A Miniature Christmas

We headed downtown on Saturday and went to the Botanic Gardens to see the holiday displays. The replicas of all the monuments and D.C. buildings made out of plant material are always fun to see. The train display this year is amazing. Lots of miniature fairy tale replicas and so much detail.

Tree lighting (Fireworks included)

We spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend just relaxing at home, playing games, eating, and watching movies. I think Amelia's favorite part of the whole weekend was getting to stay in the hotel with Grandma and Grandpa and Stephanie. She thought that was pretty much the coolest thing ever.

We did venture out on a few trips. On Friday night we all headed to the National Harbor for the tree lighting and fireworks. It was COLD. Very cold. The only information we had was that it started at 5 p.m. We had to endure about 1 1/2 hours of bad holiday musical entertainment in the cold before they finally got around to the tree lighting and the fireworks. But we weren't disappointed. The tree lighting was fun because they did a whole light show on the tree. Elsa perked up as soon as the tree lighting began...waving at the tree and clapping. The fireworks were spectacular...just as good as the Fourth of July. It was strange to see fireworks and hear Jingle Bell Rock in the background. I was torn between feelings of patriotism and the Christmas spirit.




A new Peeps Store just opened up at the National Harbor. Yes. An entire store devoted to Peeps.




Amelia actually wanted to have her picture taken with the Peep.


A REALLY happy Christmas tree lady.


Trying to stay warm...




Amelia had fun climbing around The Awakening statue.


















Inside the Gaylord Resort. Nice and warm.

A Thanksgiving Feast, The Making Of

We had a fabulous and delicious Thanksgiving weekend. My parents drove from Wisconsin with a quick stop in Michigan to pick up my sister Erin and her husband Abe. My sister Stephanie flew in from Arizona. We spent Wednesday night and most of Thursday baking and cooking and eating.

Wednesday night dessert baking:


Amelia assists Grandpa with his famous pies.


Because pie just isn't enough, I made some pumpkin cupcakes and chocolate pecan pie bars as well. The recipes will be on my craft blog soon. (Check out those beautiful pie shells!)




Watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.


Grandma and Amelia work on the pineapple turkey hors d'oeuvre.


Erin attempts to triple the roll recipe.


Amelia assembles the traditional turkey cookies. (This photo was taken pre-frustration.)


Stephanie...carves a stick of butter?


Our Thanksgiving meal involved a lot of butter. We started joking about carving something out of butter. Stephanie took the challenge. Pretty excellent butter carving on a whim.


The queue for the oven.


Turkey carving and potato mashing, with steam. (We roasted the turkey in an electric roaster in my laundry room...it still smells like turkey in there. Also, we finally attempted to use our pressure cooker six years after acquiring it...we have been missing out...it cooked up the yams, potatoes, and carrots so fast.)


The menu: Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffin' muffins, yams, rolls, and a new addition...carrot souffle. Again, check my craft blog soon for the recipe. I thought it was quite delicious.



Enough food to feed us all for 3 days!

Fatten 'er up

Elsa turned 18 months old this month. She is under doctor's orders to eat lots of butter and cheese-covered vegetables. Perhaps switch from whole milk to heavy cream. She weighs just over 20 pounds and has dropped from the 25th percentile for weight down to the 5th. Elsa is a picky eater and does not have a lot of patience for sitting in a high chair. She does love fruit, but that doesn't help with the fattening up thing. But I think we did a good job of plumping her up over Thanksgiving. There were lots of people around to constantly offer her food. She likes eating off of a tooth pick, preferably food in a cube shape.


More whipped cream on your pie? Sure. How about more cream cheese frosting? Have all you want.

Favorite 18-month activities:


Throwing tantrums. So far, there isn't a lot of screaming involved. Just a yell, and then a slow, concentrated drop to her knees, followed by a careful flop onto the ground. It takes her so long to get into her final position, that she has usually recovered by then. (Amelia's tantrum at this age was also fabulous...she would pretend to be asleep and fake snore.)


Still loves those 3 fingers.


Climbing. On everything. A recent favorite is emptying out the container of wipes...


...and then sucking on them.

Elsa is figuring out new words everyday and loves to play with blocks and read books. When she wants something, she points to it and says "eee ahhh eeee ahhh" and then escalates to yelling if you don't respond fast enough. We're working on please and thank you. She would prefer to live outside and loves to play chase with Amelia. She can melt into the saddest frown ever if you tell her "no." She LOVES taking a bath with Amelia and doesn't go anywhere without her little pink blanket. We have several floating around so there is always a spare when she dips one in the toilet and drags it all over the house.

She loves to wave to everyone and say "hi" over and over again.

She has also stopped referring to Ben as dad and now calls us both mom.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last week Amelia's class performed some Thanksgiving songs for the parents. They usually do a big feast but canceled due to the H1N1 scare. She has been working on these songs all month and did a great job singing.









Amelia performs her songs after our Thanksgiving dinner:

Cubes. Again.

I can't get enough of these cube shelves in my house. They are a great way to organize and utilize a lot of wall space. A few years ago, we ditched our dresser and got the largest IKEA cube shelves and then modified them...you can see the results here.

I needed more storage and our living room had an empty space, so we tried out the cube shelves again. We made our own drawers again but this time we did a mix of paint on some and fabric on some. (Recognize the fabric from this project?)

It spices up the living room just a bit.

The before:


After: