The-thing-that-must-not-be-named

So.  The Elf on the Shelf.

I don't get it.

I'm not going to go on some tirade about spoiling children and how parents don't need to stage these elaborate scenes because hello do you remember Peanut's birthday parties?   And forget lecturing about commercialism and the true meaning of Christmas because I LOVE Christmas.  All of it.  The good, the bad and the cheesy.  The kid has a his own house decorated for Christmas for goodness sakes..

I'm not even dead set against The Elf.  I imagined picking up Peanut from preschool one day, sniffling as he came to the door, looking up to me with big, sad eyes and asking, "Mommy, why don't we have an elf on the shelf?" To which I would reply, "Oh honey, our elf is coming tomorrow!"  It wouldn't be the first late night run to Target and hopefully it won't be the last.  (Does anyone else love that quiet, childless stroll through Target after all the normal shoppers have left?)

My plan until that moment is not to talk about The Elf at all, in hopes that when he does hear it mentioned at school, he'll have no idea what they are talking about.  We shall not name that thing.

I'm watching you.

The first thing I don't understand about the-thing-that-must-not-be-named, and this is very important, is that it's Creepy.  With a capital C.  With all the technology we have today, how was it not possible to make a remotely cute and endearing elf?   

The eyes.  

It's all in the eyes.

That thing is freaking me the heck out.  And I'm not the only one.

This is pretty accurate as to how I feel about this thing running around and wreaking havoc at night while we are all sleeping.

P.S.  This photographer is hilarious, genius and terrifying.  I especially like her Facebook page because it has the perfect mixture of classic family, boudoir and couples photography mixed with some truly disturbing creepy elf photos.  I love a lady with balance.

The second thing I don't understand is the every day part of the deal.  Parenting is so full of every single day tasks.  Feed the kids everyday.  Bathe the kids every day.  Brush their teeth every day.  Change their diapers every day.  You know?  So I'm resistant to an every day situation.  Although I have done a Christmas book a day in lieu of an advent calendar (and yes I start Thanksgiving because I have that many books) but let me give you a little background on how that is going.


Clearly this is not our pile (all of the pictures on this post are from Pinterest)

Year 1:  Every day after bath there is a nicely wrapped book sitting under the tree.  Well not everyday because he was too little to know that we were repeating books.  At the end of this year I wrapped all the books before putting them away in storage for the following year.

Year 2:  Every day there is a nicely wrapped book sitting under the tree.  At the end of this year I threw all of these books along with all our Christmas movies into a big container that was nearly impossible to carry into the attic crawl space.

Year 3:  Nearly kill the family trying to pass said container down the ladder.  Wrap 6 books and run out of tape, mentally add tape to the list of things to buy.  After 6 days of a nicely wrapped book sitting under the tree we forget, on a nightly basis, that we are supposed to have another book under the tree.  When Peanut gets out of the bath we shove a book in a gift bag with a piece of tissue paper.  Until the tissue paper disappears.  Instead of finding more tissue paper we stuff plastic grocery bags in as filler.  He doesn't seem to mind.  The gift bag has since ripped on one side.  He still doesn't mind.


Is it me or is that one angry looking powder angel?
And don't even get me started on the cop picture.

So yes, we have all these normal parenting daily things to do and then the holidays hit and we go from life is busy type of crazy to Holy Shit the holidays type of crazy. And then we have the nightly staging of the Thing.  Maybe I'll get into it next year but right now, I'm too tired to think that's realistic.

There is an undeniable perk to the-thing-that-must-not-be-named.
He's Santa's snitch.  I'm all for having something around to keep the kid in line for a few weeks.  But this leads me to my next question.

Why is that creepy little thing always getting into terrible trouble in the night?  Aren't we trying scare our kids into submission by threatening coal and the full wrath of the naughty list?  

So let me get this straight.  Every day the kids wake-up to find that the-thing-that-must-not-be-named made snow angels in the powdered sugar, tied-up his toy friends, ate all the cookies, wrote on the mirrors and had an all night strip poker party with Barbie.

All in order to get our kids to behave.

I'm so confused.

So, we spend a month giving the kids examples of things they shouldn't do and then tell them to toe the line or Santa's sleigh is skipping this house on Christmas Eve.

I mean, wouldn't this theory make more sense if It was prompting the kids to do nice things.  Like if everyday the-thing-that-must-not-be-named had a sign that said,
 "If you wake your mommy up today, you can say goodbye to any hopes of getting that Teenage Mutant Ninja Princess Rainbow Loom Sword Set."
  Or whatever. 

Don't play with fire kids!

I'm not saying It has to be holding a different scripture passage every day because let's face it, Elves, and Santa for that matter, have little to do with the religious holiday.
I don't remember hearing about any elves lurking around at the birth of Christ.  Maybe they were at that one nativity with the lobsters.

There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?



I will say that there are quite a few very cute ideas that I really do like.  Even if the Thing is creepy.

Besides if you want to get all religious you could replace the-thing with this instead.  But that's not at all the same, now is it?   I mean, there are alternatives like these two and these peeps and of course Etsy has this girl (can someone make this for me pretty please, she's too precious).  Of course there is Montgomery, the mouse that is not at all less creepy than the Elf.

I don't know.  I'm still waiting to feel inspired by some of this.

So if you can clarify any of these things, I'd greatly appreciate it.  Otherwise, we can laugh and cry together next year when you notice me pinning elaborate ideas on how to turn my living room into the North Pole by morning so that I set the right stage for the-thing-that-must-not-be-named.

Peanut's Christmas House

It is not enough that Peanut has his own house in our backyard.

A house complete with doorbell, kitchen, eating area and custom shelving by Papa.

One day I came home from work to find this happening.

Papa ran a 50 foot extension cord across the pergola, onto what was once our canopy and down onto the house so that it would have working lights.

And then he made sure it was remote-controlled so Peanut could turn them on and off himself.

They did this all during nap so he woke up to a big surprise.

He was so excited and is still excited every time he goes outside.

Peanut was very impressed with the lights!

Oh and the snow, we can't forget the snow!

Nama then made sure to decorate it with a new Christmas wreath,  plants for the flower pots and a Santa welcome mat to pull it all together.

Peanut ADORES decorations.  

It's awesome to do these types of things for him because he loves it SO much.

Even at night after dinner, when it's too dark to play outside, he likes to turn on his lights and admire his house through the window.

This year is turning out to be so much fun because

 he's really getting excited about all the holiday cheer! 

Besides, who needs to wait for Santa when you have Nama & Papa?

Halloween Felt Play Boards

It's another "I love felt" addition on Spontaneous Clapping.

Mostly that's because I'm not very good at making things that are hard to handle.

Felt is easy to use, it's easy to cut, it's cheap, and hello, you can hot glue it!

3 weeks before the party I still had no idea what I was going to make for a party favor.

The first year we did the pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.

And really, you cannot beat the Adopt-A-Monster that we did last year.

I just can't.  Nothing is going to be as cute as that.  

Plus, I wasn't feeling the motivation to get anything done.

You know what I mean, there was no inspiration and I was seriously dragging my feet.

So mom was over, looking at my fall felt tree when she suggested I do some play panels as favors.

I was immediately excited but since I didn't have a game plan, I wasn't able to take advantage of Peanut's Yen Yen (grandma), my lovely mother in law who was in town.

She would have been more than willing to help cut out shapes but I just kept sitting down and staring at big pieces of felt.  This would continue for 2 weeks.  Felt Everywhere.

Contrary to what most of you think, I'm not very creative.

But I'm great at copying things!

As you can see a few pictures up, I have my phone out.

I like to google pictures so that I know what to sketch.

Google:  Pumpkin Outlines

Google:  Bride of Frankenstein

Pinterest:  Jack-o-Lantern faces

Pinterest: Witch Crafts

This is where I get my "original" ideas. 

My felt panels are 2' x 2' which is really big.

I wanted to be able to hang it on the wall or door handle and have the kids stand and use it.

Alternatively you could make it small enough to sit on their lap.

I thought about doing it on half-size baking sheet from the 99 cent store but I didn't want to bother with cutting out such small felt pieces for 24 different panels.

My mom made them look all professional by sewing a sort of open-ended hem, 

 adding a 2' dowel (from Home Depot), cutting a slit below the dowel (no problem with felt)

 and tied a string around it for hanging the panel.

I glued on some of the pieces so that the kids would have a general idea of what they were looking at.

I also wanted the big pieces to be anchored so the smaller pieces would stay on.

Each Frankenstein had pieces to make both the Bride of Frankenstein and the man himself.

This photo is too dark to really see her hair but I was pretty happy with it.

In general, the less the panel moves around, the better the felt pieces will stay on.

BUT if you're in a situation where it's getting jostled a lot, the pieces will fall off.

So, either lay it on the floor or table to be used

OR

stick some velcro on the back of the pieces.

This is what they do in a lot of preschools.  

The only disadvantage is that the velcro tears up the bottom piece of felt 

and over time it'll need to be replaced.

Jack-o-Lanterns!

You could get really creative with these.

I originally just cut out the eyes and decided later to make the masks.

The littler kids may have a hard time with all those individual eye pieces, so I thought this would be a way to help make it easier for them.

It also adds color.

You see what a difference it makes to just turn the mask upside-down?

A bow can also be a bow tie depending on where it is placed.

You could make costume faces too.

A kitty mask, a witches hat, a scarecrow face, etc.

I used one pumpkin as the stencil for the rest of them.

Working in duplicates really helped move things along.

We have witches!

Each one has a hat and several different "faces".

You could do a night sky behind her, a broom, a black cat or just a moon and stars.

Again, all I did was flip the eyes in the 2 pictures above and the faces look completely different.

This could be good teaching tool for feelings/emotions.

I also love these because they serve as decorations during Halloween.

This was how I felt when I accidentally cut through some pieces that were already finished.

Don't be lazy like me and cut felt on a table full of other felt pieces!

Owls.

You just can't go wrong with owls.

The body and the branch are hot glued on.

I sketched both with chalk on the felt,

cut it out, smacked the chalk off and then used that to trace and cut the rest.

I made the eyes by tracing the bottom of a kids cup on white felt, glued it to another piece of felt (in the above photo I used orange) and then cut that out.

I found I liked the pupils to be towards the bottom (or top) instead of the middle because it gave more character when you flipped it upside down.

This way the owl can always look in different directions, as you can see in the photos below.

The wings are not attached and I did decorate some of them.

Decorating the wings would be a great craft to do with the kiddos.

These are all decorated with scrap from this and other projects.

In keeping with the theme of the Halloween Outer Space Party, 

I also made some space ones that I will show to you later!

Maybe next year you can try some of these out… because it's already nearly 2 weeks since Halloween and I'm just getting this posted, ha!

Fall Felt Fun

Fall is here and we've pulled out some of the play things from last fall.

This means fall books, a few fall movies and this perfect fall felt board.

This proved to be even more fun this year than it was last year!

He loves putting all the leaves up just right.

Believe me, I am often called out on my faulty leaf placement and 

he'll then correct my placement to suit his design.  

I'm not sure why this is necessary because the highlight of getting all the leaves up is that he then swipes at the tree to watch all the leaves fall down in a heap on the ground.

Peanut just got over a mild case of Pneumonia in which he seemed to go thru long spurts of being tired and very short spurts of crazed energy.

In any case, some easy, quiet, inside play was perfect.

If you want to see how I made this DIY Fall Felt Play Board you can find it HERE!

(or any of the other many places I linked on this post)

Celebrating Easter 2013

I loved Easter this year because Peanut was pleasantly surprised to find an Easter basket waiting for him in the morning.  He also loved putting up some decorations and doing a few crafts.

He did not however, have any expectations for bunny prints staged outside or elaborate egg hunts and who knows what else.  This is nice because somehow during the move I lost our bin of Easter stuff and again this holiday just snuck up on me, which is what I say for every holiday these past few years.

Perhaps my favorite part of all this egg business is watching the little ones try and open some of those tight fitting eggs.  

It is awesome.

I might have to glue some together when he gets older.

Or is that not part of the Easter spirit?  I'm not so sure.

The big reward for all that hard work is...... MONEY!

One quarter, one dime, one nickel and one penny and you would have thought the kid won the lottery.

Oh the simple things in life.

Nothing like the clunk of coins dropping into your Noah's Ark piggy bank.

I keep trying to play with the filters on flicker but I think what I really need is photoshop.
How much money do I need to spend in able to get a program that will brighten up pictures like the one above?

Peanut also loved spending time reading through his Easter book with daddy.
Daddy does a lot of fun voices and sound effects.

B had to work (Boo!) so he helped me get the kid wrangled to head to church.

Of course we were already running late which means I made a last minute switch of churches in an effort to find a mass that was 30 minutes later than the one I planned to attend.

We stopped to take a few pictures but really to throw some dirt and get messy before heading to mass.  He picked up a snail in the church parking lot and threw it at my car.

Thank you for that.

We ended up in the children's room of this new church, which is to say that we ended up in a room with no ventilation and 10 other kids, 9 of whom were sick.

There was a box of books and the kids were wandering around and

 I couldn't hear anything and Peanut thought it was play time.

We left early.  I know.  But seriously, I was dying in there and I felt like staying any longer sort of missed the point of going in the first place.

Somehow his sleeves got dirty with I-don't-want-to-know-what so I changed him again before heading to my parents house.

This look says, "Seriously mom, I just want to give Nama this bunny I made and you keep dragging me around and changing my clothes and taking lots of pictures.  Enough."

So off we went and he was so happy to see his cousin.

They are always happy to see each other.

They are always arguing within 30 minutes.

It always makes me laugh.

What I love about this age is that the kids are really happy with their one egg but all the adults are busy calling them, getting their attention and pointing them to more.

It's hilarious to watch the chaos.

I'm still trying to decide if Peanut went around picking all the pink eggs or the other boys picked all the blue and green or if it was just coincidence.

Either way it was awfully cute and very noticed by myself and others which really makes me laugh.

We can have a discussion about gender differences, gender discussions and society expectations later, yes?

Again with the egg opening!  

You gotta put some muscle into these things.

About this time we realized that all the eggs that were pre-filled with other little eggs had a bunch of candy that they couldn't eat in the center.

Bubble gum, Now & Laters and other choking hazard, yay!

It didn't really matter because the kids, or at least Peanut, doesn't really get the concept of candy anyway.  I let him have some Smarties that he ended up spitting out.

We decided it would be better to distract them with Easter Baskets.

Look mom, an Easter gun!

Yes, yes, that's nice dear.  Wait what?

OK, OK it's a bubble gun but still, the thing comes with a holster.

A holster filled with bubble ammo.

These gun and holster sets are obviously not as easy to use and you would think.

Papa to the rescue!

When Peanut was born I said no guns.  I don't particularly like them.

Of course, a child can turn just about anything into a gun.

I often find him shooting things with a backward golf club.

I suppose it doesn't matter.  

Unfortunately or fortunately these didn't end up working well and magically disappeared after the festivities.

I've decided that the ability to find your own Easter eggs and then open them is a right of passage.

It's like moving to the big kids table.

We spent a little time stuffing our face.

The adults do it with dignity, which is to say that we do it one serving, one plate at a time.
We casually go back time and time again, a serving here, a serving there.

The kids shamelessly stick as many cheese puffs as possible into their mouths before they choke.

Fun was had by all.

A little baseball training from my nephew Justin, whose child I am convinced is some kind of hitting and pitching prodigy as the age of nearly 3.

We both met daddy at home later in the evening, with our arms full of leftovers and our eyes drooping from a day of festivities.

How was your Easter?

Yay! It's the Easter Bunny!

 

In keeping with the theme we took this lovely Easter picture.

 

It looks like we took almost the same exact picture from last year.

 

I'd love to see the look on the person's face beneath that bunny mask.

 

It all seemed fine in the beginning.
He was even the tiniest bit happy to see the bunny.



Of course, being behind the fence is much better than being on it's lap.

 

We hope you're all having a perfectly joyful day!

 

(Which we are, despite what it looks like)

 

We'll be back soon to post some pictures from our day!