Christmas Celebrations

Our Christmas celebrations have now officially ended. The much needed rest and clean-up will begin soon! It has been a crazy time full of family frenzy! We have been to the airport twice, back and forth to Ridgecrest twice, and had a quick trip to Carlsbad. It was worth it because of all the great family time we had! My pictures with Rob's family blurred a bit, but next weekend we will have them over for his mom's bday and I will get some pics then.

The first picture is of the girls on Christmas morning!

The 2nd pic is my mom, brother with his son George, my sister, me, Rob and the girls.

3rd picture: My dad and all of us! My stepmom had already pooped out!

And last..... but not least are my Christmas toys! Boy was I surprised to get a Gypsy from Rob and a Kindle from my dad and stepmom!

Traditions...more crafty kids

I have been saving Christmas cards for about 15 years! I have been planning on a craft (place mats) for that long and needed enough cards to make it. It seems that 15 years of Christmas cards would be plenty...but I like to use cards and not the picture cards. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE picture cards! But they are not the best for the craft. I started making these with my grandma Jo when I was very young. She got enough cards every year that we could make the place mats every other year. They are soooo simple! Kids do need some cutting skills, though! So here is what you do: You take Christmas cards and you use a cup or something round to trace circles on the cards. I try and get the girls to get the main pictures and then we also look for phrases to trace. You trace the same size circles for all of them. Then you have to cut all of the circles out. The circles get arranged on colored contact paper (green or red) into a rectangle type shape and then they are layered so that the cards cover the area that you want. Then place clear contact paper over what you have made and then trim around the edges. We only had frosted contact paper for ours, but the girls say it looks cool!

Our pictures show a little of the process and our final products. To make them extra special, we cut out some circles that included our relatives signatures! In one picture you can see my Grandma Jo's signature! I am sure glad that she taught me about crafts and I have these ideas to share with my girls. She would have loved to be a part of this time with us!