Santa Baby!

I am so excited to have finally received the picture of my girls with Santa Claus this year!  It is a tradition that we take the girls down to the local mall Santa every year to get their pictures taken.  This year we decided to support a local cause to help foster children and support a wonderful local cafe by having the pictures taken at Little Garden Cafe.  This cafe is my all-time favorite!  Located on NW Blvd, it is so homey and comfortable with a kid's play area and beautiful views of Audubon Park.

Summer (the baby) was by far the most enthusiastic about the picture!  Guess she's just a Santa Baby!

Birthday Craziness

Aahh December... Not only is it Christmas time, but two of my three girls have birthdays in December as well.  It is always an absolute crazy time of the year!  My poor girls wish that they could "change" their birthdays to be in the summer.  There seems to be more cute birthday party ideas for kids when the weather is nice, but we do our best and using a lot of pink makes it feel a bit more like summertime. 

In total, 8 dozen cupcakes were made in less than a week for all the parties.  Gabby had her third grade party with cupcakes, then Gabby's family birthday bash at Grandma's house, and another party with her best buds (and more cupcakes).   My mom made the adorable house cake for our little family party. She took a cake decorating class about 25 years ago, but she obviously remembered what she'd learned!

Lily also had a birthday party with pre-school friends and family. Lily loves kitties and tea parties, so we just combined the two and made kitty balloons and cupcakes and tea party games.

   

And I Said That I Wasn't Going to Decorate This Year...

When everyone was busily decorating their homes and Christmas trees the weekend after Thanksgiving, I announced, "I'm going to be a Scrooge this Christmas and not put up a tree!"  Now this came as a shock to my family as I was one of those kids relentlessly begging my mom to put up all holiday decorations way too early.  I loved setting up all the Easter, Christmas, Halloween, and other holiday decorations with my mom and am certain that this was an initial sign of the love of displays yet to come.  So, here I am now, ready to forget about the tree and simplify this year due to a scheduled surgery this month and the lack of artificial tree (my husband's allergic to the real ones) and no funds to buy and new one.  The artificial tree that we've been using over the years is at least 20 years old, falling apart, and the last straw was the mold growing on it from the box getting wet!  Of course, I had to be subjected to seeing my mom's beautiful tree and I made the big mistake in sitting down one morning with my cup of coffee and old Christmas edition of Country Living!  I couldn't stand it, I had to decorate...

I love to use burlap garland anywhere that I can!  I used this on the mantle along with the vertical garland on the Christmas tree.

My daughter, Gabby, knows how much I adore bird nests and is always finding them for me (after the eggs have hatched, of course!)

Tired of all the usual tree ornaments, I made ornaments out of vintage playing cards that also help my 3 year-old learn her numbers!