The excitement of Christmas Eve

I love watching the excitement in the kids Christmas Eve, the anticipation of Santa visiting and leaving them special presents.

The kids have loved changing the 'days til Christmas' calendar tree every morning this week, and have learnt all the numbers! They were so excited yesterday morning when there was only 1 day til Christmas.

The kids and I have been having heaps of fun baking Christmas treats and the kids especially loved icing and decorating the star & reindeer shaped cookies for the neighbours. I used Sandy's (now famous) Cookie recipe and iced them with strawberry and butterscotch glace icing. I made some little tags with the cuttlebug and tied them up with ribbon. They looked so cute! I'll definitely be making them again, as there were a big hit with everyone.

Since it was raining, the kids were a bit worried the reindeers wouldn't be able to see their reindeer food, so we got busy decorating this cute little egg carton reindeer food container to put out on the front doorstep. I knew I was keeping all those egg cartons for a reason!

I spent most of yesterday cooking some traditional Polish dishes for our mini Christmas Eve at home, since it's our year to stay home. We do the full Christmas Eve thing every second year at Mum and Dad's, and every other year here with our little family, so the kids can do the whole night before Christmas (Aussie) thing. The kids and Al still aren't fussed on the Polish Bigos (cabbage stew), but Erin devoured the entire Entree (smoked salmon stacks & stuffed eggs). Something I remember from our Polish Christmases with Grandma T is the sparkling apple juice in little glasses she put out for us. I bought some and put it in little glasses for the kids. Erin loved it, Aiden wasn't too keen.

Al's Mum painted this gorgeous plate for the kids to put Santa's supper on. Isn't it just gorgeous! The kids were so excited to put out the cookies they'd made & decorated especially for Santa!

 

Wishing everyone the most gorgeous Christmas and a fresh and bright New Year in 2011! 

Warm wishes,

Leah xx

A few Christmas goodies

A few of the goodies the kids and I made yesterday.

Yummy fondant filled chocolates, which Al reckons taste like snack (pineapple, strawberry, peppermint & caramel). None of us were fussed on the caramel though. A new version of White Christmas with mini marshmallows and Sugar cookies (from Sandy's recipe), which are so delicious.

Today we have plans to make Bigos (a Polish stew with pork & mushrooms, based on sauerkraut) and ice the cute sugar cookies we made yesterday. The kids are dying to decorate them.

Some lemon loving...

A little while ago my beautiful neighbours gave me a bunch of lemons picked fresh off their tree. While pondering what I could do with these little beauties, I found a scrummy recipe for Lemon Chicken which uses 'preserved lemons', which was thoughtfully proceeded by a recipe for preserved lemons! Perfect! I ended up making 2 jars of the lemons, with the intention of giving one back to them to put in their cupboard.

Well, today (6 weeks later!), I finally managed to do up some little tags, and a label using the gorgeous Labels 4 spellbinder that Karen graciously lent me for a 'little while'. Thanks sweetie! I will return them soon.



I took them over this afternoon with the recipe that I'd found in the magazine, and they loved the little package that I'd made. That made me smile! :) I'm so thankful for all the friends we've made since moving here. Our lives wouldn't be the same without them as a part of it!

All the hard work has paid off!

Al worked hard to get the cubby finished yesterday, and to see the kids playing in it happily today made it all worthwhile. Just the staining to finish off now, but the kids don't mind. We've moved their little stove and sink over as well as a table and chairs, and they had so much fun cooking us some lunch today :)

Al also moved the train track upstairs to the wooden floor, as it kept falling apart on the carpet. The kids both seem to enjoy playing trains now, so I might actually be able to snatch some scrapping time while they're occupied!

I made some pizza scrolls for lunch today, and although Aiden was too tired to eat lunch, Erin devoured about 3 of them! Al didn't mind them either. They're a recipe that my friend gave me. Very delicious and easy to make too! Thanks Kylie!

Olympic fever...

While I haven't watched one little bit of the Olympics so far (how slack of me), I have been checking out all the action at the Scrapping Olympics over at Scrap-Pile. Everyone's on fire! Check it out for yourself here... The gallery is really buzzing and it's great to see so many beautiful designs in there each day.

Here are a few of my latest projects...

I have had this one on my table since July and it's using the gorgeous BoBunny PP that Mel sent through as part of the July DT kit... These huge letter stickers have been sitting in my stash for so long (I'd guess about 3 years) that they are no longer sticky. I love these gorgeous photos of my brother's kids and our two little ones while they were playing in the trees at my parent's house. Erin sure does stand out being the only girl :)


As part of the PP Challenge that Maree, Mel and I cooked up, we had to design some of our own PP and send it to another person to create a page with. This page features the gorgeous PP that Maree sent to me :) I love how it turned out, although this one took a bit of time to get right. I must have bumped the tension switch on the good old Janome, and it stuffed up a bit at the top, but I think it all adds to the feeling of the page. I really loved working with these colours :) Thanks Maree :)


I cooked this meal for dinner last night, so it was the inspiration for Melanie's Recipe Circle Journal. I love making this meal, it's so quick and easy.


It's amazing how quickly some things can come together. You know how you can sit for hours thinking about how to do something, but once you get started, it kind of just falls into place. Well, that's how these pages came together. I'm very thankful for those moments, otherwise nothing would get done :)

Erin's Birthday

WOW! Our little baby is now 1! I still can't believe it's been a whole year. Time has just flown by. We had a small party today with mostly family and Erin had a ball playing with the bubbles; on the fort with the big kids and running around the back yard with her cousins!

Being the good mother I am... LOL... I made the cake and organised all the nibbles. When flicking through the Women's Weekly mag a few weeks ago, the fairy house cake caught my eye... DS agreed that we just had to make that one... so here it is... after an hour or so I spent decorating it...



and here's our beautiful princess Erin...




Now I'm off to have a soak.... and hit the sac...