DeBloAdMo 2012

Here we are again! December Blog Advent Month. A concept designed by my friend Lori a few years ago. In fact i searched back through my blog to find Lori's original idea. Here it is:

 "Post every day in the month of December until Christmas one special idea you can do as a family, a couple or a group of friends. Of if you're really clever, post a wee thought each day about Christmas or something." 

Im doing it, for the third year. Feel free to join in! Let me know so i can follow your posts though! I can already say that im pretty sure i wont get to blog everyday but i will do my activity. I had great intentions of making our list less commercialised this year, get back to the true meaning of Christmas and all that jazz, but December has crept up on me again and im just not organised and im empty of ideas....i did throw in a few (day 12/day 19/day 23) 


Day 1 - hang up chocolate advent calendar and find the wooden advent calendar from the boxes in the garage!
Day 2 - Go to the Jingle Bell Fun Run (mummy's work) and walk 1K in Christmas clothes!
Day 3 - Message from Santa video
Day 4 - Elf ourselves
Day 5 - Have a special day with Grandpa and Grandma before they go back to Canada
Day 6 - Write and post a letter to Santa 
Day 7 - Christmas nativity concert at nursery
Day 8 - Go to Isla's birthday party
Day 9 - Get the Christmas trees up and start decorating
Day 10 -  Continue decorating!
Day 11 - Make paper snowflakes for bedroom windows
Day 12 - Do something for charity
Day 13 - Christmas whole school show
Day 14 - Make salt dough ornaments
Day 15 - Go up to Hamleys in Glasgow with friends for a special Santa brunch
Day 16 -  Paint salt dough ornaments
Day 17 - Go to Kinder Gym Christmas party
Day 18 - Make paperchains
Day 19 -  Read the nativity story
Day 20 - Nursery Christmas party and Funworld Christmas party at night with friends!
Day 21 - Have a Christmas picnic
Day 22 - Do an activity from our Usborne Christmas book
Day 23 - Sing Christmas carols and learn about baby Jesus
Day 24 - Have family round for Christmas Eve dinner, remember to put out milk and cookies for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph

Tonight we went down to the school in our village to see the lights get switched on, hear the choir sing carols and see Santa...... and its not even December yet!

Why do i look more excited than Caleb??

Ornament for son number1

Im quite proud that i've been organised enough to start early on my Christmas stitching! Ive finished Caleb's ornament this week. Of course i now have to stitch the back (i always like to stitch a message) and then make it into an ornament, so there's still a bit of work left to do but hey, the front is complete anyway! I stitch an ornament every year for the boys. Here's 2009, 2010, 2011

Its a Prairie Schooler design.

Lest we forget

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon

Going Galoshans

Galoshans. There's a good ole Scottish word for ye. It means 'guising' or trick or treating to use the now popular Americanism. Galoshans is a pretty local term, this part of Inverclyde is one of the few places in Scotland that still uses it apparently. In Scotland, it's tradition not just to go round houses collecting sweets but you have to 'perform'  as well. I like that part. Where i grew up in England, trick or treating for teenagers in particular was literally 'give us a treat or we'll throw an egg at your house,'  for little ones it was just going round sweet grabbing. In Scotland, kids are expected to tell a joke or sing a song. Its fun.

Did i just say FUN? For those that know me, i am NOT a fan of Halloween, it is not an occasion that sits comfortably with me. We're Christians, we go to church and im not comfortable with the evil, sinister side of Halloween. As well as that, i just dont get it! What is it celebrating? What's the point of it? Our country never used to be into it this much! On top of all that, i quite simply don't like the colour orange :)

However, i have kids now and there is no avoiding Halloween. Calebs school is decorated, they've been hearing stories about witches and such like for the past week and had a party yesterday. I was against 'celebrating' Halloween in anyway until i seen the pure joy in Calebs face at the thought of dressing up, going out with his friends in the dark and getting sweets lol On Tuesday he even told me he felt sad we had no Halloween decorations up. So....all of a sudden i became Halloween-ised (and yes, i know that's not a word).

We carved our pumpkin (i would have done this anyway, even before kids Matthew and i had a pumpkin each)

We made paper bats, painted them and hung them on the window.

We had a Halloween dinner of  Ghosts (breaded turkey steaks cut into gingerbread man shapes), blood (tomato ketchup) and guts (baked beans)

We went out trick or treating with friends

and look at the mummy who 'hates' Halloween. Yeah, that big smile clearly shows how much i hate it lol

Caleb had a blast, came home with bags and bags of sweets and went to bed exhausted. We live in a great neighbourhood for this. The street was buzzing last night with at least 30 wee kiddies out and about with their parents. It was lovely actually. Even the houses without kids welcomed them in, had turned their living rooms into proper displays and enjoyed playing host. 

Now if Halloween's good for nothing else at least we can say it forged friendships and deepened the community spirit of the neighbourhood. So its not all bad!

Caleb's joke:

What do witches put on their hair at Halloween?

Scarespray!

Not to leave Aaron out, he had his pumpkin tshirt on for the day

So whilst you wont hear me wish anyone a 'Happy Halloween' i've come round to the idea a little bit. 'Happy Dress up Day' :-)

Cross stitch blogging world

When i started blogging back in 2007 it really became all about stitching. Wips/ufos/stash/wish lists/exchanges. Now i look back though, im not interested in reading about a chart 'i really wanted' at that time or a wip picture with a few more stitches in it than the last wip picture. Im blogging now for me and my family, to record some memories and im not so bothered about how many comments i can get from cross stitch world. Life has changed!

Saying that however, i am part of a cross stitch world. I love cross stitching and my blog is the best way for me to record my work! I love other cross stitch blogs. I love getting comments. I feel i have 'friends' out there from all this cross stitching blogging malarky. I just like my blog being about other things in life too. That's what i look for in other blogs now too. Im not so interested in the blogs that are purely about stitching with no bits of life thrown in.

What got me thinking about all this was looking through my google reader list this morning and seeing how many bloggers ive followed for years that are not there anymore. Those i find the most intriguing. Where did they go? Are they alright? Its so disappointing to follow someones life for years and then all of a sudden they never post again. You just hope nothing bad has happened. I hate not knowing! Then there are those that used to post so regularly and be so involved in all things cross stitch world and they are now only posting once every few months. Life changes for people, i get that., but i do always wonder what's going on, where they are, what they're doing now. It fascinates me. In my 'favourites' section on google reader, over half of those i subscribe to are now no longer blogging!

So i was blog surfing this morning, looking for some new blogs to follow and found some lovely ones. Hope to go surfing again soon to find some more! Things have changed since 2007! Any suggestions feel free to let me know

A Dipsy party

As predicted, i never did get Aaron's birth sampler finished for his 1st birthday. I have, however, been making good progress recently. These dark nights are good for stitching at least. Maybe by Christmas? HA, i doubt that, ive got their Christmas ornaments to stitch soon. Note to self: pick charts for Christmas ornaments soon!

We had a lovely weekend celebrating our boy's 1st birthday. On his actual birthday, the Friday, we opened pressies in the morning, then when Caleb got home from nursery we went for a quick look around the boat show at the marina and then to Macdonalds for tea. On the Saturday we had his party, which went really well. My house didn't get trashed by the 12 kids + parents. The kids all played great together. He had a teletubbie themed party (actually just Dipsy). He doesn't even watch teletubbies (is it even on anymore?) but ages ago someone gave him a Dipsy toy and a free promotional dvd and he LOVES it. He kisses Dipsy all the time and sits enamoured by the dvd. So a Dispy 1st birthday party it was...i even handmade the party bags but forgot to take a picture of those.

The sheer joy at receiving a new teletubbies dvd

Dipsy cake

Some of the party Food! 

Thank-you Pinterest for this rainbow fruit idea!

As for this 'Palm tree,' it was supposed to be 2 but when i got up in the morning the boys had eaten all but 1 banana, I quite liked it (another pinterest idea) but have now gone off it since my friend with the dirty mind described it as 'a bit phallic' hahahahaha

So we have a quieter weekend ahead this weekend. Matthew normally bikes on a Saturday morning with his friends from church and Caleb has a birthday party in the afternoon. That's about all i think! Hope to squeeze a good long run in seeing as the forecast looks good.

My baby is 1!

Our first picture of Aaron, taken one year ago today! Ive even "scheduled" this post for 12.46pm, his time of birth :-)

Now look at him!

My big, beautiful, cheery, affectionate, lovely, mummy's boy. What a joy this year has been. Love this boy very, very much