Elf on the Shelf: Week 2

Elfie Pokie Nokie has been back in our house for over two weeks now - which means we're even closer to Christmas. How is it only 9 days away? Totally not stressing out about that! Ha!

While I wrack my brain trying to work out what to get the kids for Christmas (and how to get it in such a short amount of time - eek!) let's take a look at what Elfie has been up to over the past week.

Day 8
On Day 8 we found Elfie poking out from behind a cushion on the hanging chair in our living room. A favorite Christmas book (The Christmas Wish) was sitting out - one that we hadn't left there. It was the perfect invitation to sit down somewhere comfy and read, although Mathilde didn't seem so sure about Elfie reading over her shoulder!

Day 9
On Day 9 we found Elfie simply sitting on the mantel in our family room. Not a particular good hiding spot, however there was something a little peculiar happening here. It looks like Elfie decided to add himself to our family photo! He's not quite to scale though. I don't remember him being so tall! This picture has been the target of Elfie's pranks in the past too with him adding googly eyes onto our faces. You can see that prank here. I guess at least this time he didn't make us look silly!

Day 10
Our advent calendar activity for day 10 was to make honey biscuits (you can find the recipe for these tasty cookies here) so it came as no surprise when we found Elfie perched inside the mixer surrounded by cookie cutters. On a side note, as the mixer is fairly new I completely forgot how much easier it would make mixing the cookie dough, and I did it all by hand. Oops! I guess Elfie tried to tell me, but I didn't pay attention.

Day 11

It's finally looking a little festive around here with our Christmas tree up in the family room. Elfie decided to get into the Christmas spirit and we found him perched on a branch of the tree among the decorations. This year's tree is pretty sparse (Colorado tree farms don't seem to have to lush, thick trees we're used to in California) so Elfie was pretty easy to spot.
P. S. Anyone else have a tree filled with decorations from their travels? I know that nothing matches on our tree so it's not the prettiest to look at, but I love that it's filled with memories.

Day 12
Looks like Elfie decided to take a birds' eye view over everyone, or as close to a birds' eye view you can get inside, and perched himself atop the ceiling fan in the living room. The little guy is lucky that I stopped Lola from trying to turn the fan on to send him for a spin!

Day 13
Elfie sure seems to like hanging out in our family room this year. On day 13 we found him literally hanging out - hung by a tiny peg on the mantle with all of our Christmas cards! You may notice that the kids on all these cards look familiar. That's because they're all the cards that I've made over past years! We only ever receive maybe four or five cards a year (and usually after Christmas) so I hang our old cards up instead. It's a cute way to look back and see how much the girls have grown over the years.

Day 14
Day 14 found Elfie on the mantle again, but there was something different about him. Overnight he seems to have grown horns, a long tongue and a tail. Mathilde was convinced that he had transformed into a demon, but Lola recognized him straight away. Elfie was dressed as Krampus! Now, in the past Elfie has had fun mixing up holidays by stealing Halloween candy, playing with a dreidel, and dressing up as a pilgrim for Thanksgiving. This time around he's mixing things up by playing different Christmas characters. The girls noticed that Elfie seemed to have a parcel for them, and they were excited to find the book Krampus Meets his Match inside. Elfie certainly wasn't quite as scary looking as the Krampus in the book, but he sure was pretty creepy! 

And that's it for another week of Elfie Pokie Nokie in our home.

Time for me to work out how to get hot glue off an elf hat...

Christmas Tree Farm Visit 2016

Can you believe that Christmas is less than a week away? Eek!

We've been getting into the Christmas spirit little by little this year. I had planned to have a super festive month in the lead up to the big day, but with Ava being so sick (a week of croup followed by a week of pneumonia) and all the running around that comes with this time of year, things haven't been as festive as I would have liked. But we do have a Christmas tree so that's a great start, right?

This year we visited a Christmas tree farm and cut down our own tree. We had to put it off a few times due to heavy rain and Ava being unwell, but we finally got there last Sunday. In the past we've headed north to Sebastapol to visit a Christmas tree farm, but this year we decided to stay local to the East Bay and visited Castro Valley Christmas Tree Farm just a half hour drive south of Berkeley.

52 Weeks: Week 49

Week 49: Jack London Square Tree Lighting

I'm a little behind with my weekly post so this one is almost two weeks old. Oops!

A few Fridays back the girls and I got into the Christmas spirit by attending the annual Christmas tree lighting festivities at Oakland's Jack London Square.

We arrived a little late thanks to BART delays leaving us waiting on the platform for quite some time in Berkeley, but the girls enjoyed the night even though we missed the official "lights on" moment.

Hand Print Christmas Trees

Christmas is always such a busy time for crafts in our home. One of the kids' favorite holiday crafts is making painted hand print pictures. In the past they've made Santa hand prints and reindeer hand prints. This year they wanted to make something different so we decided to go for Christmas tree hand prints.

Making festive hand print pictures may be fun but it can also be pretty messy work, especially when there are toddlers involved. Trust me, there was about as much paint on Mathilde's t-shirt when we were done as there was on her actual hand print Christmas tree! Luckily we have method 4x concentrated laundry detergent to keep everything nice and clean once we're finished with all that messy paint.

Elf on the Shelf: Week 1

Elfie Pokie Nokie, our Elf on the Shelf, is back in our home again for the holiday season.

Just like last year he's been moving around the apartment and doing all sorts of different activities. I've got to admit that he has been a little lazy at times. So far there have been three days when the girls have woken to find him still in the same spot as the day before, but he has made up for it by flying back to the North Pole to visit Santa and coming back to a different position while we've been out during the day. The first time this happened he left a note saying it was due to the rain but we've come to the conclusion that maybe it has something to do with me being up throughout the night feeding Mathilde. He can't move around when Mathilde and I are still up, can he?

Anyway, here's a look at what Elfie Pokie Nokie has been up to the first week of December...

On the first day Elfie appeared along with the advent calendar just like he usually does. He fits nicely into the big pocket for day 25. This is always his starting and ending point in our home.

Our Little Christmas Tree

As if visiting Santa on Friday night wasn't exciting enough, we upped the Christmas spirit on Saturday by taking the girls to choose a Christmas tree.

The past few years we've visited a Christmas tree farm and cut our own tree. This year we kept things simpler and visited a nearby Christmas tree lot and bought a pre-cut tree. 

Merry Christmas 2013

Christmas is now over for another year but I'm still a little behind with the Christmas posts - as usual!

So let's start the catch up with a look at our Christmas Day...

As soon as the girls woke up on Christmas morning they knew that they'd made Santa's nice list thanks to the trail of sparkly, snowy footprints he'd left in the hallway overnight. You can find out how Santa left these footprints here. The footprints lead all the way from our Christmas tree in the lounge room, down our entry hallway and out our apartment door. The girls followed the footprints and discovered that, just like previous years, the footprints lead all the way to our nearest fire stairwell which was obviously Santa's point of entry.

Looks like we've had a jolly visitor overnight

A Christmas tree... finally!

On our advent calendar there are always two activity vouchers that the girls just can't wait to get their hands on. The first is visiting Santa at Macy's which came up on the advent calendar a week back. The second is choosing a tree from a Christmas tree farm. They've been waiting so patiently for their second favourite voucher and it finally appeared yesterday.

The long awaited advent voucher

Bye Bye Christmas Tree

Bye bye Christmas tree.

Thanks for bringing us Christmas cheer over the last few weeks.

We'll miss you...

Santa's Footprints

Christmas morning is always filled with such anticipation. The first thing the kids always want to know is "Has Santa been?". Well, this year it was obvious that Santa had visited as soon as the girls opened the bedroom door. There on the ground, leading from the front door to the lounge room was a set of footprints. White, glittery, snowy footprints made by someone wearing big boots. Who else other than Santa could have left such prints?

Looks like Santa's been!

Much like the Easter Bunny this Easter, Santa left a trail of footprints leading from the emergency stairwell in the hallway straight to our Christmas tree. The girls were excited to see that Santa had left footprints and happily hopped along them all the way out our apartment to see where they started. Of course, the were happiest following the footprints to the Christmas tree to see what else Santa had left!

Wondering how Santa left such glittery footprints? Here's how you can make your own...

Little Bags of Honey Biscuits

Today was Ava's last day of school for the year. Roll on the start of the two week winter break!

Ava's class celebrated their last day of school before Christmas by making Christmas crafts, watching a movie and, the kids' favourite part, wearing their pyjamas all day! Not a bad day of school.

And if all that doesn't sound good enough there was just one more treat...

Ava took bags of honey biscuits to school to give out to her classmates and teacher.

Bags of honey biscuits

Technically sweet treats like biscuits/cookies aren't actually allowed at school but we got around this by bagging the biscuits up for the kids to take home. Ah, loopholes! To make the bags of biscuits a little more festive I made cards from one of Ava's Christmas drawings and tied them on with red and white baker's twine. Ava personalised each bag of biscuits by writing a message on the back of each card. I was quite impressed that she was able to recognise each of her classmates names on the cards when handing them out. It's good to know that she is learning at school!

Merry Christmas

Christmas Tradition: Honey Biscuits

Every year in the lead up to Christmas my Mum bakes honey biscuits. They've become one of my family's Christmas traditions, taking the place of gingerbread.

In keeping with tradition, making honey biscuits was one of the Christmas activities in Ava and Lola's advent calendar; the most delicious activity in the advent calendar!

Honey Biscuits

Christmas Tree Hunting

Yesterday we finally got our Christmas tree!

Ava and Lola had been hanging out all month to get a Christmas tree but knew they had to wait until it appeared in the advent calendar. Well, day 15 was finally the day.

Day 15: Time to choose a Christmas tree!

Washi Tape Christmas Decorations

I love washi tape.

It's the one thing I feel compelled to buy whenever I see it in a store. It's the one thing that you might say I "collect". It's my go-to for decorating presents and one of my favourite crafting materials.

So when I saw a post on Modern Parents Messy Kids about a DIY washi tape christmas tree I knew I had to get out the tape collection and start decorating!

Washi tape Christmas tree, presents and wreath

Christmas Cards 2009

Our Christmas card photo from 2009 is one of my most favourite shots ever.

I think it speaks for itself so there's no need for me to say much about it except that I love it.

Angel Ava

This was taken in our backyard and as you can see from the beautiful sky it was a clear, sunny day, perfect for angelic photos. I love how Ava is looking down like she's flying overhead. The sun shining through the (slightly over exposed) feather wings provides a beautiful glow.

A tree full of angels

Every year I make one special photo ornament for our tree.

These ornaments feature the photo of Ava and Lola that we used for our Christmas cards that year.

The plan is to make a photo ornament each year until the girls are grown up so that I have a tree full of little angels. Of course, at some point the girls are probably going to get embarrassed having their photo taken for cards and ornaments, but I don't care. I'm their mum, it's my job to embarrass them!

Here are our first five years of ornaments...

Christmas 2011

Our Christmas Tree

It's Day 5 on our advent calendar and today Ava and Lola's voucher entitled them to choose a Christmas tree!

This is the first year that we've ever had a live Christmas tree. I'm looking forward to the apartment smelling like a pine forest :)

I saw a flyer last week from the Cal Forestry Club at the university here in Berkeley. They have an annual Christmas tree sale on campus and I thought this would be a great place to buy our tree. Each year members of the Cal Forestry Club visit the Sierra Nevada and handpick firs and cedars to become Christmas trees. The trees are harvested sustainably so there's no need to feel guilty about a tree being cut down just to sit in the corner of the lounge room for a month. The trees chosen are ones that would most likely not live to grow much larger. That's not to say that the trees are unhealthy, they are just generally growing in quite crowded locations where they have to fight for sunlight and nutrients. By cutting down selected trees the remaining trees have a better chance of flourishing. There, now I feel better about it :)

While there were no signs posted at the university, the Christmas tree sale was pretty easy to find if you just followed your nose. The scent of fir and cedar trees led us to the right spot.

There were so many beautiful trees to choose from. We had to stick to buying a relatively small tree due to the space constraints of living in an apartment. Plus the tree needed to be small enough to put up on a table should Lola decide to play with it. An inevitability, I'm sure.

Ava and Lola checking out the trees

Hmm, that's a nice tree Ava but a little bigger than we planned to buy