Oklahoma-part one

We left for Oklahoma on Monday morning and got there Monday evening.  It was about an 8 hour drive and the kids did great in the car, as always. Thank goodness to movies and toys :) Once we got there, we all went to go and get some pizza for dinner.  Just before we were leaving, this little cutie ran right into a chair and gave himself a black eye.  Poor guy, but he still is a cutie!

 I think this little boy was in heaven while we were there.  He absolutely LOVES to play with his cousins.  He turns into another boy when he gets around those three.  They play rough and have tons of fun.

 Another great treat we got, was we got to visit with some great friends of ours who moved to Oklahoma City a few years ago.  We miss them dearly and don't get to see them often enough! It was so much fun to get the kids together and enjoy some nice conversation.  Thanks guys for lunch and being able to visit together!!

 These two girls would be great friends if they lived closer together :)

 Keeping them quiet with suckers :)

 Trying to get a good picture of them all. 

Jayce-almost 3, Tobin-4, Ryleigh-17 months, Caroline-almost 2

 Oh how I miss this lady and our great friendship.  So wished that we lived right down the street again!

 Boys being boys! They really do play pretty well together!

 Brothers wrestling and Jayce just hopping away

 Sweet cousins enjoying their play time

This boy LOVES him some music!!! Give him a mic, guitar or drums and he acts like a natural.

Turkey Day-part one

This past week we drove up to Oklahoma and spent the week there with my sister-in-law and her family.  My mother and father-in-law drove up with us to spend Thanksgiving there too.  We had a great time while we were there.  The weather was nice the first few days and then it got freezing cold, just in time for us to leave :)  

Thursday morning we had the kids do some crafts while we were cooking and getting things ready for our Turkey lunch. Here's two of the boys making pilgrims hats.  They were very cute and very easy.  We used swirl cookies, reeses candy, yellow frosting, and orange gum.  You just dip the reeses candy into the yellow frosting and then stick it to the cookie.  After that you place the gum on so that it makes a vertical line.  And voila, you have pilgrim hats! :)

 

 

 While some cooking was going on, Ryleigh snuck a marshmellow.  She loves her some marshmellows!!!

 Our next craft was making name plates for everyone which were pinecones.  They were made from egg cartons. SOOO CUTE! We cut the egg cartons apart and then cut each piece to make four sections. The kids then painted them brown and after they were dry we stuck about 6 of them together to make a pinecone. The very top one, you had to put a rubberband on so that the name could stay on.

 Isn't it crazy how much they really look like pine cones?! 

 Here's my turkey wearing her cute turkey bow! A friend of mine found them on a website and told me about them.  SO I had to make one for Ryleigh.  I also made one for a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a long time.  Her daughter looked great in it too!!

 Finally an end to our Turkey day....we got all dressed up in our matching outfits and went BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING!!! The three of us do this every year. This year some of the stores opened on Thursday night, so we decided to go ahead and pull an all-nighter. WOW! It was a much different experience!!!! Lots of lines, more than normal, but we still had a great time! It will be the first and last time that we pull an all-nighter.

Christmas Advent Calendar

A friend of mine has a super awesome crafting blog, Crafts and Sutch and I love seeing all the cool stuff she finds!! She has a weekly segment called Sutch an Inspiration and it's where she searches people's blogs and finds cool things she would love to make someday.  In that segment I found a great idea for an advent calendar! I thought that it was different and it wouldn't be too hard to make.  So here's what it looked like on Something from Cassie's blog.  Great idea, and I just changed mine to be for Christmas.  So here's what I did. 

You will need: 2 cereal boxes,  24 muffin pan, roll of magnet, scissors, stickers, scrapbooking paper, paper cutter, and/or other embellishments.  I was lucky enough to have a great friend who let me use her cricut machine to cut all my paper, embellishments and numbers.  Let me tell you how much time that saved me!

 I cut the cereal box into 2in by 2in squares.  You probably could have cut them a little bit smaller.  Mine don't show any of the muffin pan when they are all on there. 

 Here's most of the embellishments that I used.  I also had stickers.  I used the scrapbook tape to put my paper onto the card board.  But when I started putting the embellishments onto the paper, I decided to use a glue stick.  It was a lot easier for me.

 Get all the paper onto the cardboard using the scrapbook tape or glue.

 Add embellishments and put magnet onto the backs of each card board piece and VOILA you have yourself a super easy and cute advent calendar.  The best part, is you can just put all the pieces into a small ziplock baggie and change it up if you want.