Merry Christmas!

May you and yours be blessed beyond measure this Christmas season!

Happy Yellow Day!

8 years ago, today, while washing laundry, I accidentally died our whites yellow. My David instantly declared that December 20 would forever be yellow day in honour of that boo boo. I laughed it off, but he was in ernest. So, I bring you this year's instalment of yellow.

I found various yellow shirts at the second hand stores (it is almost impossible to find yellow in the winter! we will shop for next year's yellow day in the spring) and made some iron on transfers for mine and the little's shirts. (Designs inspired by these.) It's a work day for my David, so I found him a dress shirt and did not ruin it with a t-shirt transfer.

I'm not sure if we'll get a family shot later or not, but two of my littles were ready to represent for the blog.

Checking In

It's the middle of December?!?!?! When did that happen? I can hardly believe how fast the last few weeks have gone. I have a lot to catch up on, so let's get to it!

• Before IKEA, we celebrated Malachi's 2nd birthday. He loves hats, so we had a hat party. I made myself a mini top hat to wear. It's a bit rough, but maybe someday I'll have reason to make another and to make it better.

• With much help from my David (he did some serious rescuing) we made a two layer checkerboard cake. Malachi practised blowing out candles for days before his party. He walked around the house singing "Birthday" (blow) and "yay!" It was super cute.

• Micah turned 6 months old! I am blown away!

• We've decorated for Christmas. We only have a little three foot tree and I find that a little too small, but thankfully we were able to borrow a nice tree and so this Mama got to decorate a tree and the littles got to decorate a tree. It's hard to get a nice picture of a Christmas tree, isn't it?

• We gave the children Christmas pajamas on the first of December. We're starting a new tradition to do this. They were so excited. You may have seen this on Facebook, but it's worth showing you again...

• We made an advent calendar this year. I've been wanting to do this for some time and finally was able to do it. My David found these cute boxes at Walmart. I printed off the numbers from here. We hung them on the garland we bought from IKEA. Inside the boxes are chocolates (hooray for the free swag from IKEA), a Bible reference to look up and read together, an activity (thanks to our Sunday School ministry team) and a flavour of tea for David and I to drink. My pictures aren't great, but you get the idea.

• I made roman blinds for my living room window. I like them. Not bad for a first try. I measured the windows, but didn't account for the beveled frames, so I had to tweak the first one with a trim. I ended up re-cutting the other two panels. They are much better than those awful plastic vertical blinds that we'd been using.

• I finally can show you my fun pin cushions that I made awhile back. One was a gift, so I didn't want to give away the surprise. Aren't they cute? Tutorial here.

• David and I participated in Bethlehem LIVE! for the fourth year. David was a tour guide and Micah and I were townsfolk at the well. We had a great time. You can read about BL! here. Micah, by the way, got to be a stand in for baby Jesus. That means that all three of my children have played the honoured roll at BL! We are so blessed. On one of the tours that we were in the stable scene, a lady came back after her tour group had moved on to whisper "Thank you" as tears rolled down her cheeks. I am so glad that she was so moved.

• Working on Christmas projects now. May or may not be showing you some before Christmas, but will definitely have lots to show you sooner or later.