[Elfie's been busy]

Elfie has been having fun in our house again. 

One day he left special metallic markers and a cute drawing for Sienna.

Here he is taking Sienna's dolls to see the Christmas tree.

Playing marshmallow tic-tac-toe with one of Sienna's dolls.

Elfie sure can't wrap a gift very nicely, but he does know what we like. He gave us "Christmas Cello" album by Steven Sharp Nelson. We have been listening to it over and over again in the van. Love it!! Beautiful music!! 

You can purchase the cd by clicking here.

On this day, Elfie was reading and highlighting scriptures. He put a new bookmark to mark one of his favorite scriptures of the Savior.

He's no Grumpy Cat, but Mr. Happy is one lovely pet too!

(Looooove Grumpy Cat, by the way. Wish she was mine! She'd cheer me up every single day with that grumpy frown.)

Having a nap in Sienna's slippers.

Digging into M&M's.

Peek-a-boo!

Hanging from the dining room lamp (which eventually will be exchanged to a nice modern one).

Sometimes he just likes to sit in funny places.

Fun!

[advent wall calendar update]

Here's an update on our advent wall calendar. Things are progressing. Elfie joined the fun and made some paper snowflakes for the calendar. He left a little snowflake rubber stamp gift for Sienna. Nice guy!

This photo is from today. 

The animals so far: Elephant, hedgehog, owl, bear, duck, squirrel, lion, koalas, polar bear, bird, penguin family, Boo the dog, dove, butterflies.

I found the wooden stars at Michaels.

I think next year's wall calendar is going to be a silly one. I wanted to add Grumpy Cat and goofy animals, but feel that with the manger and baby Jesus, I have to keep things reverent. 

[advent calendar update, etc.]

Here’s an update on our wall calendar. So far I've added an owl, an elephant, a hedgehog, a moose Sienna drew at school, a squirrel, a polar bear and a penguin family. Not every day, but some mornings, there's been a small treat among the animals too. A chocolate Lindt teddy bear, for example. 

I had hoped to bring Elfie back for 12 days of Christmas only this year (it is a lot of work to plan and set up) but Sienna kept asking about him so one day he showed up having had rolled down the stairs in a toilet paper tube. Forgot I had done that last year already. Oops! :)

This is one of my favorites! Elfie took a copy of himself. I had a white towel over him when I took the copy but removed it for the reveal so Sienna could easily see Elfie.

This year, Elfie has bendable arms and legs, which helps. I just stretched the stitches along a seam with a pin and then inserted wire inside. No sewing required.

Sienna caught the Christmas bug early this year and drew Christmas things first thing in the mornings. She made this Santa ornament for our tree but I thought it was a perfect center piece for the wreath. Love how he's carrying Rudolph. :)

Had fun wrapping couple of gifts.

[almost 100!]

Happy 96^th Finland! Love you forever! ♥

Juhlin Itsenäisyyspäivää tekemällä vanhanajan lippuviirin. Kuvassa vain osa siitä.

Rakas Suomi aina ajatuksissa ja sydämessä vaikka asun täällä kaukana. ♥

[homemade wall advent calendar]

When I saw the trees in this photo, an idea came to me to make a large wall advent calendar. This is the beginning of it. The trees are cut from poster board. The largest one is about 27" (70cm) tall. I found a picture of an empty manger online and printed it out. I'm not too happy about the "hill" the manger is on, I might still change it. But the idea is that each day I'll add more to the calendar and on Christmas morning, Sienna will find baby Jesus lying in the manger and the star of Bethlehem in the sky above Him.

The theme for this calendar is "forest Christmas" but who knows what it will end up looking like by Christmas. So far I've printed these to add to it:

I found the perfect baby photo to be Jesus, didn't I? And yes, I'm totally using photos I'm finding online. I'm sure the owners of the photos won't mind since this is for a good cause: to make one little girl super excited and happy about Christmas. :)

Sienna loves animals so I thought it would be fun to add all sorts of animals in the forest. Not just forest animals. Little treats and surprises will be found in the forest too.

Another idea is to have your child(ren) draw the animals (or Nativity characters if you want a more traditional Nativity scene) instead of printing them out.

I'll come and show you how the calendar is progressing throughout December.

Fun! :)

[the joy of babies]

My sister had a baby boy recently so I’ve had babies in my mind. Here are some of my favorite baby things from my BABY Pinterest board. Please click the link to see the source for each photo.

Thank goodness for the Internet, by the way. I was able to “almost be there” for the birth as we kept in touch via Facebook during it. It made it less of a blow to be so far away from my family when such an exciting event was occurring.

Love my new nephew already, even though we haven't met in person yet. ♥

my BABY Pinterest board

[Christmas is coming...]

I know, I know... I've been neglecting my blog big time. I think one of the reasons is the blue tint photo problem (see earlier blog post). But I just had to come and share this photo today. 

It's so cold and snowy right now where we live. So I'm loving all the hot pink in this photo. Could do this in a smaller scale unless you're super rich and can afford this many large gifts for an advent calendar. 

Now to just find the energy to do something like this... I tell you, there's something to nature slowing down during winter. I find it takes so much more energy to do everything in the winter. Hibernating sounds pretty good to me right now. J 

 I was looking through some old photos yesterday and cherished remembering spending Christmas in California in 2009. I so could handle Christmases without snow. Palm trees with sparkly lights is it for me! Please feel free to send me some plane tickets to somewhere warm. You know you want to... J

Until next time: stay warm people. Stay warm. 

♥   T ♥

(photo source) 

[love these!]

Love these nature themed pillows.

Plantillo/Etsy