New Year Giveaway

You know I ♥ a good product, and I could think of no better way to ring in the New Year than with a giveaway and my good friends at Tiny Prints would like to help me offer just that.

Tiny Prints is a premier online stationery website that offers exclusive designs for birthday invitations, holiday greetings, baby shower invitations, and many other cards and stationery for many different life events. Go check out their website HERE! {Don't worry...giveaway details are included below - but first go check out the products! }

Look at some of their New Year samples......

Aren't they great? Now I know where I can get all of my invitations and holiday cards this year!

Here are the details of the giveaway....... Tiny Prints would like to offer YOU a $50 gift certificate. Wow!

1) Go visit Tiny Prints at http://www.tinyprints.com and look for your favorite card.
2) Come back and leave a comment on this post with the name of your favorite card from the Tiny Prints site. You MUST include your email address in your comment so I can contact you!
3) I will select the winner using the random generator.

Don't wait! Hurry...this giveaway will run January 1st through January 9th. The lucky winner will be notified no later than January 10th. The winner will be notified via email of their winning and given specific ordering instructions at that time.

What a deal! Good Luck!!!!!

Final Trip To Our Fave Christmas Market

We took one final trip to our local Christmas Market before everything is taken down for the year. It was a cold day but Neeley insisted that Ronnie be able to enjoy it with us one more time, so we headed out, enjoyed some yummy pizza and crepes, rode a few rides, and did a bit of "window shopping." So fun!

Christmas 2010

Lovin' the title? Oh yeah, me too! I decided to lump all the rest of our holiday happenings together or else you may never see them. Editing photos takes so long and we have a ton more than what I have shown you so far.

But to show you how we spent our Christmas 2010 {Germany style}, here's a glimpse.....

We enjoyed seeing the little bit of lights we were able to find this year.......


And we always allow lil miss to open one gift of her choosing on Christmas Eve.......


In this box, she found American Girl Doll School. {Apparently this is the new hip thang...}


And this allowed for hours of good clean fun for most of the day.......


On Christmas morning, we discovered the loot in our stockings.......



Then we got right down to business as lil miss would say.......








We did not take as many pictures as we usually do, simply because we are REALLY enjoying being under one roof again. And I am usually the picture snappin' crazy woman on any day but it just didn't happen this year. And we ♥ LOVE ♥ the fact that Neeley is in her jammies, and Ronnie and I are hanging out in our t-shirts. It was a very comfortable day with just the three of us, lil Anna Banana, lots of snow on the ground, and good food in our tummies. It was probably the most relaxing holiday we have had in years and yes though we missed all of our friends and family from back home, it was also nice to not have to stress about being everywhere.

Here's hoping your holiday was equally as pleasant. And Cheers to the New Year.......

Holiday Recap

Neeley LOVES spending time in the kitchen. I'm so happy she ♥'s it so much, because it really helps to motivate me to {try to} love it right along with her. :)

For teacher and neighbor gifts and such, she hand dipped her own pretzels. She used everything she could get her hands on to drizzle over them - everything from white chocolate peppermint Hershey's kisses, to Godiva chocolates, to Hershey's german baking chocolate mixed with my PB2 powdered peanut butter. Oh they were so yummy, and looked just as good.....


What is your favorite sweet treat to make for the holidays?

In The Spirit Of Cleaning.....

I know you are all just waiting excitedly for our Christmas pictures. ;) But....they are still in the edit mode and quite frankly we would rather spend time together for this last week of vacation than sit at the computer and edit photos.

So...............in the spirit of doing some new year cleaning and reorganizing.....here are a few oldies but goodies for you to laugh at..... More to come soon, but we are having a good time spending time together as a family. Our schedule gets back to "crazy" on Monday, so we are really trying to cherish these times........

Happy Holidays!

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things.....

Adding Our Own Personal Holiday Cheer

We *FINALLY* have our Daddy home safe and sound after quite an ordeal getting him here. And poor guy...he had no idea what was in store for him upon his return.


Neeley was adamant about us waiting to put up our tree or doing any kind of decorating and such until he returned. So we got him home yesterday, fixed a good dinner, ate and relaxed a bit and then got right to work.


It's still a work in progress I would say. But for now, we have more important things to do like a lil traveling and spending time together as a family.


Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

This Holiday Season, We Wish Only For Simple Things

We made it!


{Not sure if you can read that slip of paper above but that is the *final* link in our countdown to Daddy's return paper chain. Yahoo!!!!!}

Yummy For All Tummies

Apple-Cranberry Galette

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus 2 Tbs. extra for your work surface
• 1/2 cup plus 1 Tbs. cold unsalted butter, divided, and cut into small pieces
• 2-1/2 Tbs. cold water
• 3 medium apples, peeled and cored
• 1 cup cranberries
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. cinnamon

Directions

1. KNEAD IT In a food processor with a blade attachment, mix both flours and 1/2 cup butter. Process until butter is the size of tiny peas. Add water; pulse until dough pulls together. Let your kid form it into a 5-inch disk on a floured surface. Cover; refrigerate for an hour.

2. MAKE A BIG CIRCLE Preheat oven to 425F. Prepare a floured surface. Ask your child to roll the dough into a 12-inch circle about 1/8-inch thick. Help him check the size with a ruler. Put the dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, or transfer later.

3. FILL AND FOLD Quarter apples; slice 1/4-inch thick. Ask your kid to mix remaining ingredients with apples and spoon into center of dough, leaving a 2-inch border. Fold dough over and dot center with remaining butter. Bake 35 minutes, until crust is golden and fruit bubbles.

Oh so yummy!!! I found this recipe in a copy of Parents magazine and it can be found online here. There are other kid-friendly recipes as well.

Enjoy! We certainly did! ;)

Holiday Happenings

Has anyone else been terribly busy? Yuck! Sooooooooooo ready for some down time during this holiday break.

We've experienced a fun holiday "tea time" for our kiddos on post hosted by one of our fabulous neighbors here.





We've had end of the semester programs. This was Neeley's GE program for this semester, with a focus on civil rights.





We've made peanut butter play dough here at home for a lil family fun....................



We've participated in a few Girl Scout events like our Cookie Kickoff that is held every year at our on post movie theater. This year we all got to watch the original Parent Trap and loved it!



And we took a lil trip with Neeley's class to a water treatment facility for a lil educational fun. Science experiments are always the best!







Now we're just waiting for the man of the house to arrive sometime soon and are just enjoying hanging out and sipping coffee and cocoa and spending time watching Christmas specials and doing crafts.

What are your plans for this holiday break?