Christmas

Our Christmas was insanely busy.  On Christmas Eve we started the day off  having a pancake breakfast and opening a few gifts at Granny D's house.  We later had an old fashioned Ukrainian dinner at Great Grandma Olga's farm.  And we finished the night off with presents at Grandpa Adam's.  Christmas morning arrives in a hurry and we celebrate our first one as a family opening presents and preparing for more Christmas events.  We went to my Dad's house for more presents until Matt had to leave for work, then headed to Pouce Coupe to visit my Niece and  then had dinner at my Dad's house. Parker and I spent our boxing day eating turkey and candied yams (yuuuumm) at Granny D's.    I'm just beginning to recover and relieved the holidays are mostly over.   But all the madness was so worth seeing the fam jam and watching Parker on his first Christmas. 

Finally!

We finally got our tree up and decorated.  This is our first tree as a familly and I'm absolutely in love with it.

It may not be the biggest,most lavish tree on the block, not all the ornaments match and we're using a toilet paper owl in place of a traditional star or angel.  But its OUR tree and it's perfect, to me at least.

Today Parker, Nana Ginger and I did some last minute shopping (gong show!).  Afterwards Parker helped me with laundry and was ridiculously cute.

Did I mention I baked my BUTT off today?

Don't feed after midnight

This was Parker all day.  Yep, I'm pretty sure theres a stage between infancy and toddlerhood called gremlin.

I did get some awesome mail though!

These are some cloth wipes from Modified Momma Creations.  They are just too cute!

Oh, I also won a Scentsy warmer!  I was so excited to get this.  I don't have any wax, but I'm going to get some soon so our house smells delicious.

We STILL haven't got decorations (except for a lonely owl) on our tree.  I'm hoping to conquer that on top of the mountain of laundry I have to do.

Our Week Captured

My heart beams with happiness knowing the love my family shares

❤❤❤

Toilet Paper Roll Owl Ornaments

Well we all know about Pinterest (and if you don't, get on that!) and it's limitless amounts of inspiration.  I use it for so many reasons.  I keep all my recipes organized, collect ideas for Parker's room and many many other things.  In my previous post I mentioned toilet paper roll owls, which I discovered on pinterest.  I made a few and decided they would look great in our Christmas tree.  Here's a tutorial to make your own;

Materials

Toilet paper rolls (or in my case wrapping paper tubes)

Markers

And possibly scissors

First of all if you're using wrapping paper tubes like I did, you'll have to cut them down to the height you want your owl to be.  If you're using toilet paper rolls, skip this step.

Once you've finished that, you're ready to make the owls ear/horn/thingies.  All you have to do is indent both sides with your fingers like so;

Now to the fun part, decorating your owl!  I've seen people use diluted food coloring, but we didn't have any at the moment.  We chose to use Crayola Washable Markers instead.

Tada!  You're owl is ready to perch in a tree, hang out on a mantle or be strung onto string and used as a garland.