Noon Year's Eve

I have always LOVED this concept of celebrating New Year's Eve at noon with kids. This year we will be celebrating at Kidspace in Pasadena. They have a balloon drop at noon. How perfect. Prior to the balloon drop you can decorate hats and balloons. But if you have decided to stay in or celebrate closer to the real New Year's Eve, I wanted to pass along these adorable photo printable props I found on www.iheartnaptime.com.

http://www.iheartnaptime.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/NewYearsPhotoProps.pdf

Traditions

Traditions at the holidays are what make it so special. Last year I started a few new traditions, in addition to the traditions that I grew up with and my son loves them all.
1. Elf on the Shelf (see post here: http://www.craftynotartsy.blogspot.com/2013/12/elf-on-shelf.html)
2. 25 days of gifts - Our Elf brings the gifts when he arrives and my son gets to open a gift a day beginning on 12.1. This year's theme was books and he loved opening a new book everyday. The first 10 days were chapter books, which were great. Now we are getting into the picture books and we read it right away.
3. Tree decorating - this was the first year my son wanted to help decorate the tree. Thank goodness I have a few non breakable ornaments. I think next year we may get him his own small tree to decorate.

4. Lights - my son LOVES to come home to our house when it is dark and our lights are on. We also like to "go through the neighborhood" as he says on the way home to view lights. Next year we will schedule time to do a Friday night lights tour. We just ran out of time this year.
5. Annual Santa photo - this year (and last) we did it with my sister's family Thanksgiving weekend. All of the kids were great this year. Even telling Santa exactly what they want.

6. Tree Lighting - each year we try to hit at least one tree lighting. This year we only got to see the Danville tree when we were visiting my sister for Thanksgiving. It was a fun evening filled with freedom for the boys (streets are closed off), hot chocolate and fun lights.

 7. Christmas in Montana - this is a fun one because we all come together under one roof. Christmas is so much better through the eyes of a child that still believes in Santa. Having three boys together (cousins) is crazy...fun! Praying for snow so that we can make snow angels on the front lawn. But if no snow, we will hit the slopes at least once. My son has already stated "this year I want to ski by myself. I don't want you to hold me up." We will see what happens.

Holiday Cards

Do you send Holiday Cards? I absolutely LOVE holiday cards. I also love TINYPRINTS.com. I discovered them a few years ago and they are my go to for holiday cards. If you hold out around the holiday season you can typically get them for 25% off.
I also love the new trend in photo cards. This is why I love to send cards. I also love receiving cards from old friends and seeing how everyone has grown.
Our card from tiny prints is below! Happy Holidays.

Holiday Crafts

This past weekend I babysat one of my son's friends and was worried about what we would do for 6 hours. And then I got excited. Six hours to do all of the fun holiday crafts with a little girl. We enjoyed making gingerbread houses (my son ate most of his candy), rolled and decorated our own salt dough ornaments and  made our own wrapping paper. This was of course done between play time, watching How The Grinch Stole Christmas and reading books. What a fun filled and mildly exhausting afternoon.

Elf on the Shelf

Oh how I love this tradition. A small Elf shows up right after Thanksgiving to keep an eye on the kids. Each night the Elf flies back to the North Pole (because he is magic of course) and reports on whether or not said child has been good or bad. Our elf, Jessie, arrived last year right after my son turned three. And while the concept was cute it was not in full effect. Now that my son is four, the Elf really is magic. All I have to say is "If you don't listen to mommy, Jessie will tell Santa you were not good today" and almost immediately his behavior changes. I LOVE THIS ELF.
Below are a few images of the antics of our Elf Jessie. Thank you to all of the creative people on Pinterest for inspiring me.

Hot Spots: Ojai

So we finally made it to Ojai. I have been wanting to go for years and was so excited when I finally got the chance. We stayed at the Ojai Valley Inn and it was magical. 24 hours felt like a 3-day weekend. The resort is so quiet and calm and the staff is 100% accommodating. No one complained or gave us dirty looks when my son was running from the practice putting green to our table to tell me how he saw three bunnies.
After swimming in the afternoon, napping in our room that overlooked a golf course and had a fireplace in it and running freely from our room to dinner we enjoyed making s'mores as a family in the court yard.
The next day we collected sticks, watched people play tennis, visited the kids camp and experienced Ojai Days in downtown Ojai. Amazing weekend!