Time to Make the Donuts....

Elf donuts that is!  Since Joanie was going to be leaving us on Christmas night, we wanted to send him off with some snacks to eat on the way back to the North Pole.  Will and I set up a donut assembly line and got busy making some yummy donuts for Joanie (and his elf friends) to eat after their long trip back.

The finished product!  Chocolate covered with sprinkles, powdered and cinnamon donuts! ~ aka Cheerios rolled in powdered sugar, cinnamon and dipped in chocolate.  Perfect elf sized donuts :-)

















Joanie enjoying his donut.  We'll miss you Joanie.  Looking forward to seeing you next year!!

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Ugh....I'm having major guilt that I haven't touched my blog or taken a picture for that matter since Thanksgiving. There are not enough hours in the day to get things done. I've been meaning to post these pictures for a month now and now with only two days before Christmas I guess I better get moving.

We went to visit Santa before Thanksgiving at Bass Pro. I figured going before Thanksgiving on a random Tuesday afternoon, there would be no one there. Wrong. We had to wait for 30 minutes before seeing Santa. But it was worth it. Bass Pro has the best (and nicest) Santa I've ever seen. I'm getting close to having a picture with both boys together with Santa. I think next year is going to be the year.

We spent Thanksgiving at the Cape this year and while we were there we got to see Santa for a second time. Only this time, we watched Santa sail in on a boat. How often do you get to see Santa on a boat?

And here are a few random pics from Thanksgiving weekend.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

The day after Thanksgiving literally everyone in our neighborhood is out in their yards putting up their Christmas lights. When you drive around that night, everyone also has a fully decorated tree in their house.

The week after Thanksgiving, we were the only house in the neighborhood that still had a yard full of leaves and no christmas lights on top of it. So comparatively speaking, we were a little behind this year. Our neighbors three houses down hire a Luminere (who knew such a person existed!) to put the lights on their house. While we can't compete with a Luminere we do have to represent the neighborhood. So last weekend, Eric was outside putting up our lights and then afterwards we went to a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree.

I am anal about my christmas tree and the tree we get has to be perfect (probably not surprising to those who know me). In past years, this has caused us to go to three different tree places in search of the perfect tree (Eric was ready to kill me) or 1+ hour at one place (again, Eric was ready to kill me). Fortunately, this years search went pretty quickly and everyone was happy with the tree we found.

I wanted a big tree this year and we definitely found it. When we were driving home, everyone who drove past us either pointed at our car or drove by with their mouth wide open. One woman even started clapping as we drove by!

Tada! Here is the finished product! I love having a Christmas tree in the house and wish it could be a year round decoration. I can't wait for Christmas!

Joanie the Elf

Yay! We started a new tradition this year with our Elf on the Shelf. For those of you who haven't heard of it before, Elf on the Shelf is a neat holiday story in which one of Santa's elf's comes to your house on the night of your choice. The Elf's job is to hide in a new spot every morning, stay there all day long while you go about your business, and then report back to the north pole each night to let Santa know whether you have been good or bad. The fun part is each morning, the Elf is sitting in a new spot which you have to find when you wake up.

Our elf came to our house Thanksgiving weekend. We woke up on Sunday morning and Santa had delivered a wrapped present to our house. When we opened the gift, there was the Elf on the Shelf story which we read and then went on the search for our elf. We had to choose a name for our elf and Will lovingly chose the name "Joanie" (even though it is a boy elf).

Everyday we find Joanie sitting in a new spot and each day Will gets more and more comfortable with the idea of Joanie. He asks us to make sure we tell Joanie he was a good boy. And if we threaten to tell Joanie when he is doing something bad, he starts crying that he doesn't want us to tell him. It is so cute. Occasionally he will go over to Joanie to tell him what he wants for Christmas.

Now the tough part is remembering to move the elf every night before we go to bed since it would be hard to explain why Joanie didn't move to a different spot.

And while we are talking about Christmas traditions, I'll tell you about my Advent calendar obsession this year. I blame my mother on this once since I used to have a ton of Advent calendars when I was little. Every night before going to bed we would open up each advent calendars. I can't even remember how many I had but it was a lot!

In one of my crafty moods, I decided I wanted to make an Advent calendar this year. My plan originally started out where I was going to sew an advent calendar with all the little pockets with numbers. Until I realized that was a little more difficult than anticipated. So I toned it down a little and found a few fun ideas on the internet

So now we have an Advent tree. I bought the little bags and stenciled numbers on each one (with the help of my lovely mother in law) and put a little treat in each bag.

I also made one using my new laminator (which I'm in love with and have been laminating everything! ha!)

And of course we have the traditional paper advent calendars...4 in total. Jack has no interest in them this year but Will asks every day to open "the number". It's fun and hopefully a tradition we will continue every year!