Happy Easter!!

Love, love, love me some Phil Wickham!!  Enjoy!

Hallelujah!!

Valentines Day 2011

Yes, Yes, I am still here.  I have just been busy sewing panel Kozys in whatever spare time I have (where I have energy to do anything ;0)  SO much I want to blog about and like NO extra time!  There are a million things I want to do and I am almost 38 wks YIKES!!

Anyway, I made a bunch of stuff for Christmas (necklaces for the neices, and silk/velvet purses) but I forgot to get pictures.  I did get pictures of the soap we made, I'll post those soon.  

I did manage to take some pictures of some of our Valentines creations (and we made Valentine lighted Jars, but no pictures).

I was hoping to post these before V-day but, well a week late will have to do.  We had a Valentines gathering with our local families for natural living group so we made cards and treats to share.

First my favorite of all . . . . . dipped pretzels

I thank my friend Barbara for these.  She gave us some for Christmas.  I was like eeeh, pretzels are not my favorite . . . that is until I took a bite!!  They have a layer of CARAMEL and then chocolate!  They are like a candy bar . . . SOOOOO good!!  So of course I had to make some.   Yes, I used icky food coloring to make them more festive.  I'll do another post about how to make them (super easy).

Then the kids got to making Valentines for their friends and Piper and Ever wanted to make bags to hold their Valentines.

Piper and Ever love doing crafts the most

We made butterfly valentines, another idea I got from Family Fun.  We made them differently though.  I cut out butterfly shapes from construction paper and the kids decorated them with markers, glitter, stickers, etc.  Then I taped a roll of smarties in the middle.  Fairly easy and quick and they really enjoyed it.

Here are some Valentines with the bags that Piper and Ever made (just took gift bags, covered with construction paper and made faces etc.).  Pipers is of course Pikachu (pokemon for those of you who don't know, but I am sure most of you do ;0)  She did the whole thing herself, and she helped Ever with his heart man.

Hope all of y'all had a wonderful Love Day!!

Lighted Halloween Jars . . . and other spooky stuf!!

We made these a few wks ago and I have been trying to get them up here to show y'all but I am still having a hard time finding time to blog.

I got this idea last year when I saw the lighted jars at the Not So Idle Hands blog HERE  SO CUTE!!  But alas, I was too late for Halloween, so instead I made Christmas Jars.  Some of you may remember them, I blogged about them HERE.  They turned out great and the kids had a ball making them.  In fact we are going to have to make more this year because we gave a bunch of them away as gifts last year.

I was very excited though as Halloween came around again so we could do some Halloween jars.  We made them the same way we did the Christmas jars.  They are pretty easy to make, but beware they are a tad time consuming and can be messy.  Though I was doing them with 4 kids so that will take longer.  My oldest two (10 and 8) could do much of it themselves, I helped with cutting and stuff, but the younger 2 needed some help with the Mod Podge. And since you have to do multiple layers it does take some time.  But it is worth it!!

I'll go over the instructions again for those interested.

Materials

• Glass Jars (I save all our peanut butter, pickle, pasta jars etc. so we never have a shortage of these)
• Tissue Paper (I chose white, orange, black, and green for Halloween, but you can also find holiday paper that you can use as well, then yo don't even really have to decorate it, just decoupage it on)
• Mod Podge or some other type of decoupage 'glue'
• A brush to brush the glue on
• Construction Paper or anything else the kids may want to decorate it with (we have used glitter, stamped paper shapes etc.)

Decorating

First you want to cut your tissue paper in strips, then cover your jar with a layer of Mod Podge.   We usually cover just a small section at a time, applying the Mod Podge then the tissue paper till the whole jar is covered.
To make the pumpkins more 'pumpkin like' we did the strips vertically but in the past we have done them horizontally too.  For some of the other jars, I just let the kids put the strips on however they wanted.

 Piper, Arah and Ever adding tissue paper to their pumpkin jars

(notice the dummy hanging from the rafters of the porch in the window behind Piper . . . 

Charlie made this with the kids just a few days before . . . he is creepy!!)

 Once you have the whole jar covered with the paper (and have trimmed off the excess on top and bottom) do another generous layer of Mod Podge over the whole thing, making sure to cover all the tissue paper with a protective layer.  It is delicate so take care (and tell your kids to be extra gentle).

Once you have done that, then decorate as you wish.  Each of the kids designed their own pumpkin face, then they got to do another jar however they  liked.

Piper and Ever putting tissue paper on their 2nd jars.

Piper (8) drew and colored some black cats (one she colored very dark black, the other she drew on black construction paper and cut out) and we put them on top of her purple jar (with black construction paper stripes on top and bottom) for a silhouette.  Xian (10) did a green Frankenstein.  He used black construction paper for the face and hair.  Arah (6) drew a lot of ghosts and things that he thought were 'scary' out of plain white paper, and then cut them out and put them on his purple/black striped jar.  And Ever (3) made a purple jar too, but he added squares of other colors of tissue paper over that along with a few cut outs.  I made the white ghost.
Make sure you do a coat of mod podge over any additions to your jars.

You can use anything to light them.  Being glass, candles will work.  You can also use battery operated tea lights (I have heard that you can get them at the dollar store 2 in a pack).  I have them all lined up so using a string of lights is easiest.  Usually I will use white but apparently those were like in the bottom of the Christmas box and not so easy for Charlie to get, so we used multicolored instead and they worked fine.

For some reason my pictures of these jars didn't turn out as good as the ones I took of the Christmas jars last year, but you get the general idea.

We had a Halloween party with our local natural families group (love those guys!!).  The kids always have a ball!  We had pinatas, crafts, games, lots of goodies (we made halloween shaped sugar cookies).  Thank goodness we have friends with large houses and generous hearts who are willing to host our bi-weekly gatherings and potlucks (which can sometimes get VERY large).

 Xian (monster) Arah (ninja) Ever (lake monster) Piper (witch) and Thrace (giraffe) 

and our homemade skeleton man (made with PVC pipes, we got info from the Family Fun website)

Hope YOU have a great Fall season!!

Happy Valentines Day!!

Then

 1993-1994

  

  

 1995-1996

  

Married in 1998

NOW

 

 2003

2005

 

 2007

 

2008

  

2009

  

 

 5 kids and counting

Much LOVE to you this Valentines Day

Piper and Xian 2007

Valentines Day Stuff

Our local natural families group had a valentines party last week.  I have been in a crafty mood for the last few months so of course I was wanting to do some cool crafts with the kids.  I really like the Family Fun website because they have cool recipes and crafts for each season and holiday.  It is a great place to get ideas and that is where I got all of these.  I also get the family fun magazine (it was a super cheap subscription deal) and that helps to spark my creativity too  . . . and believe me, I need it as I feel my brain doesn't function well most days!!

So we decided to make some valentines, some boxes to hold them and then some treats.  We don't eat a ton of junk or additives and food colorings etc. but on holidays and special occasions we go all out and I try not to feel too bad about all the crap we are eating (note, I said TRY, I always feel guilty as I would love to be sugar free . . . I just like it too durn much).

I got some sucker sticks and we made chocolate suckers.  I used milk chocolate and white chocolate chips.  I died like 1/2 of the white chips with (that icky) red food coloring to make pink.  All I did was take chocolate chips, melt them, put them in a sandwich bag, snip off the end and make heart shapes on top of the sticks.  OK it seems easy but try making free form heart shapes out of melted chocolate in a sandwich bag with a wiggly baby on your back and you can imagine that my hearts looked more like blobs, LOL!!  Doesn't' matter though, they all taste the same!

 

Ever in the picture at top, and Piper and Ever here decorating the suckers.

I did pop them in the fridge to harden, but after that they held up really well at room temp.  I did not add anything to them, just used the regular melted chips.

  

We then made some valentine boxes to hold the kids valentines they would get at the party.  We used tissue boxes.  The kids painted them first, then I sprayed them with a clear coat of poly (water based).  I was concerrned about the paint rubbing off since the cardboard of the boxes was kind of shiny.  Then they decorated them with stickers and stuff.  We used felt for the teeth and googly eyes.  I used a glue gun to glue on the teeth and pipe cleaners. 

  

Xian made his box all himself (left).  He made that plant thing from the Super Mario Brothers Nintendo games . . . shoot I forget what they are called.  He covered it with construction paper.  The only thing I did was the teeth. 

Ever's is in the middle.  It is a monster.  He did all the painting and decorating himself, I only did the eyes and teeth.  I thought it was great considering he just turned 3!  But he loves to paint.

  

Of course Pipers is the cat (she loves cats).  I had to help more with this, cutting out the ears/tail and teeth.  But she painted the whole box orange (had to do like 4 coates) and even gave him stripes.  She modeled him after Starlight, our orange kitty who disappeared a few months ago :0(  

And then Arah's monster on the right below.  Again, he did it all himself except the antenna and teeth.  

They were all very particular about how they wanted them to look. 

  

They worked perfectly for holding their valentines!!

For our valentines to give away I cut out several dozen hearts in a few different colors (red, pink, and purple).  I gave each kid like a dozen hearts and crayons and let them color/decorate them, then I threaded them over a lollipop stick to make flowers.

You can see them in the kids hands below.

Happy new year!!

We had our annual family new years party at Kozy this year.  The whole fam on my side (parents, sisters, 14 grandkids) all go to the Kozy headquarters and have a party, food etc. and then we spend the night.  The kids have a ball. They bring their newest gifts (this year we had lots of scooters, and RC cars . . . last year it was skate shoes and video games). 

We usually pitch tents or get out the air matresses. My sister and her husband had just come back from a few days at the beach so they had their camper and my dad insisted that they just back it on in the bay door (cargo dock or whatever it is) and so they did!

 Crazy no?  Needless to say they slept pretty comfy in there!

And we have a huge place here, so the kids still had plenty of room to skate around and play and stuff (we could probably fit 8 of those campers in here!).

I am having camera issues (meaning that my battery charger died and I can't afford a new one right now so I am conserving power) so I didn't take as many pictures this year.

But I DID have to get a recent picture of the 3 newest babies

Esther is 6mo, Jackson (kristi's baby) is 3mo and Thrace just turned 7mo.

I have eaten WAY too much junk since Thanksgiving.  It seems to take me a month longer after each baby for my body to get back to normal.  I can fit into all my clothes well before then but I was just starting to finally look like my old self at around the 6mo point.  However I think I have regressed with all the eating in the last month, LOL!!  Time to either cut back or break down and exercise (I know, I know, I should do it anyway for my overall health!).  I guess now is as good a time as any to start huh?

3 Christmas greeting from the kids!!

Well I had this scheduled to post on Christmas day but for some reason it didn't. So I am posting it now (late).

The kids wanted to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and a great holiday season!!

Merry Christmas from my elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Who can resist a disco

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Yee-Haw . . . Merry Christmas

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Homemade Felt Coasters

The kids made cute lighted jars as Christmas gifts this year, but I saw this idea for making felt coasters in the Family Fun magazine and I really wanted to try those too.

The article called for a roll of cork and self stick felt.  Well I didn't find either.  So I used these cork tiles that I found at Walmart in the office section and we used regular felt squares (super cheap at JoAnns or Walmart) and I used a hot glue gun to glue them on.  Though they weren't hard to make, it would have definitely been easier to use self stick felt.

I did most of the gluing (hot glue is called HOT glue for a reason) but I did let Xian glue some.  I also did most of the cutting of the felt because you kind of have to be precise.  I let Piper put the pieces of felt on the cork but for Arah and Ever mostly I just let them pick out the colors (we tried to use colors to match the decor of the family we were giving them to) and the order of the felt pieces as I placed them on the hot glue and then they patted them down.

 We did 4, 4x4" coasters per family, and to make the wavy lines you have to cut 4 pieces of felt (I made the pieces a little larger than 4x4" each) stacked on top of each other . . . then you can mix and match the colors on each piece of cork and the lines match up because they were all cut the same.  I did wavy lines on the first few but then got tired of them and just did straight lines (of varying lengths) on the others (it was just easier).   Then some I cut into circles using the top of a cup as a guide.

I really liked how they turned out!

Lighted Christmas Jars

OK now that our family Christmas party is over I can post about some of these!

I saw these really cute decorated Halloween jars after Halloween.

I was so bummed that I had missed my chance to make them, but I figured that hey, we could just do Christmas jars instead!! 

I really thought the kids would enjoy making them, so we made some for us and then we decided to give them as gifts to family.

I keep most of my glass jars, and it works best with jars that don't have raised writing on the sides (like Mason jars do).  The natural peanut butter jars, pickle jars etc work great.  Different sizes are cool too so even smaller jars like jars you can get mushrooms in or stuff like that are cool, even baby food jars may work if you put little tea lights inside. 

I used tissue paper like in the link above, well, except for the black, that was a streamer (note, the streamers are NOT as sturdy as the tissue paper and rip VERY easily).  And you can get some cool printed Christmas type tissue paper too. 

So as in the link above.  I used Mod Podge (which you can get at any craft store, or even Walmart) painted it on the jars and then laid the tissue paper on in strips (some we did horizontal, some verticle).  Then we went back over it with another coat of modge podge and while it was wet the kids added their own decorations.

The older kids could do the whole thing themselves, for the younger 2 I helped with the glue and/or the strips.  With some I just cut a bunch of squares of paper and let them just stick them where they wanted.   They even added glitter to one.  We used those little shaped hole punches to make shapes to add, and they drew pictures that we cut out and glued on there. They turned out REALLY cute and the kids enjoyed making them (though it was a bit messy and time consuming).

After you are finished, don't forget to do a final layer of Modge Podge

In the end we had a reindeer and snowman jar, a pokemon and Kirby jar and a fish jar.  Then some other random christmas themed jars to give away as gifts.  I decoupaged their name and age and date on a piece of paper on the bottom.

You can put Christmas lights inside them like I did, or they also look really nice with a candle inside too.  A friend says they have little battery operated tea lights at the dollar store, those would work really well.

They are perfect for a window sill and make great handmade gifts!!

Our family Thanksgiving

I finally got the family pictures from my dad!!  Here is the whole Davis (my maiden name of course) clan!!

Well, minus Karla and James as they couldn't get the time off to come up to VA this year (after having just taken 2 wks off for their honeymoon).

Left to Right

Chris (Kristi's husband), Esther (Kim's daughter), Gingie (my mom), Kristi and Jackson, Papa (my dad), Kim and Shiloh, her husband John and next to him G.G. (my grandma) Kim's kids Sarah, Selah and John Wilson, me and Thrace, Charlie, and in front of him Xian, Piper, Arah and Ever, Rodney (Kathi's husband) Roman and Shaefer, and Kathi holding Charlotte.  Oh and lets not forget the dogs.  Kristi's dog Banjo, Ptolemy and Kathi's dog Polly.  We are missing Kims and mom's dogs.

We had a great time as usual!  Lots of great food (I wish I had gotten a picture of the spread, we have amazing food!!)

I was hoping to get some pictures of our family but Thrace was sick.  He was miserable all day (his 6mo birthday) and was in the Kozy the whole day.  He has had a cold off and on for a couple weeks but I guess it caught up with him.  He had a fever and was just very unhappy. I was often without hands even though he was being worn (I had to have my hand on his back or rocking him or letting him nurse or suck my finger or something).  I finally did get to eat dinner, wearing him, eating one handed after everyone had finished, LOL!! Now that I think back, since having kids, like 1/2 of my Thanksgiving dinners have been eaten while wearing a baby!! (wouldn't have it any other way!)  

Anyway, I didn't get to take the pictures I wanted and the ones I did get didn't turn out so well. 

This is our family picture.

It was the one semi-decent one where he wasn't nursing (nursing was the only way he was happy).

I was able to get a shot of him not crying

But that was one of the few times during the day that he was content, and it only lasted a few minutes . . . poor guy.

He was much better the next day when we had Thanksgiving with Charlies family.

Now THIS is the baby I know!!!

Mmmm, I could eat him up!!