December Photos

Look how on the ball I am with posting pictures! The new year has given me new energy. December was filled with lots holiday merriment and the magic of snow!

Hand Made Christmas Decorations

Christmas is my favorite holiday of all time. Hooray! It's almost here! Here is our lovely tree, put up on a table to give us more room for presents underneath ;-)

Celebrating Christmas with Echo this year has been so much fun, she is finally old enough to start to get what it's all about. We have been reading Christmas books for months, been to two tree lightings and yesterday we took her to see live reindeer at the nature center.

One tradition that I wanted to start with her this year was making ornaments for the tree. She still doesn't really have the attention span to stick with it very long but she enjoys the idea of it and I'm hoping that next year she can take a more active role.

We did the traditional popcorn garland of course...

And one that was new for me this year, dried citrus slices. This one is so easy and so pretty, plus it made my house smell great! Cut your citrus thin (we used grapefruit and orange slices) and pat with a towel to remove excess moisture. Bake on your ovens lowest setting for 4 hours or until the citrus is completely dry, not sticky. I poked some holes in them with a bamboo skewer and threaded pretty ribbon through and Echo helped me hang them on the tree.

Last but not least, a pretty paper garland made from my mom's scrap booking paper. Echo had zero interest in this one but maybe next year :-)

What are you doing to decorate for the holidays this year? Any good kid friendly ideas?

Home Made Christmas Gifts

Now that Christmas is over I can reveal my home made presents from this past year. I didn't get as many done as I would like but here is what I ended up giving.

For my Dad and Eric I made these handy fire wood totes. I can't find the tutorial I used anywhere now but they were really easy and fun to make. It's always so hard to think of good hand made gifts for guys and these were the perfect thing.

For Echo's baby friends I sewed some little bath time buddies out of terry cloth. They are basically just wash clothes but so cute! I packaged them with little travel sized baby shampoos.

For my mom I made my first attempt at making an encaustic collage. It was definitely harder than I thought but fun to play with. I think I'd like to get a book and learn more about this process in the future.

My grown up friends got home made bees wax candles and a locally made food item (not made by me but bought at a cool store in Marietta which sells locally produced items).

That's it for this year but if I end up having time and fortune smiles on me I am going to try to work on some home made goodies for Valentines day.

Christmas on Block Island

I finally finished going through my photos from our recent trip. Block Island is a little spot off the coast of Rhode Island where we rented a house for Christmas this year. It was beautiful and very chilly but we had a great time. We went on lots of lovely walks and did a lot of cooking, reading and game playing back at the house. Here are the highlights.

Echo's first time on a plane went great! She slept most of the way and then played on the ipad some. Even with how well she did traveling with a toddler is extremely stressful! I won't be in a hurry to fly again, especially after we have two little ones!

On the Ferry to Block Island

On the Ferry to Block Island

Christmas morning. We didn't have a tree so we wrapped a coat wrack in lights. Here Echo is emptying her stocking

We walked around in the chilly weather quite a bit and it knocked Echo out every time! Now we know the secret to getting her to sleep I guess. On the right Logan is sitting in the middle of the block Island labyrinth. Walking through it while meditating/praying is supposed to help you sort your life out ;-)

 Here we are visiting one of the two light houses.

The hikes down to some of the beaches were pretty steep, the views were totally worth it though.

We also took some inland trails through the island. They were very beautiful in a different way from the beaches. 

The little rock walls all over the Island made me think of Ireland

Our last day was spent in Providence and Newport exploring and eating some of the best seafood I can remember having. Unfortunately I had come down with a cold by then and was exhausted from traveling and cosleeping with Echo the whole trip so I was mostly too tired to lug my camera around. I only got a few pictures of Providence and none of Newport but they were both beautiful and had their own distinct characters as cities.

It was such fun to do something different for Christmas and I loved getting to spend time in New England, a part of the country I haven't frequented since I was a kid. I really want to make time to go back to Rhode Island some day soon because there were loads of things I wanted to do but didn't have time for. Plus the people were incredibly friendly and the food was fantastic at pretty much every restaurant we visited. This makes Rhode Island a perfect vacation spot in my book :-)