Mommy Fail Alert

So I was getting Marshall ready for bed tonight and he lays on the bed and says "I can't wear those pajamas."  I had pulled out his batman pajamas... one of his favorites.  "Why not?"  I asked.  "Jason says that we need to wear our Christmas pajamas."  Jason is his teacher's helper at school.  He goes on to describe what constitutes "Christmas pajamas"...  ones with Santa Clause or snowflakes or snowmen or presents etc.


Every year that Marshall has been on this planet, I have spent the money on 1 or 2 pairs of Christmas pajamas like all good mommies do. 


Except for this year. 


This year I never got around to buying any Christmas pajamas... they went the way of my Christmas cards that never got sent out.


Christmas cards and buying Christmas pajamas never got added to my daily task list so they never got done!  It seems I need a task to update my task list!


So wish me luck as I leave work early on Christmas Eve to hope against hope that Target or K-Mart might still have Christmas pajamas left!


BTW... Freddy told me that I should buy him oreos.  I told him that if I find Christmas pajamas he will get oreos :)


~AKO

A Christmas Tree Lighting

Our town does an annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony every year.  They light up the large tree in front of the town hall in addition to have a petting zoo, performers, cookies and hot chocolate, and a visit from Santa Clause.  It was supposed to be December 5, but for the 3rd year in a row inclement weather forced the town to push it back.  The rescheduled date was this past Friday, December 12.  It was a little chilly out but not unbearable.

A nice perk that our town does is for the month of December they turn off all the meters to allow people to enjoy their holiday shopping and activities without being required to worry about feeding the meter.  A lot of the neighboring towns do the same.

We, of course, went right for the petting zoo upon arrival.  Marshall loved feeding and petting the animals.  There was also some goats and a llama.  My favorite was the little donkey.  All he wanted was for people to scratch between his ears.

Marshall's reaction when they announced that Santa had arrived and was in route...  he was jumping up and down.

And this is what I got when I asked them to smile... 

Around 5:40pm, with a countdown lead by the mayor, they lit the tree.  The holiday ensemble from the high school also play holiday music.

Once the tree was lit, you could hear the sirens.  Santa arrives every year in a fire truck with a police escort.

2 years ago, Marshall wouldn't go near him, but this year he couldn't wait to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas:  a semi truck with an airplane.  I was surprised that he went right up to Santa Clause and just started talking.  I couldn't get Marshall to smile because he was too busy telling Santa what he wanted, but I was happy to get any kind of picture this year.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be able to catch you up on my December Daily project, which I'm a tad bit behind on.

~AKO

December Daily 2014

This year I started on an endeavor to document our daily lives.  While I'm VERY grossly behind, I started scrapbooking in January using the pocket scrapbooking system.  If you're not familiar with this, you can take a look at BeckyHiggins.com to learn more.  You can embellish your pages if you want, but pocket scrapbooking is super easy in that all you need to do is drop in your journal cards and photos and you're done.

Anyway, I was introduced to the December Daily project about a month ago.  December Daily was created by Ali Edwards to document 1 story each day in December.  So, I thought, why not give it a go this year??

So I did some research (like I always do) and decided that in order to be successful at this I was going to need an all inclusive kit.  Otherwise, I would probably just buy a whole bunch of random Christmas paper crafting supplies and then never do anything with it.

I decided to go with 2 kits and use pieces from both of them for this years try at my first December Daily.

My first kit comes from Take Ten Kits by The Studio 29 Designs.  I subscribe to this kit every month and, in October, she offered a "Days of December" kit.  There was a small kit available at $10 and a larger kit available at $25.  Of course I had to get both of them!  As of the date of this post, the $25 kit is still available.

It is hard to see in the picture, but the kit comes with washi tape, sequins, flair buttons, chipboard designs, acrylic words, a stamp set, pocket cards, and a 6x6 paper pad.

To be honest, I was just going to use what I received from Take Ten Kits... until I saw the video from the Ali Edwards kit.  I hadn't decided on what kind of an album to use and her kit came with all sorts of awesome supplies AND an album.  You can still order a kit from Ali Edwards.  They are currently offering free shipping in November to US recipients and double the paper (while supplies last).

The kit from Ali Edwards comes with a stamp set, paper, chipboard sets, large chipboard gold alphas, plastic shapes, wood veneer numbers, puffy stickers, small alpha stickers, and more!

Unfortunately, due to all the delays on the west coast with the dock workers and such, the album hasn't arrived yet, but it should be here next week.

Next weekend, when I sit down to put together my foundation pages, I'll have more pictures of the individual pieces.  Everything is so neatly packaged up that I didn't want to take things out yet until I figure out how I'm going to organize them for easy access next month.

I can't wait to get into this project and share our Days of December with you!

~AKO

Pinterest Inspiration

We've start a little unofficial tradition where Marshall gives family members ornaments for Christmas.  This year I didn't want to just buy ornaments so I turned to Pinterest for some inspiration.  Now, we've all seen the Pinterest fails that have been floating around the Internet so I didn't want to do anything that was going to take a lot of time and be a huge disappointment if it didn't turn out.  Easy, right?

Well, I came across this ornament that looked like it would be pretty easy to do.  Now… to get a crazy 3 year old to cooperate!

I picked up some of the plain $6.00 ornaments from Target.  I thought blue would make a pretty background.  I also picked up some sharpie markers, white poster paint, and sponge paint brushes from Michaels.

As soon as Marshall saw the supplies he got super excited for the pending messiness that was soon to come.

Next steps were to slather on the white paint on his hands and keep him from touching anything! Easier said then done but we managed to complete the whole project with only paint on our hands and the ornaments.

After our hands were good and painty (is that even a word???), the next step was to mark up the ornaments.  We just set the ornament in the palm of his hand and he wrapped his fingers around it.  Since Marshall's 3 and has the attention span of a flea, I had to move quick for each ornament as well as reapplying paint in between.  I only made him hold onto the ball for a few seconds.  We had a few smudged patterns but overall he did pretty well with the whole process.

And here are our drying ornaments waiting for the final touches to be added.

I originally tried to do all of the embellishments with Sharpie markers, but the blue ornament was too dark so the black hats weren't showing up very well so I turned to some adhesive backed felt for the hats.  Otherwise, I used a Sharpie for the eyes, nose, and buttons.  The marker did each through the paint a little bit, but you can really tell.  It is possible that a different type of paint would be better suited for this type of project if you are really particular, but the poster paint worked fine for what we needed it to do.  And here is our finished product!

Not too bad for our first Pinterest project :)

Have you had any successes or fails at Pinterest project attempts?

~AKO

Christmas in Review

We didn't do as much as I had wanted as a family this Christmas season due to everything else that was going on, but I definitely wanted to make sure we made it for our town's annual Christmas tree lighting.  It was originally scheduled for December 7th, but due to bad weather was pushed back to December 14th.  The town we live in isn't big.  As a matter of fact, town hall is a very quick 10 minute drive from our house.  The festivities weren't huge, but it had a nice small town feel to it.

Everything took place in front of our town hall.

There was free hot cocoa and cookies for everyone as well as a small petting zoo.  They had two sheep, two goats, and a pony.  Marshall was beside himself excited about the animals!

At the end of the night, they had all the kids count down and lit the town Christmas tree!

Santa showed up to, complete with a police and fire escort!  I didn't get any good photos of that.  Marshall was so excited when Santa showed up we decided to wait in line to try and get a photo with him.  When we finally got to the front of the line, not only had the battery in my camera died, Marshall freaked out and wouldn't go near him!  I ended up with a crappy photo on my phone of Marshall reaching for the sucker they were trying to bribe him with.  Oh well... there's always next year!

Since we were in Michigan the past 2 years (to make up for the previous 2 years we were in NY), we spent Christmas on the East Coast this year.  We offered to host Freddy's family for Christmas this year now that we're in a house that has room for guests and festivities.  They traditionally do family Christmas on Christmas Eve so I spent most of the day and night before trying to get our house ready.  I didn't get everything completed that I wanted, but I guess it was good enough!

Here is what I was able to do in our dining room.  I actually got to use my holiday china and the fancy silverware that we got for a wedding gift.  Our dining room table only seats 6 so with 10 people to feed we had to add our card table.  In the future we hope to get a nicer table set that can expand to feed 10 - 12 people.

 

After dinner we opened presents!  Freddy and I got some gift cards that can be used to purchase things for our new home.  We also got a beautiful ornament from his sister that has our home address and family name on it as our "New Home" ornament.  Marsh, of course, was the center of attention and made out like a bandit!

 

 

I had already decided to not put out Marshall's gifts from us until that evening so that he would have stuff to open on Christmas morning.  Following in the footsteps of my mom, I was up until 3:00 AM wrapping gifts!!  But in the end it was worth it.  I fell asleep on the couch and when Marsh came down the stairs the next morning, I heard him say "Ooooooh.... pretty!"

Marshall doesn't quite get the Santa Clause concept, but he definitely gets how to open presents!  It took like three hours to open everything because he had to play with his new toy as soon as he opened it before he would open the next gift.  There were lots of cars, trucks, and musical instruments added to Marsh's toy collection that morning!

 

 

You can see the carnage :)  While I missed being with my family this year, we had a nice little family Christmas on Christmas morning.  It was followed up with pancakes for lunch and a nice dinner at my friend, Michelle's house.

 

I hope you and your family had a nice holiday and are looking forward to 2013!

 

~AKO



A Project I Just Might Complete!

The Christmas season was very disorganized for me this year.  It all started with Freddy's possible overseas deployment that wrecked havoc on our summer.  While I was preparing and expecting to move into our new house in September alone 4 weeks before the deployment was supposed to begin (Freddy was supposed to be at a training course during our scheduled closing and move), his deployment was cancelled a week before closing.  While we were happy that he didn't have to leave for 12 months, our summer had been pretty much ruined with various pre-deployment training requirements.  To the point where Freddy almost missed Marshall's baptism in August!

While we were settling into our new home, Hurricane Sandy hit at the end of October.  Freddy was deployed out to Long Island for two weeks while Marsh, 4 putties and I did our best to cope with chilly weather and no power.  We were lucky in that we sustained minimum property damage and only lost power for 3 days.  Others around our town were not so lucky.

Oh... and Marsh turned 2 the day after Sandy hit!  Last year we had a huge snow storm on his 1st birthday, which makes me wonder what next year will bring!

Anyway...  we were supposed to have Marsh's birthday party on 11/10, but pushed it back to 11/24 since Freddy had only just been released that same weekend.

So, Thanksgiving hit, then Marsh's birthday party, then all of a sudden it was December 10th and I hadn't even ordered my Christmas cards yet!!!  I finally got our Christmas tree and a few decorations up around the house, but never got around to putting everything up.  We still have a lot of boxes to unpack yet from the move and still trying to figure out where we want everything to live.  I did most of my Christmas shopping online (thanks free shipping from Amazon!!!) but just couldn't get around to getting things organized.

I had missplaced my Erin Condren 2012 Life Planner shortly after Hurricane Sandy and just couldn't get myself organized without it.  I finally found it last week and the first thing I did was write down a task list of everything I still needed to get done.

So, back to the original subject of this post...  I've been thinking a lot over the past couple of days about what I would like to accomplish in 2013.  The usual are on the list...  get fit, get organized, pay down debt, etc.  I usually end up with crafty type things on my list that I never seem to finish, but I think I might have found something that I might actually finish this year!

It is called a Smash Book.  Now, I cannot take credit for coming up with the idea.  I saw it posted on The Young Retiree today and was intrigued by the ability to be inpulsive with it.  I started doing some research on the web to see what was involved and found a whole world of "smashers".  I have an idea on what I want to do and it involves the purchase of this little guy...

Once I iron out all the details, I'll let you in on my plans!  I won't be trading in my Nikon anytime soon, but the Fujifilm INSTAX 210 Instant Photo Camera will allow me to get some shots instantly to add to my book.

Oh... and by the way... tonight is the last full moon of 2012!

~AKO

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas! I don't know about you but Marsh made out like a bandit today!

~AKO

New Technology

So I have finally taken another step into the current century and just acquired an iPad. My company has an internal rewards program and my awesomeness finally earned enough points for one so I figured why not. Not sure how I feel about it yet but it sure makes it easier to check in on things without the need to boot up my computer. Now the I have an iPod and an iPad, my next step is probably going to be an iPhone when I am due an upgrade in February.

Marsh and I spent about an hour playing with the Team UmiZoomi app tonight :)

A picture of my Christmas kitty taken with my iPad...if anyone can give insight on how to resize my photos when posting to a blog via the iPad let me know!

~AKO

Christmas Decor

So... Things have been crazy busy here these days. We are still not able to get into our offices in Manhattan after Hurricane Sandy. We almost got in today but it was cancelled at the last minute.

I can't believe Christmas is two weeks away! I am still slowly getting our decor up. We are not going too crazy this year but you can guarantee Freddy will be up on the roof with lights next year :). Marsh has been doing ok with it. Every once in awhile he will pull off an ornament to look at. Here are some pictures of what we have up so far. We are hosting Christmas this year so expect a highly decorated interior :)

~AKO

A Look Back on the Holidays

When I logged into Blogger today I noticed that this is my 100th post! When I started this blog last year I really didn't know what I wanted to do with it. I still really don't. I just play it by ear each time I sit down to write a post. I never imagined I would still be blogging after 100 posts. Yay me!

I have a few pictures to share from our trip to Michigan over the Christmas holidays to visit my family that I've finally gotten a chance to upload. We were planning on returning to New Jersey on Sunday, but due to the storm that buried the East Coast, we didn't leave until Tuesday. Marshall's schedule was all out of whack from being on vacation so we were up most of the night Tuesday night and didn't get too much done on Wednesday as planned.

We decided to drive so we had our little Focus jam packed full of stuff to make sure we had enough supplies for Marshall. In the end I think I overpacked but I figured it was better to have too much than not enough.





We weren't home for 24 hours before the spoiling of the baby began. Marshall didn't spend too much time out of Grandma Marshall's arms.





I had just missed the smile in this photo. Marshall has been smiling a lot lately in response to people talking to him. He especially smiles a lot after he's been changed. I guess he enjoys being in a clean diaper :)





Marshall also met his Grandpa Marshall for the first time. In addition, I also met my new Step-Brother and Step-Sister for the first time since my dad's marriage to his girlfriend, Sue, in October. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make the wedding since I was getting close to my due date.





My brother and sister-in-law's first Christmas in their new home.





And what would Christmas be without...





Super Mario Brothers!! And yes, that is my sister playing Mario while holding the baby.





Still on the quest for the smile shot. I was very close with this one!





And this was one of my favorite shots of the week...





All in all a pretty good Christmas this year. I'm pretty excited for next year when Marshall will be a little more aware of what's going on. We all got lots of cool things this year. Plus Marshall got to meet my extended family for the first time since he was born. Most importantly is that I don't think I'll have to buy any clothes for Marshall for a really looooong time.

Then all of a sudden 2010 is almost over. This year went by pretty quickly. I think, for me, it went by quick because I was pregnant for most of it. Marshall is 2 months old today and growing like crazy. I'm definitely looking forward to 2011 and watching him grow and learn new things. Something I'm going to do this year that I haven't done in the past is write down some realistic goals that I would like to acomplish in 2011. Then, at the end of the year, I'll be able to look back and see how much I was able to get done that I wanted to. So you can expect a New Year's Goals post in the next couple of days. I don't want to call them resolutions because I feel that calling them resolutions doesn't make them real. I mean, really, who honestly completes their New Year's resolutions???

Hope everyone enjoyed their holidays this year and are looking forward to 2011!

~AKO

Merry Christmas!!!

Marshall's first Christmas...





~AKO

Cookie Time!

So with money being a little tight this year and with the arrival of little Marshall I decided to make cookie packages for some of our family as part of their Christmas gifts. The cookie plan includes peanut butter with hershey kisses, sugar cookies, gingerbread men, and no bake cookies. I may try to do some fudge and peanut brittle if I have time. My deadline is Sunday so I'm going to try and take care of one kind each night. We'll see how this goes by the end of the week :)

And now for some updated photos of Marshall. He is now 6 weeks old and changing every day...

His brooding look...





Worn out after a diaper change...





And C-Lo hating us silently from above...





~AKO