Christmas Plays & Music

Last night was A's Christmas play. They did the Grinch. It was really cute. My goofy self completely forgot to take a single picture of her all dressed up, but I did film the entire thing. I'm pretty sure there is a feature where I can freeze a still shot and make it a picture but it will take some maneuvering before I can get that figured out. I'm in the rush to finish knitting Christmas presents and starting to panic. I was up until midnight last night trying to get one of my sister's gifts done. It is posted below that I finished her gifts, but I ended up having to help someone out w/ a gift and now I'm remaking. I'll try to update with a "picture" from last night. She was so freaking adorable!

On a lighter note, I'm trying really hard to let the stress go and get into the Christmas spirit and I downloaded tons of Christmas music to my phone so I am listening to Dean Martin now. Let me know your favorite Chrismtas CD/albums so I can check them out!

Haircuts!

A has been after me to cut her hair. I had told her she could cut it after her recital in June but it really has become hard to manage lately. Yesterday afternoon we went to meet my sister so she could cut her hair and below is the finished product! I think it is adorable, although now my child is obsessed with her hair. She was crying this morning about every hair out of place. I'm in for a long ride...

Decorations and Deer

We've had a busy few weeks around the Trahan household. First things first, A (5) and C (3) decorated the Christmas tree last week. You will see below that they did a wonderful job! I decided this year to let them take over and do as they wanted. My sister and I always did it ourselves! *Not in the picture - the 2nd angel hanging from the back of the tree. Since the girls couldn't decide which one to put - we have both!

We have some other Christmas decorations but I didn't take pics of those. Will have to update that part later. We really want lights on the outside of our house, but since we stay so busy and procrastinate quite a bit, that hasn't happened. I did promise A that this year we would hit up the after Christmas sales and get lights for next year and we will do those around Thanksgiving since we're a little late in the year to put them up this year!

Last weekend we were invited on a hunt in South Texas by someone we work with. I have never killed a deer before and it was Blaine's mission to get me to kill one. Below are the mitts I knitted on the 8+  hour drive there. They were supposed to be for someone for Christmas, but I got a little cold and wore them the second day we were there and they turned out to be my lucky mitts!!! I might have to give them to my mom for Christmas so she can have some luck when deer hunting!

Below is the deer I killed - Yes he is considered "a good one" around here - he's definitely going on our wall! (and yes, he is bigger than any of Blaine's!)

This lil guy below was very curious when we were doing the cleaning... either curious or hungry... Not sure which one. This is the first road runner I'd ever seen.

We spent all day Saturday processing our deer meat and had so much! We eat lots of venison and had already used up most of our 3 deer we started the year with. So now we're restocked! We made 30 lbs of ground meat, 30 lbs of Italian Sausage, and the rest was in Fresh Sausage and roasts and backstrap. My wonderful husband spent 8 hours processing all day Saturday while A and I shopped. I did all of the packing when I got back though :) Here's a Christmas scarf for my godchild that I'm working on - she's into goth, so I figured this was fitting...

And this one is A with our dog Lola - she needed to take a picture and it was just too cute not to share.

I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

My Mad Arts & Crafts Skills - HA!

So.... My daughter came home from school Tuesday to tell me that her Advent Mary figure was due NOW at school. Yes, I was told about this sometime in November, but apparently, since the due date was sometime in December it went on the back burner in my mind. Since Tuesday afternoons are filled with a mad dash from the bus stop, to getting ready for dancing, to driving 15 minutes to dancing and spending 2 hours & 15 minutes there, not to mention grocery shopping for ingredients for supper and making said supper... the project would have to wait. I promised her teacher she would bring it in today.

Yesterday, when I got her off the bus we had to tackle the always-fun-and-hair-pulling-tantrum-inducing Wal Mart to get supplies. Thanks to my good friend Kassi I had a great plan in mind for what we would do. Unfortunately, once I dug up the original paper with details of the project, the dimensions were required to be quite larger than what Kassi referred me to and my plan was shot to hell. We spent 3 hours of fighting with foam board - which so graciously broke my favorite yarn/knitting scissors (yes, I am totally aware that I should not have been using this type of scissors on foam board - Now...) - felt, which would not glue to said foam board, glitter paint, yarn, and needles trying to puncture said felt... Nightmare... When the regular glue wouldn't work I pulled out the super glue. I went to bed frustrated, with fingers covered in super glue, and with felt that STILL wouldn't adhere to itself. In hindsight I should've bought the "Adhesive back" felt squares... Hindsight is 20/20 right? Thank goodness I had some safety pins from Recital laying around.

Needless to say - I am not fond of arts & crafts. I am not a creative person whatsoever. It is a complete shock to anyone who knows me that I have picked up knitting and love it. Arts and crafts Stress. Me. Out. - HORRIBLY. Why? No clue. By the time I got A. bathed, fed, and in bed and I still had work to do on the damn thing I was almost in tears. Maybe PMS is to blame but I contribute it to my great hatred of all things creative when I'm involved. Anyway - below is a picture before we got busy with the rest of her "veil" and hit up the glitter glue and so forth. I completely forgot to take a picture of the finished project. Can you tell I was ready to get the horrid thing wrapped up and on the bus with A.?

I truly feel sorry for my daughter for having me for all of her forthcoming school projects. Let's hope some of her MiMi got passed down to her so she has some sort of artistic hand. Then maybe I'll be off the hook when she finds out she can do better than Mommy can!!!