My plans were vetoed today – a combination of Leggos, lazyness, and tempting me with the beads and I caved… no nature centre for us! BUT we did manage to have fun and keep busy.

I do believe the beading is now an obsession, though not quite as badly as my stitching… with more beads, more time and some imagination it threatens it though! I ran out of light brown this morning, and am pretty much out of white working on stuff for the gingerbread house. I did, however, make one of 4 walls, 1 of 2 roof pieces, 2 of 4 chimney and a bunch of the mistletoe for under the windows.

This meant moving onto Halloween and a free standing window… which is where I ran out of black DOH! Though I did manage to finish the pumpkins that go in the window and am VERY happy with the result.

So I went back to the computer, printed out the papers to make the advent calendar and sorted out which of the pieces I could make with the multitude of colours I had left over and went nuts!

Next is puzzles! And then onward and upward I guess… poor Tux has not had much work done on him but Ken is promising me a bunch of new patterns for the week so I will have to tear myself away from the beads and return to my first love.

So our Thanksgiving was spent deep in the crafts – the boys played Legos for most of the day, and then in the late afternoon everyone but Gavin took a turn outside while Ken cleaned the yard of the summer toys. Trinity was VERY put out about getting dressed but once she was bundled up and outside had just as much fun as the boys… though a little slowed by her lack of thumbs in her mittens!

We made the same casserole today as last night with the same rave reviews. I figure I will make a fancy meal when we have something SPECIFIC to be thankful for in our own time. And instead invested the time with the boys to get each of them to make their very own Christmas ornament using the Ikea beads we had bought before we stumbled across the Perler brand. Less options and melts slightly differently but for the patterns the kids wanted to try out – perfect!

Gavin Hard at Work

Tonight with more red food dye in hand Ken was able to ice my latest cookies – we made these a bit bigger and threw in some cherry flavouring for good measure (Emanuel approved). I am toying with the idea of having the boys HELP me make another double batch of cookies tomorrow for Ken to ice green. They did enjoy helping the cookie lady at the John Walter museum after all!

Ken has an appointment with his doctor – a follow up one I think, tomorrow… I am hoping to get us all to the library – the boys want to play on the computers there and I want to find books on fall, pumpkins, and Halloween. Then there is the temptation of the local thread store and getting a couple more of my exchange gifts… I have ideas and hope they have the supplies I have in mind!

I may have fallen in love with the Perler beads but KEN has fallen in love with sugar and making candy… he is hoping to try and make all different kinds of candy – I am hearing murmurs of making his own candy canes even! Not sure how well that will go, but last night he had a blast boiling sugar and checking out the different stages… as well as making up more rock candy. I can’t wait to get pastry bags so we can start packaging up our hot cocoa and rock candy! He went out today and got some more food colouring, latex gloves and corn syrup… I am sure he has an idea what to do with all of that – I will just have to wait and see!

It was a busy night for phone calls for us as well, both my brother and Ken’s phoned as did Ken’s parents. I felt the urge and gave my dad and stepmom a call myself. So not much got done this evening leaving us a busy night now that the kids are asleep!

Table of Many Projects!