun started when both sets of grandparents and two uncles came to join in our Christmas Eve tradition of making candy houses. Ethan was having so much fun, he ended up making three houses!
Madeline was only interested in eating, "MM s" and what a feat to even get this much candy on her house!:

Todd and his brother Mike both thought outside the normal candy house box. Mike made a temple and Todd a Star Destroyer:

Here are all the works of candy art. Everything from trailer park houses and lean-to's, to The Oquirrh Mountain Temple!

After the houses, we enjoyed a feast of pork loin, twice baked potatoes, rolls, salad, sweet potatoes, and much more. Then we were all almost too full for the Christmas goodies:

After eating, we acted out the first Christmas. Ethan was Joseph and Madeline was Mary. It was pretty funny . . . the rest of us even dressed up too. Hmmm, but no pictures of that! Then the kids opened their Christmas Eve presents:

Matching polar bear jammies!

Here they are with Grandpa and Nana! I wanted to get a picture of them with my parents too, but by then they were so hyper they wouldn't sit still for even one more picture!

Ethan was bouncing off the walls excited. He was just sure he'd be able to hear Santa's bells in the night!

Tonight I had Christmas

Tonight I had Christmas. With my children tucked on either side of me, we shared Christmas joy from my most treasured Christmas book:

Tonight I didn’t hear a single “don’t sing Mama”, which is what I always hear. Tonight my children smiled and eagerly listened to me sing my favorite Christmas songs for 20 minutes! Madeline’s favorite was “O Christmas Tree” and happily joined in, “O Chris Tree, O Chris Tree, O Chris Tree . . . tweeko star on top of Chris tree . . . tweeko tweeko little star, how I wonder what you are . . .”. And Ethan enjoyed “Deck the Halls”, giggling and joining in with each Fa La La part.

Singing Christmas songs is always the highlight of the season for me. It was a gift my kids gave me to let me sing to them.

I feel happy tonight. And I can’t help but think about that first Christmas . . . I hope you all have a wonderful and joyful next two days.

Merry Christmas!

A Project Story

I'm finally done with my biggest Christmas project. Good thing, since I'm running out of time! I've been working on this little something for a LONG time. You see, I've been wanting to give Madeline a kitchen for Christmas for months. I first started looking at them in stores in the summer. I soon discovered that I did not like the plastic ones and the wood ones are WAY too pricey for me . . . soooo, with a little brainstorming, I came up with an idea to make one myself!

Let's rewind to 1988. Take a look at me with my groovy matching jammies (The red shag carpet is not so bad either)! But more importantly, look at the dish cupboard on the right side of the picture:
Ahh yes, I loved playing with my kitchen. I was always sad though that I couldn't fit my toy sink AND my toy stove on it at the same time. . .

Now, back in 2009, and thanks to my WONDERFUL parents for keeping this all these years, I had a perfect piece to transform into a "new" kitchen for Madeline. Here's the before picture:

And after hours of searching through stores to find all the random pieces required to make the kitchen in my head, and a nice Dad who cut a circular hole for the sink, and a nice husband who attached all the knobs and the faucet, and lots of painting, sanding, mod podging, and more painting . . . I give you Madeline's kitchen:

Here's a closer view of the sink and the two burner stove:

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I know she's going to love it. One of her favorite things to do it pretend she's cooking and eating the play food.

So hooray, I'm SO GLAD it's done! Oh, and just so you know, I actually finished Madeline's bunny puppet last night too!

I think I'll sleep good tonight! Only one small and quick project left . . .

Sugar Cookies!

Today we spent the morning making sugar cookies! Ethan and Madeline had so much fun picking out the cookie cutters to use:
And even more fun cutting the cookies out:

Frosting them was also fun . . .

But not nearly as fun as eating them . . .

Merry Christmas!

Sending our love this Christmas Season . . .

We hope you feel the true Spirit of Christmas this week.

Love- Todd, Rachel, Ethan and Madeline

Christmas Photoshoot

Merry Christmas!

Love, Ethan and Madeline

Thomas Project . . . Check!

I finally finished another project for Christmas. This one is for Ethan. His room really doesn't have any cute decor in it, so I decided to make some things to spruce it up. And since he still REALLY likes Thomas, I made him these pictures to hang over his bed. He may or may not be getting bedding to match . . .
The frames started out bare wood, so I painted them white and Mod Podged the stars on. The stars came from the same thing the pictures did: a vinyl party table cloth. I did some thinkin' outside the box on this one! I think he'll really like them. And to go with the pictures, I'm giving him this star I made back in September at a Relief Society Thrilling Thursday craft evening. The star is also made with Mod Podge. And scrapbook paper:

Three cheers for cute rooms for cute four year olds! And for Mod Podge!

Celebrating Ethan's Birthday

Yesterday, Ethan was finally well enough to celebrate his birthday with all his birthday food choices! First up, we enjoyed Ethan's favorite dinner: pancakes!

I made blueberry pancakes, banana raisin, and chocolate chip. If I'd been thinking I would have made just one more flavor. Four because he's four! He ate one of each, along with three bowls of fruit and was in eating heaven the whole time!

After dinner was cleaned up, we got ready for his famous football cake. This is the third birthday in a row he's requested a football cake. He probably would have requested it for his first birthday too if he had known how to . . .

Then we sang . . .
And then he blew . . .

Then the best part of all, we ate . . . two days late, but at this moment, he didn't seem to mind a bit!

Oh, and neither did Madeline! She finally found her favorite part of Ethan's birthday!

If you thought it was special before . . .

A few days ago, I noticed that my kids were losing interest in their special tree. So yesterday I asked Ethan if we should make some new ornaments to add to the tree. “Oh yes, lets make numbers and letters to go on it!” Hmmmm, for those of you who know Ethan, this idea is NO surprise. I stopped myself from saying something about how we should make Christmasy ornaments and went with it. It is HIS special tree after all! I started to think about how we could make number and letter ornaments when he added, “And I want a star on top too! That’s red and purple.” “Don’t you mean red and gree . . . YES, what a great idea. Red and purple will be wonderful!”

So then my brain went a million miles an hour trying to figure out how to make these ornaments in the ten minutes where he would actually still be interested.

This is what we came up with:
The star is made from popsicle sticks I glued together and painted red. With purple paper behind, of course!

And yes, THEY LOVE IT! Hooray!

Birthday Blues

Poor Ethan! His 4th birthday was nothing like any of us had hoped . . . Ethan was sick! He threw up during breakfast and two more times later on in the morning. You have to understand too, that Ethan has NEVER thrown up. He was fine the day before, and seems fine today too . . . why did he have to get 24 hour flu on his birthday? I’ll be honest; I was more disappointed than even Ethan was. Things are always harder on the parent. Today, Ethan is happy because he got to open presents yesterday, his Grandpa and Nana are coming to visit with a gift tonight, and tomorrow we are going to have his birthday cake. He smiled big today and said, “Three days of birthday things!” I’m just glad he’s better today . . . and despite the sickness, we did manage to get a few pictures:

This one was taken about 20 minutes before he barfed!

In the evening, when he was feeling a tad better, he opened presents

Mimi and Bapa dropped in and gave him this awesome HUGE Thomas book and the tent below

We gave him a wooden IKEA train set. He's had fun all day playing with it. Hopefully I can post pictures of him with it, along with birthday cake pictures later on this week.

Happy Birthday Ethan!

A firstborn son is the most wonderful gift to receive around Christmas time! Four years ago today, that is exactly what I got:

Three days old

First birthday

Ethan holding up two fingers on his second birthday

Doing the "I love chocolate cake" dance on his third birthday

And in this picture, you're ALMOST four!

These four years have gone so fast. What a joy you are!

I love you Ethan! More than you know. Happy Birthday!