I had all good intentions this year to get a Christmas card out again, and to make it cute and creative...but I'm just plain running out of time.  We have too much to do with work, travel, school, the house craziness, and everything else this year.  So, I will try - but just in case I don't get one done on time to send out, here are a few of the wintery pictures that we had taken recently.  Thanks to Lindsey (a coworker of mine) and Brandon at Lovella Photography, for freezing their bums off with us in our town square to get a couple good shots.  I can't even decide which pictures to use, which is half the battle.  So, if you can all let me know me which one you think would be good on a card - that part will be taken care of at least.

Yep.  It was Cold.

Getting closer to being enclosed....

Click here to check out the most recent progress of the house project. It is getting close to being enclosed so that work on the inside can begin...

Kindergarten Pow Wow

Today was the day the kindergarteners have been preparing for all month long. They had a pow wow, and sang songs about all the things they had learned about Indians long-long ago.

Holiday Lighted Parade & Christmas Market

As usual, this weekend, there is another festival going on in our town.  Tonight was the lighted parade and 1st annual Christmas Market - on all the main streets.  (Yes Christmas Market, is what the town officially called it...which is nice.) 

The streets were full of food, rides, lights, Santas, and a lot of Christmasy things.



More parade candy is all we needed.  We still have candy from the Victorian Festival, Halloween, and maybe even some from the summer parades.  Too bad the food banks are not in need of candy this holiday season.

Shutterfly to the rescue

I'm not as on top of things this year. By now, I would normally have had all our Christmas Cards done, ordered, and addressed - so that I could mail them the weekend after Thanksgiving.  That is what my usual compulsive-self would have done by now.  So it is driving me a little nuts that I haven't even started.

However, I'm not too worried, because I'm planning on using Shutterfly this year.  I have used Shutterfly every year for our Christmas Photo Cards, since Dawson was born.  I used another company last year and they had cute cards - but were very expensive!  So, I'm going back to what I know and love, which is Shutterfly!  It is pretty easy to use and they have quick shipping. So now I just need to find some good photos to use from the past year, and get going on my poem. (I'm not promising one though, because I barely even have time to wash my hair these days, let alone get creative and write a poem!)

The best thing, is that since I'm mentioning Shutterfly in this blog post they are going to give us some free Photo Christmas Cards.  So, I think that is pretty fabulous!  They usually have really good specials anyway, like discounts or free shipping.  So if you don't have a blog to get this deal with, then check out some of the other promotions that they have going on on stationary or cards.  If you do have a blog - CLICK HERE to sign up for the cards.

Since I haven't started anything yet, I don't have any of my ideas for this year to share.  Instead, here are the Christmas Photo Cards from the past few years, that I did using stationary from Shutterfly:

Violet



Remember Violet, from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?  Jamie thought she was going to turn into a blueberry like her.

 

Halloween 2010

(Chris Rucker)

Robert is not happy about the Chris Rucker costume.



Just as crazy as usual on the streets.



Preview to Halloween (School Parties)

 

 

Dawson's Spider Web is one on the lower right.

Pumpkins

Nothing fancy this year for pumpkin carving.  We went minimal, since we are in an apartment with no tools.  No drills or special effects this year.  Just old-fashioned jack-o-lanterns. (With a little glitter.)



This is Jamie's pumpkin from school.  You can imagine what her clothes looked like when she came home that day.

Boilermaking Wolverine Knight. Also, how to spell Juicy - kindergarten style.

David graduated recently from U of M.  You probably didn't know that.  He didn't tell anyone about it, and he will probably think that a Boilermaking Wolverine Knight is stupid, but what do you call someone who has three degrees from three different schools?  (Also, I blurred his name on the diploma so the blog stalkers don't hunt us down.) 
Congrats to David on his second Masters!



Also......
Our other delicate genius, would like you to know how 'juicy' really should be spelled.

*See line 3: "Apples taste...."





A peek into dance class