Final Xmas card 10

Joy Magic Story Christmas 5x7 folded card

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Thanksgiving 2010

As cliche' as it sounds, I'm very thankful for Noah. It's crazy how one little baby can totally change your entire life. I can't imagine who I would be without him. It's hard to believe he has only been in my life for under 3 years because I can't imagine my life without him. So, there was my warm and fuzzy feelings on Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving the NOLA crew headed to Mississippi to celebrate the gobbe holiday with them. As usual my sister Robin made some wicked grits dressing and the turkey was super yummy that was prepared by my brother in law. Cheers to the hosts! The food was delicious and the company was even better.

As the kids were playing outside my sister and I attempted to get a picture of all the grandkids with my dad. Trying to get 5 kids ranging from 2.5 to 12 is pretty impossible. You can see how much of a fail this was in the pictures below.





Yep, the crazy one on the right with his tongue hanging out belongs to me. Think he was having fun on Thanksgiving with his cousins? I think it's safe to say yes.

I hope everyone gobbled till they wobbled on Thanksgiving!

Santas Arrival!

This past weekend Santa arrived at Lakeside Mall. I heard about this by radio ads as well as seeing a commercial. Since I'm part elf, I love anything that has to do with the holidays. It was a no brainer I would want to attend this.

I've never been, but was anxious to see what it all entailed. Jade and Jenna came with their boys and joined Noah and I. We got to the mall about an hour earlier than the event to get breakfast at Cafe Du Monde. Seems like everyone had the same idea, we could barely get a table and the line for beignets was insane!

We ended up at McDonalds for breakfast and ate before we went to wait for Santa and his crew to arrive. Once we finished up breakfast (mmm...McD's hasbrowns)we headed to the center court of the mall to wait for Santa. We had our 3 strollers lined up and the boys were super excited for Santa.




Santa, Mrs.Clause, Rudolph, Frosty and their crew 2nd lined down the mall with a band. It was Naturally Nawlins, y'all!



They also had these really cool candy canes on stilts, they were awesome!



Noah was very excited to see Santa. It was adorable to see the boys light up when they saw Santa.

The center court of the mall was all set up for Christmas. The Christmas train was up and running and Noah and Alton were psyched to ride it.


The line was out the wazoo, but Jenna and I decided to wait in line and take the boys on the train. That lasted about 3 seconds before the boys started chasing each other and hugging each other non stop to where they fell over to the ground!



We both felt really bad about fibbing to Noah and Alton that the train broke. However, there was NO way they were going to cooperate to stand in line for a good 20 minutes. We need to make our way out there before the big man comes.

The morning was great and I know Noah had a blast. I was so glad I decided to take him, it was a great way to start off the holiday season!

Happy Birthday to YOU!

I just wanted to share a few pictures and an adorable video from Clints birthday. I think that Noah beleives that any time we sing Happy Birthday at a party that it's his party. It's too cute!

A mini staycation

My mom was headed to Naples Florida for a few days, so I had to take some days off of work to spend with Noah. During this time I tried to think of things to get done since I'm rarely ever home when I take days off (I'm usually on vacation). Past the usual things like making beds (who has time for that before work? seriously!), doing laundry and sweeping floors I tried to get some errands done.

Over the days I was able to get some Christmas shopping done and wrap them all, say what! All of this sounds like fun stuff for me, so I'll now focus on things I did with Noah.

Noah loves to do crafts, so I'm forever picking up little things here and there for us to do. On my last trip to Michaels, I picked up this turkey kit. It was pretty adorable and didn't require scissors. Noah loves to use scissors, but I'm always worried he will chop off a finger or something...or maybe my chihuahuas tail.

As we were putting the turkey together we noticed that the kit was missing the turkeys eyes! We only had 1 eye, so I tried to tell Noah that he was a pirate turkey but he then said "Well, then where is his patch?"...busted! So our turkey doesn't have eyes. I'm pretty sure that my chihuahua Uneaux ate the other "missing" black eye.


Someone is lovin' their turkey!



I bought this adorable Thanksgiving shirt for Noah to wear for Thanksgiving. I'm a sucker for anything embroidered or monogrammed so when I saw this I just had to get it. It was my intention to send out a Thanksgiving card to friends and family with a cute little saying (my friend Jenna did it, and it was presh!). However, since I couldn't get any decent shots of Noah it went by the wayside.




I have no idea who he gets that pout from.

All in all it was a fun few days off of work and I got to spend a lot of time with Noah. He definitely had a great time with me, but towards the end he was ready to get back to his routine with his Gigi.

And so it begins...

First and foremost, I absolutely LOVE everything about the holidays. I'm one of the freaks who look forward to seeing Christmas decorations at Loews in August.

A few weeks ago Starbucks totally made my morning by asking "Welcome to Starbucks! Can I interest you in a gingerbread latte?"...oh yes, why yes you can! Then they handed me the pretty red Starbucks cup, it made my day week!



The Thursday after Halloween I was already playing Christmas music in my office. One of my boss men heard the music which I was playing low...because it was only November 4th and I didn't want to be judged. "Mare, is that Christmas music?" he asked. I had to embarrassingly respond by telling him that indeed it was.

I was embarrassed but told him that I love Christmas so much that I'm practically an elf. Heck, I'm only 5'2 it's pretty darn close! Well I have to run...let me go so I can turn up my *NSync Christmas Album!

BFFL

I'm lucky to say that I have a great group of friends. As any normal friendship you have ups and downs and times where you are super close and other times that you don't talk for weeks. This is very safe to say for my friends that I've known for many years... some over 20+ years.

However, when you have that special bond you can just pick up wherever you last left off. It may be 2 hours ago or 2 months ago since you last spoke, but once you start chatting it's all forgotten. It's just a closeness that you just can't describe. I'm grateful to have these girls in my life.

A few weeks back I had a little shingdig for Angela moving to DC and for Angela and Ann's birthday. I had a great time just hanging out with the girls chatting away and drinking some yummy concoctions (Jenna makes an awesome white wine sangria, y'all!). It's nice to just sit back and relax with the girls, we should do it more often.

Next Project Runway STAR!

Noah is a typical little boy who is obsessed with Spiderman one week and Woody the next. For Halloween he would carry around the Party City ciruclar pointing to different costumes daily of what he wanted to be for Halloween. Some days it was DJ Lance Rock and other days it was Buzz Lightyear.



We decided that he would be FRANKENSTEIN for Halloween. He was obsessed with anything and everything to do with Frank. You name it...he wanted it. Frankenstein cookie? Got it. Frankenstein ballon? Yep we got that to.





Well as Halloween drew nearer Noah started saying he wanted to be Spiderman. SPIDERMAN? We had poor Frankenstein chillin' in the closet waiting for Halloween night. Not only did we already have that costume but I didn't feel like spending more $$$ on another costume.

The Friday before Halloween Noah talked me into trying to find a Spiderman costume. I figured it would be on sale now, right? Well it was at KMart but I found this out after going to multiple stores and either it being full price or not having it in his size.

Once I got to KMart I was pretty desperate, ok really desperate. They had a costume but it was a 7/8 and Noah is in a 3/4T. This is obviously way too big for him but it was dirt cheap so I decided to just go ahead and get it. He could wear it to Story time the next day at Barnes and Noble.

I got home and realized that this costume is WAY too big, what was I thinking? Since I bought it on clearance I couldn't return it so we were stuck with it. Clint had the genius idea to hot hem the outfit.

I was so impressed by Clints skills! He could totally go on Project Runway. Clint had to cut the pants and take the red part and then hot hem it to where it was previously cut. Then, he had to turn up the arms with the hot hem. It doesn't sound like much, but since it was SO big it was a good amount of work.

Noah was so excited for his Spiderman costume, can you tell?



I'm thinking of making Clint sign up for the Next Project Runway STAR! In the words of Tim Gunn "Make it work!"

I *try* to be creative!

Who doesn't love cupcakes? I for one adore them. Yes, I pay a ridiculous amount of money for those fancy cupcakes (mmmm!). You have to splurge on something right? I've convinced myself that it's a cheaper addiction than say drugs or gambling, so caffeine and cupcakes it is.

I've always wanted one of those cupcake towers. Since I seem to host a lot, I've dropped several hints to Clint and family members that it would be a perfect gift for me. However, nobody has seemed to catch the hint. Boo.

I follow many crafty blogs and these women post SUCH creative crafts (like making a beer bottle into a reindeer, stay tuned!). I think I'm a creative person to a point where I can follow instructions on how to make something but not creative in the sense that I can random think of great ideas for crafts. Make sense?

Well I saw a friend posted a do it yourself cupcake tower. Genius! So I decided to try it out. First, I got some cardboard boxes. I then cut out 3 circles a big one, a medium one and alas a small one. From there I took some Halloween scrapbook paper and covered the circle cardboard shapes with some hot glue. Since this tower was 3 tiers, you would place cans in between the tiers. I then covered the cans with scrapbook paper as well. For finishing touches, I hot glued a ribbon around the edges.

Since I made this one for Halloween, I obviously used Halloween paper. However, you could totally change this for any holiday or occasion. It was super easy and really cute! Check it out!