Christmas 2 Double 0 9

Well another Christmas has gone by and I believe that it was a success. For the second year in a row we have been able to spend it in NH with family. A little less snow than last year but enough to satisfy the kids needs to sled and frolic. The unfortunate part of the holiday was that Mark, Ed and I were hit by a flu of sorts. I honestly haven't been this sick in a long long time and it has been miserable. Luckily Lucy and Maya only just got it so they could enjoy their Christmas. The kids were happy this year. I think everyone got what they wanted but as the story goes we were just happy to be amongst family. One of the things that we learned to appreciate during our time abroad was having family. We were fortunate to have kind friends that really took us in and let us become a part of their families during the holidays. During this season I miss our friends, NZ, mince tarts, fish and chips the same old BUT I am also glad to be surrounded by family, to be a homeowner and to celebrate Christmas in the cold. One thing that I realized is that families can drive us crazy, unintentionally make cruel comments, make passive aggressive criticisms, perhaps we are even the instigators but they are our family. Family also can make us laugh, pick us up when we are down, forgive, and they care for one another. While my friends were kind to invite us over I couldn't help but feel a little homesick watching them tease, argue or rant about scarce food. I guess what I mean to say is sometimes those moments that we are with our family that drive us the most crazy are in their own way the most tender and intimate ones. They show us that we are surrounded by people that we are comfortable around enough to cause a stir. There have been a lot of changes in the Berg family this year-enough to reflect on the past year and think about how relative time really is. I am grateful to be where I am at this moment in time because circumstances can really change so quickly and it is important to look to the future but it is equally important to appreciate the moment. With that here is Sara signing off--

Ponies

Homemade Garland

Moonshoes


Mark-made Puzzle Box for Ed

Surprises

Giant Gumball Machines (Ed super duper wanted one)


and of course a Dancing Grandma

Snow Dayz

Poor sick Ed and his snotsills. We are jut glad he got out there in the snow for a bit this year. I think he is getting over his snow/sand phobias.

Building Snow Castles

This is when without uttering a word, Danielle and Ed just decided to randomly take off and head down the road.

Danielle was very attentive to "snow babies" as she called them right up to the point when she decided they needed to be hurled at me while I was trying to take a picture of her. A mother's rage I guess.

Aida coming out of one of her tunnels.

I know it is Christmas Eve and I should post something Christmassy but I guess I will save that for tomorrow BECAUSE I have these snow pictures to share from our big storm. The biggest snowstorm to hit New Jersey in 100 years. Well, you know how people like to make a good story so I don't know how much is exaggerated but it was quite a bit of snow. Lucky for us the snowplow plowed everything in front of our house so our kids could construct snow tunnels and caves. One strange thing about sending our kids out was that they would multiply. I think one time we had like 12 kids in front of our house and we were going through hot chocolate like nobody's business. After a few days we were fortunate to have the Madsens once again grace us with their presence. Janae wowed me once again with her mad sewing skills by making me some more of her choice kitchen towels as well a big queen sized quilt for Aida's new room. Who does that? I have finished one quilt in my lifetime and it took me YEARS. Janae whips things out like I sweep floors. So thank you thank you thank you Janae. They were also nice enough to take Tess the wonderdog with them for the holidays. Lucy was very very sad but she knows it is for the best so Tess wouldn't freeze in NH.

Gingerbread Fun

Don't worry Mark just ripped out that littlish tooth the other night and it now looks sooo much better. :)

* Hot Tip * To get the apron to look outlined in white you frost the entire person and then lick off all the icing. The icing should remain in the channels. Yet another reason why I don't like to eat things from other people's houses. What if they are doing the same?

Every year I look forward to making gingerbread houses. I was really upset when I found out Nick Jr. decided to delete my all time most favorite gingerbread house recipe. I guess it is my fault for covering the recipe with molasses every year thinking I would just print out another the following year. Lesson to all- take care of your recipes!!! I think I saw Mark give a little smirk when I realized this beause he has been after me for YEARS to stop mucking up all of my recipes and cookbooks. Unphased I decided to forge ahead and make gingerbread houses with untrialed recipes. As an extra challenge I had yet another one of my A+ brainstorms when I decided to teach my kids about 3 dimensional construction and have them measure and draw out their own gingerbread houses. My eyes were gleaming with the prospect of having a gingerbread village-all different buildings lined up together. Aida made a lovely tall skinny one with plenty of holes to stuff the candy inside of, Lucy made a massive one that I rolled so thin that it crushed under the weight of a gumdrop, Ed and Maya I printed out a template because I actually can't be bothered to figure out measurements. My fav was how Ed just randomly took candy and stuck it the roof. I also enjoyed the decorated snowmen the girls did. If my blurry photos aren't enough check out this vid Mark got. If you will notice no one ever answers Mark's questions the first time around. Not even myself. Somehow we all managed to not hear what he was saying. Sorry Mark!

Tree Envy

Mark and I take turns calling each other “Ebenezer” because we have not been very good Christmassers this year. The kitchen wore us out and now we leave for NH so we figured what is the point?

Our “huge” fake 6 footer that we got last year is even more fake looking than it is dwarfed in our living room. Did it shrink in the attic? (After all, I have noticed that my clothes seem to shrink in my closet). Too lazy to get any of our meager, mostly broken ornaments out of the attic I resorted to my NZ style Christmas tree-the one where we craft a bunch of stuff and stick it on the tree.

The inspiration this year was to make some good old fashioned, customized with every name in a different font garland. I gave up halfway through and told Mark to just drape it on the tree like a Miss America Sash.

The wadded up piece of fabric at the base of the tree does nothing to camouflage its spindly fake “trunk” that is indeed smaller than one of the branches.

Lucy and I had some tear-drop ornaments in the works until Ed came along and wadded them up and threw them around the room and to be honest no, it did not look like snow.

Today I went up into the attic of the woman I care for to get her fiber optic tree “from several years ago now”. I set that up with its fancy fiber optics, silver vase-like base, and glittering plastic stars and I had envy. Could it really be that my tree is so bad this year that I had tree envy for this fiber optic wonder?

Surprise! Your Gift is Mine!

Sometimes I really want to buy things for my kids that would really only benefit me. That way I get what would make things better for me, they won’t get anything that would make things worse for me and I can work it into the Christmas budget.

I think a Keepsake Keeper would be great for storing all those papers until I get to it at the end of the year. The idea of filing my kids’ things into little boxes with their heads on it is very appealing to me. How disappointed could they possibly be when they see the joy on my face?

Kitchen Reno

Personally, I am glad we got rid of the stein because well, I love my new kitchen much much more. I really can’t think of anything I want for Christmas because this is it!

Because we had a small amount to work with AND because this is more of a facelift than a remodel to tide us over until we do a BIG remodel (I am actually fine with it now) we had to consider a few things.

We couldn’t get a piece of laminate countertop long enough to go across the back so we went with an apron sink which eliminated an extra seam and well it is an apron sink.
We kept the original cabinetry but painted them in a light yellow so the kitchen wouldn’t look too sterile and put new hardware on. We also repainted the insides of the cabinets which has made it way easier to see the contents.
We put wood on the island because that is what we could get in a width to fit the island. We also added a few inches making it a functioning island that people can eat at, do homework, and I can fit my cookie sheets on it in any direction. Not sure about the blue, but well it is just paint.
The dishwasher is OLD but it works great. It was rusted on the outside so we painted it green. It came out real nice and glossy but the kitchen looked too Lego-like so we did a sparkly dark grey to match the bench tops. We were limited to what you can buy in a gloss spray can so no matching yellow.
Tore out the cabinets to the left of the window giving me WAY more shelf space. Our cabinets are original to the house and are not frameless so before I couldn’t put my dishes in because there was well a huge frame in the way. Now I can unload the dishwasher standing in one place-FABULOUS!
Since we eliminated the cabinets we had to change out the fluorescent light so carefully hidden :) to a little bit of bling.
We went with the classic white subway tile because well it is classic and we don’t know how long we are going to have to keep the kitchen this way so we needed something cheap and classy. We did grout with a more coarse grout to add some texture and to prevent it looking like a faux linoleum tile facade.

Mark removed all the outlets on the back wall and put them up under the cabinets so we don’t have to look at them and yet we can plug away.
Now we can wait for our appliances to slowly die and replace them with stainless steel. Although I don’t think they will and I don’t know how much I want them to because they work great.
Still need window treatments and a large mirror under the baking racks to reflect the light from the window and add more natural light to my dark space.

Perfect

I love this idea for Christmas sugar cookies.  It combines all my favs-chocolate cookie, cupcakes, and uh hello cuteness.  I am about 99.99999% certain that my piping would not be as purdy.  Thanks for the inspiration Bakerella!

 

The Answer to Chris’ Query

Kitchen Teasers

I hope this doesn’t disappoint but I just hate to show it until it is all done.  I will give you a few glimpses of one of the final stages-tiling the backsplash.  After the backsplash is done we just have to put matching outlets and covers in, paint the back wall, and figure out the window treatments.  Window treatments probably won’t happen for awhile so I will show you up to that point.  Oh and we still have to paint the dishwasher….