Will, Audrey and I are in ski school every week for the next 8 weeks. It was tough getting back out there after a year, but after a couple hours I had a decent run.
Then we have so much fun together just playing in the snow.
Like I said, a little wobbly
While we were skiing, Annabel ran into some other friends who had baby skis that she could try.
She went down a hill too!
And at the end of the day, I said “everything is sore except my phalanges.”
Annabel had fun this morning making her first happy face ever with no help:
Then she made a picture of her best friend Audrey:
Then a bunny
Then “just some hairy guy”
Christmas is one of the best times of year to show off some Do It Yourself Projects. A few new things in our house this year were handmade with love. DIY doesn’t mean perfect, but it means a lot of fun.
One of the things we did this year was make homemade notepads for my teachers. Online, there are a lot of great tutorials for DIY notepads, we didn’t use one in particular.
First, you gather all the paper you want in your pad – we printed out some of my drawings that were scanned. Then, you glue the edges (you don’t have to use a fancy clamp, books worked just fine.)
Then have kinko’s cut them down to the size you want!
I made these for my teacher:
And these with the school logo for other teacher’s and administrators:
We have new stockings this year – using this simple stocking tutorial, mom fashioned stockings out of some of my dad’s old work shirts. You can make anything out of an old dress shirt!
The patches came from this wonderful vendor on Etsy that we met at a craft show recently.
The red and green accent fabrics match the quilt that Grandma is working on – here is what the finished product will look like:
Everybody is DIYing.
Here is an ornament Annabel made out of painted pasta and red pipe cleaner:
Here’s one I made:
Dad didn’t make anything yet, but since he is so amazing, his Secret Santa at work made him something extra special for his office.
Today, Viviana showed us a tutorial on how to make gift bags out of any kind of paper.
So, we made this one out of a watercolor painting I made last week:
We are posting our Christmas cards by the kitchen table so we can look at them during dinner. We used paper chains and painted clothespins.
Finally, here’s Annabel’s homemade dress for Christmas Eve dinner. Fig Tree & Co provided this party dress pattern.
So, we hope we’ve inspired you to make a few things of your own this Christmas!
As you know, I take a jazz/hip hop class once a week. You may wonder, “why does Ben need a dance class if he is such an amazing dancer already?”
Well, you are right, of course, but taking a class helps me with fundamental moves and body control.
We spend the beginning of class on stretching and basic moves:
Then we do some floor work. Kicking our legs according to the teacher’s counting is tricky.
One of the most important things we learn is about choreography and how to follow the music with counts and steps. For holiday season we learned a dance to one of the grinch’s favorite songs.
Here we show you the process of practicing without the music and then we put it all together.
We have been begging my mom for years to make a gingerbread house. Finally she gave in. In her defense, this is the mess we made:
How does this work? First we combined all the pieces then covered the roof in icing. Annabel and I each had a bowl of candy to put on our respective sides of the roof. I couldn’t resist eating a few pieces of candy, but most of it ended up on the roof.
Annie, on the other hand, ate a lot of candy. Here is her side:
At one point, she took a spoon to the roof:
What a fun 15 minute activity that takes an hour to set up for and a half an hour to clean up!
But we had lots of fun and enjoy looking at our final product everyday!
That’s a spoon she’s using to eat sprinkles!
And, yes, my mother recommends using a kit to avoid complete gingerbread distress and to be able to complete this project on a school night.
Since yesterday was filled with some thoughtful facts about our blog and Christmas, we thought you’d enjoy some more facts about the North Pole.
The North Pole, as you know, is located in the Arctic Region of our planet. There are 8 nations who occupy a piece of the Arctic Circle – United States, Canada, Russia, Finland, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Iceland and Sweden. That means 2 million people and 50 different languages! I had no idea! That doesn’t include how many elves and Mr. and Mrs. Claus.
Here are a few of my favorite animals that live in the Arctic:
Arctic Fox: 
Arctic Hare: 
Polar Bear: 
And the Reindeer (domesticated caribou): 
During the winter months, vegetation is really scarce in the North Pole – barely a little moss and other fuzzy stuff for the animals to chew on. So most birds and animals migrate south for the winter.
Except, of course, those hard at work at the North Pole. Conner, our Elf on the Shelf, and all his friends the elf, don’t get to enjoy much nature. It pretty much looks like this up there this time of year.
It should be no surprise then that we found Conner enjoying our plants in our house. I said, “He must need some fresh air after spending so much time in the North Pole.” You see, I’m learning about the role that plants play in the environment.
