Well Dana was supposed to share the wassail recipe today but something has laid her low. I hope she is feeling better before tonight's festivities. I am writing this from my android while a girlfriend is getting a manicure,  so if there are more spelling mistakes than normal thats why. :) I also apologize for the somewhat late sharing of this.

But, I am super excited to share with you guys the finished New Year's mantle and tablescape! I did not get all  of the projects done for this that I wanted to, but I'm still happy with the outcome!
The paper cone wreath can be found here!

The tablescape is similar to last year's with the exception of the birdcaages. Those are new. :)
 I tried to keep the theme simple for both areas. I went with white, blue/teal and copper for the main colors and then accented with the glass and silver. I am loving the effect. :)  The clocks are some paper mache' disks that I painted and then just drew the clock faces on with a sharpie. The adornments on the wreath are not permanent. I hot glued magnets to the back of all of them and then just slipped another magnet down inside the cones. Easy peasy!

Well I hope guys found this worth the wait. Be safe tonight, and I hope that everyone has a terrific New Year's Eve and I can't wait to start the New Year with all of you!

~Heather~

I am so honored to share this!














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So I started this blog back in February and my how its grown. This has become my job, which I love, because it gives me a purpose during my time. A purpose that is my own and not solely centered on the kids, which I need. I'm not going to lie to you guys and tell you that I'm one of these people who is wholly consumed by their children, because I'm not. I'd go insane. So I figured I'd share with you guys the top posts from then year and then fill in with a few that are my faves. :)

I know I said I'd show off my mantle....but its not done, so Friday will be a two-fer day. :) I know. It doesn't happen often so everyone get out those red markers :) These are in order of most visits, just lettin' you know.


1. Straight Stitches
Is it wrong to include my homepage in the countdown? I don't know if it is or isn't but the main page has been visited over 4,000 times since I started tracking with Analytics. I find that kind of impressive so I'm adding it. :)

2. Coup de Coeur
This beauty was a long time coming and raked in first place with over 1,000 page views. :) I love 25% off days at the Salvation Army Store in Manassas, which by the way...are on Wednesday.

3. Win and a Fail
This was was a pleasant surprise. Especially since its a week old. :) Coming in with just shy of 700 page views is the pocket watch ornament!

4.Finishing Needed
I have not forgotten that I promised to show off my fully completed laundry room, and I will. Next year. :) She's done, but right now the room is fighting the good fight against all of the laundry created during the holiday. :) To give you an idea of the battle being fought; our laundry sorter in our master bath battled valiantly but sadly perished under the weight of the load it was asked to carry. With the rest of Stephen's time off, I've requested him to build another laundry sorter (reusing the insert from our fallen comrade) out of 1/2" dowels and 2x4's. If we break that then we definitely need to do laundry more often. ;-)

5. The NEW and IMPROVED Craft Room
I wish my craft room still looked like this. It will again. As soon as I clean up everything from the Christmas rush, but here for your viewing pleasure is the way it should look. All year long.

6. Dr. Seuss Birthday Party! 
For H's first birthday we threw him a Seussian bash, that if I may say so myself was a hit! I had so much fun gearing up for this party and so did Dev for that matter. He was so excited to show off everything for his little bro's party. He's such a good big brother. :)

7. A Pair of Baths
Over the summer, I was quite ambitious one weekend. I dropped the kids off with my grandmother and then set about revamping both of their bathrooms in one weekend. I'll tell you what. I don't think I've ever worked so hard in two days than I did with that, but the bathrooms turned out great. The boys love them, and I had a blast. :)

8. Quilled Name
Here is my second quilled project this year. I ended up completing 6 quilled projects in all this year, and each one was a blast. I'll have to share the others after the New Year, but here is the 2nd one, and by far the most complex of all of them.

9. Little Red Cabinet
This cabinet was the biggest pain. Mostly because I could not decide what to do with those blasted doors, but as frustrating as she was....she's been well worth the wait, because she has been loved. Both by me as a storage piece and by Harrison as a drum. You may be wondering what drumsticks sound like on this cabinet and I wouldn't know, because the drumsticks H preferred for a while were empty glass baby food jars that I turned into votive holders. Nice, right? Well, its a good thing that baby food jars are resilient because sometimes they took a beating before I could pry them out of his claw-like grasp.

So now I'm going to share with you a couple of my favorite posts from when I first started this blog.

10. Fun Photo Shoot
So this is maybe a month into my blogging experience, but I had such fun with my boys that I had to share it again with you guys. :)

11. Knocking Off a Knock-Off
I have to share this sweet story. Even though the plan did not go as plan the sweetness behind the act is still making me chuckle. Here's how we created part of our Easter tablescape, and the catastrophe that ensued. :)

Well I hope all of you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane and will join us tomorrow for the very first ever Two-fer Friday. Dana will have her regularly scheduled Friday Food Frenzy, which if I remember correctly is going to be about Wassail and then later in the day I will be showing off my mantle, which by the divine grace of some deity will finally be complete. :)

Have a great day guys!



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The wreath is done! I'm so happy with how it turned out too. Granted, its not as full as some of the ones I showed off yesterday, but then again my dictionary was not made up of 8.5 x 11 pages. So without any further ado lets get to the show!

 There are 43 cones on the center and probably close to that many on the outside. I had wanted to buy a 12" MDF form, but when I went to Michael's on Sunday all they had was the 18" size. My poor 1974 dictionary.
I'm actually glad they only had the larger size, because I think that the size of the finished wreath is perfect for the space over the fireplace. So yay! I will be showing off my New Year's Mantle hopefully on Thursday. :)

Have a great day guys!

I had been planning on showing you guys my new wreath for the new year, but yea.....that's not going to happen because it still looks like this:
Not very attractive, right?



I'd like it to look like this:

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Or this!

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Even better this one costs a buck!

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And of course there's this, the mecca of all paper cone wreaths. I want my wreath to be this wreath.

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Hopefully I can get my act together and get this thing made. I'd like to have my New Year's mantle done by, well, New Year's. Hopefully working on this wreath during normal daylight hours will assist in getting it done, because rolling those cones while watching a movie that we started at midnight was probably not my best plan.

Wish me luck guys!

5 years ago, at 12:01 am I went into labor. On my due date. Who does that happen to? Oh well. 17.5 hours later the OB is telling me that you're a lot bigger than 8.5 lbs. Thanks Dr. OB guy. 18 hours later you joined our family with a very healthy scream. It was a blessing, because we'd been trying for a while and 2 miscarriages later we were excited and nervous when the 3rd round of pregnancy tests came back positive.

Daddy and I weren't able to hold you like other  parents. You were taken over to the NICU station because you had been in some distress, but you were big and loud. 10 lbs 5 oz, born at 6:30 pm, and completely healthy except for a small heart murmur. You would not believe how many people we had in that room. I was the only one giving birth that day, so EVERYONE was in our room to welcome you.

We later learned that there was a tissue mass in your left atrium which 6 weeks later was diagnosed as cor triatriatum. By the grace of God your heart condition has not affected you at all, aside from the occasional trip up to see your cardiologist at Children's. You have grown and developed into the most spectacular little guy, and we're so proud of you.


So in honor of your day, we had your favorite characters over for a party. The gang from Super Mario Bros. joined us to help ring in your 5th year a couple of weeks ago, and here are some of the highlights from the party and your 5 years so far. This was a hard process, because there are so many great pictures of you!

The Super Mario Bros. Birthday Bash was a terrific success and  I'm so glad that your Dad and I could do this for you. :)

Now today is your actual day, and we're out and about at the Museum of Natural History so that you can see the dinosaurs with your family. Just as you asked. Last year, on your birthday, you came into your brother's room where I was nursing him and told me that you did not want to open any more gifts. It was so sweet and touching. For such a little guy to be overwhelmed by gifts was sweet and heart-breaking at the same time, so when you asked that for your actual birthday you wanted to go see the dinosaurs with your family (who you then proceeded to name in case I had forgotten who they were) was so touching. I cannot even explain.

I love you, Devlin and I hope that the rest of you guys  have enjoyed this little tribute to my big guy.

There's no recipe this week, as I don't tend to cook much when I'm about to leave for a week--more on that later--but I wanted to talk about some of the warm, fuzzy feelings I get during this time of year and during other family occasions.

We all know that we need food to survive. Duh. Food, to me, though, is an experience in itself. A lovely cup of tea all alone with a good book and a blanket can be an experience, as can a tub of chocolate ice cream with your best girlfriends. Of course there are those special dates when you're with the one you love more than anything else in the world and a nice meal. Lastly, though, there are those huge meals with the people who know you better than anyone else. These are my favorite, even if sometimes having those people who know you so well around is somewhat inconvenient.

See: Heather and I instantly understanding why the other is torqued off without even having to say a word.

I am very blessed in that I get along with my family very well. The intense separation between VA and TN may certainly help with that, but it also makes the times I get together with my family all the more special. I am SO excited for tomorrow (today for all of you reading now) because I am now in VA and I will be seeing both my mum's sisters, their families, my grandparents, Heather and her crowd, of course, my twin sister, Colie, my parents, and some parents-in-laws as well all at once for Christmas Eve. There will be about a zillion pounds of food too, which is always a mixture of classic, well-loved family recipes and exciting, new ones too. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I absolutely love the chaos of being gathered all together in one room with more food than Peter Pan's table. Usually we're all maintaining at least three conversations at once. It's my time to catch up with everyone and simply enjoy company and food, and it's events like this that have created some of my warmest, most favorite memories.

I hope all of you have safe, wonderful holidays and can take some time to spend them with the people closest to you. God bless you and yours.

So I'm totally ruining a friend's Christmas gift by showing you guys this, but I can't not share it. Its too funny. :)
Oh and yesterday....I totally forgot that it was Tuesday when I wrote that.....guess what that means? I don't set the Christmas Eve table until Thursday night or Friday morning. I'm so scatterbrained sometimes. :)

Anyways, back to the ninji-ing of people. You have to see this video which said friend shared with us, which has spurned this gift for him. :)
Now don't go ninji-ing nobody that don't deserve ninji-ing. ;-) So here's my ninji tribute to WV.
 

These are store bought cookies, because I had a fail on the cookies I made. The box mix lied. They tasted like glorified cardboard. Oh well. The store bought ones are good. We couldn't fit all of them into the tin so we definitely enjoyed the overflow. :)

In case you guys aren't on the computer tomorrow. I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas and on Monday I will be sharing a Super Mario Bros. birthday party for my big guy. He's lucky enough to have a  birthday two days after Christmas. ;-)

Take care guys!

1. Place egg whites in a large mixing bowl; let stand for 30 minutes. Beat egg whites with vanilla, cream of tartar and salt on medium speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar, about 1 spoonful at a time, beating on high until stiff glossy peaks form and sugar is dissolved, about 6 minutes. You can test if the sugar is dissolved by rubbing a small amount of meringue between your finger and thumb and if it feels gritty then its not dissolved yet. :) 
2. Drop meringue by teaspoonfuls onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets. I prefer to put my meringue into a  bag and pipe it onto the parchment paper. I think this looks nicer. Sprinkle with crushed candy canes.
3. Bake at 250 for 40-45 minutes or until firm to the touch. Turn oven off; leave meringues in oven for 1-1/2 hours. Remove to wire racks. Store in an airtight container. 

So that's it. My most favorite cookie in a recipe that doesn't over brown the meringues! Yay! 

So we've all seen the melting snowman cookies, and let me tell you. They're adorable. Well, they're not so adorable at 1:30 am but adorable nonetheless.  They were a tremendous hit, especially with the kids.  I have one problem with them tho. Well 2 problems. 1) they're not very easily stored and 2) I don't like sugar cookies.  The first problem is easily solved if all the cookies are eaten shortly after being created, but the 2nd problem... well I guess that it may never be solved. ;-)

I'm actually going to be nice and just share what I did and not make you go to any sites. :)

 I baked up some Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix. I followed the cut-out recipe. Then after they were cooled, I iced them and then heated up some marshmallows. I heated up 12 marshmallows for 15 seconds in the wave and then smooshed them onto the cookies. Then just add the personality. Some of mine were quite grumpy.

The other sugar cookie that I had out were window panes. These were also a Betty Crocker bag mix, and I {again} followed the instructions for the cut out cookies. After cutting out my rounds, I then cut out the centers with smaller shapes.  Bake the cookies according to the directions, and then fill the centers of the cookies with smashed up life savers {or other hard candy} and pop back into the oven until the candy melts. In my oven that takes 4 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the pan a bit then move to a wire rack. Also, you should have parchment paper down for these or bake them on a silicone mat so that the candy doesn't stick.

Well I hope you guys are gearing up for Xmas, because I have some baking to get done! Too bad its not sweet anymore. :)

Have a great day guys and enjoy.