Weelife Paper Dolls Getting Out and About

My Paper Dolls have been playing at The Daily B's house. Nothing makes me happier to see these guys getting in some quality play time with friends.

Take some time to pop over to The Daily B for fun projects and beautiful photography. And for my original Paper Dolls post click here. To download your own, click here.

(Image: The Daily B)

Evidence that Santa Was Here

I guess he liked the cookies!

And his reindeer went to town on the apples and carrots!

And every year, he leaves an ornament on the tree, always of himself, often on some form of transportation. This year he clearly knew Spud's passion for trailers.

A magic day to you all.

Holiday Shortbread Cookies #3

Inspired by A Cozy Kitchen, this year's Santa cookies are Salted Caramel Thumbprint Shortbread. Happy Christmas Eve everyone!

(Previously Santa enjoyed Black Forest Chocolate cookies and Peanut Butter Cup cookies.)

Pasta Snowflake Ornaments

KID-FRIENDLY CRAFT   |   TEACHER GIFT

METHOD
1. Hot glue wagon wheel pasta into "snowflake shape".

2. Spray paint white, front and back. We used a paint intended for plastic, and we managed to do it in one coat. Check out katy's post for tips on regular spray paint. If you aren't careful, the pasta will start to get wet and lose its shape.

3. Let dry. Hot glue pompoms. You can see that where you decide to put the pompoms changes the character quite a bit.

4. Dip the front in watered down white glue and sprinkle your heart out.

5. Attach ribbon. Done!

  This project was inspired by katy elliot's blog.

Holiday Shortbread Cookies #2

Today's rendition of shortbread is Shortbread Sandwich Cookies filled with lemon icing. These ones are going to special teacher on Spud's last day of school before winter break.

Holiday Shortbread Cookies #1

We have 8 shortbread dough logs* in the fridge just waiting to be baked and decorated. Yesterday we cut some thick slabs to bake and topped them with royal icing. Spud was the festive sprinkle guy. These found their way to some special aunties. Reports so far are big thumbs up.

*While it probably would have made them even more fabulous, we didn't happen to have the scrapings of a Tahitian vanilla bean in our pantry so we made a substitution, you guessed it, to vanilla extract.

Snowflake Curtain Behind the Tree

Spud and I were very busy last night and this morning. Snow making machines, I called us. A wonderful way to get into the spirit. The idea came from Free People, which I gushed about here.

Holiday City Gift Tags

FREE DOWNLOADS

I've been busy creating more gift tags. This time, partly directed by Spud who currently has a passion for architecture ("Put buildings on them!"). OK, Spud, here you go!

Please help yourself. And feel free to share and leave a comment.

Help yourself to my Holiday Tree Gift Tags too.

Photo Friday #33

GROUSE MOUNTAIN'S "THE PEAK OF CHRISTMAS"  |  WEE WANDERINGS WITH KID

Snowshoeing around the frozen lake, outdoor ice skating with unexpected mini lesson from THE Karen Magnussen (Canadian sport hero), sleigh ride pulled by snow cat, Santa in his workshop, 2 of Santa's real live reindeer!, warming by the outside fire pit ... a very memorable day. All of which made up for one long line up after another and the mediocre, expensive food. Really. We would do it again.

Delicious Baby hosts Photo Fridays each week. Check it out!

Pompoms for the Tree

Our tree has a lot of sparkly, shiny, glassy, porcelain ornaments and I wanted to add a bit of warm-fuzzy to it this year. Pompoms it is! And I found the perfect yarn, with specks of holiday gold in it.

They turned out a little ragamuffin but I kind of like them all the same.

I started with a simple template cut out of a box. This saves the fingers some pain and keeps them a pretty consistent size.

The cutout slot helps at the tying off stage. Once it's tied, it's time to cut the loops on either side.

Time for a little haircut.

Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans

Jelly Belly's version of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans are called "Bean Boozled".  St. Nicholas must have a bit of a sense of humour it turns out, because Spud found these in his shoes this morning.

Spud has braved the toothpaste flavour over and over again — yet to find the Berry Blue flavour. Poor Hubs has had Skunk Spray, Centipede, Baby Wipes, and Pencil Shavings so far which has been wildly entertaining for the little one. I'm afraid it's going to be my turn next. I don't know if I can stomach it. Eeep.

Tree is Trimmed

Nothing makes me happier than the glow of Christmas time.

Photo Friday #32

THE VANCOUVER AQUARIUM

A favourite haunt of ours: the Aquarium. And Spud's all time favourite exhibit is the jellyfish one. I think it's beautiful too. But I can remember spending hours of my childhood admiring orcas, seals, and sea otters. In fact, I remember my 6 year old self trying to negotiate the acquisition of our own personal Harbour Seal (don't worry, it didn't work out). Spud, on the other hand, likes watching the jellyfish more than the dolphins, belugas, and sea lions combined.

I suppose it's similar to our experience at the zoo. We were a little surprised, while visiting the San Diego Zoo that the only time he was truly engaged was at the reptile house. Not with the pandas. Not with the elephants. But the snakes. In fact, when we were gushing over the brand new baby gorilla, Spud warned "you have 2 minutes, and then we have to go". We got the 2 minute warning! He's just not a mammal kind of guy I guess. And one of these days, I'm going to get used to that.

Delicious Baby hosts Photo Fridays each week. Her post today is a moving reminder of how lucky we are and how we can help those who need it.

Ooooo. Testing the New Colour Printer

Testing the new printer with some of my lunchbox notes. Spud's going to be surprised tomorrow. If you would like some too, I'm sharing them here.

wee love on wednesdays

Some pretty good holiday gifting ideas this week.

1. Adorable Wax Paper Balloons

2. Mini Designer Chairs

3. Home on the Go Dollhouse

4. Kids Festive Messenger Bag made to order, on Etsy

Today's Bento ...

... pretty much brought to you by Costco. Oh, and a whole lotta love. As you can see, I photographed it on my desk, hence our mouse pad, and also in utter darkness. Yes, winter is upon us and therefore no more sunlight. Alas.

CLOCKWISE STARTING AT TOP LEFT

· Beef and cheese sandwich on one of those thin/flat hamburger buns

· Asian pear slice

· Mini carrots

· Cucumber cars

· Grape tomatoes

· Mini ginger Christmas cookies

· A rainbow of mini sweet peppers

While not actually a heart-shaped sandwich, as with this bread it would just waste too much, I simply used a cookie cutter on the top piece for show. I wonder when Spud's going to get too old for hearts? Am I going to have to get some sort of death metal cookie cutter at some point?

Photo Friday #31

A FLASH FROM THE PAST  |  TRAVELS PRE-BABY

I've dredged up some oldies! And with our newly acquired scanner I thought I would start posting some of our past travel favourites. Here we are in the awe inspiring Afamia, Syria. Circa 1999.

Question of the week: would we take Spud to Afamia if we had the opportunity? Absolutely.

Sure, we've seen Roman column-lined streets before but this one is 2 kilometres. Stunning.

Look at these sweet little girls. We inadvertently interrupted their work — they were harvesting some sort of wild herb in the grass. They insisted we take their photo.

Well, actually, it went like this (excerpt from my travel journal): "... ran into a bunch of little girls who asked for  'stylos' (pens). Unfortunately we didn't have any on us. So they asked "bonbons?". Ah, the universal word for candy. But to no avail. Next they tried "baksheesh?". But the sheer number of them made this awkward. By this time they were exasperated with us. But very sweet. Finally they insisted we take their picture. And this seemed to be enough of a gift. I'm not sure why but I'm grateful for it."

I think about these little girls from time to time. Each 11 years older now. Maybe even mama's themselves. I still regret that we didn't have any candies.

Have some travel pics of your own you want to share? Maybe even from this decade? Or interested in looking at what other world travellers have captured lately? Check out Delicious Baby on Fridays.

wee love on wednesdays

1. Hyperactivitypography: An activity book for typographical geeks = love.

2. Painted rocks on Poppytalk. So simple. And so beautiful.

3. Lovely nested bowls at Pigeon Toe Ceramics via cielbleu.

4. These are just so crazy I have to try them: candy-coated-peanut-butter-Ritz-cracker sandwich cookies at Skip to My Lou.


(images: Hyperactivitypography, Poppytalk Handmade, Pigeon Toe Ceramics, and Skip to My Lou)

Two IKEA Towels Become Hooded Changing Towel

We took 2 IKEA Frajen Bath Sheets, at about $8 each, and turned them into a cozy, personal space in which Spud could change. Sure, you might think this is the wrong season for such a project. Wouldn't this be more useful during beach season? But Spud takes his swimming lessons in the winter, and when you have a boy as shy as he is (he doesn't even want to show his parents his belly button!) then you have to come up with something.

Originally I had big plans to include a carefully illustrated tutorial in this post. But things have been busy and now enough time has passed that I don't even remember all the details. But suffice it to say, we chopped off the bottom 17", or so, of each towel and used those pieces for pockets in the front and a hood. There was even a bit leftover to make little bags to hold flip flops or goggles.

The rest of the sewing is very straight forward ... leaving two arm holes and a neck hole ... and we embellished a bit here and there using some of my own fabric.

Features we like:
· Large arm holes make it easy for Spud to get his clothes inside to change into.
· The pockets in the front are large enough to hold the clothes he's changing into and then the clothes he's changing out of.
· The whole thing is long enough that he should be able to wear it for a few years. If he becomes too old for the robot, it'll come off easy enough.

And, yes, he loves it. I think he would live in it if we would let him.