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  It's Day 5 of our countdown to Christmas 2024 and Day 4 my advent calendars. I was glad that I waited to opened this present for when I had time to appreciate it. Day 4 in the Gilmore Girls calendar was a Luke's Dinner sugar bowl. I am very impressed with the quality of the presents in this advent calendar.

Day #5 of the Gilmore Girls advent calendar was a very nice 'Chilton' notebook. I am in the process of choosing the notebooks I want to use for 2026. So far my Happy Planner and Blog notebook are both Gilmore Girls themes, so this one fits in well.  At the beginning of 2026 I will share my planner set up for the year. In 2025, I couldn't decide on which planner I wanted to use. I tried a new one but it was too big and the paper was very flimsy, I found a coloring book planner, which was cool in theory but it didn't have enough writing room. I ended up using a few different ones throughout the year and now I have a pile of half finished planners. Finally, I am just going back to my classic Happy Planner and use notebooks for extra planning. This one will be perfect to bring on the go. My advent tree is starting to look more and more festive. Some of the ornaments that I have gotten over the past couple of days are different colors and sizes of Christmas balls and a cute ...

This has been a long day, I came home late from work and decided to wait for tomorrow to open my advent calendars.  I did come home to a little present though, the kids and hubby  bought me a cute Harry Potter squishmallow.   It was a nice surprise at the end of a busy day! Happy Countdown to Christmas!

Day 3! We didn't light the tapered advent candles last night, so we caught up at lunch today. Little Miss helped me decorate the little tree tonight. She deliberated for a while on where the best place for the ornament was. She decided that the best place for our little snowman was next to the other figurine ornament.   Day 3 of the Gilmore Girls calendar was a very pretty tea towel, with all the classic icons and quotes. It's so pretty I don't want to use it and risk staining it. I might try to make something out of it, it would make a nice book cover. Keep an eye out for a craft with this material next year. Happy countdown to Christmas!

  Advent Calendar Day 2! Today's surprise was a key chain in the shape of Lorelai and Rory's house.  Keychain Lorelai's house in front of advent calendar Lorelai's house. The second ornament for the tree was a cute little guy, maybe soldier, not sure what he is supposed to be but he's cute.  Happy Countdown to Christmas!

  December 1st is here! Finally! I have been staring at my Advent calendars for days now and I have had this great idea to share all countdown to Christmas fun with all of you! We started by lighting these tapered candles at supper. I placed them in my mom's brass candle stick holders, they were so nice and very nostalgic. The first decoration for my little tree was a cute red Christmas ornament with gold accents.  Day one of my Gilmore Girls calendar were two coasters with the classic I am the Rory to your Lorelai and I am the Lorelai to your Rory.  Happy Countdown to Christmas!

 For my birthday this year I was gifted two very special advent calendars. It's no surprise that I love advent calendars, I share them on my little blog every year. I love the tradition and the ritual of taking time every night to stop and spend some family together time. Counting down to Christmas helps us slow down and appreciate the little moments that make up the season, like opening our calendars all together in the evenings, with the fire burning or opening them on weekend mornings sipping on coffee. This year I have 2 new calendars to enjoy and add to my Christmas decor for years to come.  My hubby gifted me the brand new Gilmore Girls Light-up advent calendar. I've tried to avoid spoilers but one thing I did see was how to turn on the lights. If this is helpful at all for you, the battery tab that you have to pull to use the lights is behind box #7. I love the look and coziness of it, I can't wait to see what's in it!  This beautiful tree was gifted to me from m...

November is the start of craft show season. This year I helped my Mom prepare some vases to raise money at her church's craft sale.  We used vases that were donated along with blue, gold and black vinyl. I love the idea of repurposing vases to make affordable gifts.  We added some tissue paper to make the vinyl stickers stand out. She marked them for 5$ each, to make them an affordable option for teacher's gifts or for grandparents. They were a popular choice at the sale! Happy crafting and happy holidays!

  'Tis the in-between season. Time to (gradually) take down the Halloween and fall decor and start putting up the Christmas decor. I have to admit that I was very tempted to do just that today. It was a chilly late fall day and I was getting into the Christmas spirit. Little Man's birthday is coming up and he asked that I keep the Halloween decorations up for his birthday decorations but as soon as that is passed we'll be on to the next holiday. So for today I made some Christmas crafts with my mom, surrounded by Halloween decorations.  I have lots of activities and crafts in mind for the Christmas season this year, so stay tuned!  Happy crafting!

Hey! If you're looking at making a last minute Halloween lunch, I have the inspiration for you! Little Miss has requested Halloween lunches for the last 2 weeks. For tomorrow I am making monster pizzas which I have showed here before but here are some of the sandwich/wrap lunches from the past week. This is a ham and cheese spider with Halloween bark (think Christmas bark with Halloween sprinkles) and peppers (nothing spooky about them!) Above is a Witch's hat grilled cheese with Witch's brooms. Ham and cheese mummy wrap. My not so secret weapons to make a regular lunch spooky are eye sprinkles and Halloween stickers! Jack-o-lantern cheesy quessedillas with berry skewers and ghost popcorn.  Sandwich spider (any kind will do just use a fork to crimp the edges) with raspberries and apple butterscotch cookies. And last but not least a ghost sandwich with Witch's brooms, ghost cucumbers and apple butterscotch cookies. Hope these gives you some ideas! Happy Halloween!

I am loving our Halloween Town this year. We make it on top of the bookcases on either side of the fireplace in the living room. The white wall makes the perfect backdrop for our town, all the colors and shapes pop against the stark white of the wall.  Over the years we have bought a few Spooky Town houses and a lot of figurines. In the past I have used burlap as the ground which gave a good effect but this year I went with more pops of color and contrast against the white walls, with a Halloween table cloth.  This cauldron creates a bit of ambiance when it's lit up at night. We have a few of these smaller light up figurines that add to the ambiance and bring you attention away from the bigger houses. The graveyard is my favorite little scene in our Halloween Town. We bought the stairs with the grim reaper as an addition to our graveyard  this year. I always think that we have enough figurines and houses but Halloween discount shopping gets me every year!  Happy Hall...

  Happy Thanksgiving! This week was very busy and eventhough I was really looking forward to hosting my family for Thanksgiving, I didn't think about decorating. My decorations were already up for Fall/Halloween and I planned all the food but last night I realized I didn't have an idea for the table decorations. Lately my table decorations have been interactive, giving oeople something to do when they're sitting at the table. At Easter I had coloring page tablecloth. At Christmas I covered the table in brown paper and decorated each place setting with the shape of a plate and the guests names.  I knew that I wanted to have some activity at the table but I didn't have any brown paper left and I hadn't bought a tablecloth. I found versions of the a Thankful tree on Pintrest. I liked the idea and I just happened to have the materials on hand.  I used a metal container filled with with green floral foam. I had used this container for my sister's baby shower and East...

This year we have official Halloween countdown calendars. If you've read some of my past blogs you may know that I am equally obsessed with Halloween and countdown (advent) calendars. In the past I have made my own countdown calendars for Halloween, Valentine's Day and a special countdown calendar to my sister's 40th  birthday! This year, before I had time to plan what I wanted to do, Hubby surprised me by ordering Halloween countdown calendars for me and Little Miss.  My countdown calendar is Nightmare Before Christmas and Little Miss has Halloween themed squishy toys in hers. Our new figurines make nice additions to our Spooky Town, which I will share here next week. Happy Halloween and Happy Crafting.

Happy October 1st! We are well into the fall activities around here. To make the most of the season Little Miss and I made Fall Bingo cards to keep track of our activities. This is Little Miss' Fall Bingo card, she wanted to spend lots of time outside, so her activities reflect that. We had a lot of similar activities, apple pickung, pumpkin patches and decorating. We decided that we would work together to check off as many boxes on both of our bingo cards.  This craft was a wonderful mess! Just like with a vision board, there is a lot of cutting and flipping through magazines and scraps of paper. It was a great time to think about the upcoming season and all the activities that we always do this time of year.  Happy Fall and happy Halloween month!  

  Over the years we have spent many weekend mornings crafting. It has been one of my favorite times to spend crafting with the kids. Last Saturday morning Little Miss asked Little Man if he would help her build a castle for her dolls. The two of them went out on the back deck in their pj's. They dug through the recycling and brought out lots of crafting supplies. It was such a heartwarming, moment.  Little Man doesn't like to craft as much as when he was little, understandably but when his sister asked for help with her castle he said, "yeah, I know how to make a castle, how many turrets do you want?"  This is their finished product, complete with a  drawbridge and kleenex box beds for the doll princesses. 

  It's that time of year again! Back to school, back to schedules and back to making lunches. This also marks the beginning of the 'ber' months. It's almost time to decorate for Halloween! But first, let's decorate for the 1st day of school.  My decorating this year was again, centered around school supplies. This year I made large pencils and a large loose leaf piece of paper. It was easy and effective. I made the pencils out of paper towel rolls and construction paper. For the large loose leaf paper, I used the flip side of a calendar page. I drew the lines and then printed the lettering using my cricket Joy. Other than that I used books and paperclips. The overall effect was good but missing something so Hubby added the finishing touch, an apple on top of the stack of books. Happy Fall and happy crafting!

When I was little my aunt would cook a big turkey dinner in the middle of summer when she got tired of eating salads and barbecue.  Similarly, I like to decorate for Halloween when the heat gets too much for me. Celebrating Halloween in summer aka: summerween is a thing in stores this year! I'm so very excited to see spooky ghosties camping and sun bathing this summer, it made me so happy!  One of the themes in stores this year was summer fruit as jack-o-lanterns. One year Little Miss and I carved a watermelon, as they did in the Gravity Falls Episode 'Summerween' and that was a lot of fun. I found this fake succulent in a watermelon slice in Michael's, I gave him a jack-o-lantern face and voila a spooky slice of watermelon (although, he looks a little sad because his seeds look like tears, poor guy.) Similarly, I created this jack-o-lantern pineapple by giving him a face (the mustache is explained below.) Hubby gifted me this ghostie nightlight from Amazon and it fit r...