Merry Christmas Neighbor Treats

Some of the most beautiful people in our lives are our neighbors. Even when we try our hardest we can not catch up to them when it comes to yummy treats that they supply us with throughout the year! At Christmas time we try to come up with the cutest, yummiest, fun Christmas gift and we have tons of fun doing it. Here are some of our ideas. Hope you have fun spreading Christmas cheer to your neighbors too!

 We made cake balls that turned out sooo yummy!

 A tip on these suckers put a dab of chocolate down to hold the stick and then fill the rest of the way. We filled gallon zipper baggies and then cut then corner off. To add a little more flair we sprinkled red crystals to the tops. Then we put them in sucker bags with twisty ties. Adorable!

 Can you tell we love chocolate? These are chocolate flavored rice krispie treats and then we made stars with white chocolate. I drew stars on a piece of paper and then we put it under the parchment so we could keep our star shapes nice. We also added vanilla snowman marshmellows marshmallows Too cute.

Homemade Christmas

So this Christmas we were going to have an all homemade Christmas, at least the gifts to each other. It worked out half way. We improvised on the rest. The homemade part did work out totally amazing. We were busy, busy, busy!

First we baked some neighbor gifts. We love our neighbors!

The Barn Papa made for Kaity is in the background. Kaity gets to design the inside stalls and they are
finishing it with a loft together. She has had a great time designing the inside.

Hitty Emma is swinging on the swing of the Fairy House Mom made for Karlie. It is sooo awesome.



The pictures don't do it justice. It is awesome and beautiful. It has fun interactive parts like a hollow log with a lid on it and a rock covered bathtub. There are little charms and a crystal that can hang on hooks in the ceiling or around the outside. The best part is the fairies LOVE it! They actually visit and leave little presents and fairy dust. :) (Notice the little toadstools, Kaity made them and they can move around and be used for stools or just add to the decor.



The roof comes off. This is a view looking down into the top floor.

 I made the girls dresses for their Hitty dolls and they made each other adorable little presents. We will have to share all of that in the next post along with the details of our "Tiny Winter Tea Party"!  The brothers didn't get any homemade gifts. I am not that good at making electronics. :) The girls and I do have a few ideas for next year and we decided this time we are going to get all of our homemade Christmas gifts made in the summer. We should be busy.

The comfort of predictable tradtions.

We had a fabulous Christmas. There are so many beautiful people in our lives that it would be impossible not too! This year we had our fun family tree with our handmade decorations and precious things the kids have made or collected over the years, and we also hand picked the most gorgeous tree ever off of the mountain behind our home. Our awesome nieghbors, that are more like family, took us up to get it. It is huge and beautiful.

As I reflect on our wonderful Christmas, I think about all of the traditions that we have, and we do them every year. They are so predictable. We all open one present on Christmas eve and of course it is PJ's. (Smart mom's can guarantee great Christmas day photo's that way ;) Then we change into jammy's and read the Christmas story out of the Bible just like my father did when I was a child. We leave Santa milk and home-made cookies on his special plate, and he leaves us a really neat book to add to our Christmas collection. We feed the reindeer too, they don't leave us anything but we are awfully glad that they get Santa to us. Actually they did leave us some reindeer droppings this year which was a real added bonus in the believe department. We either make or collect a special ornament each year.... and the list goes on.

We celebrated New Years in our traditional way as well - together. I am so glad we have always done that and I hope my kids want to do that every year. We eat snacks and watch movies. At midnight we watch the ball drop and drink Martenellis sparkling apple cider. The kids love it and it is our tradition. And as life goes on I realize that those predictable things are the things that bond us and keep us close, they keep us grounded and moving forward, the things you can always plan for and count on. When everything in life gets crazy - and it usually does - there are things you can count on. You will get a new pair of PJ's every year even when you are to old to out grow them, Santa and the reindeer will always be able to fuel up at our house Christmas Eve, baby Jesus is always lying in the manger Christmas day, Christ comes before everything especially presents and Santa, we celebrate everything together, and family always loves you.

CHEERS!