janice's mash-up

ten on tuesday

the thinking about getting ready for Christmas edition...

1) December has kind of snuck up on me this year. It's been a busy fall full of new things for us and all of a sudden, today is the end of November. Usually I am much MUCH further ahead in my holiday planning than I am this year!

2) Because of the aforementioned, I decided to get photocards printed this year. I normally craft our Christmas cards and actually really enjoy doing them but I thought this year, I could let go of this! I did some savvy online shopping and got a great special from tiny prints that included envelopes and printed address labels. They arrived by FedEx today and Neil and I both like them. I might add a ribbon just to add a little something. Feels good to have that one thing checked off the list and I think the cards reflect our personality as a family in the same way a homemade card would.

3) I did get organized in time to get the boys' advent calendars in advance of December 1st. The Lego Castle advent calendar and the Lindor chocolate advent calendar have been hiding away for a few weeks now. When I asked the boys the other day about what holiday traditions were most important to them, the advent calendar was one of them. 

 


4) I really do love shopping for and making gifts. I try to be very thoughtful about my gift-giving and do put a lot of time into the thinking and planning. I do kind of need to get going on the actual making and shopping stage though! Along with some giftcard boxes I made the other night, a little gift item I made for teachers are these little magnetic paperclips to hold lists, notes, photos, etc.

5) To get myself organized, I always make some sort of organizational/list notebook this time of year. It's actually fun to keep them and look back at your shopping, meal planning, baking, etc lists over the years. This year I am going to make sure I include an envelope of some sort to keep receipts in. I am planning on making one of these recycled Starbucks cup notebook very soon...I even have the cup washed out, dry and ready to go. This example game from this blog...a fellow Canadian. She did a great 15 projects for Christmas series.

6) As you might have noticed, I love to bake cookies all year round but I LOVE baking holiday cookies. It is one of the special memories I have of the holidays when I was a child. I made this little christmas cookie recipe book back in 2007 and I pull it out every year to start thinking about what kinds of cookies I will make each year.

7) I am working on an updated version of my cookie recipe book but can't share here until after Christmas ;) 

8) I am planning to make either these or these for my colleagues at work. Gotta love the cute packaging!

9) I have Friday morning "off" of work so plan to pull out our holiday things in between loads of laundry. All year as I have been pulling out holiday decorations (Easter, Halloween, etc) I have been trying to reduce our "stuff" by 50%. So far, so good but you do have to be in the right frame of mind to purge. I am emotionally connected to so many of our holiday things which makes it hard for me to let go.

10) I used one of my Starbucks giftcards to buy this year's holiday CD to add to my collection. It will be playing loudly in the house as I get things pulled together on Friday!

quote of the month

last weekend of november

Just a regular weekend in our household...

Friday night was our girls' night in. I got my Hallowe'en mini book finally finished (it had been in the same place I left it since the last girls' night):

and got some Christmas crafting started:

Most importantly, I got caught up with good friends. Our lives are so parallel in so many ways but so different too. I love my pigeons ;)

Adam burst in after his hockey game showing us the hockey stick he broke. It was the first one he had broken in a game and I actually think he was kind of proud of that! It meant that "buy new hockey stick" got added to the to do list for Saturday! 

Because there was still snow covering the soccer fields on Saturday, Colin's soccer game was cancelled. He still had his soccer party and had a great time at Joe's Place playing air hockey, foosball, indoor soccer and cosom hockey, football outside and eating sushi, pizza and icecream floats! A good day for Colin! Colin also worked on his Mount Fuyi project for school.

Adam had a game out in Burnaby Saturday night so we headed out to that and luckily the roads were okay. Adam had a great game with his new stick and his team won 10-3. Another lop-sided game which is fun to see all the scoring for our guys but not fun for the other team for sure! Below is our #13 with his new stick...

Neil and I headed out for our grocery shopping date on Sunday morning. We scored almost 900 Airmiles at Safeway which is nice! I got my last assignment finished for my online course which is great...I have lots of other things that have been waiting for me!

Adam had another hockey game this afternoon and another lopsided win for our boys, 7-0. We played our long-time rivals so the boys were happy with the win but I just felt so bad for the other team. 

Neil watched the Grey Cup this afternoon and I worked away on some work stuff and some photo calendars and photobooks, taking advantage of some online Black Friday sales!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Looking back over the year, as we all do this time of year, it is amazing to think that one year ago this weekend, our world turned upside down when Neil's dad had a bad fall and a resulting brain injury that had him in the neuro-intensive care unit at VGH. He has come so far in a year...this time last year, we really didn't know what to expect. We are feeling so very thankful for time with family and are looking forward to the holiday season when there is even more time!

wordle of the month

a day with the boys

Today was a professional development day and the boys slept in while I went to the first part of our school's day. When I got home we made some oatmeal cranberry cookies (I found the yummy recipe HERE) before we went out for lunch.

Shopping with boys must be so different than shopping with girls. When we were at the mall for lunch, I seized the opportunity to take the boys to Old Navy for their Black Friday sale to choose two shirts/sweaters that they would agree to wear for holiday and birthday events this winter. This can always be a bit of an ordeal in our house...they think "dressing up in formal clothes" is anything that is not a t-shirt and sports pants or jeans!

We had thought maybe we would head up to Cypress or Grouse but I think the boys had enough snow this week. They thought they might want to go bowling but I think all the shopping (all of 15 minutes!) tired them out and they decided they just wanted to go home and hang out together. I love that as they get older they still choose to spend time together.

Neil's taking the boys out to dinner before Adam's hockey game tonight and I have sushi and girls' night in with some friends. I'm looking forward to some female conversation!

another snowy day

We woke up to another morning of snow. I got out of bed and looked out the window to see a winter wonderland. I knew it had snowed because everything was SO quiet...that muffled silence you get after a heavy snowfall. We hadn't planned ahead so were scrambling this morning to get all our snow gear organized before we got out the door. Colin left his lunch behind and when I got home I found my breakfast oatmeal sitting uneaten on the counter. It was one of those mornings.

I was excited to go to school though and had fun with a class out in the snow this afternoon doing some "snow science". Adam had a 1:00 dismissal today so he had a big snowball fight with friends before coming home and then he went back to Colin's school afterschool to join Colin and his friends playing in the snow. When I got home at 4:30 they were COLD and tired. I made some Harry Potter butter beer which warmed them up.

 I also made them some chocolate covered frogs (another Harry Potter thing) to go with their butter beer. Yum! After an early dinner, Neil and I headed over to Adam's school for parent-teacher conferences. It's so rewarding to hear such nice things about who your is and not just how he "did". I got tears in my eyes at one point listening to a teacher talk about Adam. We are so very proud of him.

HP 7-1

We saw the first part of the final Harry Potter movie tonight. Wow. It was so great and so different than the other movies. I did miss the Hogwarts scenes though - I must have a thing for educational institutions ;)

I cried, I laughed and I jumped in my seat. 

A very good movie experience!

ten on tuesday

the Harry Potter edition...

1) I have mentioned many times how we are a Harry Potter family. The books and movies are something we have enjoyed together. It all started around 2007 with reading and listening to the first few audiobooks of the series. Adam and I read the first book but the rest were all audio. The narration by Jim Dale is AMAZING and really brings the stories to life. We started watching the movies too. Looking back, those first few movies were so "light" compared to the dark, complex ones of late.

2) Colin dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween in 2007. We even dyed his hair dark for the occasion. Oh my gosh, how young he looks. With the seventh movie out, there has been lots of looking back on Harry Potter. The actor, Daniel Radcliffe, played Harry for 11 years. I think he was 10 or 11 when he started.

3) We have all become very knowledgeable about Hogwarts and wizards and muggles and such. We started geocaching around the same time as our HP fascination started and the boys so got the "muggle alert" aspect of geocaching!

4) The food they eat in Harry Potter has been fun to learn about too. Much of it is variations on British cuisine but some is unique for sure like chocolate covered frogs and butter beer.  There are lots of websites available with recipes for Harry Potter treats. If you're interested, you could go HERE or HERE. I might make the butter beer for the boys (the non-alcoholic kind) one of these cool evenings. 

5) An indulgent vacation for our family would be to visit the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida. Wow. 

6) My parents gave Colin the new Harry Potter lego game for his birthday. You build the Hogwarts gameboard before you play. We are looking forward to a family game night to open up the box!

 

7) Colin also recieved the Quidditch lego set for this birthday. I know the rules for Quidditch just as well as I do for soccer and hockey!

 

 

8) As a pre-movie surprise, I bought the book  Harry Potter Film Wizardry. I can't wait to see the boys get immersed in it as we wait to see the movie. It is one of those interactive books with pockets, letters and maps. So fun!

9) We had hoped to go the movie tonight but are waiting til Wednesday night instead. I can't wait. I might get some chocolate-covered frogs made in time to take with us!

10) And here is the trailer for the movie. 

 Scary and dark...but we're ready!

baby it's cold outside!

Brrr...even with multiple layers of clothing on today at work, I was still chilly. I love the snow but the cold, not so much! Tonight is to hit about -10 degrees celsius, with it feeling like -17 with the windchill. We have some Arctic breezes coming our way!

After we got home this afternoon, I took a few Santa hat shots before the sun went down. I have taken this shot of the boys for many years and it often makes it on to our Christmas cards. I might do a family shot this year for the cards but wanted one of these anyways...

As you can see, there's still lots of ice and frozen snow around here. Brrr. My parents are probably smiling in sunny Arizona about this!

more birthday celebrations for colin

Last night, Colin had some friends over for a "hang out at home" or PMC (pizza, movie, chocolate) party. They watched Avatar on and off in between epic nerf gun battles. Having 8 pre-teen boys in your house for four hours on a Saturday night is a bit loud and crazy. Colin had fun which I guess is what is most important ;)

 
  pizza                                             movie                                          chocolate

We made chocolate candy bark...

 

had a chocolate and whipped cream cake...

and also had a chocolate fountain.

  

The chocolate was a BIG hit with the boys. 

This photo of Colin kind of sums up the evening!

Today we had guitar lessons and a hockey game before going out for another birthday dinner with Grandpa and Uncle Glenn...Colin's request was sushi. It was SO icy and cold. The fountain outside of Ichiro was running but most of it was frozen! We all ordered hot food to help warm us up. Colin still got his favourite sushi rice balls and a kappa maki roll but also got some hot miso soup!

I think this is it for the birthday festivities for Colin. Happy birthday my 11 year old!