Happy Friday!

Happy Friday, friends!  We got some snow last night and are hoping to get a delay this morning.  We'll have to wait until 5am or so until the schools start announcing.  I hope you had a great week.  We had a lot of fun (our Indiana Hoosiers are headed to the playoffs!) and a lot of hard.  Dumb car issues, Notre Dame's football season ended ubruptly, tragic health new for a friend, allergic reactions and lots of Christmas cheer!  Haha.  Can you relate to a week full of ALL the things??

The best parts of our week were:

1. What's your level of holiday cheer?  I'm upping my game and switching out my shoe laces for festive ones.  Aren't these darling!?!  They are anywhere from $3-6 a pair on Amazon and are SO CUTE.  

I have these three pairs so far and LOVE them:

Christmas Red Plaid - pictured here!

Black and white gingham

Navy and white gingham

& these are on my wish list: Red & white gingham & pink and white gingham

They are so fun for the holidays, school spirit days or just to give some new life to old shoes.

2. Our elves have been busy!  The kids woke up to a hot chocolate bar set up and ready to enjoy after school today.  Stay tuned for an elf post next week.

3. The Cozy Crawl at school!  We go all around the school to the different themed snack stations and enjoy so many different delicious foods.  I love this team of mine.  We had our team dinner one night and that was fun, too.

The cheese table covered in tiny Christmas mice was my favorite!

Christmas cookies - donated by parents and teachers get to fill up a box.

4. A breakfast board for my crew!  They loved it.

5. We had candy cane stripe day at school and my headband was a big hit.  Pumpkin is getting so fluffy!

6. Everyone loves this guy.  Hence the three cats in his bed at bedtime.

7. A sink drink is Pumpkin's favorite.  But look at that tail!  It's as long as his body.

8. Leo loves to sit and draw.  I'm going to miss this view one day when he's too big to sit like this.

9. Crazy Christmas sweater day at school!

10. Building and exploring in our creek.  The boys were excited for some nice weather mid week to get outside and play.

10. 4 years ago we were packing up and relocating to a new city with a VERY BUSY toddler.  He scaled every stack of boxes and was so proud.  I probably wouldn't recommend moving at Christmas in a six week time frame, but we survived and it worked out great for us.

11. You have got to try these!  We sampled them at Sams and almost ate an entire bag in one week.  I'm not a huge peppermint fan, but these are AMAZING.  I need to go and buy more before the season is over.

12. We celebrated my sister's birthday!

13. Pumpkin can smile!  Of course he can.  He's the sweetest so it shouldn't surprise anyone that he can smile.  We sure do love him.

14. Snow!  My dream came true this year and we put candy cane lights on our fence line.  They look so good as do our snow covered trees.  We were supposed to get a dusting, but we measured almost 2 inches.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!  See you back here on Monday.

Linking up with Momfessionals

Nutella Bites

I made the easiest, yummiest treat for breakfast and I wanted to share!  These kinds of recipes are floating around social media like crazy this time of year.

You just need 4 ingredients-

1 pkg pastry sheets

Nutella

one egg for an egg wash

powdered sugar

Look at this nutella deliciousness.

I just used one of these sheets since I was making them for my little family.  We ended up with 12 Nutella bites out of that one sheet.

Thaw the pastry sheets.

Unroll the pastry sheet and smear half of it generously with Nutella.

I used this much and would recommend using a little more next time.  The pastry puffs up pretty thick so a thick chocolate layer is necessary.

Fold it in half.

Slice it into 12 bites.

Do an egg wash on top.

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes or until everything is browned.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

These are best served warm so enjoy them right away!

I can't wait to try these again!  I might try some different combos - maybe adding in some more chocolate, a stripe of peanut butter, cutting different shapes, etc.  There are so many options!  I might every roll my next pastry up into a swirl and cut Nutella swirls.

You've got to give this a try this Christmas season!

North Pole Breakfast

We have been doing a North Pole Breakfast in early December for years.  I looked back on my blog and I think this tradition start in 2014 when Olive was one.  The details are flexible - date, menu, gifts - and the overall idea is the same - a special breakfast with the elves to kick off the holiday season.  I love to do it on December 1st if I can, but December 7th was the first day I could make it happen this year.  Again, we're flexible with details.

The kids were so excited to wake up to a gingerbread themed North Pole Breakfast!

I grabbed all the gingerbread stuff on after Christmas clearance last year and was so excited to use it this year.  We even had mini gingerbread ice cubes!

The kids each got some new ornaments with favortie things from the year and a mini gingerbread house kit.  Some years I've done pjs, new books, Santa hats, etc.  This year since we did it a little later, we just did ornaments and gingerbread houses.

This vase of holly branches from our yard makes me so happy!  I've been waiting for years for the holly bushes to grow big enough to trim them at Christmas.

Menu:
Christmas treats, bacon, eggs, apples and homemade nutella squares.  Come back on Wednesday for that recipe.

We hot glued the mini gingerbread houses together because that's the only way to do it.  Then the kids decorated each of their houses.

Do you do a North Pole Breakfast at your house?

Friday Favorites

It was a busy week kicking off December!  We had fun things going on at school and at home.  Let me tell you about my favorite moments of the week.

1. Christmas Squishmallow surprises under your pillow.  Kevin's signature dad move.

2. Elf Day at school.  The kids loved hearing our elf names.

3. Grinch bros.  The new Grinch merch was a huge hit.

Our elves brought new sweatshirts for all the kids and they loved them so much!

4. We're a real tree family for our family room.  Fletcher picked out the perfect tree at Menards.  It smells wonderful and so far the cats have yet to climb this tree.

5. I love getting hugs at lunch from this guy.  He gave me a big elf kiss.

6. Christmas sock day!

7. Pumpkin is the sweetest cat ever.  He wants to purr and snuggle all day long.  And look at his winter coat!  He's half fluff.

8. We got a Dutch Bros!  We tried their walk up window and all loved our coffee drinks.  The kids got hot gingerbread drinks and I got an iced caramel latte.  The line was a little crazy so we used the app to order.

9. I love this time of year with couch snuggles and blankets.  So does Pumpkin.

10. I popped in to visit Grandma in between some errands and a birthday party for Olive's friend.  I took her to ran some errands and caught up on life. I always enjoy hanging out with her.  Olive ice skated with her best buddies and had the best time.

11. I took the kids to see Zootopia 2 and we loved it! Cute animals, cute story and we can't wait to watch it again.  I bumped into some of my students, too!

12. Costco pizza is superior.  The best $1.99 you'll spend on a GIANT piece of pizza.  We picked up everything from groceries to Christmas gifts and lights to lunch at Costco.

13. This apple dijon salad mix was yummy from Costco!  I added in some fresh apples, cucumbers, purple onion and blueberries.  It was tasty!  The salad mix was $3.99 and I already had the fruits and veggies to add in.

14. Leo loves art!  He's a drawing machine these days.  He makes all these characters and then tells elloborate stories with them.  It's so sweet.

15. All 4 cats are so happy to hang out with me while I get ready every morning.  But Pumpkin is the sweetest.  He purrs, gets a drink and is so excited to see me.  Remember our cat Topher, he did the same thing and got ready with me every morning for 15 years.  We miss him, but are so thankful to have another sweet orange cat in the family.

16. We got our first snow!  It wasn't a ton, but it was enough to get us a 2 hour delay.  Our tree line looked so pretty.  I got to hurry to the kid's rooms at 5am to turn off their alarms and then hear their excitement when the ran downstairs to realize they had a 2 hour delay.

I hope you have the best weekend!  I need to finish up some shopping, relax a bit, work on Christmas cards and map out the month of December.

Linking up with Momfessionals

See you back here on Monday!