WINNER!

I want to thank everyone for entering my SUPER fun giveaway!

I wish I could make a SUPER cute shirt for all of you!

I used Random.org to select a winner and it is:

CARRIE from MARTIN MANOR HAPPENINGS!

I am so excited...mainly because I am going to get to make a fun girly shirt for Miss Emily! YAY! I have already emailed Carrie and she emailed me back with the details....so now I am going to get busy working on Emily's SUPER cute {PINK} shirt!

Wordless Wednesday: In Front of Grammy's Tree

"Real Holiday Helpings" and another GIVEAWAY!

The "Real Holiday Helpings" website is a great resource for SUPER busy moms {like I know you all are} to use during the SUPER busy holiday season.

The website has a ton of SUPER recipe ideas for the holidays, as well as some awesome videos of Bobby Flay sharing his {holiday} magic in the kitchen! You can also print out a coupon for Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise and enter to win year of free groceries!
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I tried out one of the recipes from the Real Holiday Helpings website and it turned out so YUMMY! I just made half the recipe to try it out...but this would be a great party appetizer for a crowd!

CAESAR SALAD CROSTINI

A Bobby Flay Recipe

Ingredients:
1/2 cup Hellmann's® or Best Foods® Real Mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp. anchovy paste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 loaf French baguette, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
1-1/2 cups finely chopped romaine lettuce leaves
3 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

Instructions:
Combine Hellmann's® or Best Foods® Real Mayonnaise, mustard, garlic, anchovy paste, salt and pepper with wire whisk in medium bowl. Remove 1/2 of the dressing to small bowl; evenly spread 1 side of bread slices with dressing mixture. Arrange bread on baking sheet, dressing-side-up, and broil until lightly golden brown. Let cool slightly.
Toss lettuce with remaining dressing and cheese. Stir in vinegar and, if desired, salt and pepper to taste. Top each crouton with salad.

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Just for sharing a little bit about this wonderful website, the wonderful people at Real Holiday Helpings are letting me give away a $25 American Express giftcard to one of my readers!

So here is how to enter:

For your first entry leave a comment...any comment will do!

For another entry, visit Real Holiday Helpings and tell me which recipe you would love to try.

For one extra entry, follow me and leave a comment telling me that you do.

For another entry, put my button on your blog and leave a comment telling me you did.

For one more entry, follow me on twitter and leave a comment telling that you do.

For three extra entries, blog about my giveaway linking back to this post and to Real Holiday Helpings, then leave three comments telling me you blogged.

**This giveaway will end on Wednesday, December 16th at 12:00 pm CST. Winner will be chosen using Random.org and the winner will be announced on my blog.**

Special thanks to Hellmann's and Real Holiday Helpings for sponsoring this giveaway by providing the winner and myself a $25 gift card.

CHRISTmas Parade

On Saturday, Jason and I bundled up the boys and headed to our community's Christmas parade. We met a few friends and their kiddos and had a blast waiting for and watching the parade. Grant, Hayden, and Henry waiting for the parade to start.

Eli playing with a necklace that he got at the parade.

It was pretty cold when we first got there. But by the time the floats started rolling by, all the kiddos had taken off their gloves so they could pick up candy and treats!

After the parade, we took the boys to a birthday party and then to pick out our Christmas tree. We stopped by Krispy Kreme on the way home and ate some yummy hot donuts for dinner. I think we may have to make that a new tradition! When we got home Jason set up the tree and put on the lights. Then the boys got busy decorating {the bottom half of} the tree. Now if only I could figure out how to keep Eli from un-decorating it!

C is for Coconut Cookies

I had a little bit of this: leftover from making Magic Cookie Bars.

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So I decided to make these:

And fill up this:

For at least one day, anyway!

Chewy Coconut Cookies

{from allrecipes.com}

Ingredients1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut

DirectionsPreheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C.) Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla until light and fluffy. Gradually blend in the flour mixture, then mix in the coconut.

Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until lightly toasted. Cool on wire racks.

Help for the Holidays

I wanted to share a little bit about a great website that I found through MomSelect.

The "Real Holiday Helpings" website is a great resource for SUPER busy moms {like I know you all are} to use during the SUPER busy holiday season.

The website has a ton of SUPER recipe ideas for the holidays, as well as some awesome videos of Bobby Flay sharing his {holiday} magic in the kitchen!

The Caesar Salad Crostini that Bobby makes on one of his videos looks so YUMMY and SUPER elegant for a party! I am definitely going to be making them soon!

Plus, you can print out some great coupons and even enter to win a year's worth of groceries for FREE! What mom doesn't love free food?!?

I am planning to share a little more about this website and the SUPER yummy recipes one day next week. So come back and check it out...and I will be giving away a little surprise too {thanks to the people at Hellmann's Real Holiday Helpings who are supplying me with a $25 American Express gift card for one of my readers and one for me too}!

Wordless Wednesday: It's Beginning....

The Shirt Off My Back: GIVEAWAY

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED!

Lately, I have been

{just a little} obsessed
with making SUPER cute shirts
for my boys!

And now I am going to make a SUPER cute shirt just for one of you!

You get to pick the size, the color, the fabric, and the design.

But first you have to enter and win!

So here is how to enter:

For your first entry leave a comment...any comment will do!

For one extra entry, follow me and leave a comment telling me that you do.

For another entry, put my button on your blog and leave a comment telling me you did.

For one more entry, follow me on twitter and leave a comment telling that you do.

For three extra entries, blog about my giveaway linking back to this post, then leave three comments telling me you blogged.

This contest will end on Wednesday, December 9th. That way I can get the shirt made and hopefully to the winner before Christmas...just in case someone wants a Christmas shirt like this:

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

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This was NOT the view from our hotel room last week. Jason and I did NOT have a great {and much needed} mini vacation...going to dinner, seeing a movie, doing a little shopping, and getting room service breakfast the next morning!

For more than half of last week, I was NOT confused about what day it was. This was NOT because the boys were out of school and Jason was off of work, throwing my whole weekly schedule into a jumbled mess.

On Thanksgiving, I did NOT forgo eating a bunch of SUPER healthy vegetables and really yummy turkey just to save room for dessert. I would NEVER eat dessert instead of lunch or dinner! I did NOT 'sample' almost all of the five or six desserts that were served at my grandmother's house!

I did NOT go shopping on Thanksgiving night {and Black Friday morning}...leaving my house at 9:30 pm and not getting home until 8:30 am the next morning. I would NEVER be crazy enough to completely forgo a night of sleep just to get some SUPER deals and have a ton of fun!

Lately, I have NOT been obsessed with making SUPER cute appliqued shirts for the boys. I am NOT planning a GIVEAWAY for tomorrow....and I am NOT going to make a shirt of their choice {size, color, fabric, and design} for the winner of that giveaway!

I Heart Faces Week 47 We Heart Tooshies

I have for the most part stopped entering the I Heart Faces contest each week...mainly because my photography skills are a bit lacking, and I know my pictures are never as great as the ones that win. BUT when I saw this weeks theme, I just had to enter this picture! This is one of my favorite pics of the boys...I even got it printed on an 18X24 so I could hang it in my hallway. To see more SUPER cute tooshies and some awesome photography check out I Heart Faces.

Wordless Wednesday: Pilgrims and Indians

Happy Thanksgiving!

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.
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I did NOT finish off an entire carton of SUPER yummy Blue Bell ice cream by myself while Jason was out of town last week! I did NOT wait until the kiddos were asleep each night so that I didn't have to share my yummy ice cream! I would NEVER do that....because I always share my sweets and desserts with my oh so calm {sugar NEVER effects them} children!

I did NOT use my tshirt as a napkin while working on some Christmas crafts. I did NOT wipe SUPER sticky and hard to get out Mod Podge on my shirt simply because I didn't want to get up and walk to the kitchen to get a napkin. I would NEVER ruin a perfectly good {but kind of ugly} tshirt just because I was lazy!

I am NOT going on a {much needed} mini-vacation with my hubby today! We are NOT going to have dinner and maybe see a movie by ourselves for the first time in months! I am NOT really excited about getting a little bit of alone time without at least one kiddo tagging along {Who knew it would be so hard to talk my parents into watching three kids at once...before Eli, they watched the older two together all the time}, and possibly getting to sleep past 7 am.

Christmas Advent Calendar

I have been wanting a cute advent calendar for a few years. We had the cheap felt one from Walmart for a few years, but it wasn't nearly as cute as it could have been....so I decided to make my own. I did a little research online, and I got a ton of inspiration from other blogs and from Etsy! I took a few of the ideas that I found and mixed them all up and came up with my own advent calendar.

I hit up Hobby Lobby for

a canvas

wedding favor tins

scrapbook paper

and

a painted star

I already had some stuff at home

fabric

rick rack

mod podge

and

hot glue

I started by cutting out a lot of circle...48 to be exact. 24 without numbers for the inside of the tins.

24 with numbers for the outside of the tins.
I applied a thin layer of mod podge to the inside of the tin and to the inside of the lid. Then I place the unnumbered circles inside the tins and mod podged them in place.
I put the numbered circles in the lids {with the paper and number showing through the plastic} and then mod podged them into place. I cut out a Chrismas tree from leftover fabric and used spray adhesive to attach it to the canvas. I finished off the edges by hot glueing on some white rick rack.

After everything was dry, I put the lids on the tins and hot glued them to the fabric Christmas tree.

Starting on December 1st the boys will get to remove the lid to one tin a day and get a special treat that is inside. I also placed small pieces of paper with special Christmas activites {bake cookies, sing Christmas songs, wrap presents, watch a Christmas cartoon, read the Christmas story} for us to do in some of the tins.

I also made the boys some SUPER cute shirts to wear this Christmas! I used all left over fabrics for their shirts this year...so the only thing I bought was the actual shirt that was $3.50 at Walmart!