Christmas Craftiness

I guess the title of this post is a little deceptive because my craftiness has been lacking lately.  As many of you know, I'm totally obsessed with Pinterest lately, so I have all of these cute holiday ideas and they are just going to have to wait until next year. My craftiness around the house has been limited to 2 things:

This idea is courtesy of my friend, Jamie.

And this is from an evening spent at Sunshine Glaze with my friend, Erica.

I did convince Eric to let me do something a little crafty for his team members at work.

I found these ideas on Pinterest or blogs I follow, but I'll give you the original source in case you want to use them. In the bag are Crock Pot Sugared Almonds & Walnuts. I tasted a few that didn't make it in the bags and they were so yummy! In the jar is Mocha Cocoa. I made the top label with the instructions and then printed these great tags from Hostess with the Mostess at Peppermint Twist Printables. It's not much, but it was fun to do and I can say I was a little bit crafty this Christmas.

Caiden's 18 month photos

In the middle of November we had Caiden's 18 month photos taken. We still use our favorite photographer Lindsey Rabon. She is great, so easy to work with and takes great pictures. It's always so hard to choose our favorites, but here's a few of them!

19 month milestones

There is not much to report but I wanted to make note of all of Caiden's new words.

pa-pa-dos= zapatos (shoes)
apple-da =apple sauce (his current addiction)
big = usually in the context of big puppy
poo-poo = he will let us know he's done the deed
moo = for a cow (and sometimes a pig)
baa-baa = for a sheep
roar = for lion
ee-ee-oo-oo = for monkey
bird
owl
eye

The other developmental news is we've adjusted his bedtime to 7:30 pm and so far this has helped him to sleep in a little more. We've only been doing it for less than a week but he's been sleeping in until after 6:30am! This is WAY better than the pre-6am time he was waking.

November wrap-up

I can't believe it's been a month since I posted last. I don't even really have a good excuse. My blogging app on the iPad hasn't been working and I haven't felt like sitting upstairs to write. I can summarize November fairly easily though. Caiden and I had lots of fun with moms club activities, I got sick just before Thanksgiving so we couldn't go to Iowa, and the month wrapped up with American Airlines filing for bankruptcy. Fun, huh? All in all it wasn't terrible though. Eric worked his butt off to make us a nice Thanksgiving dinner. It was  the first time for him to cook a turkey and it turned out great. Although I'm glad we've never had to eat leftovers for 4 days before.  I did miss visiting with family and all the extra goodies that Eric's grandma makes!

I'm ready to move on into December and enjoy the holidays. We've got the house decorated as much as possible with a toddler running around. Caiden has done pretty well not bothering the tree, but he does like to turn the lights on and off.

I put a small tree up in his room with some fabric ornaments that he got as a gift last year.

Here is our entry table with some random decorations- since he can't yet reach on top of it.

And my Hallmark village on display. My uncle, Dan, started a long time ago by choosing an ornament series to get us each year. My series is one of the longest running ones in the family. I think this year will be the 28th or 29th year!

I promise I'll do better posting in December!  Hope all is well with your families!