Happy Easter!

Christmas

A few of our memorable moments from a wonderful Christmas celebrating the birth of our Savior!

 Christmas with the Vickery/Britt Family

Roasting Marshmallows at the Pennington Christmas

Time with MeMe and Mackenzie

Playing with the potato shooter contraption my brother made!

 Pennington Christmas

 Christmas Eve program the girls performed and singing Happy Birthday to Jesus!

Christmas morning fun!

Playing with their new outside toys!

Christmas with Pop-Pop and Phyllis

2012 Pumpkin Patch

We had our annual pumpkin patch visit this year! 

Our Thankful Tree

Disclaimer: I will admit, even though I love to do crafty things, I tend to slack in doing crafty things with my children.  The perfectionist in me comes roaring out at these times!  The good news is that I recognize it and I'm working on it.  Oh...another a problem....I tend to try and make things way to elaborate with the kids crafts, which ends up just frustrating me and them.  Like I said, I'm working on it!

With all that said, this November we are making a Thankful Tree to record all the things we are thankful for. The tree is very simple, but the girls had a wonderful time making the tree trunk and the grass.  I cut out a ton of leaves on my nifty little Silhouette...and we have the makings of a thankful tree.  See.  I'm doing better!  Simple and easy!  Danny was really proud of me!

 I just cut a large piece of white paper for them to paint brown for the tree trunk and limbs. 

 Alexandra loved having her hands messy!

 I thought the paper was going to tear several times due to how much paint they put on it, 

but it held up and dried very good!

 Aubrey's thinking...this is a blast!

I'm thinking...PLEASE don't touch anything but the paper with those hands!!! 

 I need help, I know!

 Paint the paper, Alexandra!  Not yourself!

The beginning of our thankful tree!  

I love how sassy Anna has become in front of the camera!  

Anna was dressed like her sisters, but she wanted to be different, so she put this outfit together.  She is currently obsessed with wearing skirts!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

My sweet girls on Valentine's Day!

Our Valentine's Day was a busy one!  We hosted a little Valentine's play group with friends that morning and the kids all had a blast.  They played, made Valentine's, played some more, ate cupcakes, and then played some more!  My girls love hosting their friends here and we really should have more play groups...I'll put that on my Needs Improvement List...#103!

After our morning play group, we got busy getting ready for our special Valentine's dinner for Daddy!  We made a quick trip to the grocery store to get the remaining items on my list and then we were set.  The girls helped me make heart shaped rice krispie treats that we dipped in chocolate and added sprinkles. 

The dinner menu was one of Daddy's (and Mommy's) favorite, Garlic Cheese grits with shrimp, asparagus, fresh fruit and bread.  Sometimes the girls will eat the grits and sometimes they won't.  This night, they all decided NOT to eat the grits.  Oh, well, more for us.  They were delicious!

The girls helped me set the table with paper hearts and candles.  There's a little story behind the small paper hearts on the table.  A lot of those hearts have little love quotes on them.  I made these hearts for the first Valentine's dinner I ever made Danny when we were dating.  It will come to no surprise to some of you that I kept these hearts and I bring them out every Valentine's day to display on out table.  It has become a special tradition of ours. 

Aubrey made her first Valentine's this year.  Well, not her first, but the first one's that she did completely by herself.  She was so thoughtful to make one for each of her sisters and I think she did a fabulous job!

My little Alexandra giving me some Valentine kisses after dinner!

I'm not sure why, but I have always loved decorating for Valentine's day.  I haven't had time to do a whole lot of crafting lately, so I decided to step it up with Valentine's day.  I follow so many wonderful blogs that have the most amazing craft ideas.  They are so inspiring, so these are a couple of the things I made to bring a little red, pink and white love into the house for Valentine's Day.

 

  My first project with my new Silhouette Machine!  

This machine is awesome and I can't wait to have more time to play with it!

My front door plaque.  I'm very much a copy-cat artist!  I saw one similar to this posted on fb.  

I've been wanting to make one of these for a while, so here it is.  

It was so easy, too!  Be on the lookout for more of these!

Our foyer entrance. The wreath is made with a styrofoam ring wrapped in ribbon with cupcake wrapper hot-glued on!  It was super easy and cheap!  I also printed the Love one Another sign from a blog and framed it in a frame my mom gave me for Christmas.  I used my wonderful JoAnn, Michael's, and A.C. Moore coupons to by the apothecary jar and candles.  I finished the look off by adding M&M's to the jar and placing some greenery on the table!

 I also made a smaller version of the cupcake wrapper wreath to place in the girl's dollhouse in the playroom!

Our morning chocolate chip muffins were displayed on different height pedastals.  I bought the plates and cups at Target (all for around $7).  Instead of gluing the plates to the cups, I added velcro to the plate and cup.  This way, I can change out the plates for different seasons simply by adding velcro dots. 

I also got the red & white pokadot plates so that I could use these for different holidays.  

I can use them for the Fourth or July or Christmas!

This is a better view of the cup beneath the plate.  

Another great idea for this is to fill the cup with decorations to to add a little pizazz to it!

Aubrey and I also made some really cute hearts made out of wax paper and melted crayons that we hung from our kitchen table lighting.  I don't have a picture of these hearts because a certain 20 month old climbed onto the table and ripped them all down while I was blow drying my hair!  Here's a picture of what they looked like, though!

Ok.  Ours didn't look quite as good as Martha Stewart's, 

but they were still cute!

More Christmas with Poppy and MeMe

 It felt like Christmas morning all over again once 

Poppy and MeMe arrived Christmas afternoon and unloaded all their presents!

Alexandra gets to open the first present...with MeMe's help!

Alexandra got a block set that builds to a tower.  

As you can see all three are playing with it.  

I almost hated putting any tags on presents this year because all of them will be playing with each toy!  

Tags with names just start fights that start with the word, "MINE" being screamed!

Poppy helping Aubrey with one of her presents.

Anna got an alphabet puzzle.  This girl is crazy over some puzzles!

Anna showing off the new bathtub toy!

There is no telling what is coming out of her mouth....I'm sure it was a LOUD scream!

With as many pictures as I take, I'm always in need of more picture frames!!!

Aubrey and Anna helping MeMe open her present!

Sweet Alexandra hugging her new stuffed animal!

The present in Poppy's lap actually weighs 45 pounds.  Yep, I know how much it weighs because it's weights for his work-out bench.  He was a little afraid to open a present that weighed so much!

Danny's new tool bag!

This is actually Aubrey's helmet, but Alexandra thought she needed to break it in for her....

plus she thought it made a good photo op!