sad.

here are the lovely gingerbread homes, dumped in the trashcan...siggggghhhhhhhhh. putting Christmas decorations is a bit of a downer for me. however, i must confess, i get a little geared up at the thought of "starting over".

:)

here are a some Christmas 2009 happy memories...



my parents with their adorable grandchildren...



a tiny little glitter coated wreath place setting favor i whipped up for the first ever Christmas Day meal i hosted...notice there are no photos of the food! the big honkin storm totally switched up all of our Christmas plans...but karla and her family were able to make the two block trek to join us. it was truly a special day.



darth vader.



mr. elliott reading the Christmas story from Luke 2.



our new jammies.



beatrice and fancy nancy. we L.O.V.E. fancy nancy.



all the cousins opening their gift...a "let's stay at a hotel and go swimming and have a pizza party and see a movie" night. this was a wonderful alternative to exchanging gifts, as we live in a tiny cottage and have no room for more "stuff". (well, except for momma's treasures!)

happy day!

Today...

in the City of David, a Savior has been born to you! He is CHRIST the Lord!

happy*blessed*day!

little bits...(bella's in training)...how cute is this???

shortly after silver bella, our daughters were all invited to participate in a little bit swap hosted by sheila, at blessed and distressed.

beatrice was paired up with lorelei and her cousin elizabeth. (girls, if your mamma's have blogs, would you please have them send me their link?) :)



she got right to work, gluing on buttons, flowers, lace and ribbon...she did have a wee bit of help from her mamma. here is miss lorelei's pretty in pink ornament..



and here is elizabeth's fun and funky ornament...



i have to tell you, we had the best time. we love any excuse we can find to play a little silver bella in our art room, but THEN, the exchange!!! oh my goodness, what fun! little girls do not get real mail nearly enough!



it was such a great treat!



thank you, sheila, for the swap, and thank you, lorelei and elizabeth, for the beautiful ornaments!



beatrice and i hope to participate in more bit's!



happy SNOWY day!

fun little art party!

these are a few of my girlfriends from school. we had a lovely little art party! our project was inspired by a class i took at silver bella with pam garrison:



we created a garland using antique postcards, lace, trinkets, music sheets, and other little pretties.



we laughed and shared supplies,



asked for advice and chanted our mantra that



"perfect is not good."



the girls were so sweet and thankful...



they have no idea that i am the one who is grateful...



i loved having friends create something beautiful and enjoy it!



it was a big time treat for me.



i suggested a valentines day activity...



can't wait!
happy day!

bubble paint!

ok. here's last nite's advent activity.



four bowls of water, add a big glop of dishwashing soap, drops of food coloring, give everyone a straw, and you've got some fun!



the bubbles create a large dome over the top of the bowl. take a piece of paper and gently lower it onto the bubble world, and it creates a lovely pattern. layer the bubble images on one another to create your one of a kind masterpiece!



we're going to use the paper to create cards for our friends at a local assisted living facility.
happy day!

cookies!

earlier this month, i shared my dirty little secret about how i hate to work in the kitchen. well. i haven't baked since last december, and after we had all the dough ready to go, i vaguely remembered my rolling pin breaking...so, we used beatrice's play dough rolling pin this year!



we baked up a small batch and frosted and sprinkled to our hearts' content!



my lover even got in on the action!



mr. elliott created some tasty treats!



beatrice takes her baking seriously. i pray that she gets the kitchen gene from her grandma suzie! while everyone was decorating, i worked on the gift boxes, cause really, that's more my thing.



i love those "decorate me" pencil boxes. they are so handy dandy, whenever i find them on sale, i try to STOCK UP!



i covered them with some of my favorite papers,



gently added the cookies in between sheets of tissue paper, tied on a Christmas green ribbon, attached a gold trinket star and...



lovely.
now the fun part! delivering our treats to our friends!
happy day!

Christmas pretties...