Sew Excited

One of the things I got for Christmas was a new SEWING MACHINE! I'm thrilled. My old one just flat out died. I think.

Y'all, this thing is crazy. It's not super expensive, but makes me feel like my old machine was from another century. Look at all this stuff, though:

Don't they know I'm too busy and lazy for all these instruction manuals? And this is even after I threw all the Spanish ones away. Great. I'll just spend all my free time (time in between cleaning hot dog juice off the floor and wiping hinies) over the next year reading these suckers and I'll be ready to start sewing come 2014.

Seriously, though, this thing better be able to sew my projects by itself while I'm sleeping.

But I'm not the only one who made out like a bandit this Christmas. Laney, Parker & Brooks got cars, trucks, lawn mowers, Lilly Pulitzer dresses, shoes, shopping carts, Dream Lites, microphones, and much much more. They also got to spend the holidays with 2 families that are down right crazy about them and would do anything in the world to see them happy. We are so BLESSED. It kinda makes me want to cry.

Christmas Bow Ties

I'm still going through all my pictures from Christmas. I just came across these, though, and couldn't resist posting them.

I made the boys some Christmas bow ties a while back and wanted to take some pictures of all the kids dressed up fancy. The plan was to maybe even put one on our Christmas card. That didn't happen because we got zero good pictures. Well that's if you count a "good" picture as one where all three kids are looking and smiling. We tried and tried until I was past the point of frustration and Marshall was begging me to stop for everybody's sanity. Ha.

But how can you stay mad at these cuties?

Giant Jenga

Hi! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas! I'm in the process of sorting through millions hundreds of pictures to find the ones I want to post and remember most. But I wanted to stop in now to show you this little hand-made gift of ours that turned out awesome.

We made my father-in-law a Giant Jenga set. And by "we" made it, I really mean I had the great idea and Marsh did most of the work. Sorry, honey. But, seriously, it was pretty easy and works great! It is the perfect gift for that man in your family that doesn't need anything, doesn't want anything, and doesn't need another tie (or is a Cowboy like mine and doesn't wear ties at all).

Here's how we did it:

1. CUT YOUR BLOCKS. First, I bought three of the longest 2 X 4's available at our Home Depot. Then, I had a guy there cut them into 10.5 inch segments. They were long enough to get 18 blocks out of each of the three original pieces, which made for 54 blocks in all. He was SO NICE and didn't even charge for the cutting. I think the lumber only ended up costing $27 in all! Here's what they looked like when I brought them home from the store and stacked them up in the garage:

2. SAND YOUR BLOCKS. Here's where Marshall was really hating me at first. He sat there with our orbital sander between his knees for hours sanding each of the 54 blocks. Janson, Laney and I kept him company, though, and took some pictures, of course. He finally got in a rhythm and got it done quicker than we originally thought it would take. He lightly sanded each of the 6 faces of the block and then heavily sanded the edges and corners. You want to be able to run your hand over the block without getting splinters. I had read online that we would need to sand them first with 80 grit paper AND THEN with 220 grit to make them even smoother. But we only had time to do them once with the 80 grit paper and it was fine. Plus, they will get smoother as the game is played over and over.

And that's it! After that, we just put them in a large Rubbermaid bin and stuck a tacky little sticky bow on top of it. I think Papa D (my father-in-law) was kind of confused when we first gave it to him, but when all the kids went to sleep and we were able to go outside and play it, he LOVED it. Check out how there's only one block left on the bottom row in this game we played. Hold your breath!