From my family to yours. We want to wish you a very merry Christmas this holiday season. We will never forget that He is the true reason for the season. Merry Christmas to all and to all...


And to all a goodnight! { OK cannot believe this was Mushy just a mere 2 years ago! }

I am a sucker for Almond Roca! I kid you not I could sit and eat an entire tub in one sitting! I love the stuff and totally blame that on my Grandma as she too loves it! Last year a friend of mine brought me some homemade Almond Roca! It was delish...but if you have been following me a while you know that I like to tweak things to how I think they should be! I am kinda a perfectionist! Well folks...I did it! I have perfected hands down the best Almond Roca recipe { insert pat on back here } I am so proud of myself! And kinda greedy too! I was planning on sticking some in little boxes with cookies for friends and neighbors to hand out tomorrow evening. Well. I filled a box for my OBGYN (next baby apt is tomorrow!)...but the rest went into a large baggie in the fridge that will be gone by the end of the week! Almonds are good fat...right?!


Here is what you will need:

3 Tbsp light corn syrup
4 sticks of Butter (equals 2 cups or 1 lb)
2 cups sugar, rounded (WHITE sugar!)
6 Tbsp water

Combine the top ingredients into a sauce pan. This part as easy as it is...begins to resemble sitting and watching paint dry! You will want to continuously stir the ingredients in the sauce pan over medium heat until a candy thermometer reads 290. This will be about 15-20 minutes. So get comfy! I feel more buff on my right side!


Your caramel should be about the color of a paper bag. REMEMBER to continuously stir so that you do not burn your caramel! Will give it an awful flavor!

You will then remove from heat and dump in 1 1/2 cups of chopped unsalted almonds (I buy a large container of raw almonds from Target! We eat them by the handfuls!) I used my Pampered Chef food chopper to get the correct size of almonds for this recipe. Combine the almonds with your caramel. Spray a cookie sheet (metal with sides) with Pam (or any other kind of grease spray!) and pour into the pan. The caramel will instantly start to spread but you will need to use your spatula to slowly press to each corner evenly.


Once you have the caramel mixture spread. Immediately dump an entire bag of chocolate chips on top (I sprinkle all around the pan as you will be spreading this to cover!)

Welcome welcome to the NEW followers! WOW! How wonderful it is to have you here with me! I am excited to show you a super simple craft that you can actually do with your kids (under supervision as you will be using a hot glue gun!) Our Elf Snowflake enjoys hiding below this adorable tree and this year I decided I needed a second one as we love it so much!

Above is what you will need for your project. Now I go with the smaller styrofoam cone shape...but have thought about the larger. Maybe next year! BUT you will need TONS more puff balls for the larger one! Can I just say we love puff balls around here! You can use them on so many crafts! We are always out!

I used the tree last year for my dessert and drama table and just love how it set the mood for the table! Have fun...and don't burn yourself! Have a blessed day!

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Do you ever go walking through the craft store...something catches your eye and you think to yourself I MUST make something with this!? NO?! Awwww...come on! Sure it does! I fell in love in the wood section of Michael's!


It was super easy to create these Naughty or Nice plaques to hang above each stocking and I adore how they turned out! The best part is I had most of the stuff on hand already! Here is what you will need:

Once dry I took red satin ribbon and cut into 20" strips. I burnt the ends with a lighter (to seal the ribbon so it wouldn't fray). You will need 2 ribbon strips for each plaque.

I would love to say my days are always sunshine and rainbows with hints of cotton candy, creamy hot fudge, sprinkles and add a cherry on top...but reality is this...I'm a mom. If any mom tries to tell you that they have the PERFECT life and that they never have a bad day and their children are the most well behaved little people on the planet then they are A) either flat out lying B) on Prozac C) slightly delusional or D) all of the above! I know some pretty fantastic moms that are always dressed at their best, homes are spotless and you never hear or see them stress about anything. But I do know they have days too and that my reality is this...life happens. Children happen. Today has been a prime example of that...you know my son had surgery last week. Well the same day he had surgery our mortgage was taken from our bank account a 2nd time. Yes. You read that correct. And as an average everyday family we just don't keep that kind of cash flow around as much as we would LOVE to! So it over drew our bank account. It is the banks wrong and they are in the process of fixing it BUT as we speak it has been 8 days. With NO access to our account at all. No cash. We haven't Christmas shopped at all (let alone birthday shopped...my husband and step dad are BOTH ON Christmas day! Lucky us right? OH and Emily Grace...her birthday is a week after! Oh...the holidays!) and we were completely out of milk, eggs, etc (a sweet friend surprised me with a bag of groceries today! Talk about Be CHRISTmas right there!)

So as I deal with this...my children have been actually pretty good! Night was going smoothly until...DUM DUM DUM...they wanted our cat to come in. Yes. This set it off! Our cat, you remember Bear Bear right? The one eyed pirate cat?! Well, he is not allowed outside and escaped while we were bringing in the tree on Saturday. Because of this and us trying to get him BACK inside we have not been feeding him (that sounds horrible...but we are trying to entice him WITH his food to come back in!). He is the most stubborn animal you will ever meet and is refusing. But...wants his food! Emily Grace was in hysterics that we decided to give up for the night. My thought on it, the cat will get hungry and eventually decide that a nice warm house with soft comfy blankets and furniture is much better than a hard damp deck while its raining and only 40 degrees outside. I think...no brainer! We let her know that we will just try again tomorrow that it is now time to clean up so we can get ready for bed and we also needed to do homework. OH LORDY, watch out. Sista was not happy. Through a ginormous tantrum { enter screaming, crying, red in the face child } so we sent her to time out to calm down. This went on for over an hour. I kid you not. I actually told her that tomorrow she will be grounded (OK for real... I don't do the whole "grounding" thing...yet I was stumped!) if she doesn't turn it around. We FINALLY get the situation under control and when it was time for her to go off to bed I say "sweetie, lets get some chap stick on your lips before bed." Girlfriends lips are SO chapped that they have cracked in the corners like 2 months ago and we are still combating them (so if you have any tips on chapped lips HELP please! We use Burt's Bee's) she had to be held down to get some on her lips! I kid you not my almost 6 year old was throwing a better tantrum than my 2 year old could throw. That leads to now...I am wiped out.

Talk about Be CHRISTmas!! My dear friend Carrie (the mastermind behind the detail work on my blog!) and fellow blogger, mamaprenuer of Ink & Mouse has an incredible freebie printable (gift tags!) she created! All you have to do is go to her blog and print away (she has directions...detailed of course!) BUT I had to share! Here is a sneak peak! She's lovely...no...she's divine...no...this girl ROCKS my world! Love you Carrie!

Yes...I know! I have CHRIST big and bold in the Christmas! That is because for our family this year we are trying to remember to keep...Christ in...Christmas! Its a good reminder for myself! I am going to show you a few Christmas goodies here and there but today's is how to make cute glass ornaments with curly paper inside! Simple yet...adorable I think! AND you can change up the look a bit by using different colored papers or even papers with different textures, decorations etc! I love them!


I used large glass clear ornaments that I found at Michael's! You know I love any place that either already has them on sale OR I can use a coupon! I used 2 different scrap book papers (12x12 size) and then cut them into 1" strips using my Fiskars paper cutter.


You will start with 1 strip of paper at a time and roll it tightly in your fingers...I started to use a pencil and found my fingers did it better and the curls were tighter like I wanted!


I then took the end of my scissors and pushed the paper out...so I could start cutting the curls.


I cut various lengths of curls like the one above. Some were longer!


Take your curls and drop them into your glass ornament until it is a little more than 1/2 way full.


Then you are going to pick up your ornament and shake shake shake! This way you are intermixing the papers!


I found some cute ribbon in my stash to make a bow. Add a hook and you can hang on your tree or even gift to friends, neighbors or teachers! I am having Emily Grace and Noah make them for their teachers as I think its easy enough for them to do! I will take them to pick out the paper themselves! Have a blessed day!

We for the first time ever had our first experience with...dum dum dum...surgery in any of our children. This whole piece is going to be a bit TMI but I have had many followers wanting to know what is going on. Basically my son...was well...rather endowed when he was born. ONLY for it to of course continue to grow in the last 4 years. The problem is that when a small child has a body part like that grow too fast it can grow extended excess skin. This skin created pockets and adhesion's around the head of his privates. Yes. He is circumcised and NO it is NOT related in anyway shape or form to the circumcision. In fact my mother in law who is a recovery nurse thinks it would have been an even tougher surgery had he not been circumcised! The reason we had to get the adhesion's removed is because they created pockets and under the pockets (that are sealed into the skin) you can see white build up called...crud. Very scientific right?! We tried steroid creams and different methods our doctor had shown us in office but nothing worked. The urologist said none of that would work for the type he had. Noah's surgery we knew in advance was going to be more invasive.


The day before the scheduled surgery you find out the time of your surgery. As not fun as that is...its a children's hospital and you just kinda have to go with the flow! We of course were scheduled for the first surgery of the day making it so we arrived at 6 a.m. Due to us driving there we were up at 4 a.m. We were ready to go! There are signs everywhere stating that you can only eat in the cafeteria which is located on a different floor. This is because the children are not allowed to eat or drink past a certain time. You also have to be healthy to enter this hospital area which is wonderful knowing that you should not leave with any sort of bug! The nerves set in with Noah right away (what am I talking about they kicked in the night before at Target when we were shopping for snacks and he lost it...people staring at him like "look at that bratty child throwing a tantrum" when really they had no clue what so ever what my boy was going through. And to that I say shame on them!)


He was not thrilled in the least to get his hospital scrubs on so we waited until the latest possible moment to get ready. Mind you...we are not in separate rooms but instead we are each separated by curtains. The sweet 5 year old behind the curtain you see there...was getting ready to have her 3rd brain surgery. The surgery itself would take 7 hours. In order to prep for that they had to arrive at 7 a.m. for a 10 a.m. surgery. I was more than a little thankful that the procedure we were doing was on my sons "man parts". They come in and check vitals. The doctors each come in and talk to you about anesthesia risks etc and then he was given silly juice!




My little loopy drunk man started out angry (they said he could be one of 2 ways!) and then his eyes drooped and he became infatuated with his pillow! "Mama...this side is warm...feel. NO I mean like SO warm." "This side is cold...I wanna make the WHOLE pillow warm". We had a few good laughs and before you know it they are ready to wheel your baby away. I can honestly say I am glad they do not do the IV until they are actually in the O.R. as I feel this makes it easier. He was wheeled off with a smile (we were able to go to a certain point...stop give kisses and say see you soon baboon). Inside the O.R. the first thing they do is give him a mask that has a sleeping gas in it. Then when he is asleep they put in a breathing tube (yep...rough) and IV. This surgery was supposed to be 20 minutes to a 1/2 hour. It ended up being EVEN more invasive once they got in there so he was in surgery for over an hour. I have never looked at my clock as much as I did that day.


I thought the waiting game was the most torturous part of the process...by golly. I was in for a rude awakening!

We tried distracting him with cartoons, with talking, with angry birds on my ipod. NOTHING worked! It was horrible. Finally about 1/2 hour after he had taken the pain meds he was starting to calm down. He was talking to us calm but still complaining of pain. But praise God we had it under control for the time being! The doctor came in and told us that there was a short, a medium and a long adhesion. The long adhesion's are a lot more difficult and because of this he would be down 2 weeks instead of 1. He also had stitches in his privates and they had to cauterize in different areas so parts of his area would look like charcoal. They also had to wrap it with what they call plastic wrap...its like a sticky saran wrap that is supposed to last a few days (it lasted only 1 in his case!).

He was annoyed with the shirt so we put his own shirt on him...his favorite nurse Twyla was telling him she would send him home with the scrubs on if he wants...he loved that idea only cause it came from her! After a while I finally asked if we could go home.



I thought...this will all be so much easier at home. We clipped him carefully into his car seat and took our slow drive home! Arriving we were greeted by two hyper excited girls wanting to know everything and it was completely over whelming for me...I couldn't imagine what it was like for him! We finally got everyone calm and quiet...set everyone up for naps and Paul layed on the couch with him to stop him from wiggling. All cashed out...although I was soon awoken by the phone...multiple times so I never got to rest that day! I was a bear!