Burt the Elf Announces YHL Book Giveaway Winner!

I'm going to let Burt, our elf, announce the winner of the YHL Book Giveaway.  Here are a few of the places he's been hiding lately:

Dinosaur Parading in the Basement!

Sucker Jar Sweet Tooth Time

Riding a zip line in our kitchen.

Bill finally understands why I included a chair in our stairwell gallery wall:).

Curtain Peeking

Sugar Diving

More toy fun.

The fourth wise man.

And now for the drawing..

 The suspense is building!

Lucky pulled a name out of a hat!

And here's Burt....

 And Lucky:

Congrats Murphyboysmom5!  If you could email your mailing address to sunshineontheinside@yahoo.com by the morning of Friday, December 21st, I'll get your book right out to you!  Thank you to everyone for entering...I see I need to come up with a few posts on toy storage solutions:)!

I plan to have a few more Christmas projects posted before Christmas, so stay tuned!

Merry Christmas To You!!

I'm averaging one "giveaway" per year, and in order to keep my average up it's time for another giveaway!  Last year, I collected Huggies points which I exchanged for a Starbucks gift card to give away to a reader  This year's giveaway comes courtesy of my very thoughtful mother...or me, depending on how you look at it.

Have you seen this book yet?:

Young House Love

by John and Sherry Petersik

Well, I've been a longtime fan of the Dynamic Petersik Duo, so I pre-ordered a copy of their book on Amazon months ago.  My mom knew I was a Young House Love fan as well, and she also pre-ordered me a copy of their book.  A day or two after the book was released, I received two identical packages in the mail:).  I kept the copy my mom sent (Thank you Mom!), and I'm giving away my copy to one lucky reader.  It's my way of saying thanks for reading my little blog and also a way of continuing on the DIY spirit by passing along an inspirational book!

If you're interested in having your very own copy of Young House Love's book and if you're a follower of my blog and/or a regular reader, please leave a comment on this post indicating your name and a DIY project you'd like to tackle.

I'll be picking a name out of a Santa hat on Tuesday night, so please have your comment posted by 6pm Tuesday, December 18th.  I'll announce the winner on Wednesday!

A Christmas Tree Countdown...Better Late Than Never!

I really wanted to come up with a fun Christmas Countdown that I could make or purchase this year that would last for years to come so I wouldn't have to recreate the countdown every year.  I really loved the Bulletin Board Countdown that we made last year:

Bulletin Board Countdown

...but that bulletin board is currently in use in our office and the space it was hung last year now has a canvas portrait of Lucky and Charm that I didn't want to take down.

I thought really hard about ordering this one again:

Telluride Advent Calendar

Pottery Barn Kids

But by the time I got ready to pull the trigger, it was out of stock.  Two years in a row.  I decided to brainstorm a bit about what I wanted in a countdown.  I decided that I wanted something simple that we could reuse every year without much effort.  I decided I didn't want anything that had pockets that had to be filled with cheap gifts or sweets every year (which ruled the Telluride Calendar out anyway!).  I searched around the internet and stumbled on the blog called Oh Happy Day!  There are so many great countdown ideas on this site!

Check out this one:

Chalkboard Advent Calendar

Oh Happy Day!

And this one:

Mini Tree Advent Calendar

Oh Happy Day

And this one:

Giant Advent Calendar

Oh Happy Day!

I was particularly inspired by the last calendar, especially because I had seen the tree fabric at IKEA recently, and I wished I had a use for it because it was so awesome!  I would need to tweak the plan a bit because it had numbered pockets, and I didn't want pockets, but I decided to go for it!  Here is our end result:

The pictures don't do it justice, mostly because it's located in an area that gets no natural light, but also because it's at the bottom of our staircase which makes getting pictures a little tricky.  I do love that it's the first thing you see upon walking downstairs though!

And now for some details.  I picked up the fabric on sale at IKEA for $4.99/yard, and I needed 2 yards.  I ironed the fabric and then attached twenty-four iron on velcro strips to the tree fabric.  

Next, Bill picked up four furring strips for 75 cents each and built a 73" x 55" frame for me.  (It is huge!)  We needed to put L brackets in the corners of the frame to keep it somewhat square because the furring strips we used had some serious curves in them (and we picked the best four in the entire pile!!)

We stapled the tree fabric to the frame (it only took two tries to get it lined up right...be forewarned, this tree is not vertical on the fabric...you'll never get the base and top perfectly centered:)).  And we adhered the big ol' tree to a wall in our basement using Command Strips.  We really didn't have much going on in our basement in terms of holiday decor, so I love that this added some festive flair to a space we are in several hours a day!

I numbered brown lunch bags and added a little ribbon and placed an ornament in each one.  Some ornaments are felt, some are wood.  (The felt ornaments stuck to the 'hard' side of the velcro that was attached to the tree, and I put a little adhesive piece of 'soft' velcro on the wood ornaments so they would stick to the velcro tabs on the tree too.)  Lucky, Charm and I painted the wood ornaments (which were 29 cents each from Joann's).  The felt ones were 70 cents each from Michael's on sale.  I let the kids open up 10 bags in one day to get us caught up.  

Here are some pictures from our big ornament opening:

If you include the cost of the fabric, velcro, ornaments, furring strips and L-brackets, the project cost about $30.  Now I have to figure out how to store it:)...perhaps I should have used dowels instead!

Our Annual Ornament: Noodle Angels!

We made our annual ornament last week.  (See this post for last year's ornament.)  I decided to make noodle angels with the kids last week, mostly because I had all the supplies on hand in one neatly labeled shoe box from the last time I made these ornaments about 7 or 8 years ago with Bill's help.

We used several types of noodles and a wooden balls for the angel heads.

This ornament requires a good deal of patience and good gluing skills.  Lucky and Charm were on the young side to be making them, but we pushed through anyway.  Here are our headless angels waiting for the Elmer's Glue to dry:

Next, we painted the noodle angels with white paint, though any color would work.  Lucky is trying to pull off a Lady Gaga look here with huge faux poinsettia clips in her hair.  

And here's Charm painting and showing off his usual 'no look' camera pose.

After the paint dried, we strung the heads with ribbon for hanging:

And a few made it on our tree:

As an aside, we picked up our tree at Menards this year.  It was economical and easy to pick it up there.  I think the tree cost $20.  The kids loved watching Bill tie it to the top of our car, and I love the shape and size of the tree.  I think it fits the room perfectly without overtaking it.  We let the kids put their ornaments on the tree however they wished.  We found that they liked to group several ornaments on the same branch.  Perhaps they didn't want their ornaments to be lonely?  Bill and I added ornaments from our collection, and then we tossed on several white and red ornaments to make those colors stand out the most.  Here is how our front room is looking this year

There is something so sweet about watching Charm and Lucky play with their train set by the Christmas tree at night, so we've been keeping the set out most of the time.

And now back to the ornaments.  We tied some on Christmas packages for family and we're saving a few for Lucky and Charm's teachers presents as well.

And here are a couple random, fun pictures:

Lady Lucky Licking a Lovely Candy Cane:).

Everyone in this picture, angel included need a little V-8, I think.  

It's hard to believe that Christmas is only a couple weeks away!!

Christmas Book Countdown

Last year, we did two Christmas Countdowns in our house.  (Click here and here for details from last year.)  This year I decided to do a couple different countdowns, one of which Bill and I will make this weekend.  (Better late than never, right?...and it will be all set for next year!)  I'll post pictures of the second one after we get it done, but for now, here are a few pictures of our book countdown:

It is a really easy countdown.  I just wrapped up all of our Christmas Books and labeled them with numbers 1 through 24.  I luckily had enough Christmas Books on hand thanks to a Scholastic order that I placed before I even decided on this countdown:).  The vast majority of the books I wrapped were ones we had from years past.

We unwrap the 'book of the day' at night and read it as a bedtime story with both kiddos.  Then the unwrapped books go in another basket so we can enjoy them throughout the month!

(Gingerbread Pirates is Charm's new favorite book.  He has requested that we make cookies that look like a crew of pirates for Christmas.  We will be having a very pirate-y Christmas this year!)

We are really enjoying this countdown because it is so simple.  I also really like that it doesn't involve sweet treats (which abound this season without a daily 'countdown' treat in addition) or a daily cheapo gift that I'll have to pick up 1000 times this month:).  Books are good.  Books that you already own are even better!!  Lucky and Charm get really excited to open a book every night, and they really enjoy our special reading time too.  

As an aside, if you are looking for Christmas books to add to your collection, you might want to take a look at this post at Modern Parents Messy Kids.  We actually don't own any of these book suggestions, so I put several on hold at our local library...and maybe next year St. Nick will bring one or two of the books:)!

Let It Snow!

I had a little photo session yesterday with the kids in an attempt to take the elusive 'perfect' Christmas picture for this year's card.  I actually really tried this year...like more than just going to our closets the day we decide to take a picture to coordinate our outfits.  I bought Christmas pajamas on sale ($11 each set and 100% cotton:)) from Gymboree.  I made felt letters (like Gobble, which in retrospect really looks like OB LE), and I picked up some $1 felt snowflakes from Target. I borrowed 'faux snow' from my Mom because I saw some in her basement when I was up north last, and I didn't realize how readily available that stuff is ($2.49 at Target) and how messy it is.  I think it is shredded plastic bags.  The kids loved playing with it, but the mess it left was not so much fun.  Ah well.   Here's how the picture taking went:

This picture was when I knew they were done.

The aftermath.

Now, I'll turn the 124 pictures I took over to Bill, our in house card maker, to see what he comes up with for this year's card.  We were mailed a fantastic coupon from Cardstore, so we'll most likely be using them again this year!  (Here is my post about Cardstore from last year.)