miniswap 2!

we got our package thursday morning from miniswap 2, and our fantastic partners, the hilbert meads!  there was so much excitement, but we had to wait until sage got home from her pajama party day of preschool to open it.  she asked me seven times on the way home from school if we were going to open the package from those kids on the computer.  check out the bounty:

there’s the front little striped bag, sewn by mama hilbert, and filled with handpainted beads and strings for making necklaces (see below), the pretty blue bag in the back filled with an assortment of green tea (most of which is now gone, s!), envelopes filled with foamy sea creatures just begging to be stuck to fun projects, and the piece de resistance (i’m not sure how to spell that correctly, but i’m letting it go), the little collage on the left.  ms. s. hilbert makes these amazing creations, and thought enough of me to send me this one.  at the bottom, the text reads: soon… spring.  i have to be honest and tell you that i cried a little when i opened it.  the message resounds in a lot of ways for me right now, and it’s just so perfect- i love it, s. 

not pictured (due to having been consumed/used before i got the box all the way open): a big bag of gummi bears, and a wonderful mix CD that lydia decorated.  i found out that papa mead worked with feist, a wonderful credit indeed! 

you spoiled us rotten, guys- we’re so thankful to “know” you!  thank you, thank you, thank you!! 

snow sunday

 

it didn’t end up being much more than this, but they still loved every minute of it…

and then we ate these…

banana chocolate chip cookies… email me for the recipe- only 60 calories each, and especially good with the Ghirardelli  dark chocolate chips we got half price! 

Ho Ho Ho!

long, long ago, when i was in high school, i had the pleasure of working at a craft fair that my mom’s friend organized.  this isn’t your average church basement kind of thing- it’s a pull-out-all-the-stops, big budget type dealie.  i did many jobs there, taking tickets, running errands, working for the vendors.  by far the best thing i got to do there was work with santa.  the real santa.  for years i dressed as an elf (no ears, sadly) and helped the kids standing in line to stay patient, and get their names to pass to santa in case he forgot them since last year. 

 

 

 

the real santa, in case you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him, is a carver by trade, which comes in handy when working with the elves on a big deadline.  you can recognize him by the carvings in his costume- all his buttons are cross sections of reindeer antler (dropped in the field, no reindeer were harmed in the making of this suit), carved into santa faces, his carved rings, his carved walking stick, his carved pocket knife (handy for knocking stones out of the reindeer hooves, as he explained to sage this year), and mostly, his demeanor.  the real santa is loving and kind, soft spoken and genuine.  he loves to talk about peace on earth and goodwill towards men more than playstation and pokemon.  he cares deeply about every child and adult who visits him.  he is a talented and creative artist.  his personality is magnetic, and he lingers with people who need his time.  truly, he is a saint. 

he made me cry this year, telling me how proud he was of the job i’ve done with my kids.  sage told him she’d like some books with pictures and words this year, and we gave him a gift of some crocheted hearts to sew onto his stocking.  he’s been giving me reindeer buttons to put on our stockings for years, so we thought that a fitting gift. 

i love him so much, and i wanted to share him with you.  here is a carving he gave me many years ago, inscribed on the bottom, “to elf heather”. 

WHEW!

i cannot describe to you the joy i feel today, sitting here at the computer, ready to write a post.  i have time!  there is still a laundry list of things to be done, but none of them need to be finished RIGHT NOW- so nice, and so different from the past week.  of course, first there was this:

i used an old cooking light recipe- orange maple turkey.  highly recommended.  we had both my sisters, and my brother in law, and neice and nephews.  a nice small crowd.  my neice helped colored in the paper dolls i was making for sage (downloaded from Kiddley, thanks Claire!), which was a huge help (thanks T!), and everyone else had a nice visit.  we missed grandmommy and grandsam, though, who are in guatemala visiting grandsam’s brother.  so glad they had the chance to be there, but were missing them nonetheless. 

next up, a certain someone’s fourth birthday…

edited to add: i made the hat and that’s a finished woolen flower up there!  a happy hat for my hat wearin’ gal!

there was much celebration.  we had presents, sage used the POTTY all day(!!!), people came to play, much fun was had by all. 

and then there was the cake…

uncle geof, of ace of cakes fame, really outdid himself on the jerome cake.  sage loved it- she thought it was so funny that there were two jeromes in the house.  she blew out all the candles in a single breath, too, without singeing a single hair on her head.   

next, on to the annual lighting of the 34th street hoopla:

dear reader, if you are the nice lady in the superman shirt, please forgive me for using your photo on my blog without your permission- I tried to cut your head out, but I was bumped and pushed so much, i was happy to get any photo at all.  apparently HGTV was filming a special on our humble Hampden lights, which brought out even more than the usual seventy gajillion people who attend the annual lighting.  it was a good vibe, though, not hostile at all, just busy, like a bee hive.  oh, and baltimore peeps?  what is up with the dude selling ravens swag?  i mean, i can get behind the hot chocolate and the italian sausages, but do we really need ravens brand santa hats in order to fully experience the miracle of kitsch?  really?  sorry.  sliding the soapbox back under the counter now… 

later tonight, i must get to work on decorating the house, and getting this prepared.  what did i do before kiddley?  seriously, if you have or know children, you simply must get over there.  really.

happy? halloween?

my kids aren’t so sure about this whole halloween thing. 

 

zander wanted to be elmo, which was convenient, as i had a hand-me-down elmo costume.  it would have been ultra cute, but he was afraid of the fur.  enter every mom’s dream, the pumpkin jacket.  insta-costume.  sage was a cow, another hand-me-down, EZ, just-add-water kind of costume, and i was a 50’s girl, a costume i’ve had since teaching at a school that held an annual sock-hop.  after year three, i broke down and made the poodle skirt. 

we went to a party at church, no trick-or-treating in our neighborhood.  some of the “older” (all the kids at this party were under 8, and 90% were preschoolers) attendees decided to wear gory/scary costumes, which was pretty much all sage could look at most of the night.  i suggested she just not look at the boys in question, and she did try, sort of, but you know how difficult that can be.  she was compelled to look.  we went into the “pumpkin patch” room, which was one half of the “haunted room”, but instead of dismembered hands and the like, there were light up pumpkins all over the floor.  the problem was the fog machine in the haunted side which was sending billowing clouds of fog over the pumpkins, so the non-scary side quickly morphed into a creepy orange glowing orb fog type dealie.  not such a big hit with my pumpkin and cow. 

next year, maybe we’ll actually match…