Cookies for Santa

Mason and I made (and by made, I mean "sliced off") cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve-Day. He just loves putting the crystal sugar sprinkles on the top--and gets a little carried away! He was really excited about making them & loves to help out in the kitchen any day.



We made sugar cookies with kisses on top & good ol'chocolate chip.

Before bed, we made sure to put out the cookie plate. Mason decided Santa needed 6 cookies and instead of milk, this year he wanted to put out cranberry juice. Mmmkay.

Sporting his new Christmas pajamas

P. S. Santa, please don't forget to fill my stocking!

Cookies for Santa

Mason and I made (slice & bake, that is!) sugar cookies for Santa on Dec. 24th.
First, I showed him how it's done:

He started lightly coating the cookies with red & green sugar

And then got one in each hand and really started shaking them!

It works better if you stick your tongue out...

That night, we put a plate of them out with a glass of milk and a carrot for Rudolph.

Excitement!

BEFORE

AFTER (Christmas morning!)

Spring Cleaning, Decor & More!

It's hard to tell that it's Springtime today because it's SNOWING here! Here's what it looked like at 9:oo this morning:
It looks weird having snow on top of green grass!

At least the snow has not eliminated the urge to dust away the winter blahs with some Spring Cleaning! I've gotten some much needed cleaning done today and we've made some progress around the house over the last few weeks. Here's what we've been up to:

The day we returned from Tulsa was nice & warm & Mason got his very first ice cream from the ice cream truck! It's been driving around our neighborhood for a few weeks now (already!) and we finally caved. Of course Mason picked out a huge Spongebob with bubblegum eyeballs. He loved it but wasn't able to finish the whole thing. I tried to get a good picture of him holding up the ice cream, since it was a "first," but of course he wouldn't hold it up right and finally just made this silly face. I have no idea where he came up with this face, but that's the face he always makes when being silly.

A few weeks ago, after getting the new shelf in our office to match the new desk from my parents, I started rearranging all sorts of things & I ended up moving Mason's books from his bedroom into the office bookcase. They are so much easier to get at & I like having his books with ours. It also freed up a lot of space in his room for toys to be reorganized.

This is our Bradford pear tree (what's left of it after the ice storm-It's not too bad though) Early this week we had a tree service come out & top & trim a different large tree in our backyard (one that's right next to this pear tree) and it looks much better. Now we aren't scared of it falling on our fence, storage building or into the precious neighbor's pool. (that's a whole other story! LOL)

I even made (slice & bake) sugar cookies last weekend! In spring colors of course.

Now you won't believe this one. Drumroll please.....
I cleaned out The Junk Drawer! Don't act like you don't have one.
Ours was beyond unruly and embarrassing. I was sick of digging around through batteries, twist ties, tools, broken pieces off toys, etc. So I bought a huge drawer organizer at Walmart, sat down with the drawer and went to town. Here are the beautiful results:

Last weekend I also put away the St Patrick's Day decorations (what few I have) and brought out the Easter/Spring stuff. I was inspired by my friend Sherri and her post about decorating, the blog Southern Hospitality & one of my fave blogs to check out, Bless Our Nest.
I usually keep most of the decorations in the living room area, but Spring pastels don't exactly lend themselves to the RED in my living room, so I mostly decorated the kitchen this time.

The kitchen table centerpiece~I pulled a watering can vase from my baker's rack, a little fern/snail plaque, threw my coaster set on there just because they matched the SLAH tray, and finished it off with 2 little ceramic bunnies that I've had since I was little. (Well, one was mine & one was my sister's. They're now both mine!) Bwah ha ha :)

In the corner~Lots of SLAH (Southern Living at Home)stuff.

It looked a little plain, so I added this ivy & purple flower...

Another corner~a hydrangea arrangement I made years ago (with the tips chewed off from my cat. At the time I was so mad, but now that she's gone, I like it. Weird, I know.) And a little Dept 56 bunny pot.

More SLAH, a (fake) chocolate bunny and the green votive candle is a new one from Yankee~Vanilla Lime (YUM)

Onto the Living Room~ A huge egg candle (There's a blue one just like it on the opposite table)

Bunnies on the the mantle with another flower arrangement (I did not make this one)

A plaque I love with tulip candle holders (have them in green & orange too)

I made this ceramic egg in Kindergarten...

That's it for this extra-long post! Next Spring Project: Getting ready for a Huge Yard Sale! (wish me luck on that one!)
Happy Spring!

Footblob Cookies

Due to popular demand, here are the "footblob' cookies I made on Sunday in honor of (me not watching) the Super Bowl. For some reason I thought I could take sugar cookie slice & bake dough, roll it out, cut it with a cookie cutter & it would stay in that lovely shape. It didn't occur to me that they would spill out all over the place until I was sliding them into the oven. (I never claimed to be a baker.)
I let Mason help at first, but he was so tired (& so was I) that I went ahead & finished them.

These are the 3 that turned out OK. Mind you, I was slapping the frosting on pretty quick so we could eat them (Wayne's brother, Billy was over) & I could get out of the hot kitchen & get Mason to bed after a day with no nap (which is becoming the norm lately).

And here they are. The Footblobs. As you can see, I finally gave up and just put our initials on the last few.

Valentines Day (It happened, I missed it)

I have finally been feeling better over the last couple of days although I still have a small cough and a stuffy nose at night. That I can deal with, compared to how bad I felt before! I really kinda missed Valentine's day because that's the first day I was really sick. So here it is in a nutshell:

Wayne was so sweet and got me a dozen red roses, a gift card to Signed, Sealed, Delivered (my fave!) and a beatifully written, mushy card. I got him some cologne and some chocolate, which he liked. Mason got a card and some yummy cookies (below) from us, as well as some money and trinkets from other family members. I had planned to take his picture with his "King of Hearts" shirt on while eating a Valentine cookie, but just didn't feel up to it at the time. So now I'm contemplating staging the whole process! (Only a scrapbooker!) It's just that I have documented all other holidays and major events and there will be one missing if I don't!