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Coming at you straight from our annual forsythia shot, the Miller kids wish you a Happy Easter!

We’ve been having lots of Easter fun over Spring Break which included watercolor painting, Easter Bread baking, coloring eggs and a glow-in-the-dark egghunt!

We are looking forward to having this entire week off for even more family fun!

I hope everyone has a blessed, beautiful day!

I’m baaaaack. ;)

I thought I would share my next batch of challenge photos today. I love that these are Disney photos. :) I took 1,020 photos with my Nikon, a few dozen with my iPhone and there are over 250+ on our Photopass CD! I am looking forward to creating our vacation scrapbook but I know it’s going to take some time to edit and organize so many shots.

Day 10: Loud

The kids were watching the luggage load into our plane. We were on a 5pm outbound flight to Orlando.

Day 11: Someone I Talked To Today

Pretty cool!

Day 12: Solitary

I love taking pictures of the castle at night!

Day 13: A Sign

This was the first trip where Grace was tall enough to ride Splash Mountain. (You have to be 40″ and she is just about 42″). She. Loved. It! We rode it four times. During one of the times we splashed down, my husband said “Great. She’s bad (and by this we mean she’s our most mischievous, strong-willed child) AND she’s an adrenaline junkie!” LOL!

Day 14: Clouds

My girls were in the castle when I took this shot. :) They were getting makeovers from Fairy Godmothers-In-Training at the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique.

Day 15: Angular

We ate in one of my favorite restaurants today: San Angel Inn in Mexico. Our meals were all-around delicious!

Day 16: Sunglasses

My three cuties. See that faint pink mark on Andrew’s forehead? It’s lipstick. When he was 3, Sleeping Beauty planted a huge kiss on his cheek and left a kiss mark. This time around, we asked her if she remembered him. She took a quick glance in his autograph book and said “Andrew, of course I do!” She then asked if she could kiss him again. LOL! Sleeping Beauty has a thing for my little guy. ;)

I’m so tired. We got in a little after 10:30pm last night. The first thing I did was check the mail for my Nikon slip saying my camera was ready for pick-up (the mirror needed fixing. I took a rental to Disney World. And yes, it’s ready for pick-up on Monday. Yay!) Then I powered-up and hugged my iMac. ;) I really did that. Shhh. We shouldn’t tell too many people.

I couldn’t let today pass without doing something festive for the kids so I whipped-up some rainbow cupcakes topped with shamrock sprinkles and Lucky Charms. We had them with green milk.

My Mom dropped off a homemade Irish Soda Bread as an after dinner treat. And I played catch-up with the laundry. Thankfully it was a beautiful day out so I got to hang some of the laundry out on the line.

I think tonight I will finish my coffee and perhaps create a scrapbook page of my Disney iPhone shots. I’ll also edit some family shots from the Photopass CD. If you have under 700 shots on your disc, they now offer a download option. Awesome! I did that plus spent another $20 for the hard copy.

It’s good to be home and even better with tons of fun pictures to play with! :)

I could get used to the way I spent the last few days around here: sleeping-in, hanging in sweatpants, reading at my leisure and working on art projects!

I saw this cute idea and pinned it twice on Pinterest. I knew I had to find a small chunk of time for this one. It was really easy to put together and a great way to save our photo cards that we received this year.

All you need are some binder rings (please make no mention of the fact that mine are a very un-Christmasy purple), a hole punch, a thin Sharpie, some supplies to design a quick cover and of course, your stack of cards!

First I rounded the corners of allllll of our photo cards because like I’ve said before, I’m obsessed. Then I designed a cover. I didn’t measure it out and figured some of the larger cards would peek out here and there but what do you know, I designed a cover that ended up being perfectly sized and even the largest card fit inside. (I also added a plain black cardstock back cover just to give the book a little protection).

Two patterned papers, Thickers, glue dots ~ done! The only thing I need to do is go back an add the year. I didn’t have any numeric stickers I liked enough. The sparkly gold ones I bought just for this project didn’t pop enough on my patterned paper cover.

After my cover was done, I randomly punched two holes on the left edge. Then I laid all of the photo cards underneath, one by one, and used a thin Sharpie to mark off where I would need to punch.

I put the largest cards in the back and then added the rest at random. Some small mixed between some tall, and others wider. Very mish-mashed and quirky!

And just a few more shots of the inside. I really like that we can see the back of the cards now, something we couldn’t when they were hanging in our living room. My husband went through the book last night and commented on a few new 2nd-side pictures he hadn’t seen before.

I started the mini album with our very own family’s card which you’ll notice blurred in the background below. I have each year saved and never do anything with them. Into the book it goes!

Family & friends, thank you for sending along your beautiful greetings this year! For once, I can assure you that they are being appreciated after the holiday season has passed us by.

Here are a few Christmas photos of the Millers, scrapped, flattened and filed away for our family’s memory books. :)

Sweet Joy

Christmas Wishlists

As always, credits can be found HERE or HERE.

I realize it’s a bit early to post pictures of New Year’s Eve cupcakes when we haven’t reached Christmas yet, but in 2nd grade, you celebrate New Year’s. That means, party hats, confetti, air horns (that must have been a fun drive home for our bus driver, let me tell you) and cupcakes! I was assigned the cupcakes for my son’s class and I wanted to do something clean & simple. I kept seeing silver and blue so this is what I came up with.

I was really happy with them. They were plain vanilla with vanilla frosting. Even better than the tasty cupcake were the toppers I made for them. So simple and yet you can personalize them in so many ways! All you need are white lollipop sticks, curling ribbon, a bit of glue, cardstock and some printable designs (provided for you below). You may also want tape and waxed paper before assembling.

I printed my sheet of toppers and cut them out. I designed them as small squares because I wasn’t bothering with a circle cutter. I used my paper trimmer and these took seconds to cut apart. Then I tied ribbon on my lollipop sticks. Curl. They wanted to slide down a bit no matter how tight I tied them so I ended up taping each stick to some waxed paper to hold it straight. Then I added a dab of glue around the center part of the tied ribbon, just so it wouldn’t move. I went back and glued on the toppers. Done. I baked my cupcakes one night, assembled the toppers the next day and frosted the cupcakes later that second day. They weren’t much work at all broken down like this. I even made a second batch the following day for my oldest daughter’s holiday party. She got snowmen and those snowmen only had time for a quick iPhone shot. I frosted hers with a smaller dollop of frosting and lots of clear sugar crystals.

I ended up designing a third set of tags for my Christmas Eve table. I am making chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting and sticking some cute red & green gingerbread and Christmas tree toppers in there. I used some stickers from my Figgy Pudding element pack. I have those and the New Years Eve set available as a free download for you (in PDF form).

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE CUPCAKE TOPPERS

Happy cupcake decorating! Have a sweet day!

DECORATING GINGERBREAD

We split our usual gingerbread decorating fun into two days this year. We made the cookies two weeks ago after crafts and this past weekend we decorated one large house, four mini houses and three sleighs.

The kids transformed these…

…into these:

And this…

…into this:

Lots of candies were used.

No really. Lots of candies were used. Gumdrops were also being snuck when they thought I wasn’t watching.

Something we do while decorating gingerbread houses is to create windows and doors on individual graham crackers. The kids get to work in their own little space on their own individual piece and we don’t have to worry about stuff falling off of the house as it dries. The above graham cracker is Grace’s design and it made me laugh because she just piled candies on top of one another with no icing to adhere them down. You knew when you lifted this one that those little candy balls were rolling everywhere.

I have swept countless amounts of sprinkles and small candy bits from my dining room this past week.

Love Grace’s face here. She was explaining to the other kids why she chose to decorate one corner of the house in all purple lights (see the 5 purple candies in a line?)

Of course, this gingerbread largely remains unedible because it’s so hard but we have fun during the process and we use the pieces are decoration on our Christmas Eve table. Win-Win.

CAKE POPS

I also did a little baking recently. The kids keep asking who I am making all of these cake pops for and I said “I have no idea”. I am not sure if I am actually assembling them onto cookie trays or not, but it seems that even without an end goal in mind, I can’t help making them for the past two days! I finally bought myself a candy melter which was a total last-minute purchase as I stood at the register at AC Moore the other day. Best $30 I ever spent!

Chocolate that stays warm and gooey for the dipping process. Perfect!

Cake pops are soooo easy to make! All you need is a boxed cake mix and frosting!  I made them years ago and hated the dipping process. I despise dipping. I make delicious Oreo Truffles for Christmas and I won’t even dip those. However, armed with some tips, I decided to give the pops one more try this year. This is what worked for me.

Bake your cake according to package directions. You can use any flavor you like. Cool the cake (I’ve actually been leaving mine overnight). Crumble the entire cake. Yes, just shred the whole thing apart. Spoon in about half a can of frosting. ONLY half the can! In the past, I’ve used the full can and it makes the cake balls way too moist. This leads to them falling apart during the dipping which usually leads to me throwing something across my kitchen in a fit of baking rage. So do yourself a favor and for the love of cake balls, only use half the can.

Mix it in with a fork to start. Then you can finish mixing with your hand. It will resemble cookie dough at this point. It looks raw but as you know since you did the prep work, it’s really cooked.

Using my Pampered Chef cookie scoop, I scooped out even amounts of batter. My cake balls were about 1 1/2″ big after rolling. Roll & line them up on baking sheets lined with waxed paper.

Take out your pot of melted chocolate. If you didn’t do that yet, go melt some. I’ll wait.

Ok I am done waiting.

Now the most important trick of all: dip your lollipop stick into the melted chocolate just a bit. And stick it in the cake ball. They will look someting like this arranged on your baking sheet.

I am showing the ones using red chocolate from the day before because the cake balls that paired with the green chocolate were strawberry and while they tasted phenomenal, they looked like raw meatballs on the tray and really, what’s appetizing about that?!

Now pop the whole tray in the fridge so they can firm-up a bit. Give it a good 30 minutes if not a little longer. I had two fall off the stick today but none yesterday. You want them as “glued” to that stick as possible.

Take them out of the fridge and dip! I sprinkled mine with Christmas sprinkles after. The pops covered in red candy melts are vanilla inside. The green covered ones are strawberry. Had I known I was going to decide on a strawberry cake last night for today’s pop-making, I would have covered them in red because strawberry seems to make sense with a red coating. But like I said, it was a last minute decision so these are ass backward cake pops. What can I say.

Emily tried one and said  “Mom, I am not going to tell Starbucks this but, yours are better”.

Next-up I am going to make either chocolate or brownie ones. I am thinking brownie so they can sort of taste like the Starbucks ones (by the way, my yellow cake – red coating pops totally taste like Birthday Cake pops from Starbucks!)

Here’s a cake pop funny: a few days ago I was going through the Starbucks drive-thru and ordered “Two candy cane cake pops please”. The barista said “Oh, you mean the Mint Brownie ones?” and I did a double take at the menu board and was shocked to find that they aren’t called Candy Cane Cake Pops at all. Which is kind of cool because I always thought that was a bit like a tongue twister but seriously, I’ve been ordering Candy Cane Cake Pops for the past 2 or 3 weeks. I love how I just decided on my own name for them and went with it.

Ok back to my cake pops.

So even though I have my handy dandy new melter, melting chocolate and dipping stuff in it is still not my most favorite baking activity. I like for things to be simple yet tasty and even better if they are easy to package. I decided to take a few of my strawberry cake balls, roll them in powdered sugar and place each one in a mini cupcake liner. Then I put them in the fridge. Pop one of those babies in your mouth. Unreal.

These are my Strawberry Cake Ball Truffles. I can feel my sugar count spiking as I type this.

Happy gingerbread-decorating, cake-pop-making to you!

It’s important to note that since I last posted about Buddy’s current antics, he was a semi-finalist in a mischievous elf contest! I follow The Elf On The Shelf’s FB page and saw a call for photo submissions at random one day so I sent one over. Then I forgot all about it until a friend said “I voted for Buddy!” and linked him up on my Wall. By George, there he was. One of the 50 semi-finalists in some crazy contest! The photo I entered was of Buddy in the fridge hanging out with a polar bear wearing a blue jacket & fur (check vol. 3′s photos). We did pretty good in the contest! There were a few entries that LIKE-wise (which was how you cast your vote) left us in the dust. The kids were so excited about the possibility of winning an elf prize package. It didn’t happen, but like I said to them, how many people can say their elf was a semi-finalist in a Christmas contest?

Here’s what Buddy has been up to this past week.

This was after a rough night flying to and from the North Pole. Elves need a caffeine fix every now & again too you know.

“Make that a grande triple-shot peppermint mocha with whip. And do you have any brownie cake pops?”

The miniature orange sock monkey is my coffee monkey. I really don’t know why. Emily likes to tell me I stole him from her. I might have. But now he sits in my K-cup carousel and watches over my coffees like a hawk. monkey.

Buddy has also been spotted in my girls’ room playing Emily’s violin.

“Let me just rosin up my bow and play a little “Devil Went Down To Georgia” for you”.

You thought I was going to say something from Johann Sebastian Bach and not Charlie Daniels didn’t you?

“I bet a fiddle of gold against your soul, ‘cos I think I’m better than you.”

And then there was the morning the kids woke to find Buddy going over some very detailed flight plans from the North Pole with our reindeer. Emily said “It looks like he got that from Google Earth. I bet he did!”

Buddy, the felt pantsuit-wearing, sugar-loving, coffee-drinking, violin-playing, Google expert.

This morning, the kids woke laughing as they discovered Buddy had turned them into red-nosed reindeer in their sleep.

“Huh? Wasn’t me…”

I also have photographic evidence of Buddy hanging upside down from the top of my stove with 3 bottles of opened sprinkles below him. I would post it, but there are grease splatters all over my black stove and while I am sure you can appreciate that this makes me look real and human and like a woman who does her fair share of cooking, I cannot appreciate the glaring fact that I am behind on Windexing and polishing my stove top. So use your imagination for that one.

Something fun with that set-up though: When the kids weren’t looking, I stuck Buddy’s hand into one of the sprinkle jars. Of course they thought Buddy moved and tried to eat some sprinkles! The next day he left a note:

Those sprinkles looked mighty tasty yesterday. I couldn’t resist trying to eat a few when you all left the kitchen. Mainly because the blood was rushing to my head all day and I was feeling faint. Remind me never to do THAT again.

Love,
Buddy

I have a nice handful of assorted Christmas shots I will try to Blog soon. I’ve been checking things off my holiday photo checklist too. Today though, we’re switching from Christmas mode to birthday mode as we celebrate my nephew’s 1st birthday. Can’t wait to surprise him with our gift!

Have a lovely weekend!

I am going to be bold and subtitle this part one. I am hoping there will actually be a part two.  I have so many ideas (thanks brain that never shuts off and Pinterest) that there’s no way I’ll be able to sit around and not try a few more of these. After all, it’s only December 5th! There’s plenty of crafting time left. :)

This weekend marked our 2nd Annual Christmas Craft Day! Mind you, I’ve been doing crafts with my kids since they are babies. There was the time that Emily made everyone cute little foam figures for the holidays and she was a whole 4 months old. =P  Last year I decided to invite my cousin’s son over to join my kids and now it’s our new tradition to have him over each Christmas and leave with a box full of homemade decorations.

I love craft day for many reasons. One especially nice side effect is due to the fact that I have three kids creating the same craft. We don’t need three of everything in this house so we always choose one to keep and two to give away. So after all of our Christmas crafts are done, we have quite the assortment of gifts to give to people during the holiday season.

When formulating my Plan-Of-Crafting-Attack, I always choose a project or two that will {hopefully} WOW and mix in a few easy, fool-proof ideas. I know my audience. I am working with a 3, 4, 7 & 8 year old. Two are boys. Younger kids plus boys tend to fade faster. So we keep it light, breezy with plenty of time to watch a Christmas movie and have a snack in between.

Pine cone Christmas Trees are nothing new. A nice, simple craft that kills some time and results in a cute decoration. I wasn’t even planning to make these but one of my Aunts bought the kids a bag full of pinecones. Plus, I can’t resist glittering them. So much glitter sticks to these things. Yes, glitter excites me.

Here’s how you would make a super-simple pine cone Christmas tree:

1) Paint your pine cone green. The kids found that small brushes worked much better than the foam ones we usually like to use.

2) While the paint is still wet, sprinkle a generous amount of green glitter (ooooh, ahhh) onto the “leaves”. For the love of everything, please do this over a garbage can.

3) Put little glue spots on various parts of the tree. Older kids can decide this themselves. I placed the glue for the younger kids.

4) Glue down little colorful pom poms as ornaments. Use a larger yellow one for the star. Done!

Next-up we worked on some Christmas masks. This was one of those simple $1 crafts I bought to kill a bit of time. It ended up resulting in the cutest after picture. So glad we bought these!

There’s really nothing complicated here.

1) Paint masks. You’re like, 85% done at this point.

2) Take a funny picture wearing them!

Emily and Andrew did awesome jobs on theirs. Grace and Anthony tried their hardest and just globbed on the paint. Grace was actually doing a pretty good job but when I turned my back for like 3 nanoseconds to grab something, she smeared alllll of her colors together which resulted in a muddy looking reindeer who may be tinged with nausea. Nothing a little red nose and a yarn smile couldn’t fix.

This next idea was something that I saw on Pinterest. I used that for my initial idea and then changed it up a bit. You could add a ribbon hanger or a jingle bell inside the clay pot if you wanted. It did take me a few tries to shape the antlers in the way I wanted them.

Here’s how we made them:

1) We painted small clay pots brown. Let them dry.

2) Fashion a set of antlers out of a brown pipe cleaner. At first I clipped the pipe cleaner in two and made two separate antlers. Then I realized I was making more work for myself so I ended up folding the pipe cleaner in half but leaving it as once piece.

3) Glue on eyes and a nose.

4) Tie a red ribbon around your reindeer’s antlers. Done.

This next ornament is my favorite from the day!  It’s a great keepsake.

I saw a kit at Oriental Trading for something like this. I figured I dind’t need to purchase it though. It was easy enough to put together on my own. Here’s how we made them:

1) Paint a small wooden spool. I figured red would pop more on a green tree but you could make these any color you want.

2) Make a template in Photoshop so you know what your parameters on when filling out your Christmas list. I don’t remember the exact size of these spools but they weren’t that big. My paper inside was about 0.6″ wide and approximately 2″ long. I printed a test strip first just to make sure. Also make note that when you fill in your list, you’ll want to leave the first half of the paper bare, because you are going to roll this around the spool.

3) After your list is printed, laminate it. I made one that wasn’t laminated and while just as cute, I feared it wouldn’t last after many years in and out of wrapping as you pack your ornaments up.

4) Glue your laminated list to your spool. Feed some twine, ribbon or yarn through the holes for hanging.

Note #1: this is an adorable ornament and one of my new favorites, but it’s not a great project for very young kids. Aside from giving me their wish lists, assembly on this one was really all me.

Note #2: We had two extra spools so we made these for each set of grandparents too. You don’t have to write out a wish list. We listed their names (along with the family dog) and put two check marks near each name. “Merry Christmas! Love, Emily, Andrew & Grace | 2011″. Bam ~ done!

This next ornament came out cute but of course, I have already figured out a way to make it cuter. There I go, revamping my crafts.

I love crafts and knick knacks that are tiny-sized. So I will tell you how we made the above ornament and then how I think you could make it cute on a smaller scale.

1) Glue a plain ornament into a foil cupcake liner. Tilt it a bit to the side so it will hang a little ‘crooked’ on your tree.

2) Drizzle white paint on the top. We used a shimmery white which was sort of runny (by Folk Art). Worked nicely. Don’t pour a ton! I sort of gooped some one (like my word? Gooped?), watched it drip and then if I felt we needed more drippage (what about that one? Drippage. I’m on a roll!), I added a bit more.

3) While the paint is still wet, sprinkle on some seed beads to resemble sprinkles. This part made everyone laugh. I put a few beads in Anthony’s hand and told him to sprinkle them on. Well you know how little kids try to do what they are told but sometimes their coordination just isn’t there? So he turned his palm over and basically threw seed beads all over my dining room table. LOL! I said “Orrrr just throw them around the dining room!” Roaring laughter ensued.

4) Glue on a red pom pom for the cherry.

5) Add a ribbon for hanging. Done.

Now, my “lets revamp these” plan:

Use a smaller foil liner, a white pearly colored ornament (again, the smaller size. I saw them at Michaels), drizzle brown paint for chocolate sauce, sprinkles and a cherry. I really think I will make these trying this idea because the colors seem better to me. We made the above ornaments in green, pink, red and blue and while cute, when have you ever seen an aqua blue cupcake?

If you have in fact, seen an aqua blue cupcake, no need to comment here today.

Yes. I am totally over-thinking these. It’s what I do best.

After all of our crafts were made and the dining room table and floor were cleared from the majority of paint splatters, glitter and beads, we moved into the living room to decorate gingerbread men! I usually make a whole day out of decorating gingerbread with my kids but I thought this would be something fun for Anthony to do with us. The kids loved it! Right after I took the 8-count cookie picture, they all devoured one sweet, sugary cookie each.

L-R: Emily, Andrew, Anthony and Grace’s cookies

(Click the bold text above the gingerbread pictures for last year’s entry and links to our favorite gingerbread-decorating products!)

psst: If you missed last year’s Blogged projects, make sure to check both THIS entry as well as THIS one for even more kid-friendly Christmas crafts!

Lastly, I made myself a checklist last week listing all of the holiday pictures I would love to take. I never did made a final decision as far as a daily photo project goes. So I think I am just going to attempt to capture as many of my list items as I can and then maybe post them in a couple of Blog entries. I already have a few marked off my list. Perhaps this will help inspire you.

Have a great day!

I have a few more Buddy the Elf shots to share and wanted to do that now in case you needed some ideas over the weekend. I have even started an elf magic category so all of Buddy’s adventures will stay in one tidy place on the Blog.

As the pictures below will lay out for you in a colorful display of visual proof…

…I think Christmas might be bringing out my inner crazy.

The kids woke one morning recently to find that Buddy had gotten into our candy bowl. Upon closer inspection, we see that Buddy favors Kit Kats and peanut M&Ms. The M&Ms you can have mister but lay off my Kit Kats!

On this particular day, Buddy left behind a note that said:

“Sorry friends. I just thought you needed some minor accessories”.

Oh you know what would have been funny? If he drew some hair on my husband’s head.

Or not.

But really. It would be. The kids would die laughing.

Then there was the time that Buddy left a trail of marshmallows all along the kitchen counter leading to the fridge. What did we find inside?

An arctic elf of course!

You should wear fur more often Buddy. It looks great on you.

Really. How fancy is his updated Christmas hat? He probably could have went with a color other than pink, but when you’re working with Barbie’s wardrobe, you take what you can get.

I should mention that the kids wanted to eat some of the marshmallows which were cold and hardening. They proclaimed them the coolest treat ever so the next morning, Buddy left a note:

“Gee willikers. I was so cold spending all day in the fridge yesterday friends! I see you discovered my tasty North Pole treat: ice cold marshmallows!”

This morning, we woke to find Buddy sweatin’ the the oldies on the living room windowsill.

“Hey friends. Lets work out!”

Buddy did something a little different in his note this morning and the kids got a big kick out of it.

“Hi friends. I see you’ve found me. Holy snowballs – this is one heavy weight! Imagine the muscles I will have if I keep this up!

The elves are putting the final touches on a few of your gifts this weekend. Can you guess what they are?

Love,
Buddy”

Emily: _ O _ S _ E _   H _ _ H   D _ L L

Andrew:  _ L A _ _   P _ _ R L

Gracie: K _ _   _ U I _ A _

They were so excited to find that and fill in the blanks!

And no I am not helping you with a word puzzle designed for kids ages 8 and under. Fill it in yourself!

Have an awesome weekend!

You may remember my post from last year introducing our Christmas elf, Buddy. Please read that entry if you want the basic logistics of housing a Christmas elf. I don’t want to be the girl who repeats herself.

This year, Buddy came back to visit a bit earlier than usual. In our house, Buddy cannot come back to visit until our Christmas tree is up. After all, it’s got to feel a little bit like the North Pole to make Buddy feel at home! The kids begged us two weeks ago to put up the tree and even though my husband fought tooth and nail to not have to drag down the tree boxes before Thanksgiving, the other 4 Millers eventually won. “Do it for the kids, man!” <- I may have actually said those exact words. Right for the heartstrings.

So this year, instead of going through the basics on Buddy again, I thought I would try to take as many pictures as possible of his silly adventures and document them on my Blog. This is our 5th year with a Christmas elf. I’ve come up with lots of fun ideas and have borrowed others that I’ve found on the web that are equally as fun. If we all continue to share and inspire others, felty little elves will eventually rule the land! …or something like that.

Usually Buddy arrives in a sleigh in some grand fashion. One year he crashed into our glass front door. I made sure he brushed up on his driving skills before attempting that stunt twice. This year since our tree went up so suddenly, he arrived that night after the kids were fast asleep. Easiest elf entrance to date. I asked the kids how they knew that Buddy had in fact arrived. They said they got up and looked for the sugar mess in the kitchen. Naturally. Why wouldn’t your elf come to visit and sprinkle sugar on your counters?

The 2nd morning everyone woke to find Buddy in the shower.

“I’m baaaaack…!”

Make yourself right at home Buddy.

This year, Buddy has tried a few new things. He’s tried his hand at cooking which didn’t go over too well. The pasta tastes better boiled Buddy.

He had a sock fight with a bunch of sock monkeys…

Personally, I think if he’s going to throw socks around my living room in the middle of the night, he should clean them up the following day but he’s not seeing it like that.

It appears that Buddy has taken a special interest in the ladies this year and he’s not even particular as far as them being blond or brunette. I am not sure I approve.

Grace was very concerned and double-checked to make sure that Buddy was wearing his seatbelt.

On Thanksgiving, everyone else was in the kitchen so why not Buddy? Only he wasn’t preparing a turkey. Rather, he was preparing a dish with his favorite ingredient as the star: sugar! There were actually mini marshmallows in his perfectly polished frying pan too but little hands picked at & ate those before the camera came out.

I’ve got to point out one very helpful tip, especially if you are Mom to girls: take advantage of Barbie’s stuff. Her clothes, her furniture, heck even her. It’s perfectly sized for your elf and makes his hiding spots lots of fun.

If I don’t get a chance to snap a picture with my “real” camera, I’ve been taking them with my iPhone just to have a more detailed record of Buddy’s misadventures. This is one of my favorite shots so far this year.

Do you spot our knight in felted pant suit riding off into the sunset? I was trying to put a cowboy hat from Andrew’s Jesse doll on him but it was too top heavy.

Note to self: must still rethink that cowboy on reindeer plan…

We’ve caught Buddy hiding amongst some Christmas friends.

He’s even traveled to Grandma & Grandpa’s house a whopping 2 minutes away and joined the kids for a sleepover. That was something new and the kids were really surprised to see that Buddy had found them.

Buddy leaves notes too. He types them of course because he’s very tech-savvy like that. We think he may have his very own MAC at the North Pole but we can’t be certain.

He doesn’t leave a note every night, but if the kids write to him he will write back. In fact, this year Emily started a really cute mailbox on the back of our front door. She drew a red flag and attached it to an envelope. If they want to write to Buddy, the notes go in there. He answers back and leaves the note in the kitchen where his sugar mess is. Here’s a sample note from the morning after the sleepover:

Kids,

Was that a magnificent trick or what?! Were you surprised to see me at your sleepover? I told you I am ALWAYS watching.

p.s. Holy candy canes – that is one big dog that lives in that house!

Love,
Buddy

(The dog Buddy is referring to is my brother’s Goldendoodle which is roughly the size of oh, a small horse. Can you imagine if she got a hold of Buddy? That could have been a Christmas tradition gone South *real* fast…)

Sometimes the notes are more educational as the kids start to question Buddy’s magic…

Dear Buddy,

Why don’t you talk to us? Wouldn’t that be easier? I can’t wait til night.

Love,
Emily

Dearest Emily,

I am not allowed to talk to you, remember? Those are Santa’s orders and part of my magic. I almost slipped and answered your question yesterday but then I remembered Santa’s rules and was afraid he wouldn’t send me to your house anymore if I didn’t listen.

Sorry about my hiding place this morning (shower). I really needed some freshening up though.

Love,
Buddy

Did anyone catch the half hour Elf On The Shelf Christmas movie that aired on CBS last night? It was adorable! I would definitely recommend trying to catch it at a later air date. It followed the website/book perfectly so if you follow along with this particular elf tradition, everything matched what you’ve most likely already told your kids (i.e. why your elf won’t fly and show you his magic in front of you, why you shouldn’t touch him, etc). Very sweet little Christmas flick that the kids and I enjoyed.

Do you have a Christmas elf? Has he or she come to visit yet? Feel free to link everyone to your Blog where we can read about more elf adventures. After I get another batch of Buddy’s crazy antics photographed, I’ll be sure to share again.

Have a great weekend!

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