It's the Holiday Season!!

Chopper and I have already been in the holiday spirit thanks to the building of the dollhouse (which is coming along nicely!) and last week was a nice low-key week to relax a little bit before the craziness of Christmas.  Although this year we're trying not to make it too crazy.  I don't like feeling stressed at this time of year!!

I literally forced Chopper to do Thanksgiving my way this year -- he prefers a quiet family dinner and I like a big group -- partly because then I don't have to cook the whole thing!!  The pregnancy won out though and we ended up with 17 people and had a really good time I thought!  In addition to hosting, we did turkeys, cranberry sauce, layered jello, apple pie, and a cranberry lime cheesecake that turned out surprisingly good.

Chopper smoked the turkeys again this year -- hey any excuse to barbeque!!  Once again, they turned out very well although Chop is his own worst critic and said they were a little dry.  I did not hear any complaining though!  The smoked flavor is just enough to be more than bland turkey but not so much that cranberry sauce clashes with it.  

I've been singing a song that the girls love -- it's the only Thanksgiving song I know and I think I learned it in elementary school!!  One of the lines is "who will get the drumstick, yummy yummy yum stick" and both girls insisted on having a drumstick for Thanksgiving.

Megan actually ate hers!!  It was so funny to watch her chowing down.  Abby took a bite maybe.  She spent most of dinner telling the people around her about how the birds were dead, daddy shot them, and then moved on to the human body and how we have blood in our legs, etc.  It was very entertaining.  She is so interested in that kind of stuff -- she may just turn out to be medically minded!  Makes me shudder just thinking about it!

I've been working nonstop to finish a pair of twin-size denim quilts for a friend's twin boys in Idaho.  She sent me their old jeans -- lots of Wranglers -- and particularly wanted me to use the tiny pockets.  It was hard hard work to do denim, batting, and flannel and quilts but I found a method called quilt as you go where you quilt in panels and then bind them all together.  It was easier than pushing the entire quilt through my machine and I'm actually really pleased with how they turned out.  The binding gives a nice little stripe effect that ended up working really well.

 Her boys picked out the coordinating fabric.  This one is hard to tell but those are red flames.  I wish I had a motorcycle to drape this over!!

This one was hunter's camouflage.  

The back of the first one is plain black -- this one ended up striped.  I was worried that doing plaid flannel in panels wouldn't match up so I deliberately added some black.

Close up of how the binding looks.

Now it's on to Christmas projects!!  I'm building some furniture and making some tiny quilts for the dollhouse as well as some fun little presents for my family who will all be here (hooray!!) so I've got a lot to do but it will be a lot of fun stuff.

My first attempt at a couch.  Upholstering is hard!!!  But I think it turned out decent enough that the girls will like it. 

The day after Thanksgiving we were going to put up the tree but Chopper had to work and we didn't get to it until the evening.  I had to distract the girls somehow so we tried a pinterest recipe for cornstarch and baking soda dough and made ornaments.  They weren't nearly as polished as what you see on pinterest but they are a nice white color so perfect for painting. 

Some of the finished products.  Megan's are the deliberately painted ones and Abby's are the mess of paint ones.  I need to go through and label them so I remember in future years though.

This is why we're getting the girls a dollhouse -- admittedly Megan will play with it more.  She LOVES Chopper's Christmas village and would spend hours arranging and rearranging the little things if we would let her.  We won't though because eventually William has to get up from a nap!! 

 This handsome boy has done a nice job of staying away from the tree actually.  More so than the girls who like to pull off and play with certain ornaments. 

We are having some family pictures done but our scheduled day was rainy and awful cold and I'm not sure when we'll be able to reschedule so yesterday a good friend came over and took a few shots of us in our backyard for Christmas cards.  We're still trying to decide which one to use -- not because we have several good ones but because we have several regular family ones!!  Chopper really protested having coordinating outfits because he wanted us to look normal.  But I think you'll agree that we certainly manage normal despite the outfits!! 

 

This might be the one.  William is obviously not happy but at least you can see everyone.  We still haven't decided though!!! And only 3 weeks to get it all together!