Wooden Peg People

Well, we made it through another December.  Almost.  Sort of. Our house is still going.  We still have birthday and Christmas celebrations on the calendar for the next two days as I type this. And the spoiled rotten Dad got a Rose Bowl ticket for Christmas, so he's road trippin' it with The Boys to go watch his beloved Ducks play on the 1st. Which means the single mom gig for me again for a few days.  But I think once we're deep into the first week of January, things will slow down for a minute.  I'm anxious to do the after-Christmas purge.  Room by room, starting with the kids.  I'm not looking forward to the job of packing up all the decorations, but I do LOVE that feeling of a fresh clean house, that always seems wonderfully sparse after the holidays.  And it's always fun to find homes for the new things I unwrapped.  Like new sheets.  I can not WAIT to put my new sheets on the bed.

You got a sneak peak of these little people the other day in my Merry Christmas post.  

I had done a version a couple years ago for my niece, that you can see here, and thought it would be fun to paint a set for Baby for Christmas.  The ones I had done before were made out of wooden flower pots and balls, and were quite a bit bigger.  These are all one piece that I bought as actual wooden peg dolls in the craft section of Joann's.

Rather than just painting random people, I decided to do our family.  

I had two of the smaller sizes left over, and was going to do The Dog and The Cat, but decided I didn't trust my painting skills enough to pull that off, so I did two of her cousins instead.

So here is The Mom, The Dad, The Kid, The Girl, Baby, Cousin Lucas, and Cousin Lylah.

They sell little wooden knobber dobbers that I was going to glue on as a bun for my hair, since it's ALWAYS pulled back like that, but they were out both times I was in the store, so I gave myself a ponytail instead.

So here we have, yours truly, The Mom.

The Dad.

The Kid.

The Girl.

Baby.

Cousin Lucas and Cousin Lylah.

I didn't notice until I was looking at these photos, but Lucas' eyes are kinda wonky.

I may need to go back and fix that.

And there ya go, a family of peg people.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas,

from our house to yours.

The Mom, The Dad, The Kid, The Girl, Baby,

The Dog, The Cat, and The Tortoise

Jello Mold Lights

So ya know that new favorite thing I talked about the other day? This would be the one.

I can not even tell you how much I love these.

I grin like an idiot every time I walk into the kitchen and see them lit up.

I found a stack of Jello molds in an antique mall by our house.

I snagged them up so fast I nearly knocked everything else over.

There were only seven of them, but I didn't care, I knew EXACTLY what I was going to do with them.

Then, the next day, the stars aligned and I came across another stack of four at a junk store.

The hardest part was finding a short strand of lights.

I ended up with two strands of twenty that I wrapped around the fake garland.

 The Dad drilled holes in the bottoms of the molds and slipped them over the bulbs for me, while I lay on the couch like an exhausted pile of goo.

He did a pretty good job at placement, eh?

Did I mention how much I love them?

There's no way I'll be able to put them away after Christmas.

I'll have to find lights with white cords so I can have them up around the window year round.

In love.

I didn't buy them, but the junk store had a bunch of mini bundt pans, too.

I wracked my brain trying to come up with an excuse to buy them, but I couldn't think of anything fun.

So I left them there.

Now, I'll probably come across something fantastic on Pinterest and they'll be gone.

That's okay, I still have my new favorite thing.

And speaking of favorite things, today is my birthday, and even though I still feel like a big pile of crap, I'm going out to dinner, without kids.

Woohoo!!!!

2014 Bathroom & Hallway Christmas Tour

We're finally at the homestretch.  These are the last of the Christmas decoration photos for the year.  And just in time, only three more days left.

In addition to the shower curtain, I stuck a few things on the shelves in here.

I bought this after Christmas last year and I've tried everything to get the wrinkles out of it.

Ya know, aside from actually ironing it.

It's clear now that I have a thing for old bottles, isn't it?

I stuck a red votive holder in each of the corners.

More bottles.  :)

Speaking of bottles, there are more in the hallway, as well.

I rarely post pictures of our hall because, not unlike our bedroom, it's a dungeon.

So it's really hard to get decent pictures.

But I put the Precious Moments nativity and village in there this year, so I figured I'd give some photographs a shot.

This wall is all kid art.

The Kid drew the cat.

Buwahahahahahaha.

I'm totally kidding.

My mom did that one.  :)

Aren't they sweet?

Since I had the camera out, I figured I'd try to get a couple shots of the coat tree.

It's just painted on, but the best part is the insulators.

I found them at a garage sale years ago.

The guy had dozens and dozens of them.

I kick myself for not buying more.

And last, this has nothing to do with Christmas, but I got a few photos of my flower wall that I always talk about.

And that's it.
I've been deathly ill for two days.
I'm doin' breakfast for dinner for the fam and then going straight to bed.
We've got something going on every night through the 28th, so I can NOT be sick any longer.
And that's how I feel about that.