Belated Christmas Greetings and Best Wishes for a Prosperous and Healthy New Year!

I hope this finds you all enjoying a wonderful holiday season, doing things you enjoy! I apologize to my loyal reader (lol) for my e-absence; I have been out of commission with the yearly bout of creeping crud bronchitis. This particular nasty round brought along with it an inner ear infection that made me nauseous when I looked at the computer screen. I'm feeling much better now, and gearing up for a new year. I plan on offering several challenges thru the course of the year. So spend your next day or two prepping an art journal for yourself so you can play along with me! I will be focusing on the positive and on increasing happiness thru art.

Pay it Forward

Pay It Forward
Belinda, Dawn, and a number of other talented ladies have posted this on their site recently. Now it is my turn! I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF (Pay it forward) exchange. The only thing you have to do in return is to pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog, and follow thru. So basically, if you’re one of the first 3 comments, I’ll send you something crafty that I’ll make! Once you sign up, I'll e-mail you for your address. Then you copy and paste the above paragraph on your blog, and three other lucky people will be recipients of your handmade work. I will send the giftees, and then post a photo here on my blog.

Look what the elves did!

Just LOOK what those naughty elves got into last night! Not only did they pull a panty raid, but they brought at least 5-6 inches of snow!



Now who do you suppose is having the most fun?

Merry mischief

Well, the naughty little squirts were at it again last night! Taking a ride on the mixer and baking cookies! They took little elf bites out of most of the cookies, and Mike noticed they particularly liked biting the stars off of the Christmas trees. At least they left us some to nibble on! And the dentist will be proud that they left Macie a brand new Barbie toothbrush and Barbie toothpaste.

I sure hope they are writing all these adventures down in a little elf diary somewhere!

Oh- and for Aileen from over at http://aileensmusings.blogspot.com/ who wondered what elf shoes looked like- here is a quick peek!

The Elves have landed!

Merri and Chris, our holiday visitors

Does anyone else have elves that come stay for a visit? We do? We have 2 that came on Thanksgiving night and are going to stay until Christmas eve when they will return to the North Pole with Santa. We think that they are on vacation, and Santa told them all about a nice house that had good cookies and a little girl named Macie to play with, so they decided to come stay. Of course they still have to make daily reports to about Santa if we are all behaving or not. We think they are probably supposed to have visited in secret, so they act like they are frozen when we come into the room!

We came home from the store one day and just found them waiting for Macie! With them they brought the movie "Annie" and some popcorn. Macie instantly fell in love with them, and couldn't wait to pop popcorn and enjoy the show with her new little friends.

Off to bed they all 3 went, Macie tucking them in tight with their own little elf blankies. The next morning, we were shocked to find them playing checkers in front of the fire!

They also left her a little elf size Christmas card with a note inside, politely thanking her for sharing the movie and popcorn the night before.

For the most part, Macie is thrilled to find what they've been up to every night as she is sleeping. She keeps finding new ways of tucking them in each night to make sure they don't get out! And when we leave the house she keeps finding new boxes to keep them locked up in until we return. But somehow those little Houdini's keep getting out and causing mischief! The other morning, they left a trail of Barbie cereal thru the house. (Thank goodness they eat their cereal dry with no milk.

After the second day of escapes, Macie figured out how to wrangle them! She buckled them into her seatbelt with her!

We went out to the a family party and came back to more mischief! They were doing some sort of an act from the circus from the kitchen chandelier!

We've caught them sharing milk and cookies with Christmas bear, and coloring in a new coloring book they brought to share.The little teases have also been leaving us little mini polaroids of their late night antics. Just look at what one of the polaroids showed them doing last night! That's them~ jumping off the towel bar!
All in all they really are sweet, and don't cause too much trouble. Macie says she like them better when they bring a new little surprise (it's so funny, she gets a little annoyed with them when they touch her toys, puzzles and tea sets!)

So, that's what's been going on at our house recently. I wonder what they'll do next......really...Mike and I can't imagine what they might do next... anyone have any suggestions as to what we should be on the "lookout" for? I did notice some extra baking supplies in the pantry...I suspect cookies could be forthcoming some night, but after that, I really can't imagine!

Elfin Good Giggle

No time to properly blog today, but wanted to start the holiday decor off right, and Dawn http://www.artistreborne.typepad.com/ always has so many wonderful holiday ideas I couldn't help but peek at her blog first to mentally enjoy holiday art. Her hilarious creation at this site sparked Mike, Macie and I's own holiday giggle.
Please consider this our holiday card to you! (Thanks Dawn for the point in the right direction!)

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9629028656

Wow-where did the week go?

Did so much this past week, I don't know where the time went! It seems that here in the Columbus area, life speeds up in some sort of weird space-time continuum thing the week of the OSU-Michigan game! We had a chili cook-off and corn hole play-offs at work the Friday before the game and the Mayor came to award the prizes. It's the only day we can all wear jeans and sweats into the office, so everyone gets into the spirit. Although I am not a football fanatic, I enjoy the revelry. I've never quite seen any other town go so crazy for football. There are plenty of goings-on during the season. My uncle's company hosts a big breakfast every year to say "GO BUCKS" and thanks to his clients. The band plays, there are corn-hole tournaments, prizes and I've done face painting for kids and adults alike. It just seems as if as soon as the 'big game' is over you race screaming towards Thanksgiving. Throw in a couple of close friends birthdays to be celebrated, a FIL's birthday, and the presents and mailing involved with that all to get done BEFORE the "relaxing" holiday, and it's just a whirlwind of activity.