"Little Man's" 1st birthday

While my little guy doesn't officially turn 1 until the end of the month, we went ahead and celebrated his first birthday along with his cousin, Ray. They are exactly 2 weeks apart and it made for a fun celebration and half the planning and preparation on my part..bonus! Plus his birthday is 3 days before Christmas which is way too much chaos at once.

 I get sooo excited about planning my kid's parties. It was one of the many things that I really looked forward to when I had kids. Knox's was in the making for about 6 months. Once I decided on the theme and found lots of ideas on pinterest, I knew for sure this was it.

We had a "Little Man" party, which seems to be very popular in the little boy party world. It was easy to throw together; just some ties, top hats and fake mustaches and we were ready to roll. I cannot believe that my boy has been in my life for a year already. This has been the fastest year of my life..no joke! I feel like I was literally at the hospital with him yesterday and now here he is looking like a toddler and rubbing his first birthday cake in his eyes:( Here are some snapshots from the fun filled day.

The invite (ordered from Etsy)

Chocolate mustache sucker favors

I made the little food tags the night before to add some flair.

 My little stud muffin!

The photo booth with props. Wishing that we would have stood in front of a more solid background, but oh well!

My cousin Shannon and I (the hostesses)

Knox just wanted to eat the mustache.

 

Had to include the baby

The birthday boys

 Having fun opening presents

                                    

The organic smash cakes made by Shannon. They liked the bananas and icing, but didn't eat much of the cake.

                                       

Chocolate in the eyes = not fun!!!

All of the little cousins in our family. Needless to say, family events are always fun and chaotic.

Dance party 

My sweet little curly q in Daddy's tie.

Happy 1st birthday Knox Armstrong!!!!

Sugar, flour and LOTS of sprinkles!

One of the Christmas traditions that we started when we got married, is making and decorating homemade Christmas cookies. It is one of my favorite traditions because it is fun and there is a yummy treat at the end. The task has gotten a little harder with babies. You can't just sit and decorate like you used to because they need your attention or are spilling the entire bottle of sprinkles on the floor (thank you Dixie Jean:) It is still a great time of family bonding though. This year it was neat to watch Dixie get really into it and want to decorate the entire time. Knox wanted nothing to do with the cookies...not even eat them (is that child really mine??) He did however enjoy playing with some of the cookie cutters.

 It's always fun to see how everyone decorates their cookies. For me, I sit down thinking that I am about to create a masterpiece and by the time I am done, it looks like a 4 year old decorated my cookie....maybe that's why I taught Kindergarten. My favorite part though is eating the cookies the next day dipped in milk..who would've thought? This is one tradition that is going to stick around for a while. Next year, Knox will join in the festivities of decorating while the new baby will be in their highchair screaming their head off and playing with cookie cutters:) Hmm....I think I may ned to invest in a bigger table.

Dixie and Daddy cutting out cookies

 Even the grandparents get in on the fun.

 3 generations

 Knox wants to make the candy cane one

My Dad and his mad Christmas tree decorating skills

My little brother Dayne had more fun sneaking eating the dough than anything. But he did manage to decorate a few.

She enjoyed this cookie more than you know.

Nanny and Grandpa Ricky 

  

Knox's 1st hair cut

I always said that if I had a little boy, I wanted to give him a mohawk or spike his hair. Turns out, my wish was granted..for the boy and the mohawk. Knox's hair actually grew into a natural mohawk, straight down the middle of his head and nothing on the sides. Of course I took full advantage of this cute manly hair style and spiked it when I could. People would ask me all the time if I cut it to look like that. While I may not be the world's best mom, I def was not taking clippers to my 3 month olds head to give him a mohawk.

 Over time though, his cowlick started growing a lot longer, so he had a mohawk with one long swirl on the back of his head. He also decided to pay tribute to the early 90's and start to grow a rat tail at the base of his neck (ugh..I shudder at the thought). It was not looking as cute and we had family pictures coming up, so I decided that I would trim it myself.

Dixie's 1st haircut was a big deal. We didn't do one till she was 2 (mainly because it took her 2 years to grow out those ringlets) and we went to a fun kid's salon to get it done. We videoed, talked it up, took pictures, etc.  For Knox however, I pulled out my everyday scissors and sat him in his high chair (poor second child). He moved so much that I thought surely there was no way this was going to be accomplished without one of us getting poked. After much wiggling and a cookie, I got the 2 pieces that I needed cut and his first curl placed securely in an envelope and in his baby book. My boy is 11 months now and the hair on the sides is starting to grow in. The top is getting too long to spike and the mohawk is disappearing:( I have to say, I'm a little sad about it.  Watch, when he's 17 he's going to want a mohawk again and suddenly mom is going to have issues with it:)

Oh look, here I am in pajamas....again and no make-up. This seems to be a reoccurring theme lately...my poor husband.

   

The countdown begins

About a month ago, we went on a camping trip with Evan's family. My awesome mother in law decided that it would be fun to make a craft. So, with the help of my also awesome sister in law, they found a tutorial for a really cute advent calendar. Here is mine. It turned out a little LOUDER than I intended, but   that's ok.

 My MIL bought all of the supplies and while the boys went out on the boat, us ladies stayed back to craft:) I did not get the chance to finish mine on the trip, but brought it home to complete. So, here we are a month later, December 1st and I FINALLY finished my advent calendar just in time. It is made from foam board, wrapping paper, scrapbook paper and sticker embellishments. It was fun to make and I enjoyed coming up with the list of things that we would do throughout the month. Here are a few:

• make and decorate homemade Christmas cookies (one of my favs)
• Watch a Christmas movie
• Drink hot chocolate
• Give to a needy family
• make a Christmas craft
• make Smores by the fire pit
• Go look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood
• Donate toys
• Review all of our Christmas cards and pray for those families
• Sing Christmas songs
• Tell the story of the candy cane and eat one
• make treats for our neighbors and deliver them
• Read the Christmas story (the real one..Jesus..not Santa)
• Throw a Christmas Neighborhood Block party

Those are just some on our list. Some are simple and fun while others are more meaningful, but they have to be  tasks that we can do as a family with 2 kids under 2. It was very cute to see how excited Dixie got today over "drink hot chocolate." (that was Dec 1st) She can hardly wait for her daddy to get home so that we can share such a fun time...just wait till she realizes that she gets marshmallows on top:) Hope your Christmas season is filled with lots of fun and special things to do too.

On another crafting note, I bought some plain cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby the other day and some Christmas yarn. I had the intention of doing something like this with the letters: JOY

Call me crazy, but I could not get the darn yarn to look right on the letters. I couldn't cover the top and the sides of the J in the same direction and quite frankly, it was driving me insane. So after 20 minutes of attempting this yarn thing (which is probably so simple), I unwrapped my letters and decided to cut up wrapping paper and mod podge them. It gives it an imperfect look as the polka dots don't match up. I put them on my buffet in the living room and it adds a nice punch of color.

Christmas puts me in a crafting mood...are any of you crafting out there?