Finally sunny!

It's cold today, but it is sunny. It's been raining or snowing for days now.

FYI--there's still a hole in the ceiling where the old light used to be.

I pretend that the hole isn't there. I'm hoping to patch it sometime in 2012. Ellie even asked the other day why it is still there. Mary gets up every morning and plugs in the tree herself. I'm glad she loves the Christmas decorations as much as I do. She, Ellie, and I did the tree ourselves this year while John was outside playing with his chainsaw.

Ellie watches educational TV while I take pictures of the furniture.

In my defense, she was out of the room making some play-doh pancakes for me when I took this picture. She was making them on her grill. They were raspberry pancakes, and they were delicious!

I put my normal Christmas decorations out on the TV cabinet this year, but I didn't like them. So I took them down and looked at it for a while. Then I had one of my wonderful ideas. Ah, the ones that send John out to the freezing cold garage at 10pm to cut, glue, and nail things for me.


He used some of the left over wood from the barn door. And no project would be complete without adding some old dining room paneling to it. It's on the bottom. When the glue dried, I stained it inside and out. John even drilled a hole in the back so that I could run the cord of lights through it. I love how it turned out!

Tree number two

Once again, it was John to the rescue. I had the tree. Then I bought the pail. We had thought of about 10 ways to get it in there, but none of them seemed easy.

Pinterest to the rescue!

I showed the above to John, and he said it would work. Thank goodness we have a huge pile of wood in the yard from the storm in May. John just drilled a hole into a piece and set it in the bucket. Then we shoved the tree into the log. It actually looked pretty cool with just the pink tree shoved into the the log, but I wanted to use the bucket since I bought it specifically for the tree. It's really steady which was my main concern.

I have all my Christmas decorating done! I even started my Christmas knitting last night. I think I'm at least two weeks ahead of where I was last year.

Lessons learned.

First lesson: Don't paint until 11pm when you have a cold. You'll wake up in the morning to find something like this:

Oops!

I was removing the outlet covers as I went instead of doing them all at once. I was going to go back for this one. Oops. It's fixed now.

Second Lesson: Even though you know it's going to take hundreds of ornaments, you can't really grasp that it will be HUNDREDS of ornaments until you dig in:

Getting there!

I stopped counting after the first hundred, but I think I'm close to 200 now. I still have to go back and fill in all the gaps with small ornaments. Maybe another 150 or so will do it. That's an 18 inch straw wreath form under there somewhere. I've only broken two ornaments so far. It weighs a lot. I have no idea how or where I am going to hang it. But it is going to be pretty!

Blogs I read...and random updates

I updated the "Blogs I read" on the sidebar. Sadly, I probably read a lot more than that. I get sucked in reading crafting blogs and want to do every craft I see. Not that I have time to of course, but it is fun to be inspired. Hopefully over the next couple years we will start working on our house (a 1965 ranch, still mostly original) and so I've been looking at a lot of home decor crafts.

What else is new? Ellie not only learned to roll front to back this week, but she also figured out she can put several in a row! She only did it a couple times and has now forgotten about it I guess. She's really into her hands (looking at them) and her feet (putting them in her mouth when I try to change her diaper which is really fun!), and she can hold a toy with two hands at the same time.

Mary....gah.....Mary's 2 going on 12. Well, going on 3 really. Her birthday is in less than two weeks. Which on the one hand I am really excited about, and on the other I am totally dreading. I can't believe she will be 3! I want to stop the clock, and to let her be a baby a little longer. But just since Christmas she's grown up. I've noticed, John's noticed and even Mom commented on some recent pictures.

Project 33 is coming along, nothing too exciting to report yet. I did manage to workout several times (5?) this week. I used to be in REALLY good shape, oh, 4 or 5 years ago. I lifted weights probably 6 hours a week, and really watched what I ate. I got really into heavy lifting and I loved it. I am not ready to get back to that yet, but I do see it being a part of Project 33. For now, I just need to do some sort of exercise, which is about weight loss, but also about firming up this "Mommy body" AND really about having 20-30 mins to myself at the end of the day (well, the end of the work day...so far the best time to squeeze in a workout is when John comes home from work then I get to run upstairs all sweaty and still have dinner ready by 6pm). We have our workout equipment in the basement and I blast my i-pod over Mary's yelling upstairs. It's great "me" time and hopefully has some health benefits too.

I have some really good pics from this week, but they are on my other computer (yes, I have two that I actively use) and aren't uploaded to Flickr yet. But here are a few overdue from the holidays.

The third day of Christmas parties, and all pretty worn out:

Mary and her new bike!


Christmas morning:
(You can see Mary's gnomes in the background in their cradles John made. They came out great! Also, yes, that is a 20+ pound cat. His name is Stinky Simon)

I still take more pics of Mary than of Ellie. I need to get better about taking some of Ellie now that she doesn't just lay there like a lump anymore (a cute lump, but still a lump. Sorry, Ellie). I have some good ones from Friday. I'll try to upload them later.

Ugh, almost 11am and I haven't done a darn thing today! Mary and John aren't home and Ellie's sleeping on me. Guess I'll surf some more since putting her down would wake her up.

Ready for Christmas

Last week, I told John I was ready to put up the Christmas tree. Last year we put it up the weekend before Thanksgiving. I wonder how early I can get him to agree to putting it up this year??? Maybe it will get me into the mood to make presents. I did go buy some supplies yesterday. I also saw these little unpainted wooden ornaments. I thought it would be fun to paint them with Mary. I got two for myself and three for her. We started on them today:

Mary wanted to get started with her gingerbread man. I explained they were usually brown, and she was happy with that. I thought we were off to a great start. But then, she wanted green. Then orange, pink, blue and white. It actually came out super cool! I can't wait for her to do the others I got her:).

I stuck the eyes on after she was done (I asked permission first). I might see if she wants me to draw his mouth back on with a marker after the paint is all the way dry.

I started a pair of longies for Ellie on Wednesday, and was off to a great start. Now I'm not in the mood to knit. I sort of started on another Christmas project, but the next step is something I have to do when Mary's not around and Ellie is asleep. I guess that's why I started early. Maybe I can work on it in 15 minute intervals on the weekends.