Won't You Be My Neighbor?

I am so tired tonight that I can barely think straight. The past few days we have been working full force at the finishing touches for Christmas and then today I raked and bagged leaves for three hours straight. Plus I have two huge piles left to bag in the morning. We have an enormous tree in our front yard that drops leaves all over our yard and our neighbors yards, at least a foot deep and I am not joking. Then we put off raking it as long as possible until they have blown all over the other neighbor's yards.

Truth be told, I'm not totally sure why the neighbors still like me.

Wait... could this be why?

The loaf of Santa bread that they all received tonight?

Or this?

The box of sugar cookies and edible coal?

Surely I can't buy them off that easily... or can I?

Some of Damion's coworkers also got similar treats this year:

a box of edible coal with hand painted sugar cookies. These are the cookies that I was making when Princess Newbie turned blue.

I love how everything turned out but honestly my favorite thing this year was the Santa Bread.  Who doesn't love a good carb filled Santa?

Perfect Christmas Gift: Edible Coal

I think this is one of my favorite ideas of all time but the pictures don't really show the glory of it, so be warned and use your imagination.

My neighbors have had a bad week. They had to put their dog to sleep in the middle of the night, only to find out the next day that the landlord is putting their house up for sale and they have to find somewhere else to live. That is a rough week to me. They also have a good sense of humor and a slightly darker side than I do so I knew they would get a kick out of this gift.

What gift you ask? A bag of coal.. a yummy yummy bag of coal.  Here's what you need to make these pieces of coal:

You will need Dark Cocoa Mint Candy melts,
Black sanding sugar,
and Marshmallows.

I know black food coloring is in the picture but I wound up not needing it, so just strike that from your grocery list. You will also need straws or skewers and a glass of rice.

First melt your candy melts, following the instructions on the package.

Place your marshmallow on a straw or a skewer and roll it in the melted chocolate. Use a fork or spoon to coat the places that you missed such as the top and bottom and then scrap off any extra chocolate. Tap it on the side of the bowl to shake off more excess chocolate and then place the straw end in the glass of rice so that it can start to set up.

Don't let it harden, just let it set for a minute or two so that the weight of the sanding sugar won't pull the chocolate off the marshmallow when you dip it in the sugar.

when it's set for a minute or so, roll it in the sanding sugar to coat the whole marshmallow. You might have to use your hands to sprinkle it on the bottom, where the straw is.

Stick this back in the rice and let it set until totally hardened, about 20 minutes.

Now you'll have edible coal. My husband did not believe me that this was edible at first.

However it is edible, and delicious. It tastes like a fluffy Andes Mint. Yum. Seriously.

So now you have your coal, what are you going to do with it?

I put the coal in an extremely shiny Ziploc bag. Then I printed out the "Save Santa, Be Naughty" on white cardstock and attached it to the top of the bag. You can use staples to do this or punch holes in both the bag and cardstock and weave ribbon through the holes. Finally I made a loop on the back of the cardstock so we could hang it on their door and run.

This is the back:

Tonight Princess Goofy went and hung it on their door, knocked, and then we all ran away. Hopefully they enjoy the joke but not as much as they enjoy their treat!

Because I love you, here's the graphics that you can use to make your own. Just right click on it and save or if you do have photoshop CS and above and you want a copy of it in .psd format, just email me or leave a comment with your email address and I'll send it to you.

And remember.. Santa is getting old people. Be nice and save him a trip... by Being Naughty!

Snow Happy

I've been cleaning and decluttering the house the past two days and it has worn me out! Yesterday I took down christmas decorations and cleaned every nook and cranny that I could find. Today we cleaned the garage and His Royal Highness built me more shelves to store my craft supplies. Or as he often calls it, crap supplies. Constantly I'm forced to remind him that my craft issues save him money since I make things rather than buy them.

Throughout all this cleaning and decluttering, the house has stayed a mess. Isn't that how it always seems to happen? I am finding little knick knacks here and there that have no place and little piles of stuff is growing. Tomorrow I plan on erradicating each and every pile. But tonight I am exhausted. I plan on watching the rest of my movie, Pride and Prejudice, and then laying down to read my Sarah Palin book for a few minutes before I pass out cold.

I never showed you any pictures from our snowy Christmas adventure so I'll leave you with those. Please know that by the time you look at these tonight, I will be happily drooling on my pillow in an exhaustive state of slumber. Good night moon, Good night red balloon, and Good night snow angels everywhere.

and finally introducing the snow angel who ate too many christmas goodies...

good thing her waistline will melt away after christmas...

hahah.. I kill myself.

The White Christmas

We never go out of town for christmas. We decided many many years ago that when we had kids we would stay home for every christmas. It was a great plan but this year things outside our control happened and we needed to go out of town for christmas. ugh. His Royal Highness' mom offered to come down to visit and take all our gifts back to her house early so that we would have room in the van for our luggage. It sounded like a good idea at the time.... that is until we realized that there was a massive winter storm headed toward the DFW area and she had all our gifts held hostage in that area! She's a smart one..... she also got me a Chi (real, not fake...) for christmas so she's also a giving one. But for the sake of this story, we'll just say that she's a smart one... very cunning and wise. If you want to make sure that your grandchildren come to see you, take all their gifts hostage.

So we headed off from 60 degree Houston on Christmas Eve in hopes of arriving at his parent's house by dinner time that evening and with plenty of time left in the evening for telling the christmas story and making cookies. We had no idea then that we would talk about the christmas story at Jack-in-the-Box while sharing fries instead of cookies.

A winter storm had descended upon the DFW area and our trip quickly turned into a slow steady crawl on texas ice skating rinks, known to some as roads. The only place we could find open to eat was that Jack-in-the-box hours after we should already arrived at his parents and it made a great lesson to teach the girls about how Mary and Joseph searched for a place to stay the night before Jesus was born. Eight hours later and after three hours of driving no more than 25 mph, we finally pulled into his parent's driveway and decided that we would not drive again on the ice, even if it meant we were stuck there long than expected. I was frazzled and seriously almost threw up a few times while driving. If I was by myself it wouldn't have been so bad but my heart was in the back of the van and their lives mean everything to me. I swore up and down at that point that I would never travel for christmas again..... until....

I woke up to this....

My first white christmas.... ever....I'm approaching a higher number birthday wise than I care to talk about and I've never had a white christmas. I honestly don't remember ever playing in snow as deep as we played in that day. It was magical.

The rest of the day was wonderful. The older princesses loved christmas morning even though Princess Newbie had to be woken up to join up and was grouchy. Here are a few pictures of our morning for all of you to enjoy.

Don't worry about Princess Newbie though.... she got the best gift of all. A grandmother to hold her and fuss over her for hours and hours that day. Now that's one blessed baby....

Christmas Morning

Christmas was great. The princesses are at the age where it is still so fun. We do not celebrate Santa in our house. Christmas is reserved for Jesus' birth, not some fat man that eats all our cookies. We chose to scale down on the gifts this year and only bought them three presents each. They were all smaller presents and their grandparents bought them one big gift to share, a dollhouse. My dad also chose to get them all educational gifts, which they loved.

This is the dollhouse that they play with non-stop. Princess Goofy even took the dollhouse babies to the park with us today.

We're teaching her early that it's all about product placement.

His Royal Highness and Princess Goofy playing with the new monkey of the family.

Princess Goofy showing me her mouthful of chocolate while wearing her beautiful new coat. Just in case you weren't aware, chocolate stains badly. This only gave me a minor heart attack until someone was able to quickly remove the coat. Crisis averted. I know kids get stains on things but the coat just needs a little more time of perfection first. My aunt and cousin sends the best coats from Chicago. They are always so beautiful.

They also sent sparkly purses. It's like they have Princess girly girl down to a T!

The hair! This is the normal morning hair for Princess Goofy. This hair fits her just as much as sparkles and glamour fits princess girly girl.

I hope everyone had a great christmas as well.