Christmas is coming...

I LOVE the Christmas holidays! I love the sights and sounds and smells of Christmas. I love the magic of Christmas. I love just sitting by the Christmas tree in the evenings, all lit up and the fire a glow. I love all the time we spend together as a family. I don't like the cold white stuff much but the Christmas season I love! We don't have a lot of family traditions but the ones we have are important to us.

Every year daddy makes sausage rolls from scratch just like he and his dad used to do. Below Sierra helps daddy for the first time in 2008.

We love decorating our tree together. Here's some of our past trees full of many homemade and store bought ornaments but all of them have a special meaning.

Aayla helping in 2009

2009 tree all decorated

2010 tree all decorated

Everyone helping to decorate our 2010 tree

Me adding one of my favourite store bought
ornaments...I just LOVE this fairy dog :)
 I have a large one in my craft room too!
2011

Our 2011 Tree...some branches are heavy
with multiple ornaments as the girls love
to add numerous ornaments to each branch

We always make gingerbread houses. Sierra and Aayla are so excited about our house from 2010

We buy or make at least one new tree decoration every year (in all honesty we usually end up with 3 or 4 every year). Here are some of my favourite ornaments from past years. I love unwrapping each ornament as we get ready to hang them.

Notice a theme? A lot of red, a lot of Santas, and mainly handmade ornaments.

This year we started a new tradition called "the Elf on the Shelf" and we LOVE our Elfie :)

To learn about the Elf on the Shelf click HERE


Here are a couple pictures of the mischief our Elfie has been getting into

Swinging on the chandelier

Caught watching a movie

Built a pop mountain/tree and gave the
girls invitations to the north pole BC

We are having fun with this new tradition! I love his vintage feel and the book he came with is really a sweet story. It is so magical to watch the girls search for Elfie every morning and to see them talking to him throughout the day, telling him stories :)

What traditions do you have each Christmas? Are you in an RV this Christmas? How will you celebrate? decorate? I'm curious as this is our last Christmas in a typical "house" and next year we will be on the road and I would love to hear about some of your RV Christmas plans.

A weekend in Seattle

Mom and I took the girls to Seattle for a weekend get away which turned into a kids weekend :)

We visited the Seattle Children's Museum.

 Playing in this little taco restaurant was Aaylas favourite thing to do. Making smoothies just like daddy does.

 Walking through leaves my girls can't help but pick them up by the handfuls.

And the Woodland Park Zoo which we got in for FREE with our membership to the Carlsbad Living Desert Zoo and Gardens we purchased on our trip this summer.

 This elephant was so much fun to watch. He kept throwing the dirt up on his back, then rolling in it and then throwing it again.

 We bought bird food feeders for $2 each to feed the birds.

All in all we had a great girls weekend away...now home we go to continue with organizing and selling things in preparation for hitting the road again in the spring.

Oh and I bought this book (find it here)

at a thrift store for $2.99. Looks like it's full of lots of great info for travelling this Spring.

Lest We Forget

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

- John McCrae May 1915

To see how we made our own poppies this year click HERE

Fall Fun at home in BC

Back home to reality and the selling off of stuff continues...I do hope to have my living room back for Christmas.

The rain has arrived and the evenings are cooling off so painting has slowed to a minimum...everything is basically painted except for the gutters and eaves troughs. We are looking into a couple quotes to replace them...if not they might not get painted until the spring as we have almost finished the front but the other 3 sides are still blue! The door will have to be painted too but should we do it a yellow or a red???

We have managed to get out and enjoy our beautiful province a bit...

We went to Richmond Nature Park and was thrilled to find these amazing Muscaria Mushrooms. I have searched for them every fall for years and have never been lucky enough to find them. This week I scored and knocked them off my wishlist of things I want to photograph someday!

We also went to the pumpkin patch and collected some pumpkins.

Yesterday we enjoyed a wonderful roast dinner here with family as Ian's mom arrived from Toronto this week for a visit and today of course we celebrated Halloween!

Hoping you all had a safe and Happy Halloween!!!