good ol' bragger update

I am so happy for thanksgiving break!  Although it might feel a little hard with Jeremy losing 4 days of work, I am excited to have him home and to get to rest, relax, and work on a few projects before the holidays hit. We have been watching movies, eating way too much popcorn, playing Wii, and staying up much too late. But, these are the things we love about time off.

Lately I feel like our regular day-to-day routines have been off a little.  We haven't been taking our morning walks (mostly because it is cold and for some reason I have not wanted to leave our cozy house), and I haven't had as much preschool activities for the kids to do during the day.  I took some time to write out a plan and am hoping to get back into it once Jeremy is back at work again.

I haven't been doing a ton of work on my shop lately.  This is partly because I am waiting for some materials to arrive in the mail, and also because the office is freezing cold, because it isn't insulated at all, and we leave the door closed during the day so the rest of the house heats up.  So, when I go into sew, I put on like three sweaters and some fingerless gloves, ha ha.  I keep  meaning to bring the space heater in from the garage, but haven't gotten to it yet.  I'm hoping to get back to some projects and into the swing of things before I have to give my mom her sewing machine back.  The sewing machine I want is on sale on amazon right now for $100 (normally $289), but it is hard to justify quite yet.  I would really like to make a few more sales before I buy it.  Thankfully, my mom hasn't asked for it back yet.

Anyway.

Tomorrow we are having Thanksgiving dinner with some of Jeremy's family.  It will just be his parents, his sister Hanna's family, and his grandma and uncle.  I am making a few allergen free foods (hanna and her kids are on a pretty restricted diet due to allergies), but otherwise, it should be pretty low key.  Shea is SUPER excited about waking up and watching the Thanksgiving Day Parade with me in the morning, too.  I used to love it when I was little, but haven't watched it in years.  Hurray for kids and getting to be nostalgic with them.

Earlier this week, I started getting antsy to get things cleaned up for Christmas.  Jeremy and I have been planning out advent calendar/activities to do for the month, and I have spent a few evenings painting peg buddies for Shea (I'll have to post pictures, soon!  I can't wait to give them to him!).  I finally purged like a mad-woman to de-clutter the office this week, also.  I hate it when there is stuff on the floors and stuffed places and forever classified as needing to be fixed or given to someone or whatever.  Once we got older, one of my childhood friends told me that my idea of cleaning when we used to spend time together was always to stuff things where you couldn't see them, but you always still could.  I am so not that way anymore.

So I didn't take any before pictures, but here is my nice and clean office (half of it, anyway).  Ah.  Now, wouldn't you feel more like walking in and beginning to create in a space clean and airy like this?  Yes.  Before I always would look at my table, move around a few things, and then not want to do anything more or not have time, because I spent it all cleaning.  Now I can walk in when I have time, sit down and get a few things done without worrying about prepping my workspace so much (or finding things).

I also re-arranged the playroom.  I created more of a reading space for me and the kids and moved over the shelf (also to partly block the toy closet so they would stop climbing in there and knocking over everything).

Here is just a view from the hallway, because I feel like I haven't shown that much of our living space.

And I have to leave you with some bath tub shots.  Can you believe how long Hailey's hair is getting?  When it is wet and I comb it down it goes halfway down her back and her bangs are down past her nose now.  Although Shea still has his bouts of "I don't like SISTERS", they are playing more and more together these days, and I LOVE it.  She wants to do everything her big brother does.

And these are the blankets I made as a custom order for one of my friends.  I don't think I shared a picture of them.  They make me happy :)

Today I cleaned out the storage room at the church where I keep all of my preschool supplies and did a huge deposit for the church (there were SOOOO many checks to enter), because the treasurer is out of town.  We took the kids to a park, got some cocoa and coffee at the local coffee shop, and then we had dinner and watched Monsters University together as a family.  So fun to cuddle up with the kids these days!  Although, Hailey doesn't care very much about movies and just goofs off the entire time and tries to steal everyone's popcorn.  She loved pointing at the screen and saying "EYE!" when she saw Mike Wazowski.

I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving!!  I hope we can get together in December at some point!