The highlight for today HAS to be our family outing to Ikea. Right now on Mondays and Tuesdays from 5pm to close they have a wonderful deal in their restaurant of 15 meatballs and mashed potatoes for 2.99. So under 20.00 and we managed to feed all 6 of us to near bursting (5 plates of meatballs, two garlic breads and a vegetarian fettuccine with one refillable pop). Trinity was in heaven with everyone sharing meatballs with her… soooo good!

Nom Nom Nom (Gavin middle)

Garlic Toast!

After dinner we did a tiny bit of shopping and used the money I had saved up and got the 4 chairs to match the table we got on sale ages ago – the BIG Christmas present for the family! I am so looking forward to a little and SAFE (for Trinity) table and chairs for school and crafts! Not sure where it will end up in the upstairs permanently but Christmas day it will be right there in front of the tree for the crew to find and that feels GREAT. Now to drum up either some pattern sales and donations OR some more commissions to be able to afford something nice for Ken.

Brr It is Still So Cold Ourside!

I want to share a link with you all – for the little ones… we have been loving the advent colour book and now I just printed off a Nativity Storybook for the boys to colour and fold. This UK site as a whole is TERRIFIC. We have found countless activities and print outs and I plan on using it for a long time to come!

Today my stitching has been focused on my Woodland Santa ornament. It is going a lot more quickly than the other and I am loving it just as much. I cannot wait until after Christmas when we are going to take an attempt at designing our own perforated paper paper-dolls.

Santa to Date

I have found something new  that I want to try out – making Lucky Stars in origami. I even found some paper on eBay for a really nice price… now if we could just sort out our credit card woes… they seem unable to fix THEIR mistake! OR get more money into my paypal account (working on that… or at least attempting to). I think tonight I will add that to my wish list on the site! I used to love origami.

So the boys glittered and glued and made up pretty baubles from the UK website today that tonight we are going to glue together to hang on the tree (two printouts of a round ornament decorated and then glued together with a loop of ribbon to hang). A bit of a mess but it was so much fun! Tomorrow I think they want to make some more candy canes out of beads among other crafty endevours though we DO have Trinity’s library program in the morning first.

Colouring Cards at the Table (Gavin left)

Crafting Free For All! (Zander right)

I am still a bit behind where I would LIKE to be baking wise… so many cookies yet to ice and so much to package up, but so much MORE fun than the shopping we usually do. Another silver lining to our year’s woes! So back to baking and stitching and ornament sorting I go!

Day 7 The Ever Needed Labels for Thread Bobbins!! Thank You!