Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone has had a Very Merry CHRISTmas and I hope each of you have a Happy New Year!!! I will be back after the first of the year will lots of Christmas pictures.



I did want to leave you with one picture. This is one of my favorite pictures and it was taken last New Years Eve.

From our Family to Yours...

Click to enlarge.

Gingerbread

BROWN GINGERBREAD MEN

(Makes 30 ornaments)

1c Sugar

6T Shortening

2t Baking soda

2t Cloves, ground

2t Ginger

2t Cinnamon

7c Flour

1c Water

1/2c Molasses

2T Cocoa powder

Mix shortening and 1 cup of sugar together in a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate for 4-hours.

Roll dough out on floured surface of wax paper to 1/4-inch thickness. Poke a hole in the top of each cookie with a straw, knife, chopstick, pencil, or similar object.

Put cutouts on cookie sheet and bake 20-minutes in 325-degree oven. After 20-minutes, turn oven off, leaving cookies inside oven to continue the drying process. After 1-hour, move cookies to a rack and allow to sit untouched for 1-3 days or until completely dry and hard.

When cookies are dry, spray with clear acrylic paint or brush with clear varnish and allow cookie coating to dry completely.

***My dough was extremly dry so I added a little more water and Molasses. I also decorated my ornaments with Tulip paint. For other recipies and decorating ideas check out this link.

If you are interested in the crayon bag from my last post please e-mail me at jessaleelangford@hotmail.com. I would love to make you one or share some tips with you so you can make your own.

Crafty Christmas

I teach 4th grade Kid's Praise on Wednesday evenings. I wanted to give each child something for Christmas, so I made these cute ornaments for each student and their families to enjoy. I think making gingerbread cookie ornaments with Miller will be a new tradition we start next year. Not only do they look great but they make the house smell SO good. I was even thinking about having a ALL gingerbread tree next year.



I also had a craving for homemade cookies. They really look better than they taste. Anyone have a great cookie recipe? I would love for you to share!!


Every year I make the little one's in Luke's family a gift. This year I made these crayon bags. I got the idea off a blog I stalk. I filled it with a couple of coloring books and a Veggie Tale DVD.


I took this picture by accident and I loved it. He is such a MESS!!

13 Months

Miller is 13 months old today. He is continuing to grow like a weed. We went for his one year check up on Tuesday. He weighed in at 22 1/2 lbs and 31 3/4 inches long. He is in the 50 percentile for weight, 75 percentile for height, and 100 percentile for head circumference. His one year check up also meant more shots. He cried for only a minute and quickly bounced back to his normal self.

Miller is ALL over the place these days. It is so funny to watch him walk around on his own. He seems so small and young.

He is sleeping better these days than he has in a long time. He has 12 teeth that have caused many cries in the middle of the night. He has slept through the night all week. YEAH!!! I really hope this is here to stay. Along with sleeping better through the night he is also taking better naps. He now takes two, good naps a day... down from 3-4 little cat naps.

He loves to talk. Some new things he can say resemble Good Girl, Gobble Gobble, Thank you, and we are working on HO HO HO.

He loves all the Christmas lights and Ornaments. I had to put a gate around the tree because he kept pulling the ornaments off the tree and playing with the gifts.

Speaking of our tree...
I have been meaning to post pictures our Christmas Decorations. I LOVE the Christmas season. We put our tree up on November 10th and have enjoyed it for over a month. We have 5 trees in our house.

Did I mention I LOVE the Christmas Season!!!

First Artwork

This is what I found this evening when I got home from Bunko. We have the BEST baby sitters. Thanks Meme, Granpa Don, Addie, and Marybeth. Notice his little hands are the antlers. TOO CUTE!!

Let it SNOW!!

It was hard to capture the true beauty of our little snow shower today so just take my word it was peaceful. Since this might be the only Snow we see all winter I wanted to document it.

Happy first day of December!!

Christmas Pictures...

Tis the Season!!!

For a Christmas redesign!!! More Christmas pictures coming soon!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

At a glance this picture may seem a little random, but it is what we are dealing with this Thanksgiving week. Miller has had a stomach bug all week. He acts fine, playing and smiling like normal but he cannot keep anything down. Without getting into all the yucky details.... the bug has caused him to have a horrible diaper rash. Along with changing his diaper often we have had "No Diaper Play Time" in front of the fire each evening. It has gotten a lot better and Miller enjoys running around commando.

This morning Luke woke up with the nasty little bug so we will be staying home catching up on rest and trying to enjoy our time together. Hopefully they will both start feeling better soon.

Even though both my guys are sick we have SO much to be thankful for. We hope your Thanksgiving is full of joy and good times with family.

Reminiscing...

This past weekend Luke, His brother Heath, and Cousin Rob went Squirrel hunting. Luke and Rob were so proud to take pictures of the squirrels they shot with their boys. This is a picture of Luke, Heath, and Rob then and now.

We also took this cute picture of Miller in Luke's boots. I also dug around a little and found a picture of Luke and I in our Dad's boots. It is fun to have these similar pictures.

A Early Thanksgiving Weekend

We spent the weekend in Brewton celebrating Thanksgiving with Luke's family. The highlight of our visit was Miller meeting his second cousin Brady for the first time. Brady was born last Valentine's day and is exactly three months younger then Miller. Most of the pictures we took this weekend was of the boys playing. We can't wait until the next time we can all get together again.

Click on collage to enlarge.

Getting into the Spirit...

of Thanksgiving. We are heading to South Alabama for the weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving with Luke's Family. We are very fortunate that everyone will be there. To help out I baked 2 loafs of Banana Bread, a Chocolate Pie, and a Pecan Pie. Yum Yum!!!



The chocolate pie is a family favorite. I am not sure where the recipe came form but it is always a hit... and it is EASY.

Mom's Playdate Brunch

On Saturday we went to a Mom's Play date Brunch. The Mom's had a great time visiting while the kiddo's had fun playing. Most of the babies have just begun to walk so it was fun to see them walking around.