Decking Our Halls

It's time to do another December post, so how about I show off my Christmas crafts and give a few updates...

First up, here we have the Jones Family Christmas Tree for 2012. After hassling with real trees over the past few years and all the crap that comes with them (sticky sap, nettles getting in every flipping nook and cranny, watering the dang thing like a pet, spiders in the cussing branches!), I decided it was time to give in and buy an artificial one. No discussion needed. Jake was not the happiest camper and pretty much thinks I'm destroying the Christmas spirit, taking it a step further to make sure to point out every tree lot we drive by now to show me all those trees left out in the cold that don't have a home this year. Yes, his guilt trips work and make me feel bad for the trees that don't get to be loved and decorated! I try to remind myself that I'm actually saving a tree because the more artificial ones that are bought means less of the real ones being cut down...right? Supply and demand, people. Anyway, I love our new 7.5 ft beauty! The branches look real and the set up was easy breezy. Hallelujah! 

Next up, here is my wreath I completed for our front door. Wreaths are so expensive, and I couldn't find anything I completely liked. So, I decided to call upon my Martha crafting powers and create my own. I started off with a simple $15 wreath from Hobby Lobby that was just greenery and pine cones. I then added Christmas ornament balls to match my Christmas tree (the ornaments were extra ones leftovers from my tree), red and pearl berry sprigs with glitter, and brushed on fake snow to the pine cones to make them considerably more visible. I love the end result!


My next project was something for our outside flower box sitting on our front walkway. Remember seeing my post about it in the spring? Well, it's all bare and naked now and needs something in it for winter! For fall it was filled with pumpkins. So, hello Christmas signs! These turned out adorable, I must say. I saw a blog post on them and knew they'd be perfect. Once again, they match my Christmas colors I use on my tree, and I got to use the fake snow stuff again. It...is...the...best. It is comparable to whipped marshmallow. And funny thing about the blue candy candy stripe, it is painter's tape. I had planned to tape it off and color red over it, leaving it white underneath for a true candy cane stake, but once I got the tape on, I liked the color so much that I left it. Brilliant! 

I kept going on the crafting craze and added a reindeer friend for my wooden Santa, and a plain red and white box sign to help fill in the top of our entertainment center that I decorate. Just add in a full hand-painted mini Nativity set for Jake's parents (not pictured), and that wraps up my holiday crafts. Whew!

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel

Ugly Christmas sweater parties have been popping up over the last few years, and I have only had the privilege to attend just one...and it was only because I was the one to arrange it. So, you can imagine my excitement this year when I found out Jake's work Christmas party is ugly sweater themed AND my work party. Time to strut my stuff! If you could have only seen some of the Christmas sweater gems my nana used to wear. One in particular that stands out in my memory was an ivory over-sized knit sweater with sequin Christmas light bulbs all over in an assortment of colors...we're talking like 4-inch big a** bulbs, and I'd bet you a Klondike bar that it had shoulder pads. A true beauty. 

Unfortunately, as I was rampaging for it through mother's collection of closets she's taken over since being an empty-nester, I was deeply saddened to hear that my mom had gotten rid of nana's fugly sweaters shortly after her passing. Even all the sweaters I used to wear as a child are no-more: no more moose sweater, iron-on kittens in Santa hats, homemade button-up Christmas vest, and even my red velvet Santa vest and skirt from singing group days couldn't be found. If only we could've predicted this fab coming back in style, then all those precious items wouldn't have been given to DI. I am left only with a red sweatshirt my mom used to wear that has a plaid Scottie dog on it, which really, is pretty cute...I just wish I had a turtleneck and leggings to go with it. Regardless, I am excited just to finally be a part of ugly sweater parties and hope they are everything I dream of.

Here's to looking merry and bright, and wishing Jake and I could look this awesome!...minus the freaky baby goat.

 

Prepare To Be Amazed

During my travels the other night, I came across the most spectacular house of lights. It was so bright that it caught my eye from the street, and upon a drive-by investigation to check things out, I was completely blown away! Here's a simple home in simple Lehi turned into a Christmas Light Extravaganza, complete with their own radio station that loops a variety of Christmas music, all timed and choreographed to hundreds of twinkling lights...no, thousands...maybe millions. Ok, maybe not millions. But you get the point! It was so amazing that I dragged hubby, kiddo, and brother to the house later that night to show off my prize, then text a video to my mom and dad, and even announced the location to my Utah Twitter friends. Ha! Now the only audience missing is my blog, so why not post it! Done.

Carol of The Bells - Trans-Siberian Orchestra

Jingle Bells - The Chipmunks

PS...We have at least 3 more trips planned to see this house again with different people we've been recruiting. 

Thanks-birthday

Updates! I'm behind on my posts. How have I not posted anything yet in November?! Shame on me. Before this month ends (tomorrow), I'm fitting in a post or two. 

Post, begin...

Hubby Jake celebrated his birthday November 13th. He chose Rodizio Grill for his schmancy dinner outing, and I sure didn't complain...until afterwards when I was overly stuffed full of various meats, salads and delicious Brazilian limeade to the point where I thought my stomach was going to burst. Mmm, hungry now typing this. I love you top sirloin! It was a simple birthday celebration on a Tuesday evening, ending with presents and cake afterwards. Birthday highlights include: Jake liking 2 of the 5 shirts I bought (that's a big win for me); feeling awkward explaining to Gage that the Steve Martin Twitter book I gave Jake is a funny "adult book" so he couldn't be filled in on what we were laughing about; discovering that Nothing Bundt Cakes is a fabulous bakery and the marble cake with cream cheese frosting I bought for Jake was the most amazing cake ever and now I'm plotting one for my birthday; also discovering that the birthday candles I bought that advertised as having colored flames were full of BS, as clearly seen in the photo below. 

HaPpY BiRthDaY!!!

 

Side note: Jake did blow at all the candles out in one blow. What a champ! Additional side note: Clearly Jake is not turning 12 as the number of candles imply, so regardless of blowing out all candles, his wish might be voided...which might be good since he probably wished for me to smother him less. Not happening!

The other excitement November brings is obviously Thanksgiving. This year was definitely out of the ordinary since we were not able to spend it with my parents, who of course we rely on to do all the cooking. No, they decided to have a huge family party with my cousins out in Colorado at my Aunt and Uncle's new South Western adobe-style, half-million dollar mansion they just bought. Did I mention it's a half-million dollar mansion? Ahh! Why did we not go, you ask? Because dear sweet Jacob was assigned to work at the hospital on Thanksgiving!...only to find out at 5 a.m. ON Thanksgiving that he no longer needed to go in. Good hell. So, instead of rushing to pack our bags Home Alone movie style and venture on the 8-hour drive to Colorado, we stuck with our plans and prepared a wonderful meal for the two of us...no, wait, make that three of us because we were nice and invited my brother to join us, having pity on him for also missing out on the Colorado festivities. 

Our Thanksgiving consisted of the Macy's Day parade (I get emotional when they show Santa at the end...wow, pathetic), delicious feast complete with mac n' cheese, watching 21 Jump Street, and deciding to venture out into the madness of Black Friday shopping ending up a new 40" Samsung HDTV for our bedroom, a DVD player, new vacuum and power drill. Well worth our hour and a half wait outside in the cold with other crazy people. It ended up being a nice holiday, and I was thankful to have a wonderful hubby to spend it with. Now bring on Christmas and MY birthday.

* Happy Halloween *

I give special kudos to my Bloody Mary pumpkin...used a red candle. Maybe Frankie should've had a green one?

 Pretty much my favorite holiday!!...or at least second fave. Hip-hip, hooray! My Halloween will consist of scary movies (I've saved up my DVR full of them...thank you AMC Fear Fest!), making butter pecan cupcakes, picking up Cafe Rio for the hubs and I, and passing out candy for the first time in my own home. I am one happy camper. To add to my happiness, I also got to do my much-anticipated pumpkin carvings this year. Oh, what joy! Last year we were in the middle of moving into our house so unfortunately my beloved Halloween got skipped...minimal decor, no pumpkins, such a drag! I made up for it this time around with decorations up since middle of September and even spent $20 on a profesh pumpkin carving kit, compliments of my pumpkin pattern site I've used for the last 6 years, ZombiePumpkins.com...see it, share it, love it, thank me later. 

Zombie from The Walking Dead (Google bicycle girl...dare you). Been following the show faithfully for 3 seasons. OBSESSED!

Have a happiest of Halloweens, and enjoy my 2012 pumpkin carvings above and a super creepy song below that's been playing on the radio that will make you feel uncomfortable for laughing. Slightly disturbing, yet hilarious. If you don't laugh, I'm not sure we can be friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYFnY_1JO8U


 **UPDATE: Here is a picture of Gage in his creepy grim reaper costume and the coolest, spookiest house we took him trick-or-treating too. We've been waiting a year to go to this house since discovering it last year by our home.  

Oh, and I couldn't help but share my Halloween craft from this year. Absolutely LOVE how he turned out!!

K...the end.

A Jedi Birthday

On Sunday the 14th, Gage turned 9 years old!! His last year in single digits before moving on to a tween. Where does time go?! It doesn't seem that long ago that I was giving him a Curious George monkey for his 5th birthday while he was in footy pajamas...the days when he would still cry when he lost to Disney Bingo...the days when he hollered for Jake from the bathroom to announce that his poop was "creamy"...Sigh...

Anywhoo, memories aside...he's growing up now! To celebrate, we gave him the choice of going to Frightmares at Lagoon or having a birthday party at home with school and primary friends, thinking he'd totally go for rides, haunted houses and Churros. Right?! Wrong...he surprised Jake and I both by choosing to have a friends party instead. So late Monday night, I was scrambling to throw together a birthday party that would take place 5 days later. Luckily, I had a sweet Star Wars birthday party idea pinned on Pinterest, so a Stars Wars birthday party he got! I had successfully executed a Superhero birthday for him for his 6th birthday, so using a similar style, we planned a Jedi training where the goal of the party was to find Gage's missing birthday cake.

Here's the exclusive details on the party of the year....

Darth Vader and Yoda invitations.

Inside the cards read:

"Inviting all Jedis!

An evil emperor has stolen 

Gage's birthday cake!

Your Jedi skills are needed to track 

it down and save the Galactic Empire. 

Lunch and a Jedi training will be provided 

to sharpen your skills. Please joins us, 

and may the force be with you..." 

(Ehh...had I not had 15 minutes to throw the invites together I would have realized that "Jedis" is probably not correct since I think "Jedi" is already the plural form, and then I also would have maybe realized that the Galactic Empire is actually part of the dark side and that the Galactic Republic is the society that the Jedi fight for. Whatever. Don't be a nerd and call me out on it.)

Moving on...

I hung blue and silver foil stars from the ceiling for decor, and then the party of course needed light sabers since every worthy Jedi has one. Most Star Wars parties that I've looked up online have used actual light saber toys that are about $20 a piece, or homemade light sabers made out of pool noodles by cutting them in half and duck-taping the ends...I think they look retarded, and I'm not rich enough for the other option. Instead, my brilliant mind decided to buy foam swords from the craft store and then tweaked them into light sabers by cutting off the pirate handles, painting the remaining handle base black, duck-taping the handles to make them silver and then adding random blue masking tape squares and lines for buttons and what not. I think they turned out pretty fantastic...even if they aren't round! The kids didn't complain. 

Next up was the lunch menu I planned out. This might be my fave part of the whole party...ok, it was. Sure I could've just had boxes of pizza for the ravenous children, but how unoriginal is that? I snazzed it up a bit and labeled everything using the Star Wars font found online...

As you can see, menu items included:

Han-Burgers  (mini sliders)

Palpatine's Pizza  (bagel pizza bites)

Yoda Soda  (Sprite and green sherbet)

Obi-Wan Kabob-ies  (strawberries, pineapple, grapes)

Wookie Cookies  (frosted oatmeal cookies)

Chewbacca Chips  (barbeque chips)

Princess Lays  (regular chips)

UHH-DORABLE!!!

The party started off with lunch once all the hopeful Jedis arrived, followed by games, which Jake was in charge of because I was too stressed out doing the above mentioned things already. We didn't have time to plan an elaborate scavenger hunt like I would have liked, so instead Jake kind of winged it and planned games such as Fighter Jet making (paper airplanes), a Pop-Rocks eating contest (seeing who could keep the whole packet in their mouth the longest with no peeps), and Asteroid Dodgeball which was the fave of the party. We used balled chunks of tin foil for the asteroids and had the boys play dodgeball in our emptied-out basement, encouraging them to use their light sabers for blocking. They loved it!! Then, to tie in everything to finding the birthday cake, the winners of each game above were handed a clue to help discover the secret location of the cake...which was hidden in Jake's car trunk. At the end of all the games, the boys came together to read their clues and figure it out.

 

Eventually the cake was found and the boys acted as if they really did just save the planet, waving their light sabers and announcing to everyone that they passed that they had found the birthday cake. Victory!..and then of course, there's always that one kid who claims he knew where it was the whole time. Liar, liar pants on fire.

After cake and ice cream (Beaver Tracks ice cream!), Gage opened his buttload of presents, and that was it...successful birthday party completed! That meant time for a group pic of everyone with their light sabers before all the kids went home. It was a great, fun-filled day...and I needed a nap after.

Oh, and for the record, Gage LOOOOOVES my Shutterfly book we gave him saying it's his most favorite treasured present that he'll keep forever and ever, which really was a tough competition among all the assortments of Nerf guns he got. I'm beaming with pride! Hooray!! 

* HaPpY BiRthDaY Gage! *

R.I.P. Gage the Kid

Last Friday, Gage finally got to go to his cousin Aidan's birthday party he had anxiously been waiting for all week...a zombie themed birthday party! Oh yes. A party full of young, wonderful children dressed as dead corpses with rotting flesh. Bless their little souls. To prepare Gage for the big event, I of course had been looking into zombie makeup tutorials. I'm not sure which one I was more excited about: Gage going to a zombie party, or me getting to do his makeup. After a well-spent $4 on Halloween makeup at Walmart, this was the fabulous freakish fiend I created...behold, creeper Gage! And liquid latex? My new best friend. It created some nasty looking scabs. Bravo.

 Look how gaunt his face looks in this! Sick. Awesome.

At the party, as if all the children ghouls weren't frightful enough, there was the zombie buffet table to feast on that featured delicatessens such as birthday cupcakes topped with mini severed body parts, dry ice in the punch bowl that eventually resembled a bloody brain, chocolate pudding with Oreo pieces that looked like dirt itself accompanied by gummy worms to complete your compost dessert, and a giant green Jello bowl with floating apple and pineapple chunks, all of which these fabulous foods were displayed on a blood-stained table cloth. Yummy. To add to the creep factor, the lights were dimmed, picture frames in the house were tilted and had spider webs draped over them and eerie pipe-organ music played in the background sending chills up my spine. Seriously, some creepy tunage...not a norm kid's Halloween CD with Monster Mash and Purple People Eater. How...awesome...is...this...party?! Answer: so awesome that one of the little girls in attendance was terrified of everything (especially the life-size zombie cut out taped on the front door) and shut herself in a back room for the entire party to watch a movie. Poor thing. 

 

Here we have a pic of a few zombie party-goers...the rest were scattered around the house and would not follow my "gather around for a picture" directions. Grumble. But, if I may say so, Gage was by far the most legit. Thank you Walmart makeup! And Gage says, "Arghhhhuhhhh!"

P.S. Speaking of zombies...yippy skippy that The Walking Dead started on Sunday!! I've been longing for it.