Thrifty Thanksgiving Table: Dollar Store DIY

Thanksgiving 

I love Thanksgiving.  

The smells in the house, the fall colors in the house and

having family around. 

This year I tasked each kiddo with cooking one item.  

I love getting them involved.  I have found they eat better when they help.

DECORATING THE TABLE

Decorating the table is always an attention grabber.

This year all I bought were some fake leaves and votives from the Dollar Tree.

Easter party ideas

Easter
This Easter was a little hard for me to be motivated to host Easter.
I've been really involved with catching up with homeschooling and taking
care of Espen's recovery from surgery.
So it was Wednesday before Easter and the kids asked one more time,
"What are we gonna do for Easter?"
I picked myself up and said, "We are gonna have a picnic, with games!"
We collected duck eggs because they are bigger than chicken eggs.
Then we blew them out.  Oh boy is that hard and time consuming.
We chose to blow them out for a couple of reasons. So they would last longer and
we wanted to try to modge podge them.
We found tissue paper and some fun string and other things laying around that would
make a fun egg.  We bought some dye so we could dye some eggs.  We wanted
a variety.

The Magic Elves are back...

 The Elves are back........

This year only Rosemary and Alvin came back.

Brooks is our other elf but he didn't return this year.

Our 13 year old hasn't asked for him to return.

Just to share a little with you about the Elves.  Our Elves are Magic Elves, not Elf on the shelf.

My daughter tells me the difference is that you are allowed to hold our elves and cuddle.

Halloween costumes look at these characters

Halloween oh let the fun begin.

My husband goes all out.  He is always motivated by the contest

at work.  He usually always places the top 3. He loves dressing up with the kids too.

This year he was Captain Hook.
He and the kids took to the streets strutting their stuff.
Captain Hook loved carrying Little Peter Pan around the neighborhood...

Good times in Indiana with my Mom

The first of November my youngest and I had an opportunity to fly to my moms in Indiana. We did some shopping in a little town called Roanoke.
The weather was amazing, then the day we had to fly home it snowed. Adelynn got to see snow she was so excited. I was excited to see my mom. My dad died the month adelynn was born so she never met him. My mom loves it when we come she gets pretty lonely. I thought I would share some photos of our little trip.

25 days of elf-magic

Magic Elf Fishing Party

A year ago while visiting my sister in Alabama. My kids and I discovered elf-magic elves. These little
elves come from Santa and stay with the children till Christmas. They bring a sack and magic snow with them. The kids put the snow on them at night so the elves come alive and do things at night, usually mischief. Sometimes the elves put presents in their bags. Oh and the kids need to leave crackers and water out because they love that. On Christmas Eve Santa will pick up his special elves to take back to the North Pole. Last year out youngest hid hers

DIY Crate for a Christmas tree

This year when we pulled out the Christmas tree my wonderful

husband said, "hey honey, I can make a crate for the tree to sit in".

I loved the idea.

So he went to work using some lumber that was left over from other

projects.  You could easily take a pallet apart and use that too.

After he built it.  I sanded it down. 

Then applied a cream colored semi gloss paint.  I applied 3 coats.

After it dried, I sanded it to give it the distress look.

I could of left it like that but the wood looked to new and fresh.

So, I took some dark stain and applied it using old rag.  I just wiped it 

on the distressed part.