Here's to a wonderful 2011

We, the Ellwoods, are very busy folks.  When we aren't teaching at school, we're going to school.  When we aren't going to school, we are talking about getting ready for school (Miss A starts preschool this year!).  And when we aren't completely and totally preoccupied with everything of school, we are biding our time until it's time to go back to school. (Thank the good Lord for being teachers and having the great blessing of nice long holiday breaks!)

Still... with all of the hustle and bustle of the regular school that still isn't over yet for us... the 2010 calendar year is done for and here comes 2011.  Last year we had every intention of sending out holiday mailings but as with so many other best laid plans, things didn't pan out.  We should know better by now to stop putting the carriage before the horse. *shrug*  We'll learn.  Because what it comes down to is there's never a good time like the present to start doing the things you always should have done in the first place.  And for all of these reasons we're kicking off 2011 doing just that.  We give you our happy new year mailings.  An emerging photography talent I've had the great blessing to be introduced to did the portrait for us and I took care of the graphic design work - because why pay for someone else to do it when I can do it all myself?

For those of you folks who love to print pictures right off of this here blog, hold your horses! :)  Some beautiful specialty metallic prints (my new favorite thing because of what the process does for the colors!) are en route to your mailboxes as you read this.   Just give the wonderful postal service time to catch up with itself and take a breath from the holiday rush that was and your 5x7 will be in your hands and on your fridges before you know it. But we just wanted to post this here for you to enjoy as soon as possible just the same even if it is just in digital format. (See the post date?  It happened the moment the New Year rolled in!  Clever, eh?)

Thank you all for uniting with us and making 2010 so memorable and wonderful.  Let's do it again, shall we?  To 2011, we say, HERE WE COME!!!

Just a tad early

This year the executive decision was made that we would celebrate Christmas day yesterday.  We don't do the Santa thing in our house and really have tried to gear it towards the birth of our Savior so it worked out nicely to be able to have Christmas yesterday morning so we could go to church right after we did a little gift exchanging and had a delicious breakfast.

We've been talking about Christmas for weeks now and Miss A has gotten excited about it because of both Jesus and "my advent" (as she calls it).  We got one of those calendars with chocolates in them and she gets a chocolate at the end of every day to help count the days down.  Since she's just a little more than two and a half, she's still learning about it all and trying to figure it out but we're excited to report that she's gotten the most important part of it down - which is realizing the importance of the birth of Jesus.  Miss A gets all excited when you mention His name and even knows exactly who He is in the nativity...

Every year Miss A has gotten stocking gifts and then three gifts under the tree to symbolize what the wise men brought to Jesus.  This year one of her gifts was her own Craftsman tool bench that I actually picked up months ago for a mere $12 from my favorite local thrift store.

We thought it was brand new because it looked sealed and the box just looked a little beat up but as it turned out, it was missing the battery-operated power tools and had only the manual ones.  *shrug* Honestly?  Miss A isn't missing them too much and has plenty of imagination power to make everything else that came work just fine. Oh... but DON'T call it her tool bench because in her mind it's a new kitchen.

Miss A's second gift was a very special doll.  I am forever in search of Asian baby dolls that actually look Asian and are pretty (many end up looking like aliens or far from Asian) and I've thought that I would have to pony up and buy one of those super expensive American Girl dolls that are close to $100.  (*sigh* I don't like that idea but I would budget and save for it if I had to.)  Thankfully I will have to do no such thing!!  One of my favorite doll companies in the world (I used to work at FAO Schwarz in college) teamed up with Walmart and created their own version of the 18-inch dolls that are very much like American Girl dolls AND they have one that is of Asian descent that is so much prettier than the American Girl ones.  YAY!!!!!!  I saw it at Walmart last week and it was a real steal at not even $30!!!  And it was a big hit with Miss A...

 

And seeing as how well it went over, I'm already scheming about how to get her some matching outfits with her doll for upcoming birthdays and other occasions.

And for the third present this year, well... we're waiting on that one until Christmas day with family.  We've got only half of it here and we decided to hold off on opening that until it can all be opened together.  It was a very blessed early Christmas for us this year though and we loved being able to go to our home church together.  Miss A was especially excited about getting all dressed up in her sparkly shoes AND koala hat...

God bless us everyone indeed.

Our little bear

As it's happened, I'm not crocheting so much these days. Sad but it's hard to sit down and do such a thing with everything else going on.  Still, somehow I managed to eek out some time to devote to what has seemingly become an annual tradition for Miss A: the Winter hat.

This year I decided to go with a Koala bear design for no other reason than it seemed like it would make an adorable hat.  I saw a few pictures of other peoples versions on etsy and ravelry but I didn't go by a pattern and just kind of winged it.  Total time it took me was maybe a little under ten hours but it was stretched out over weeks because I ended up running out of yarn and blahblahblah... I couldn't finish it quickly.

Anyway, here it is...

Not sure what next year's will be but I ended up making this one so large that she might not even need one next year!  (Of course, I will probably end up doing one anyway because of the unofficial tradition of it all.)

Just for fun

This one might be from summertime and I found it on the video camera. It's very entertaining and I dare you to try not to laugh out loud at certain points of it.

Our resident songbird

It's official. I'm the mom who embarrasses her child because I try to sing along too - as evidenced by Miss A telling me outright "NO" when I tried to sing with her. *sigh* This day was just waiting to happen.