Happy Jollydays!

That was this year’s giant-sized Christmas postcard (Ree left, Ro right), and here’s a peek back at our Christmas cards over the years (just because I got all nostalgic and went combing through the image archives).

Last year (2009) was the year that TubaDad and I got all ambitious and set up the white background in the garage. The pics and the card turned out really cute, but boy that was a lot of work. Ro has the red bow and white dress and Ree has the green bow and black dress:

In 2008, the girls decided Santa was A-OK. We got smiles with the man in red, and then had them sit near our red family-room wall and grabbed the two individual shots (Ro left on Santa’s lap and top, Ree right on Santa’s lap and bottom):

In 2007, my mom and I thought we’d jaunt over to the mall with the girls and get a quick, happy shot with Santa. Yeah... They sure were happy about everything else Christmas-related though. Ree in silver, Ro in red:

And 2006 was our first Christmas with Ree and Ro. We came home from China on Nov 4, and then went to see Santa a little over a month later, to the girls’ supreme displeasure. They switched places in the pics, so Ro is on the left in the first pic, and Ree is on the left in the second one.

Prior to 2006, TubaDad and I sent out detailed, humorous Christmas newsletters every year. Funny, we don’t seem to have time to do those anymore... Good thing we have a blog. Heh.

Have a wonderful holiday with your family and friends!

Two quick holiday crafts: Santa hat brownie bites and Christmas card tree

It was TubaDad’s first day off in I-don’t-even-know-how-long and instead of having a lazy day on the couch, we were hopping all day. Oh well, tis the season, right? And we got a lot done, even though we’re both bushed right now.

One of TubaDad’s big projects for the day was assembling the new kitchen island. We ordered a second one like we had in the other house and it is awesome to finally have it. He had great helpers in my dad and his buddy Clark (who came over with the girls’ BFF to drop off some presents and then got sucked in) – thanks guys! I unloaded six boxes into that island tonight – SIX! It felt so victorious to toss those empty cardboard boxes into the garage. Ahhhhhhh.

While the guys were hard at work, my mom and sister-in-law Jane had an edible craft project for the kids: Santa hat brownie bites. Jane had seen these on the Pioneer Woman’s web site, and they arrived with ingredients in hand. Fun, yummo, and a great project to do with kids!

To make the hats, start with brownie bites (either bake brownies in mini muffin tins or get a container of brownie bites from the store), put a strawberry on top of your brownie bite and pipe a circle of frosting around the base, then dot the top of your strawberry with icing. Voila! They used homemade brownies and melted white chocolate chips on the PW site (here’s how they did it), but we used store-bought brownie bites and a can of white cake frosting squeezed out of a ziploc bag with the corner cut off. These little babies got rave reviews from the kids and the adults and would be so easy and quick to make for a Christmas party.

The guys were still working on the island, so Jane and I decided to whip up another craft project, a Christmas Card Tree. I had seen this one in Family Fun and loved the idea of using something we had lying around in the garden to display all the beautiful Christmas cards we’ve received. Basically we took an old, rusty tomato cage:

My mom gave it a quick rub-down with steel wool, then we sprayed it with some old gold spray paint we found in the garage. (If your tomato cages aren’t rusty and half-submerged in dirt like ours, you wouldn’t need any spray paint.) We wrapped a cone of Christmas paper around the top, and cut a circle of Christmas paper for the base (it should be a little larger than the tomato-cage base), then hung Christmas cards on it using binder clips.

Cool! In Family Fun, they had a bigger tomato cage that had another row to hang the cards from (here’s their picture). So I improvised a third row by tying some ribbon around the top of the cone and hanging cards from that. I’m definitely going to remember to do this next year.

While we were working on the card tree, by the way, my little bro tried to take a nap, and I couldn’t resist snapping a pic. I know, I know, pesky sister.

Alrighty, I need to get some sleep because tomorrow is going to be crazy with all the last-minute Christmas wrap-up that we should have finished ages ago and didn’t. Enjoy the holidays, and merry merry from our family to yours.

PS: You’ll notice from the pic that the new house doesn’t have a fireplace mantel, which drives me crazy! Maybe later, much later, if we get brave, we’ll try raise it and add a mantel.

Any Scrabble whizzes out there?

The girls and I were playing Scrabble and had a nearly perfect game!! Well, nearly perfect according to our rules. There was only 1 tile left at the end of the game!

We play a heavily modified version of the game that we like to call Kid Scrabble. Here are the rules:

1. You can play your word any place on the board where there’s room and it doesn’t conflict with other words (try to put it where you rack up the most triple word points, double letter points, etc.)

2. The kids help me count up their score each time (I figure it’s good math practice)

3. If a kid hooks her new word up with an existing word, there is an instant 10-point bonus

4. Phonetic spelling (if the kiddo comes up with it on her own and knows what the word is) is perfectly acceptable

5. Help is perfectly acceptable, when asked for. If a kiddo says “I think I can spell xyz, is that how I spell it?” or “I wish I had an xyzletter to spell xyzword,” you can help them get it right or trade them for the desired letter (hey I figure if they know what they need to spell a word they deserve to have it).

6. A small treat is doled out every 20 points

7. When everyone is out of words, the remaining few tiles are combined and you all try to put them somewhere on the board

8. Then the winner (the person with the most points) is congratulated and high-fived and everyone gets a treat

In this game, the only tile we had left was a “U” – does anyone see anywhere that it can go? It was driving Ro crazy that we couldn’t fit it in, and Ree said “Just put it on the blog, mama, someone will know.” Hee! The blank tile on the left of the board is a “T” and the one on the right is an “S”.

PS: “jin” for “chin,” and “mace” for “make,” are the kid spellings in this game.

The Nutcracker got two thumbs up out of four (except for the tuba player, he got four thumbs up and tons of twinado hugs)

It was raining buckets this morning when I told Ree and Ro to run upstairs and get dressed in something warm and a little bit Christmassy. Because this afternoon TubaDad was playing in a Nutcracker, and they had center seats for the show.

This is what they came downstairs in. Cuties. Well they do look festive.

We grabbed a quick lunch at an absolutely dreadful Indian restaurant, then ran next door to a drugstore and picked up a few cereal bars for the hungry girls who (wisely) refused to eat any of their lunch.

Then we scoped out the ballet souvenir area and each girl picked the nutcracker they wanted to buy at intermission. Ro chose a glittery gold soldier dude, and Ree picked out a green and blue feather-tufted nutcracker. We gave TubaDad a quick hug and found our seats.

They hung in there pretty well during the first half, but got really squirmy and distracted during the second half of the show. I think they would have been perfectly happy with a really speeded-up one-hour show that didn’t have an intermission. Maybe other little kids just have longer attention spans than Ro and Ree. They did perk up anytime we heard the great tuba parts, though, and we had a secret silent hand signal that we did anytime we could hear the tuba, which was fun.

Afterwards, they said they were sleepy (which never happens during the day anymore), so I half jokingly said “take a nap!” and looked back not one minute later to see them both snoring away. Pity I was driving and couldn’t join them.

I grabbed the first pic with the D300, snapped the second and third ones with the cell phone, and took an over-the-shoulder shot (while parked) with the purse Canon. Hey, whatever’s handy, right? Anyhow, the progression of headbands in these pictures amuses me.

Hope everyone’s staying warm and dry tonight.

The cutest cupcakes I have ever seen (not even kidding)

We ♥ cupcakes in this house. I like them so much I even tried to have them at our wedding, but TubaDad shot me down saying “No way, it’s called wedding cake, NOT wedding cupcake.” Meh. Anyhow, the girls and I are nuts about them. I think it’s the deliciously high icing-to-cake ratio. Mmmm. Anyhow, when we saw these awesome reindeer cupcakes in the latest Family Fun magazine (which I really, really need a subscription to), we were 100% sold and couldn’t wait to try them out. Can you blame me?:

I didn’t think so! Our pajama-clad girls eagerly set about assembling their reindeer fleet.

They stirred with vigor:

They sampled with enthusiasm:

They snuggled on the couch and watched “The Flight Before Christmas” (their new fave Christmas movie, along with Prep and Landing) while the cupcakes baked and cooled:

They frosted with abandon:

They studied the picture and stuck on all the reindeer parts, and I’m telling you those cupcakes were criminally cute!! (Maggie’s is the top left, mine is the top right, Ree’s is the bottom left, and Ro’s is the bottom right):

We have a whole herd of them now, and hopefully will resist devouring them all so we can deliver a few to family and friends:

Ingredients: If you want to make your own reindeer cupcakes, you’ll need: cupcakes (any flavor for the cupcake and chocolate for the frosting), pretzels (don’t get the mini ones, you want the ones that are about 2.5” wide), red and brown M&Ms (I bought a humungo bag, picked out the red and brown ones and then ate the rest, sigh...), mini Nilla Wafers (this is important, get the MINI ones), white M&Ms that you can dot with black icing or sugar eyes (I used sugar eyes that I got on Amazon here), and Tootsie Roll midges.

How To: Then just bake and frost your cupcakes, stick on a Nilla Wafer for the snout, add a dot of icing glue and stick on a brown or red M&M nose, add two eyes, break a pretzel and put one big piece or two little pieces in as antlers (Family Fun tells you to break the pretzels in a very specific way that we were unable to duplicate – finally we figured out that it didn’t really matter what the pieces looked like, it was all good), use a third of a Tootsie Roll midge for each ear and squish the piece into an ear shape.

That’s it! You really can’t go wrong with these -- they are fun and delicious.

PS: I had to laugh at our somewhat-chaotic reindeer-assembly station. Hey no one ever said fun was neat and clean, right?

Urgent clothing help needed

Ro, Ree, and I are going to a chichi tea in San Francisco, and the girls told me tonight that they want us ALL to get something “REALLY fancy and sparkly” to wear. Oh shoot, does that mean we’re not wearing jeans? Yikes. This decidedly un-fancy girl needs your help. Does anyone have any clothing suggestions for me or the girls?!

If you’ve read this blog for any time at all, you know that Ree and Ro have a style that is somewhat, um... “unconventional” – yeah let’s go with unconventional. When they say fancy, they don’t mean a big scratchy ball gown. They’d be more likely to pair a silver sequined ballerina skirt with a festive green and red star turtleneck, some outrageous tights, and their sparkle high tops. To get you thinking the Ro and Ree way (heaven help us all), here’s what they looked like on their way to school today (and no, before anyone asks, it was not wacky wednesday):

So if you can find anything glittery, festive, pretty, Christmassy, layerish, outrageous, or spunky – anything that’s five-year-old fancy – please lay it on me! (Oh, and you don’t have to find the whole outfit, any one piece will help.) And as for me (Miss Boring Jeans and a T-shirt), I’m looking for something a little more simple, reasonably comfortable, and grown-up fancy. A much more difficult quest, I think, but we’ll see. Thank you!!

The halls have been decked

We are slowly but surely moving in the direction of Christmas. Whew. This weekend we hung up the stockings, put out our Christmassy stuff, and even decorated our trees. Well actually Ro and Ree decorated the trees. They hung every single ornament themselves. I just handed out hooks and brought up some festive Christmas music on the AppleTV.

First they decorated our downstairs tree. Little sweeties ooh and ahh every time the lights come on and they sit and just stare at the ornaments. My favorites are the yearly family pic ornaments, and the special decorations we got in China, and their faves are the plaster ornaments that they painted themselves when they were little.

Then they decorated their bedroom trees. We picked up some fiber optic white trees last year at Target and they love using them as nightlights during the holidays. If you look closely, you can see that Ro (in pink) was enamored with sorting her ornaments and hanging them by type. See the hilarious clustered groups of ornaments that are only at the very bottom of her tree? Hee! Ree (in blue) went for even tree coverage and careful even spacing of ornaments. Love both trees and just loved their comments like “Ooooo, this one is beeyooootiful” and “Wow, look mama, this one is the sparkliest” during the decorating.

(I made this collage clickable to a larger version, in case anyone’s dying to see the details. You can see a tiny bit of the girls’ new pink room and big-girl beds in the bottom right photo, I need to take more house pics soon.)

Alrighty, I think we’re getting there. The only decoratey-type thing that’s left (I think) is the hanging of the outside lights, and that’s kind of TubaDad’s area. Oh, and for the presents, I found the BEST new hiding place. All of Ro and Ree’s gifts have been secreted away in the refrigerator-sized tuba-shipping case in the garage. Mwah ha ha!!

PS: If you still haven’t done your Christmas cards and are panicking (like I was), check out Prints Made Easy. We’ve used them many times before for seasonal postcard mailings and used them for the first time this year to make Christmas postcards. They print large, beautiful postcards (5.5” x 8.5”) that you design (you can get super fancy and create intricate graphics for both sides, or just upload a snapshot for the front like I did) and then they will mail them for you to the addresses you supply in an Excel sheet. They’re fast, I put in our addresses on 12/6, and our fab Christmas postcards were printed, stamped, and delivered to the post office on 12/9.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Which, around this house, means the Nutcrackers are back:

Happy holidays, from our nutty house to yours.

Pajama day did not disappoint (does it ever?)

The little girls were ebullient all day. What’s better than to get to wear your favorite pair of pajamas to school? The whole class was still revved up at pickup time. So excited, even the boys (most of whom dressed up for spirit week, although naturally they were sporting Cars, Batman, or fireman PJs instead of fairy and princess ones).

Our heavily pro-Disney pajama gang was thrilled to wear their absolute fave PJs in the world (which just happen to be handed down from fab friends H2 and S2). Ree wore purple Tinkerbelle jams, and Ro wore hot-pink princess ones. It was raining but oddly bright behind us, so these quick snaps on the covered porch challenged (taunted?) my editing skills, but still make me grin.

The exposure on this photo was so messed up that I couldn’t get it to look normal even with editing (at least not with the hack editing I know how to do). If anyone knows a good way to do it, please share! Anyhow, rather than tossing the photo in the trash, I played around with funky artsy effects. So here’s one with Lightroom editing (higher exposure, more brightness, more blacks, some fill light, cooler temperature, a mask over Ree’s face to bring it out of the shadows, and then, as a last resort because the skintones still looked cruddy, the Lightroom Aged Photo preset). Hey, kind of like the final effect. Especially on the pink Polliwalks for some reason:

And then here’s another fun edit. For a kind of artsy look, I cropped the photo, pulled it into PhotoShop, and added a dry brush painting texture:

Hope you all get a pajama day in the near future (kidlets AND moms!).

PS: Notice the black dent in Ro’s forehead? We were looking up Rapunzel wigs online last night, and she got so excited when we found a primo 60” one that she turned to run out of the room and ran smack into the doorframe. Ugh!!! We held ice on it and fed her tiny marshmallows (bribes to have leave the ice on there for a little while).

I think they should just call it “Ro and Ree Day”

It’s Wacky Wednesday today at school (part of the fun spirit week), where all the kids are supposed to wear wacky outfits. And the girls had a BALL choosing theirs.

Oh my goodness, this day, a day of bright wild wacky fashion choices, is SO right up their alley. The ladies in the school office asked if Ro and Ree had picked everything out themselves or if I had helped. Ha! We all know the answer to that, don’t we?

Ro (left) said she wasn’t going to wear any pink today, which would be soooooo wacky. True. She mixed up her colors, legwarmers, and shoes with glee, then directed me to put the left side of her hair in a ponytail and the right side in a braid. Ree was up in the closet a long time, and came down with this funny ensemble, giggling and happily pointing out to me exactly what didn’t match with what. She decided she wanted wild ponies all over her entire head, so I think we got 6 of them in there.

Funny kiddos. They sure do love spirit week. Yesterday was “winter holiday” day, by the way, and they wore their adorable Christmas ribbon outfits from last year.

Tomorrow is (double squeal) pajama day and the girls cannot wait. Oh the plotting and rejoicing that is going into pajama day. I’m sure I’ll take a picture or two...

PS: Two of our giveaways are still open, the Hallmark Recordable Storybook (open till 5pm tonight) and the $50 HomeGoods giftcard (open till 5pm on the 29th). Good luck!

Do I need to explain this?

Or can we just pretend it never happened?

I'm sure TubaDad would like to forget all about it.

Ok, ok, here’s the brief and somewhat-painful explanation: TubaDad was bolting the office shelves to the wall (California earthquakes, ya know?) and accidentally drilled dead in the center of a hot water pipe. I cannot even describe what it looked like to run into that office and see hot water shooting all over the entire room.

Yada yada yada, the water was eventually turned off, an emergency after-hours-on-the-weekend plumber was called, and we are now the proud owners of a $503 dollar new pipe piece and a charming hole in our wall. The wall will have to be fixed and repainted (I guess paint isn’t designed to stand up to torrents of boiling hot water, go figure), we think the hardwood floors are going to be ok after frantic mopping, and we didn’t have any phone or internet over the weekend since apparently that little techno box wasn’t designed to be submerged either.

But Elfala and the girls sure got a kick out of it.

I guess we’ve entered the “gifts will be hidden” stage

TubaDad got home from a long trip to Singapore last night (hallelujah, there is another parent in the house again!!!) and we’ve both been lazing around taking it easy this morning.

The girls (who despite our best coaching simply do not have Saturday-morning-sleep-in-and-take-it-easy personalities) have been running up and down the stairs, amusing themselves with all the cardboard moving boxes, playing with their toys, and checking on us every few minutes. They already had breakfast in bed, watched some Disney channel, sucked down mugs of hot apple cider, did Sudoku with me, found Elfala (who spilled crayons all over the counter and wrote them a note!), and many many other tiring things.

TubaDad and I observed it all from bed. Just. Couldn’t. Get. Up.

Until...

We heard screaming, jumping, and squealing. Ro came running up the stairs just beside herself yelling “We have Tangled!!! Mama, daddy, we have Tangled!!!” Then ran back downstairs, leaving us a little puzzled. Oh crap – suddenly I realized that they must have looked inside the cardboard box from Leapster that I had carelessly left in the office and found one of their Christmas presents, the new Rapunzel Tag book.

Yep.

They were so happy we didn’t have the heart to take the book away and make them wait until Christmas. So I guess they just opened their first present on Dec 4. And I guess we’ve now entered the era when we can’t leave Christmas presents out in plain view.

Merry Christmas to all!

PS: If you’re ordering any Leapster stuff, I just saw a coupon pop up on my screen for 25% off, the coupon code is CONNECT25 and it’s valid thru 1/31.

Review and giveaway: Hallmark recordable storybooks

Does your family have a Hallmark recordable storybook yet? We do, actually we have two. Read our review here (and get a sneak peek at the girls’ new Christmas Wela Wear dresses) and enter our giveaway to win your own storybook.

The lost school portraits

I have been looking all over the dang place for the girls’ school pictures. We lost so many things in the move that will someday (hopefully oh please oh please) turn up, and it’s annoying, but par for the course, right? But Ro and Ree’s kindergarten school pictures? Now THOSE I was really ticked off about losing.

Well last night I found them!!! And before showing them, I know everyone thinks I’m nuts when I say the girls don’t look anything alike, but these pictures really capture what *I* see when I look at them. The differences of expression and the personalities that jump out are so pronounced.

Alright, enough crazy talk, here’s Ree, see the wide-eyed happy expression and sweet smile? I look at this photo and can almost hear her saying in her high voice “Mama, can we cuddle on the couch and read a story? I brought us a blanket to share.”:

And here’s Ro, see the big smirk about something (probably a joke she just cracked) and the way she looks a little tough/smug? I can almost hear her deeper voice saying “You think that’s fast? Watch how fast I can go when I put on my flying cape!”:

Funny girls. When I blow them kisses, Ree’s whole face lights up and she instantly blows a kiss back. Ro looks up very soberly, grabs the kiss in the air and presses it to her heart. They’re just so different, inside and out, and I love them both to pieces.

PS: Another thing these pictures tell me is that I am so far behind on laundry I may never catch up. Those cute little shirts they’re wearing? Haven’t seen them since picture day. Which means I haven’t gotten to the bottom of the darks pile since at least the end of September!!!!

PPS: Just dropped the girls off at school and their teacher said: “Did you hear about yesterday’s big controversy?” “Oh no,” I said, shuddering a little and picturing everything they could have done, “what happened?” “Both girls had M clips in their hair!!!” she replied. Bwah ha! Oops.

Well we finally got that elf on a shelf dude

Wela and BobBob recently went on a quest and found an Elf on the Shelf for Ro and Ree. The girls were tickled pink, named him Elfala (they’re a little ambiguous about his/her gender), and can’t wait to figure out where he’s hiding every morning.

We don’t do the whole “you can’t touch the elf” or “the elf tells Santa if you do something naughty” malarkey that it talks about in the accompanying book (I never have been good at following other people’s rules, heh). In our house Santa is just a fun, jolly guy who fills the stockings  and brings one great present on Christmas – there’s no spying on children to see if they’re naughty or nice, or taking gifts away, or delivering coal. And now Elfala ties into the fun by hiding somewhere in the house every morning. When Ro and Ree find him they get to add something to their Christmas lists and then Elfala magically heads out each night to make sure that Santa hears about the lists and also gets a chuckle from something good/sweet/cute that the girls did. I just grin to see them holding Elfala over the lists saying “Now see, Elfala, do you see what I wrote here?”

And it is AWESOME to see what they write on their lists. That’s the best part.

Can you decipher Ro’s list?:

In case the spelling is a smidge too creative, Ro is interested in the life-size Rapunzel doll, a map book with the whole world, the giant lollipop (we saw some of these in HomeGoods recently), recipe for my birthday (hm? I think she heard that Ree wrote recipe on her list and decided to go for it also), toy numbers (I’m a little vague on this one too)

How about Ree’s?

Ree would like a lava lamp, pretend kitchen to cook, recipe for baking cup cakes, blue hoppy ball, and leotard that’s blue.

Hee! Once these lists are done, they’re going in the keepsake box for sure. I heart these lists. In the meantime, it’s a fun elfin hide and seek each morning.