Friday, December 16, 2016

Happy Friday!!

I hope you've had a wonderful week filled with Christmasy cheer.  We've been busy doing fun things at home and making some great plans for the rest of December.  Kevin is finishing up a super busy Fall semester and excited for a long Christmas break with us.  We're excited to get to spend the holidays with friends and family.

The best parts of our week were:

// 1 //
SNOW
We got our first snow of the season this week!!  It was about three inches and it was lovely.  The temps were FREEZING so it was too cold to get out and about in it.  Fletcher was mesmerized by his first snow and kept crawling from window to window watching it come down.  Olive was excited to tell him all about snow.

// 2 //
Christmas Crafting
We took advantage of all the time inside this week and did some Christmas crafting.  We did foot print Christmas trees, snowman ornaments and painted.  It was tons of fun and we ended up making some sweet new Christmas decorations.  Have you done any Christmas crafting this month??

// 3 //
Christmas Cheer!
We've loved watching Christmas movies, singing Christmas songs and  going to brunch with Santa and his reindeer.  We're counting down the days until Christmas and can't believe how soon it will be here.  Fletcher is loving his Christmas pjs and Olive loves her smocked Santa dress.

 // 4 //
College Basketball
We have made it a tradition to go to at least one college basketball game for Kevin's school.  We loaded up the kids and headed to the game.  I wore Fletcher, we all wore jackets with hoods because it was raining and had a great time.  It took a bit of planning and a lot of work to get us there, but it was definitely worth the effort.  We enjoy game food and had a great time.  We were planning to get a pretzel and Olive insisted on popcorn.  She was eating it and said, "These yellow popcorns sure are delicious!!"  She quickly figured out buttery popcorn is best :)



 // 5 //
Christmas Cards
I LOVE getting the mail this time of year!  My mailbox is overflowing with Christmas cards from sweet friends all over the country.  We sent out our cards and hang up all the Christmas cards that arrive on a door in our kitchen.  What do you do with Christmas cards that arrive at your house?


 Polka-Dotty Place Week in Review:

Monday: Holiday Best - Sharing my favorite Christmas recipes
Tuesday: Making Christmas Memories - DIY Christmas ornaments
Wednesday: Christmas Favorites - Sharing all of our Christmas favorites - books, movies, etc.
Thursday: 2016 Christmas Cards - Merry Christmas from my house to yours!


What was your FAVORITE part of the week??





I hope you have a really great weekend!!
We are going to visit some friends this weekend, having people over for dinner, finishing up our Christmas shopping and baking some sugar cookies.  It should be great :)

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Thursday, December 15, 2016

2016 Christmas Cards

My Christmas cards have almost all been mailed out and I'm excited to share them with you today.  I was thrilled to take advantage of Black Friday sales again this year and order them from Sams.  I've been really pleased with this set up for several years.  I love their big 6x8 cards, their one hour photo options and that they're SO affordable.

We got family pictures taken for my birthday present back in November so we had some cute options to use.  I was excited our photographer captured sweet expressions and have a picture we all liked.  Olive made the exact same face/expression that Fletcher is making for her first several Christmas cards.  He smiles HUGE for me or for someone in our family, but he's skeptical of photographers.  She captured us all perfectly.

  We have done picture Christmas cards for our entire married lives - 12 years so I look forward to putting these together every year.  My mom did photo cards when IU was growing up so it just seems like a must do tradition now that I'm the mom.




Merry Christmas from my family to yours!!  
I hope you have a sweet remainder of the Christmas season.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Christmas Favorites

We love all things Christmas this time of year - plates, coffee cups, decorations, ornaments, books and outings.  We try to squeeze in all the fun things we want during the month of December.  We plan ahead, pick things that sound fun to our family and then put them on the calendar.  We have gotten to do a lot of fun things as a family and we are hoping to drive around to look at Christmas lights, drink some hot chocolate, bake sugar cookies and spend time with friends and family in the next couple of weeks.

I thought I'd share some of our Christmas FAVORITES today:

 Favorite BOOKS:
We have a big stack of Christmas books, but these are our very favorites.  I'm reading to my kids (3.5 years and 8 months) and they request these books over and over again.
What's your favorite Christmas book?

Favorite PLATES:
I'm usually a big fan of the kid's holiday plates from Pottery Barn Kids, but I didn't love them this year.  They're pricey so I didn't want to buy them if I didn't love them.

Instead, I opted for Target Dollar Spot Christmas plates that are so cute!  I spent my monthly $10 Target budget on these this month.  They are bright and cheery and were only $1 each.  The only downside is that they are NOT microwave/dishwasher safe.  It really has not been a problem to hand wash them as needed.

I serve all the kid meals on Christmas plates in December.  They love it!

 
Favorite MOVIES:
My DVR is nearly at capacity with fun Christmas movies.
So far we are loving:
Elf
The Search for Santa Paws
The Santa Clause
Arthur's Christmas (not the cartoon character Arthur)
and any cartoon Christmas specials

I'm excited to watch The Holiday, Home Alone and anything on the Hallmark channel.

Favorite SHOPPING:
The majority of my shopping is brought to you by Amazon this year.  I shipped gifts from Amazon, ordered things for myself and everything showed up at my door.  I did a little shopping at Meijer and Wal-Mart, but the majority of it was done on-line.

Where did you do your shopping this year??


 Share some of your Christmas FAVORITES with me :)


It's time to link up with my Target Haul ladies to see what everyone spent their $10 in December.  I loved the Christmas plates in the dollar spot and ended up spending my whole budget on those and Christmas candy.  I'm guessing I'm not the only one who bought Christmasy things.  Can't wait to see what everyone found.

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Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Making Christmas Memories


I love to make special holiday things with my kids.  I really love decorating with their holiday art and know that these will be some of my favorite decorations to put out every single year as they get older.  I swear I get teary eyed every year when I pull Olive's 1st Christmas hand print ornaments out of the box.  They're so tiny and time goes by so quickly.

We've been working on some fun art projects this month and I'm excited to share them with you.  They're all easy, require little prep and are perfectly doable for little kids.  I have found the cutest ornament kits this year.  I usually search Pinterest for cute ornament ideas, but this year I found such cute kits that it wasn't necessary.  Hobby Lobby and Meijer really came through for me.  Both had their ornament kits half off and tons of cute options.  I surprised my daughter with them, but I bet it would be fun to pick out kits with your kids if they were a little older.

FELT SNOW GLOBES
We found this cute little packet of snowmen in snow globes at Hobby Lobby.  They were originally $5 and we got them during a half off sale.  Each felt piece has a sticker like back that needs to be removed.  My three year old could take the back off the bigger pieces and I helped with all the little parts.  These were so fun and turned out DARLING.  They look great on our tree and I'd definitely buy this type of kit again.




 We did one snowman at a time and Olive insisted on making them all wave.  She said they were friendly snowmen :)  We also include Fletcher in the fun.  He sits and snacks while we craft. 

 They really pop on our Christmas tree and I love that the aren't fragile :)


 
 PAINTING WOODEN ORNAMENTS
Meijer had these Lara's Crafts Wood Painting Kit that contained two wooden ornaments to paint, the paints needed, string to hang them with and a paint brush.  They were around $3 for two ornaments and were on sale when I bought them.  We had so much fun with these that I went back to get a different set.  The kits are listed best for ages 8+, but I found them completely doable with my 3.5 year old.  I'd say they're very doable with younger kids and some adult supervision.

Here's how the kits come packaged:

Some tips that made the process go really smoothly.
Paint one color at a time.
Talk things through as you paint them - what color is Santa's beard? what else needs to be red?
Let them dry overnight
We used two brushes so we could both paint.
Write the year on the back with a sharpie.

Aren't they adorable!?!?


I gave Olive a paint to plate and some free time with the leftover paints.  She opted to do some body painting.  The paints were great and washed off really easily.


Here are some things we've done in years past:
Captures what your child is doing for art that year.


Salt Dough Ornaments
I'll be doing these with Fletcher to document his 1st Christmas

It's time to link up with my favorite Tuesday Talk ladies.
Be sure to join us with your best post of the week.


Polka-Dotty Place

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Monday, December 12, 2016

Holiday Best

I have some great recipes to share with you today.  They are perfect if you are cooking, baking or preparing food for holiday gatherings.  

They are all tasty, simple to prepare and, most importantly, DELICIOUS!
I've made each of them and they're all crowd pleasers.



Prebake your favorite cut out sugar cookies and invite some friends over for a
Some friends and I did these for an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party we were hosting.





Hope you find at least one new recipe to try this Christmas!!
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Friday, December 9, 2016

The Best Parts

This week was bit of a blur.  Lots of fun things and colds for everyone at our house.  The kids started it with fevers and colds last week and now Kevin and I are stuck with colds and froggy sounding voices.  I'm hoping we'll get all the sickness out of the way before Christmas.

We packed in lots of fun Christmas things this week - gingerbread house decorating party, the house is all decorated, I got some things reorganized and lots of fun with friends.  I'd definitely repeat this week (minus the colds:)

// 1 //
Home for the Holidays
Our house is all decorated and I love how it turned out.  We'd planned on putting lights outside, but the outlet on the front of the house doesn't work.  So we focused our efforts indoors and things are so cozy.  The cats have left the tree alone and I think I baby proofed things pretty well for our crawler.  I posted the whole house tour on Wednesday.




// 2 //
Candy Cane Building
We went to a fun candy cane building workshop at Bricks 4 Kidz and had a great time.  Olive learned about candy canes, made an ornament, decorated a cookie and built with Duplos.  She's really hoping Santa brings her some for Christmas.  Olive loves building there and we are thinking their gingerbread house building class would be fun in a couple of weeks.

 // 3 //
Eat Your Veggies
It seems like we're surrounded by sweets this time of year so I'm trying hard to eat BIG salads for lunch.  I pack in as many veggies as possible and it's usually pretty delicious.  I also chop a lot of my veggies ahead of time so the salad prep part is pretty easy.  I try to come up with new salad combos and then eat that same salad a couple of times. 
 
 

 // 4 //
St. Nick's Day
We celebrated St. Nick's Day and Olive keeps saying, "I'm really glad Nick could come and give us presents.  I hope he brings me chocolate every day."  Apparently she's on first name basis with St. Nick :)  I filled our shoes with our favorite candies and treats - Cadbury for me, baby Puffs for Fletcher, Reese's cups for Olive and Kevin got York Peppermint Pattie and a Starbucks drink.  We were all happy with the treats.  Do you celebrate St. Nick's Day??  I didn't start until I got married.

 // 5 //
Cookie Exchange
My friends planned a cookie exchange this week and we all went home with some delicious goodies.  It was fun to see what everyone brought, sample cookies with friends and get to go home with a huge platter of treats.  I made my favorite Christmas Monster Cookies to share.

 // 6 //
Kids
Olive has been painting up a storm and helping me decorate.  We made some ornaments to share with you next week and after we finished the projects she got to has some free time with the leftover paint.  She opted to paint her hand and everything else in sight.
Fletcher is getting SO BIG!  He's a super speed crawler, pulling up, lunging at things and a total sweet baby tornado.  He's into everything and just wants to leave his baby days in the dust.  Good thing he still likes to be snuggled sometimes.  He's started imitating sounds and is trying hard to say dada.  He's the sweetest and HE SLEPT 8 HOURS STRAIGHT a few nights this week.  I'd forgotten what it felt like to really sleep.  It's amazing :)


What was your FAVORITE part of the week??

I hope you have a really great weekend!!
We are having brunch with Santa, going to a basketball game and hoping to finishing up our Christmas shopping.  Should be a fun weekend.

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