A Month of Celebrating

Well, here we are with another holiday season come and gone. The last month (plus) has been a whirlwind of parties, eating, fun activities, eating, shopping and more eating. As our hours of sleep decreased, our waist lines have expanded. I'm looking forward to getting the holidays behind us and these extra pounds off. BUT before that happens, I'm heading back to Texas to spend a little Christmas joy time with my family. In addition to all the holiday chaos, the last week has been chaos with Mom in the hospital .We're all looking forward to getting home and giving her big hugs to aid in her recovery.

Since all of this madness has kept me from properly blogging, here is our celebrating in pictures taken with my phone (I haven't even looked at the ones we took with our actual camera yet).

Dylan being a turkey.

Gobble Up That Cuteness!

We got a couple of great snowstorms that filled our yard with snow and then had a big melt the week before Christmas. Before the snow was gone, we needed to make a snowman. Dylan gave him ears. Cade was a sledding maniac and wanted to do nothing but go down the hill, walk up and hop on the sled back down. Dylan also got new skis and the lessons will start in the new year.

Frosty with our inflatables - Cade got great joy out of watching them go inflate and deflate all month.

Saw Santa at my company holiday party. The boys had a great time dancing on the dance floor but hightailed it off quickly when Santa showed up to hokey pokey. I guess they were intimidated! Dylan was very excited to see Santa getting ice cream at the dessert bar.

Got our Christmas tree early - the weekend after Thanksgiving.
It made it to Christmas but I'll be tossing that thing out very promptly when we get back from our trip.
Hopefully it won't be kindling while we're gone.

Dylan was a great help decorating the tree. Cade just wanted to play with the ornaments.

This was Cade's addition to the tree. Poor dangling Spiderman!

We had an impromptu pizza party with some of the families we've met through Dylan's preschool. I am completely in awe of the wonderful people that we've met in our community. It makes us really love it here. These lovely gals are MacKenzie and Isabella - 2 of Dylan school friends and wonderful cooking assistants.

Santa also came to Dylan's preschool party. He was very eager to share one of his candy canes with his brother.
(That sound you just heard was my heart melting a little.)

Cade's finally got enough hair to get some seriously cute bed head. (AKA crazy hair.)

Christmas Eve Snowman Pizza

Christmas Morning Reindeer Pancakes
I may have a problem with making theme food. Is there a group therapy for that?

Waiting on the stairs for the ok from Dad to come down to see what Santa had left us.

Lots of presents under the tree!

We didn't get to spend much time in NH this month but we did squeeze in one quick trip last weekend.
We went on a little hike. The boys did a great job walking in the snow. I was more comfortable with snowshoes on but the boys opted to just use their boots. Dylan plopped his snowshoes on towards the end of the hike and did great with them. Cade was not a fan...perhaps we'll try them on him again when it's not right at nap time.

So that's a really quick review of what we've been up to. With our trip to Dallas and a to do list a mile long to do when we get back, I can't promise I'll be back here before the new year. So happy holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Years to you all!

Ho Ho Ho in September

Happy belated Thanksgiving to everyone! We had a great day yesterday hosting Mike's family. The day had a rough start with dishes gone wrong, nose bleeds that wouldn't stop, lots to do and the kids doing their best to make everything twice as hard to get done, but once family arrived, it was a good time. Lots of food, drinks and laughs. Now it's on to Christmas!

I have to admit, I have been super antsy about the holiday and have had a really hard time holding off on the decorating and dressing the kids in their cute Christmas t-shirts. The boys love so much about the holiday that I'm ready to dive it. Watch out because there's going to be a serious amount of tree trimming and holiday spirit about to be unleashed at our house! Oh, and of course, the boys are wearing Christmas themed shirts today. 

Anyway, long ago (September) in a land far away (NH), we took a vacation. I have not exactly been on top of this blogging business lately and failed to finish blogging about our trip. Well now is actually the perfect time to post about our last big day on vacation because it was spent at Santa's Village!

Santa's Village is a year round kids amusement park in northern New Hampshire. We've opted for the "other" kid's park, Storyland, the last few years but decided to mix things up this year and see what Santa's Village was all about. It was seriously cute! Everything is Christmas themed of course. Given how much kids love Christmas, they thought it was great. Here's a run down of our day in pictures and captions.

We were greeted by Rudolph. If you said your name, he would greet you back personally.

Cupcake Chair!

The park had a great game. You picked up a card from "Elf School" and had to find all the lettered elves throughout the park. You punched your card on each one. Once you had a full card, you returned it and received your diploma. The boys loved it.

Dylan's favorite ride was the Humbug ride. You had to try and "tickle" the Humbugs with your laser to make them laugh.

Huge Nativity Scene
It felt a little weird to have Cade climbing all over the animals in a sacred scene but it seemed to be the thing to do.
When in Rome??

I was impressed with the little details that the park had.
Here are little male and female gingerbread cutouts in a railing.

Neither of the kids were too sure of Santa.
That should be interesting over the next few weeks when we plan to have some more run ins with the big guy.

We got to feed the reindeer!

Cade gave this one a little smooch.

We did a little shopping too.

I think the boys had the most fun of the day just chasing after each other in this little area.
It's really the little things for the kids, isn't it?

Despite the fun they were having at that point, they somehow were both giving the camera a pouty face at the same time.
We didn't really notice as I was taking the pictures, but Mike and I both laughed hysterically when we reviewed the pictures from the day and saw this. Those boys are too cute!

What's a Christmas themed park without a giant Easter Bunny?

Our Cute Little Gingerbread Men

And My Cute Little Man

While Cade had a nap in the stroller and Mike wheeled him around,
Dylan and I decorated (and ate) our own gingerbread men.

We ended our day by watching Dylan navigate the crazy, huge nutcracker slide just outside the entrance.

So there's our start to the holiday season back in September. Now it's time to get serious about it!

Crafting the Costume

Let's face it, even though I don't have a lot of time to do it, I enjoy tapping into my creative side.
When Dylan said he wanted to be a Skylander for Halloween, we did what any time strapped parent does, go straight to the web to shop. However, we only found 2 costumeand they both looked pretty stupid. I asked Dylan if he could chose any Skylander, who would he want to dress up as for Halloween. He fluctuated between Pop Fizz and Eye Brawl for a while but I finally got him to commit 100% to Eye Brawl. Given this is what I started with, I had lots of creative juices to make flow:

EyeBrawl!!

First step was figuring out the eye. It was pretty clear fairly early on that paper mache was the way to go. Somehow, I have made it this far in life without ever doing paper mache so I had to research the best ways to do it. Plus, time available and time until our Halloween parties gave me only 1 shot to get it right...no pressure or anything.

It was actually fairly difficult to get a base for the mache. The party stores didn't have round balloons that were big enough, beach balls are out of season and not to be found anywhere and I couldn't find an affordable globe to ruin for this purpose. Finally, Mike found the right size bouncy ball to use as our base. Having never paper mached before and not knowing too much about what kind of surfaces it might stick too, I was a bit nervous that in the end, that ball would not separate from the eye ball.

First and Second Layers
Cut Newspaper Strips, Flour\Water glue and careful placement to make neat pupil and neck openings.

3rd and Final Layer
Cut Paper Towel Strips, Elmer's Glue\Water Paste

After it was all dried, I added a couple of layers of white latex paint.

3 paper mache layers - 24 hours to dry in between each layer and then another day for paint application and drying. That was every night for an entire work week....most after the boys were in bed. Oh, and all the worry about the ball was for not. I did test to see that the edges seem to separate from the ball after each layer but I wasn't totally confident there wouldn't be an issue. After everything was dry, I took the scissors, popped a hole and the whole ball shriveled away without incident. 

For the pupil, I had about 4 layers of black gauze from the fabric store and blue duct tape cut and applied in small pieces to put them together, add some strength and give me a way to attach it to the paper mache eyeball. Small circles of adhesive Velcro did that trick. My theory was that Dylan could take off that part of the eyeball if it bothered him too much. In the end, the weight of it was what made him uncomfortable so the Velcro wasn't used. However, it worked to easily attach it so it wasn't all for not.

Not sure why the coloring looks so terrible in this picture but this is the gauze and duct tape pupil.

When looking for Eye Brawl costume trim, Velcro and gauze at the fabric store, I saw that they cut foam. I had planned on buying it and cutting myself but inquired further about their services. They said they could cut to square dimensions or, if given a template, cut to form. Score! I showed the woman the figure and she gave me some paper to cut the wings but then stopped me and said "There's a guy here who's an artist who could probably draw that very easily for you!" Double score! He decided to free hand so the two of them disappeared out back and reappeared about 10 minutes later with the perfect size, perfect shaped wings. I was super excited about how that worked out. All I did was spray paint a black base, tape off some spots and then add some silver on top. They looked awesome!

Painted Wings

I also then taped off and painted the front grill (underneath the front of the eye ball) and skull on the back.

Making the "Stencil" For The Skull

Back at the beginning of the process, when shopping for a beach ball, I came across some big Hulk hands at the store that were the perfect size for Eye Brawl hands. Unfortunately, they were green (of course). Fortunately, fabric paint exists. I've never used it much, but found a black spray paint bottle at the craft store and it applied very quickly and evenly over the hands. Only took 10 minutes of my time to spray 2 coats (with 24 hours of drying in between).

While on a walk the weekend before our Halloween party, I happened upon a garage sell where they were selling some old hockey pads - perfect for adding some bulk to make my little boy into a Skylanders. Sold!

Base Coat of Hulk Hands Painted
Trying on His Hockey Pads and Sweatshirt

It Fits!
Dylan's first modeling of head and hands.
I did add some more detail to the hands with my craft acrylic paint.

For all the trim, I used some parachute craft cord that I found at the craft store. I kind of ran out of time\energy so my grand plans to sew it on got demoted to a more timely glue gun application. It did need a little touch up after each event Dylan wore it too and possible wasn't too neat in places, but I'm sure I'm (mostly) the only one that noticed the flaws.

Last was the skull on the front. Cut cardboard, painted silver, with cut foam and stenciled spray paint made that. A couple of stitches applied it to the sweatshirt (as did the wings in the back).

EyeBrawl Top, Jammie Bottom

In the end, adding the trim to the sweatshirt took away some stretch and made it not at easy to get on and off. So, we ditched the hockey pads. They still made the costume though. I had cut off parts of it anyway and realized the padded sections were just the right size\shape\color of the detail on the lower back of EyeBrawl so they got hot glued on there.

To replicate the black boots, we found some solid black sneakers and some flashback to the 80s black leg warmers. Pretty sweet! And, of course, skinny black jeans for his pants.

The Back!

The Front

Dylan was so cute and excited to be involved in the process and help when he could. He didn't quite understand why it was taking so long to get finished, so it was a good lesson in the time and effort involved in crafting and creating. And, he looked totally awesome and happy in the end which made it all worth it. I won't lie though, it was fun at first but I was ready to be done with it before I actually was. Labor of love, labor of love.