This was actually not through the Salvation Army, but through Loudoun County's Holiday Coalition, "Neighbors Helping Neighbors." I had filled a stocking just like this years ago from the Salvation Army and just thought that's what these were for. Michael's school was participating in this and gave each child the stocking and a list of ideas on what to fill it up with.
I've always been about decorating the house for the different holidays, but Thanksgiving is one of the holidays I don't have a lot of decorations for. Last year we made
turkey decorations for the family and I wanted to try and make something different. I've been wanting to do hand and feet prints with Michael for the past few years, but he has hated getting paint on his hands. This year he was excited to get paint on his hands and feet (thank you preschool)!
This past weekend we didn't get to do our shopping on Friday like I had planned. We ended up doing it after church on Sunday. Since it was so late in the day, Michael actually fell asleep in the car. I ended up staying in the car with
You GO to church!
Two Saturdays ago, Michael had asked both Jon and I if we could go to church the next morning. We were shocked that a) he knew the next day was Sunday and b) he knew you went to church on Sunday. Jon and I both grew up
Today was Michael's Thanksgiving party at school and I was so excited when the sign up sheet was set out last week to see that yes, pumpkin pie was on it and that no one had signed up for it. Ever since Michael started school, I've been pinning on Pinterest different cool things to do for his class parties (Yeah, I'm probably going to be that mom the other mom's will probably hate). The mini pumpkin pie was one of them. I found this off of the blog called
makes and takes. She said that she was able to make 12 mini pies, but I was able to make 16 (only needed 13). Here's what you'll need:
Here's a rather simple and delicious side dish to add to any holiday meal, corn pudding. As long as I can remember, my mom has made this with every holiday meal she's made. This year, Jon's family decided to do Thanksgiving the weekend before and his mom had asked me to make this side dish. Because of the size of family we now are, I decided to double the recipe. Here's what you'll need for the regular recipe:
A little late on posting about how we spent our Halloween this year, but better late than never. I love the fact that Michael is starting to understand how fun Halloween is. I mean, it's always been fun all the other years, but this year he seemed to have so much more fun.
Since Michael has started preschool we are experiencing a lot of new things that we've never done. One of those things is trunk-or-treat. We've heard about them and our nephews participated in one every year at their daycare, but had never participated in one ourselves. Being the creative, cool parents that we are (or in our minds we think we are), we wanted to create something the kids would like. Michael loves Toy Story and we had the main characters of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and Jessie so why not make my trunk into a scene from the movie!
So, we are back on track with getting our shopping at least started on Friday and finished early on Saturday. I forgot how much I love shopping on Friday. So much nicer and easier than what it has been the past couple of weekends.
The below list is a good majority of the toys that Michael received for his first Christmas back in 2011. He was 6 months old which made it a little easier to shop for. Just within the last three years, there's even more toys out there for any baby between newborn and a year old.
This is my third year making boxes for
Operation Christmas Child, but I have never done a box for a 10 - 14 year old boy. I've read that this age group, the boys especially, is the group with the least boxes made. I will admit, not ever being a teenage boy it was rather hard to figure out what to purchase and make sure it would fit the box.
Time to start planning what we're going to have for dinner. We did somewhat good with staying on plan last week. Here's the list for this week:
Last year we made these ghost-o-lanterns and they were a big hit with all who came to our house trick-or-treating. To see what they looked like last year,
click here.
I always try to do one boy and one girl for
Operation Christmas Child, but have never done a box for the older group. I've read that this group is the least group that boxes are made for. I guess it's because it's a little harder to find stuff that will fit in the box. To learn more about our
other boxes and packing them, click here. As with Michael's box, I wasn't able to fit everything in.
Since we have a tree in our front yard, we wanted to try and have some of our Halloween decorations hanging from it. One of our neighbors down the street had these awesome ghosts that also lit up at night hanging from their tree. I looked everywhere for them, but had no luck in finding them. I decided that I would have to forget about our ghosts lighting up and just make some on my own.
It's that time of year again, but if you're like me you've been planning throughout the year. Michael and I have been doing some of our last minute shopping to finalize our three boxes. Not too late to start one. The national collection week for the
Operation Christmas Child boxes is November 17th - 24th.
Growing up I only remember one time having a carved pumpkin for Halloween. For Jon, it was something his family did every year. Since it was something that Jon loved to do with his family, we've been carving pumpkins for the past six years.
With last Friday being Halloween, we ended up starting our grocery trip on Sunday and Michael & I finished it on Monday. I came up with the meal plan on Sunday morning while Jon was working on his car. Here's the plan that I came up with:
Even though the week of Halloween is long gone, I still wanted to write about our meals we had planned for that week and what our grocery trip was like. Here's what was planned:
I know this is late and I had all intentions of writing about this weeks ago. How about something fun to plan to do with the family next October. We bought these 3D foam structure kits at Michaels and had so much fun putting them together. I actually went to Michaels today and all Halloween items are on sale 80% off! I bought two more kits for less than half the cost of one! I'm set for next year.
