Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Free Printable Gift Tags

here's the best roundup i've found yet!
Skip To My Lou - Free Christmas Gift Tags & Labels

It's Snowing!

okay, so if you're in the lower mainland it's not really snowing right now (unfortunately!) but if you have a mac you can pretend it is!  check out this FREE snowy screen saver: Snowfall!

follow the link and click "download now".  when the downloads window opens wait for it to finish and then click the little magnifying glass icon on the right to show in finder.  drag the icon to your desktop.
then open your finder (the faces icon in your taskbar), click on your hard drive icon on the left (mine's called macintosh HD), click library and drag the screen saver icon from your desktop into the screen savers folder.
to set the screen saver, find your "system preferences" (grey icon with a light switch and an apple) either in your taskbar or through finder > applications > system preferences.  click desktop & screen saver, then snowfall.  you can change the background colour in options, and choose whether you want stripes or not.  enjoy!

Bookworm Baby Shower

it's the cutest shower idea i've ever seen (and works well for a girl or a boy!)

check it out: Baby Bookworm Baby Shower

Wrap It Up

most people will probably think i'm crazy for saying what i'm about to say, but one of the things i look most forward to every year is wrapping christmas presents.  we try to stick with a cohesive theme, whether it be completely matching or at least coordinating with all the separate gifts that hang out under our tree until we give them out.  it looks better that way.  this year i plan to step it up a notch and get creative because it's barely november and we've already almost finished our christmas shopping, so there's time to take a little more time wrapping.
here are my favourite gift wrapping & tag ideas from martha stewart.  thanks martha!

green satin & brown ribbon

red bell "holly berries"

woven tissue strips (also works well with ribbon)

button stamped paper and a pretty button tied on with baker's twine

monogram tags from old christmas cards

felt leaf gift toppers

and my all-time favourite idea to keep it cheap is to use brown kraft paper and jazz it up with your ribbons, bows and what-have-you.  at $1 per roll it saves wrapping paper money (which i don't factor in to my shopping budget, do you?)

there are so many great ideas and instructions on how to do it yourself, i could have posted almost every single one but these were my top picks for the shape & size gifts i have to wrap this year.

i hope she leaves you inspired, too!

This Made My Evening

(click it for link)

Elliott's Screen Obsession

lately elliott seems to be most interested in things with screens:
the television (kids shows and wii video games), our nintendo ds (which, i have to admit, i am proud at how good he's getting at "marioworld", that's a lot of hand-eye coordination, thumb control and timing going on), and our computer (which is my favourite for him because he loves the educational games at pbskids.org - if you have a toddler i highly recommend it, i played with him the first few times but one day he took over the mouse and won't let me play anymore, he went from not knowing how to control the mouse to an expert in a few short weeks of playing, not to mention he now recognizes numbers, letters, follows directions, does simple math, and constantly surprises me with his problem-solving skills!) (yes, that was a pretty long statement to be in parentheses.)

we decided it was time to figure out a way of earning screen time instead of him expecting it so i came up with a chore chart full of chores that he's capable of, printed it on blank card stock and backed it with magnets for our fridge:

we've been doing it for 2 days now and so far it's been working great, it's been most beneficial when it comes to finishing eating everything on his plate (something we never force him to do so he knows to stop when he's full, though he seems to be just like me and stops eating when he gets bored of it instead).  the only chore he needs a lot of help with is sweeping but he really enjoys it (and it's pretty cute to watch!)  it's also encouraged him to learn to dress himself, something he never showed interest in learning - he's the kind of kid who isn't interested unless there's a reason (be it a prize or a consequence), and especially after watching the "changing education paradigms" video milissa posted, colin and i want to make sure elliott can be entertained without screens, that his imagination can always be enough entertainment.  which it is!  he loves spending time playing with lego, his playmobil playground and fire truck, and g.i.joe's (that one is all colin's encouragement), as well as colouring and reading, and even helping out around the house with laundry, vacuuming and dishes, too.  he's a well rounded little dude and i'm very proud of him!

i'm starting to think i should make the same chart for myself - facebook and blog browsing is always more interesting than dishes.  i'm a really good procrastinator...

Oops.

it all happened last week.  my brother-in-law rob left a message that he got junk e-mail sent to him from our email address.  so into that email account we went, deleted everything, and closed it down.  it made colin feel so gross (like our house had been broken into) that he decided to delete everything we don't use that might have personal information on it.  including our google account.  what do we need that for?  deleted.
the next day i typed my blog address into the browser and a "sorry, the blog has been removed" message came up.  that's weird.  so i went to blogger.com to sign in, put in my email address (which no longer existed) and thought "ohhh, because i deleted my email account!"  so i was able to sign back in to that hotmail account and tried blogger.com again, this time realizing it had little to do with my email account and everything to do with my google account, which also no longer existed.  feeling slightly ill at the thought of having lost all i'd ever written about my kids, crafts, not to mention all my favourite blog links that i sign into my blog every day to check out, i told colin what had happened.  he started to feel slightly ill as well and sat at the computer for a good half hour trying to figure out a way to get it back.  in the end he read that even if you re-open that account your blog information will all be gone forever for privacy reasons or something.  lame.  so there it is.  or, rather, there it isn't anymore.  it's gone for good.  i didn't update it that often anyway, right?  hmph.
live and learn.
so here is a new blog.  i've tried to remember and re-collect all the blogs and websites i love most, if you can remember any i've forgotten please let me know and i'll try to find it!  the only part i'm truly disappointed to have lost is my molly birth story.  i think i remember it all, but it was always here in case i forgot anything, and now it's not anymore.
i also somehow lost my blog header that i worked so hard on, i don't know how it got deleted off my computer but it's nowhere to be found.  so i made a new one!
and there you have it.
oops indeed.