The Best of Christmas 2012

Larsen Family Christmas 2012: The Highlight Reel

• Homemade gingerbread house, complete with chimney and lots of candy sampling (thanks, mom, you are the best Nana ever!)

•  Christmas Eve Nativity Play, complete with adoring and adorable shepherds and their sheepdog

• Christmas Jammies!

•  Pillow Pets from Auntie Misty and Uncle Drew. Complete with handlebars for jaunty rides around the kitchen....

•  My dad made this cradle for my dolls when I was a little girl. I repainted and stenciled it and made a patchwork doll quilt for Alyssa.

•  Great time with family

•  a healthy sense of humor

•  and, of course, some really cool toys to play with.

Now, if only I can get my NOOK to synch up with my computer so I can actually use it....

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Capturing a Christmas Tree

To: whom it may concern, more specifically "color-specific" people who feel we Phoenicians deny our children of a "true" Christmas experience due to the general dearth of a certain "omnipresent" color that isn't technically even a color...

I present: The Arizona White Christmas, aka the Great Christmas Tree Adventure. Also known as "I don't think Eric will ever do this again but the rest of us had a good time."

The Saturday after Thanksgiving we piled the kids in the car with plenty of snow gear, grabbed our tree-cutting permits, and headed out for a two-hour drive to Heber in search of an authentic Christmas tree. After two days of constant snow prior to said adventure and quite the amount of fluff falling all morning, the original road was closed, forcing us to drive an hour farther north to the top of the rim, where we found beautiful frosted snow, plenty of trees, and even some sunshine.

It didn't take too long to pick a few trees and dispatch the boys with a saw and some clippers to capture and drag them home for dinner, err, decoration. Meanwhile, mom and I played in the snow with kids making snowmen, snow angels, and having a great time until Scotty finally admitted he was cold.

Merry Christmas!

I dedicate this post to shoes

As Cinderella once noted, "the right shoe can change your life." I'm not sure I'd take it that far, but this little project was pretty cool. I first got the idea from a craft blog nearly a year ago and was dying for the chance to try it myself. I found the perfect pair of boring heels for $3 at Goodwill, but never got around to fabric shopping.

Over Thanksgiving we were in Utah with most of the Larsen clan and the girls decided we wanted some fun projects, and this was perfect. Well, at least I thought it was perfect--a few of the patterns were tricky to make but we stuck it out!

Serious chaos

 Here is the whole layout. We didn't think to put them in the same order, so I tried to label them. Sometimes it's hard to connect the "before" with the "after".... It's a super easy project involving mod podge, fabric, cheap shoes from goodwill, DI, or your closet, and an exacto knife. Want more info? Click here for a flats tutorial, here for a heels/wedges tutorial, and here for the original inspiration. For what it's worth, we used outdoor mod podge because it's more water proof, and we decided that heels are much easier to make patterns for than flats. You only need 1/8 yard of fabric for a pair of shoes and it's easier to match up abstract designs than stripes.

Click on this to see it BIG

The guys were great sports about of crafting. Mostly because they were shut in with a bunch of computers playing Command & Conquer Generals for an entire day.

So, anyone else have a pair of still comfy but rarely worn shoes in their closet that need a $2 makeover? :o)

All I Want for Christmas is...

1. You (baby).

2. my two front teeth.

Funny, how these two are currently related. Actually for Christmas I want some quality family time. And a Nook. But for THIS week (early Christmas, maybe?) I want my sweet little girl back from the Tooth Harpy. Since that present isn't looking particularly promising, I'm preserving my sanity by finding the humor in the situation. Sit back, and enjoy some Christmas season melodrama. With subtitles.

Count Your Blessings

 1. A finite number of teeth to fit in this little mouth.

2. On normal days, there are more happy shrieks than angry ones.

3. She still loves me, even when I'm cranky back at her.

4. Music--a great distraction.

5. Nice weather outside.

6. Someone to make me laugh.

7. Two best friends.

In related news, my attempted auction of the above pictured children garnered ZERO bids, so I'm happy I get to keep them after all :o)

Thanksgiving 2011

What a wonderful week! I have a scattered handful of pictures that fail to capture much of the awesomeness. First, there was driving.

She played peek a boo with herself for a few hours

Quit yawning and pull over!

We split our drive to Utah over two days and stayed the night with our fabulous friends, the Birks, who moved to Hendersen, Nevada a few months ago just to be closer to us. Really, they moved for Adam's job as a lawyer, but we couldn't be happier that they're closer! Thanks again for letting us crash at your place--we loved seeing you and holding that brand new baby Olivia!

We've known each other since there were only four of us! We now have a cute bunch of kids...

The rest of the trip was a whirlwind of Nerts (Bekah, you are still the reigning champion so you can keep the belt buckle for now...), Acquire, Settlers, Family Feud, eating, cooking, shopping, crafting, and 14 hours of Generals Command & Conquer. While the boys locked themselves in with a bunch of computers to play, the girls made Christmas ornaments and some fabulously amazing shoes. Pictures of that project to come, as it seems I didn't take any with my camera! (Emily, help me out here!). The girls pitched in to tie the quilt I've been making for Eric's grandpa in memory of Grandma Gay.

Some fabulous looking ladies

There was also this:

There were 9 nerf guns (one automatic) and about 75 foam nerf arrows. We found them stuck to walls, in closets, in the bathroom....it was CARNAGE.

And our Thanksgiving tradition: bowling. Eric pulled a 186 the second game after a nearly flawless 8 frames.

with Peeta

She loves her Uncle Brent

You're welcome to take our kids anytime, Bekah and Grant!

So excited to meet your baby BOY in April!

Thanks again to Stephen and Emily for letting us takeover your house for the week, to mom for all the wonderful cooking and company, to Bekah for our nice chats and girl time, to Carlissa for your quilting guru-ness and pregnancy gung-ho, to Brent for being a great uncle to my kiddos, to Stephen for helping my husband get his fill of blowing stuff up, to Grant for teaching Scotty killer wrestling moves, to Emily for getting time to talk just us, to dad for letting me actually beat you at Acquire, and to my husband for all his help packing and driving and hanging out. Who's ready for the next vacation?