Crafty Gifts

I had to wait until after Christmas to post this one since it involves the gifts the girls gave to family this year. So I failed and didn't make any gifts to give to friends and neighbors like we have done in previous years but Hi, I just had a baby. But thankfully I had thought ahead for the girls to make some fun things for their family members. 

My favorite project was the one they did for their grandparents. They also made one for themselves. This one was made with colored glue and frames to create stained glass art pieces. I loved the results!

 

Drying

The girls: I took one of the frame normal and one being held up to the light.

And the ones for their grandparents.

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Next they made snow globes for their cousins, Annika and Ginny. They kept the penguin one for their room. :) This one was my idea and I saved the jars from some mandarin oranges but then my mom gets full credit for making this happen when she was here visiting. Thanks mom! 

And then they made melted bead ornaments for their aunts, uncles, and great grandparents. And also one for our neighbor Glade. :) My mom also gets full credit for making this one happen.

This was Hazel's special tree that she took great care to make. She ended up being cute and giving it up to give to Erin and Dan.

So yeah! There you have it. Some fun little crafts and thoughtful gifts. 

Merry Christmas!

From Our Family to Yours

Luminaria

We had an extra special family night this week. Thanks to my mom, who had been here all week to help me out (which deserves its own post) she was able to hang out with Rose while we went to this new light show/exhibit thing. We had planned to go before Rose came but the night of our tickets the lights weren't working so we got to come back any night of the season and this was the only time it worked out. Buck's parents also came. 

Anyway, it's at the Thanksgiving Point gardens, which you've seen us go to a lot. They transformed the place into a magical light land. The pictures don't do it justice. There were so many lights! And themes and creativity! And there were smells- like on the peppermint candy cane lane it smelt like peppermint! And pine scents in the forests and things like that. Lots of attention to details. The only downside was it was SO COLD. Let's all move to Hawaii and out lots of lights up there instead.

Anyway, here was the Poinsettia green house at the beginning.

 

Under/inside the tree

This area had two real reindeer and some fire pits and a place to buy some sweets.

This was an incredible light show. See the end of the post for a video of it! It was so cool!

And then you entered the new Christ statue area where there are dozens of Him through his earthly life. The whole tone changed, there were thousands of lanterns and powerful violin singing "Oh come oh come Emmanuel" as you entered. It was amazing!

Towards the end there was the S'mores land with fire pits and kits to purchase.

And now here is the video!

I'm so grateful I was able to go to this and have a Christmasy night after being stuck at home for weeks!