Spillane Gifts

My family gives a lot of homemade gifts.  These gifts tend to be the favorites.  This year my sister, Kristy had our names.  She put together gifts for each one of us that we could use to “create”. 

The big girls were given personalized braid and bed boxes to make bracelets.  She even included a book with one and design board with the other…

Jacob was given a mini sketch book and pencils.  Nathan was given a package of CDs with a package of labels WITH an itunes card to “create” some music CD’s…

Jerrica was given the cutes cupcake apron with some brownie and cookie mixes.  I need to take a picture of her in it.  Right now, the apron is in the bottom of the laundry with chocolate all over it. 

Ashley was given a cute container with nail polishes and nail stickers to “create” fancy nails.  Ash already told me that when she goes to college she is taking her fingernail kit.  :)

To top off all of these fun gifts, Kristy gave Stephen and I a gift card to Lowes, so that we can continue with our projects and creations for our house.  It has been fun to see how much time each of the kids have spent creating and enjoying their gifts.

The Spillane’s spoiled us!  We sure love you guys!  Thanks Again!!!!

Tea Party

Ashley LOVES to throw little parties.  We have tea parties monthly.  Usually she invites all of the family.  This means dragging out every little chair and every little teacup she can find.  Invitations are always made and hand delivered.

When I was at Target last week I saw  a little tea set on sale.  I thought that would add the extra two cups that she is always lacking.  We picked it up along with a 2 liter of rootbeer and thought we were all set.

I was wrong.  The little girls thought we needed to go home and bake cookies.  “Store bought would not do for a proper tea party”, Ashley told me.  So we came home and made cookies.  The girls got their table all set up.  Ash made name cards and invitations.  They had little bowls and spoons to add sugar.  Yes, they add sugar to their rootbeer.  A tea party is not a success unless there is a massive sugar overload. 

It was fun.  They even got Stephen to break away from work to join them.  I felt like “If you give a mouse a cookie”, I went from seeing a tea set to spending the afternoon baking cookies and tea partying.

 

Going to Grandma’s

I went to my mom’s for a few days with all of my girls.  When I left I had a couple of friends ask why I was going.  Why not?!?!

As I drove home yesterday I was thinking of all the reasons you should take your kids and go home.

• Grandparents give love, teach and make memories in ways that only they can.
• The value and importance of going home is seen by my kids.  Hopefully they will come home to me as they grow older.
• Relationship bonds are strengthened.
• It brings joy to the grandparents AND grandchild. 

We enjoyed our quick trip and really need to do it more!  Sure love you mom and dad!

Games

Our family loves to play games.  Yes we are competitive, we fight, we laugh, but we are bonding.  I like to gift new games to the kids for Christmas.  It adds to our collection and variety.  This year we received some fun ones. 

We have been playing a lot of games over the break ….

Did you get any new games for Christmas?

A New Favorite Place to take Pictures

My girls love to give me a foot massage.  I give them a little money and they get to play in the lotion.  Today I sat down to work on picture books and in came Jerrica begging to give me a foot massage.  I NEVER say no to a foot massage!

She was so cute talking with me as she rubbed my feet.  I grabbed my camera right there and started taking pictures of her twinkly, little eyes.  I am SOOO going to miss her next year!

 

My new favorite spot to take pictures is with my feet up!

Library Bag

I decided to make Jerrica a library bag for Christmas.  She loves books and we usually go to the library once a week to pick out books and hear the story time.

 

I used two different prints for the inside and outside.  The inside fabric is filled with the stories of the three little pigs, the ugly duckling, the three bears….  It’s fun to see Jerra looking inside and outside trying to name all of the stories.

I love homemade gifts, both giving and receiving.  Kristy’s family had us this year and she sent some really clever gifts to each of us that she had made.  I will have to do a post on them.  They were awesome Kristy, and are already well loved!

New Years FHE

We do the poster collages every year, so this year I thought we could make lists of our goals and what we wanted to accomplish.  However, all of the kids freaked out and didn’t want to do the lists.  “Mom, the collages are our tradition.  You can’t just stop doing a tradition.”

So, all of the magazines from the year came out.  The cutting and gluing ensued. 

We then had our family home evening on time and goals.  I still shared bits from THIS lesson on time management.  I share it every year, but it’s so good and I feel that they can glean something new each year.  I like this quote from it, “Time is all the capital stock there is on the earth; … if properly used, it brings that which will add to your comfort, convenience, and satisfaction,”

I had Rebecca talk about a goal she had of writing in her journal and how she has accomplished it.  She was really cute talking about it.  She showed us her first page written back in 2010.  She talked about finding the perfect time to write in it.  She told us that she keeps it in her church bag and jots down her favorite part of the week during sacrament meeting.  She has kept that record going since 2010.  She then challenged us to find the right time to accomplish our goals.

I then shared a couple other tips and quotes on goals and how to achieve a goal.  It was fun to hear other ideas from the family.  I liked this quote from the lesson “A goal is a standard, a skill, an ideal, or a destination that is to be achieved. We set a goal when we decide to accomplish a particular thing. Some goals, such as cleaning a room or reading a book, may take a short time to accomplish. Other goals, such as saving money to buy a new home or doing things to improve the love and peace within the family, may take months or years. Goals that will help us become worthy to dwell eternally with our Heavenly Father may take an entire lifetime”. 

Nathan thought we needed to end the night with a clip from youtube to pump us up.  It was an awesome evening!

If you don’t have the time lesson, you really should download and print it.  It has such good stories and a perfect object lesson.  Here is the link - Using Time Wisely

My Artist

Jacob LOVES art.  He could sit and doodle for hours.  This year for Christmas he wanted some Prisma colored pencils.  I was having a VERY hard time buying them because they are so incredibly expensive.  In my head a colored pencil is a colored pencil, but I guess these Prismas are a little different.

I told him that they were too much, but secretly had gotten some.  He was so excited Christmas morning.  I think he thanked be at least three times.

I’m excited too, because now I can receive even more gifts like this…

The shading with these Prismas DOES look a little different.  Yes, I dare say these are a bit better than the Crayola colored pencils.

You have an incredible talent Jacob!

Picture

I found this big 16 x 20 frame at a thrift store when my mom was in town.  I passed it by, but had to go back for it because of the fun shape, the fact it had glass, the size of it, AND the $3 price tag.

 

I ended up spray painting it white, sanding it down a bit and sticking in a big picture of the big girls.  Ashley was asking why I was putting it in the big girls room.  I told her “they needed it in there because they keep forgetting which room is theirs”.  She smiled and rolled her eyes.  I’m thinking this eye rolling is getting to be a common Ashley expression.

Anyway, I LOVE the frame addition in their room!

New Years Eve

New Years we did the count down packets again.  The kids LOVEd these last year, so I put a few together for this year.  It was fun to see how excited they were each hour to open up the packet and found out what they were doing for the hour.  The packets kept them busy and “almost all” of them stayed awake until midnight.



The first hour I had these sheets for the kids to fill out to reflect on 2011.  The kids had such cute answers.  Ashley wrote on hers for “The Hardest Thing of the Year – Going to sleep the night that Santa was coming”.  Anyway, HERE is the link to that New Years sheet.  We also put a few toppings in an envelope for a clue that a sundae bar would be happening in the hour.  We did the top 10 at 10.  I found lists of the top 10 news stories, top 10 google searches, top 10 songs and top 10 movies that had grossed the most money.  We split up into five different teams to get the most answers for a “prize”.

We had fun families over for dinner and games.  I love when there is a good mix of people.  I was LAME and didn’t take any pictures though.  We had the Hopkins’ family, Sariah and her little one, the Mumma’s, and then Kaylee and Nathan thought they needed Jordan and Annalise Wright as well.  I could tell it was a good mix of people because all of the kids scattered with their friends throughout the house. 

We made Janie’s yummy crockpot Green Burros recipe.  I can tell that will be a new family favorite for us.  We played two fun games with the adults Bohnanza AND
Logo Board Game

Jake and the older teenage girls all went to the dance with Jake’s friends.  THEY thought they had the most fun, but I beg to differ.  It was a great night!

Tie Gift

Stephen’s parents are getting ready to serve a mission.  SO I thought it would be fun to give Don some new ties.  I had each of the kids make their “own” tie for him with a sweet note on the back to their grandpa.  Their notes to him were so cute.  Kaylee commented on how if she were stranded in the wilderness somewhere, she would want Grandpa Don with her because he knows so much about plants and animals.  Jacob’s Christmas tie drawing was amazing.  He is so talented!

Anyway, the ties were a hit!  Special notes to loved ones always have a way of touching those that receive them.

Gingerbread Houses

I wonder how much frosting and candy is consumed when we do our gingerbread houses.  It must be a lot because the kids are always wayyyy giddy. 

The little girls made one, the big girls made another, and I don’t know what to call the boys creation other than something LOADED with candy to eat at a later time.  I always save a little Halloween candy to add into the variety of candy for the kids to use.  I wish that I would have taken a picture of all of the finished creations.  We sure had fun making them!

Fort Building

Lael flew in first and helped us build a fort to attack all of the others that were coming.  We had the snowball maker going strong.

At first I didn’t think that chances were high that the kids would be out there to use their snowballs and attack those coming, BUT I was wrong!  When Aunt Jodee pulled up with Grandma Brenda, Grandpa, Janie and Andrew the kids were in full attack mode.