Freedom! (for some)

So today was Mika's last day of school! Woohoo! It's been a long last few weeks and we're all really tired - really REALLY tired. We all need a break from stress! Everybody! Yes, that includes you, too! =)

Isn't this an adorable decoration? Every year, Holly gives us a holiday ornament of some kind - this year, it was this awesome reindeer! Love it, love it, love it! He even has some snow on his nose! =)

And remember how blowing bubbles used to make us all so happy? Here's a happy Marika (and her little tummy poking out) with one of her Christmas favors yesterday...

Rudolph Came to Visit

When Mika came out of her classroom today, wearing what she made in classe, we all inadvertently giggled. Of course, she wanted to see her little sister in it, too... =)

Nuttin' like good friends & good food...

Michelle had been planning to visit for quite some time, but finally... it happened! Daddy Dude and I had chicken that we wanted to cook with... had a craving for pasta... and searched the Food Network website for ideas. We decided to make Chicken Carbonara, a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis. It wasn't a recipe for the faint-of-heart, simply because it had lots of cream, cheese, egg yolks, and pancetta.

Now, I have to admit - I'm a very lucky girl who is married to a fabulous man. While I was cleaning the house, he started dinner all by himself. The girls helped him a little bit and voila! Our dinner was ready minutes after Michelle arrived in the pouring rain. It would have been nice to have fresh herbs (not his fault) but the dish was delicious! A real winner! (and as Marika would say, "Yummers!")

Michelle has been stressed by graduate school (as she is supposed to be - if you're not stressed, you must be doing something wrong!) so I thought she might find it relaxing to do a little bit of baking. I'm not a baker, but she LOVES it, so I made her give me a lesson cookie-cutting. No, I didn't make her do ALL of the work (that wouldn't have been nice!) but I tried to learn as much as I could from her.

Here's Michelle, demonstrating her cookie dough rolling technique ("use flour!").

And now here's everyone (but me) cookie-cutting... (it's not as easy it looks!)

I tell ya, the amount of work is (grossly) inversely proportional to the yield!

Voila! Here are some of Michelle's iced creations. Pretty, aren't they? So festive!

The only reason I had been baking sugar cookies, too, was to get a trial run of a new recipe, since I was scheduled to bring in 52 un-iced sugar cookies to Mika and Marika's classrooms on Thursday (tomorrow).

On Monday, I was told that the cookies HAD to be store-bought, that the school was enforcing their policy. *sigh* So today, I went to buy 5 dozen un-iced sugar cookies from Albertson's. Do you know what the really scary part it? The label on the bakery carton said that they should be eaten by 1/23/10! And I was worried about them being fresh enough... sheesh!

You know somebody's a really good friend when they come to visit, even though they know you have a soccer game the next day - and they agree to come. Michelle even offered to take pictures, which was really nice of her. I normally hate being photographed, but I didn't have ANY pictures of me playing soccer at all, even in high school.

I like this artsy picture of Mika with the soccer ball... we were lucky to have beautiful weather (it'd been raining the 7 days previous).

This picture was on my camera and taken from far away (so it's a little blurry), but I thought it made me look pretty cool... even though this girl kept pushing and knocking me on the ground. *sigh*

And here are the pictures from Michelle's camera. She made me look good, didn't she? Thanks, Michelle!

So it was grand to see Michelle... but sadly, we probably won't see her again for another few months, since she'll be buried in grad school stuff. Wow, am I glad to be done with all of that! =)

And last but not least... since we knew the rain was coming, I had purchased some umbrellas for the girls. Marika was rather miffed that the store didn't have any "cute" ones (as the 99-cent store usually does), so the compromise was to give them a bunch of colored Sharpies and let them decorate their own umbrellas. They enjoyed doing that, but I have to admit - I was very surprised that they only wanted to draw little things and only on the very top part of the umbrella. What's up with that???

Our first visit to a Christmas Tree Farm - ever!

My family always celebrated Christmas with an artificial tree. Now, you have to admit, fake trees are mighty convenient to use - although, there were a couple of years when my dad would simply shove the tree in another part of the house until the next Christmas - I kid you not!!!.

Still, I'm intrigued by the culture of using live trees at Christmas and Marika, of course, loves field trips, so we were both psyched to visit a local Christmas tree farm last week.

We got the "royal tour", which included the Honey House, a hay ride, a maze run (did no one else see The Shining?), and the viewing of an assortment of animals. I actually included this picture of a cow, because she was so beautiful. She's an Angus, which I assume is the beef cow... and my, she looks fabulous compared to the dairy cows I used to rub elbows with (when I was helping out a veterinary entomologist) or even the cows that occasionally chased my friend and I when we were collecting insects on their turf. Ah, but I digress...

The kids may have enjoyed the train more than anything else. They would have stayed there for hours, if we had let them. What IS it about trains and little kids???

At the very end, our tour guide chopped down a tree for the kids to bring back to their classroom. This hurt to watch because in Japanese folktales, all trees are believed to have spirits living within them. *sigh*

And this is my favorite picture... isn't she cute?

For those scrappers in search of free tutorials and inspiration...

You might want to check out Tim Holtz' blog, if you don't already do so. For the last 2 weeks, he has been doing 12 Days of Tags. His work is incredible and amazing and his tutorials appear to be quite detailed.

I wanted to post pictures today, but DaddyDude borrowed my camera (I hadn't downloaded this weekend's pictures yet) to use at work today... *sigh*... I feel a little lost without it... =(

And now, back to baking more Christmas cookies... two more snowmen will be delivered to their new homes tomorrow... =) It's a little strange to realize that this is the very last batch of Christmas cookies to bake for 2009. Whew! I thought I'd have to bake a few batches of sugar cookies on Wednesday, but as it turns out, the school is enforcing their rule of "store-bought only". Marika and I have to visit a different grocery store tomorrow to order un-iced Christmas sugar cookies... but admittedly, this is much easier than stressing out about rolling out the dough properly and frantically cookie-cutting (more on that later!).

And by the way, no, I still haven't decided what to do for our Christmas cards. We are getting dangerously close to buy store-bought cards for the first time in years (*gulp*)...

It's that time of year

The inside of the house was decorated last week. This makes the girls very happy, as well as the electricity company... =)

Today was the day Daddy Dude delivered his Christmas goodies to his coworkers at his clinic. This is one of my big crafting projects for the winter season, something that I plan out several months in advance.

I purchased the template for the box from here (there are a couple of freebies you can download, if you want to try things out first). I was very pleased with the template, especially since it came with a 19-page booklet containing instructions and ideas. The patterned paper (Making Memories) was purchased from Tuesday Morning (along with the red cardstock), which I have become addicted to, thanks to my friend scrapper al. I even got a Pink Paislee paper pack the last time I was there... =)

I think I started making the snowmen back in August, doing little bits at a time. You can purchase the pattern here (Holly showed me how to modified it from a bell to an ornament globe). The felt embellishments on the hat were made from QK dies (did you know they'd cut through felt? I didn't!), topped off by a dab of gold Stickles.

The cookies were a recipe we discovered last year in Relish Magazine - I know they sound a little weird (there are pretzels and potato chips in there) but they are really tasty!

And finally - what is it about pinatas that makes kids go so crazy? Check out their expressions!

More pictures of the nieces...

I can't help myself, I have to post more pictures of my nieces and their visit. =)

We didn't make the babies cry! It wasn't our fault! Really!!!

Marika really surprised me, with how careful and gentle she was around the babies - it made my heart melt! A couple of years earlier, if I ever held another baby, she'd be really jealous and freak out. My, what a difference time makes!

The weather was actually really nice for a couple of days (80+ degrees!) so Misao had fun sidewalk chalking with the girls... too bad there were so many cars on the driveway or she could have decorated the whole thing! She likes a big canvas!

I brought the butterfly nets out for the girls to use. They seemed to have a good time, what do you think? Apparently, the butterfly nets were also very useful for collecting leaves... =)

And last but not least...there's that family gene in action again... the ability to fall asleep whenever and wherever! In all honesty, we saw that taking care of twins and a toddler was incredibly demanding. I don't know how they did it! Uncle Ken was soooo tired... even with the two girls screaming and jumping around in, he was still able to pass out...!