Christmas 2014

This year, Christmas snuck up on me. It barely felt like the holidays because we had been traveling and next thing I know, it was already December and I didn't have my Christmas cards made yet! 

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas went by so quickly because there were so many holiday events going on and not enough time. We ended up going to a lot of things and it was fun to see how Koala was now old enough to participate and enjoy the events.

There was of course our annual trip to see the zoo lights. I love that we have such a great zoo right here- it was voted the best zoo in the US in USA Today. And the lights are always pretty to go see in the winter. 

The best thing about the zoo membership is that you get unlimited entrance to the zoo lights Mon- Thurs and one admittance on the weekend. This is great because we can go without having to feel like we have to spend all evening there to make it worth it. This year, we ended up going twice and the weather was nice both times! 

Koala enjoyed the pretty lights and was such a ham- she would stop and pose in front of statues or lights and wait for me to take a picture. 

The Botanical Garden also had their annual weekend holiday event. They mostly have local artists/vendors selling their work but Santa comes to visit and they offer free carriage/hay rides. Koala loved the horses and had a blast riding on the hay ride! Luckily there weren't many people there so she was able to ride it a couple times. 

One of the local churches had A Night in Bethlehem where they have live scenes from the Bible, real animals and a Bethlehem 'marketplace' with crafts for the kids. 

Koala seemed to like petting the animals- camels, donkeys, goats and sheep. I was also surprised at how she was excited to participate in making the crafts as well. One tent was where they made a wreath to wear. I thought it would be too hard so I didn't go in but Koala really wanted to do it and went in on her own. She did such a good job making the wreath. The part she did turned out a lot prettier than the part I did. 

Santa came to visit a local suburb and there were more free carriage rides so we went to check it out. Koala was more impressed with the horses and a balloon than Santa lol

Unfortunately, free means long lines. The line for the carriage ride was too long and it was too cold. But since I promised Koala a horse ride (always keep your promises to kids. They'll remember when you don't), we drove to a mall and rode in the carriage ride there. She had a blast- hot chocolate while we waited and pretty lights on the carriage ride. 

Of course, Christmas isn't about Santa and horse rides. Koala participated in the children's play at church. 

Even though she didn't practice, she enjoyed being on stage and she seemed to follow the cues like when the shepherds talked about the sheep wandering off, she wandered off lol. She also was very interested in Baby Jesus and was gentle and even gave him a kiss. 

I was in charge of desserts for our Christmas lunch at church so I did a little baking- Reese's pieces cupcakes (chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter filling), thin mint truffles and a red and green velvet cake with buttercream frosting and crushed candy canes on top. 

Although the desserts did not come out as pretty as I wanted, they were more tasty than I expected- people kept saying how good they were. I guess ugly good tasting desserts are better than pretty bad tasting desserts lol. One day I'll perfect both and have pretty, yummy desserts. 

This year, I wrapped family presents in reusable Christmas bags again (which I apparently tied too tightly which made it hard to open lol. Oops). I like how easy they are to 'wrap' presents and they look good. Plus I love that they are reusable and better for the environment than wrapping paper. 

For Christmas, Koala decorated her first gingerbread house which was part of our second annual gingerbread house competition. Once again I didn't think she'd enjoy it as much as she did. She was really into decorating and using the sprinkles. Every now and then she snuck a bite of the toppings lol. 

Koala's gingerbread house. She had a little help from mommy and daddy. 

The finished houses. 

I love the holidays and all the fun activities so I'm a little sad that the holidays are over. Only 356 more days until Christmas 2015! 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! 

I LOVE thanksgiving! And this year I was especially excited for the food after being in Korea for so long. 

My Turkey Veggie platter 

I made a cornucopia based on this link from Pinterest. 

My cornucopia turned out to be smaller than I thought so I had leftover pizza dough and I made cheesy bread too. 

This is the cornucopia prebake.

Cornucopia & rolls: my brothers said I should have had more color contrast but I didn't feel like preparing something to put in the cornucopia 

I was also inspired to make more mini pies. This time I made pumpkin pie (for the first time! Thanks Maria for looking up the recipe for me when I shopped for ingredients!)

My mini pumpkin pies prebake, midbake and post.

My brothers deep fried a turkey for the second year in a row- tasted even better than last year 

Pre and post pics

The finished products (fried turkey and baked turkey- both were delish!) Koala approved of the turkey. She didn't really eat much but she ate a lot of turkey!

And the sides! Ah my favorite! I was sooo stuffed & satisfied after eating. (Garlicky Butternut squash, green beans & green bean casserole, mac n cheese, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, stuffing, chap chae)

Carbs, carbs, carbs! Yesterday at my doctor's appointment, I was given my slip for my glucose test for my pregnancy. Thankfully, they said I could do it next week which meant I could enjoy all the carbs I wanted for thanksgiving! 

Decorations were simple this year: gold chargers and pumpkins!

Aside from being thankful for the food, I have many things to be thankful for- so many things but I'll list just 5.

1) I'm thankful for my Hubby. This year he went on a business trip- I think the first trip since we had Koala. I realized how much I need him and how much he helps out around the house. I'm thankful for him because we make a good team together. He's a good husband and dad. 

2.) I'm thankful for Koala- she is such a gift from God. She brings so much joy to our lives and makes me laugh even when she's dramatically crying. 

3) I'm thankful for Baby Boy and that he is healthy and the pregnancy is going well. I can't wait to meet him and see how he grows.

4) I'm thankful for my parents. They are so sacrificial and loving and I'm thankful that I live close to them so that we can spend time together. It was great being able to travel with them recently. I love that they adore Koala and love to spend time with her. I'm so thankful for my mom who watches Koala all the time and offers to help me out when she knows I'm tired, even though she's probably tired herself. She says that she is amazed at the mom I am and I say that I'm only the mom I am because I'm trying to be half the mom that she is. 

5.) I'm thankful for my siblings and the friendship that we have. I hope that Koala and Baby Boy can share that type of friendship when they grow up. 

Oops that's 5- I'll just list 2 more:

6.) I'm thankful for my friends who go the extra mile! Too many examples to list and I don't wanna forget anyone- I should thank them personally! 

7.) I'm thankful for my new job. Hubby told me that I don't complain about work anymore and I told him it's cause there's nothing to complain about. I'm thankful that God opened up this job at just the right time. 

I'm thankful for this time of year that I can remember all the blessings God gives me! I know I should be thankful everyday! 

Give Thanks!

Not so crafty post

Last month, we took a family trip to Korea. 

I learned a couple things while on the trip. 

1) It's hard to travel with a toddler

Hubby and I had planned this trip before Koala became an opinionated toddler and before I was pregnant. We wanted Koala to meet her grandparents and to meet our grandmas (her great-grandmas) since they were both getting old. In retrospect, if I knew what I know now, I probably would have waited to take the trip but I'm glad we went. 

I'm sure some people would argue that traveling with kids in general is a challenge but I think traveling with a toddler is the hardest. They understand everything but are just getting to the age where they're developing their own ideas but can't quite verbalize what they want yet. There were many times when Koala was frustrated because she wanted something but couldn't tell us which made it hard when you're both already tired from traveling. She also is at the age where she understands everything we say but isn't at the age where she listens to everything we say. She is too excited to explore and see what's going on to listen when we say, 'stay right here.' Koala is also still in diapers and still takes naps which makes traveling hard. We had to bring enough diapers and wipes for the trip because my friend told us diapers are more than double in Korea. And it was hard keeping Koala on a schedule because we were traveling so she was often cranky from being tired because we missed her nap time or were home later than her normal bedtime (in my defense, it's hard to keep a 6pm bedtime in general). 

2) Travel in packs 

I'm so thankful that I had multiple hands helping me on this trip. I can't imagine trying to chase after Koala and look after my bags by myself. It was so helpful to have not just Hubby but my parents there to watch after Koala while we traveled. 

3) Korea is a lot more child friendly than I expected 

I'm not sure if Korea made changes to be more kid friendly since I was last there or if I just didn't notice it because I didn't have a kid back then (I'm pretty sure they changed because sooooo much changed since I was last there!). There were family bathrooms and toddler size toilets everywhere we went, nursing rooms in restaurants and other places (I heard they have them in subways too), and fun places to take toddlers. 

Nursing room in a restaurant 

Playground at a 찜질방

Pororo Library in Busan 

Meeting Pororo at Pororo Park in Seoul

Children's Grand Park: free zoo, park, botanical garden as well as a Children's museum (there's a fee for the museum). 

Lotte World

With all that said, it was overall a great trip. Koala did great on the plane and on the trip in general. 

Plenty of activities on the plane ride to keep her entertained- coloring, stickers, & the quiet book I made to minimize how much TV she watched. 

It was great to see Koala meeting our relatives and how much they loved/doted on her and how quickly she warmed up to them! She called everyone either Haha (Halmonee/grandma), Papa (harabujee/grandpa), Emo (aunt), or uncle without being told to do so. And I'm so glad my grandma was able to meet Koala since she had prayed so much for Koala. 

Koala had a good time with both sets of grandparents.  She met Hubby's parents for the first time.  It was great to see how their faces lit up because of her. And she also spent a lot of time with my parents. Usually my dad is pretty busy when he goes to Korea because he has a lot of people to meet. But they spent a lot of time taking her on walks and going to the  Children's park, Secret garden and to see the ocean for the first time. 

It was definitely a memorable trip and even though Koala probably won't remember any of it, one day we'll look at all the pictures and I'll tell her all about her first plan ride and trip to Korea. 

Quiet book- Links and Elmo

Back when I was in my 1st trimester, I had pregnancy insomnia. I spent most of my restless nights on Pinterest where I found a lot of activities for Koala like sensory bins, etc. One night, I searched for ideas to keep Koala busy on a plane ride for a trip we were taking and I came across quiet books aka busy books. Quiet books are basically activity pages usually made of felt. Most help the kids practice skills like zipping or buttoning. I decided to attempt to make one for Koala. 

So I borrowed my mom's sewing machine, raided my sister's house for supplies and went to the store to buy the rest of the supplies I needed. I've since then made a ton of trips to Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and Joann's. Those 40-50% off coupons are awesome. The great thing about Joann's is they let you use as many as you want so you can use a mailer coupon, a mobile coupon and if you download the app Shopular, they have different coupons on there as well. Joann's also takes competitor coupons so you can use a Michael's coupon for similar items (ie you can't use it for fabric since Michael's doesn't sell fabric). I found that Joann's prices were a little more than Michael's but since they let you use multiple coupons, it was worth it because you didn't have to make multiple trips to try to save money. 

When researching the quiet book, I came across this website that suggested using non fusible pellon for the page background. It took me a while to find the right pellon since I know nothing about fabric and could only seem to find fusible pellon. Pellon is basically stiff felt that they sell by the yard with fabric for interfacing. The drawback with Pellon is that it only comes in white.

Initially, I was going to make the book 8x8 because I saw other blogs that made 9x9 pages and I thought 8x8 would be easier for adding colored backgrounds since felt pages come 8x11. But after cutting a bunch of 8x8 pellon sheets, I realized that it was too small and I needed to make the details of the pages really small which just made it more difficult. So in the end I decided to go with an 11x11 page. I came up with this odd size because when I folded the pellon in half, it ended up being about 11 inches and just made it easier to cut. 

My very first activity was making these colored strips of fabric that Koala could snap together to make a link chain. 

Even though the sewing wasn't too hard since I just sewed in a straight line, sewing felt isn't as easy as I thought- especially since I'm a novice sewer (is that a word? I mean someone who sews, not a sewer that waste goes in and where TNMT live). 

I later figured out how to change the tension on the sewing machine and that helped on later pages but the stitching on the links is a bit loose since I didn't figure it out until afterwards. 

I added the snaps which caused me a lot of grief because I didn't buy the starter kit that came with the installing tool so I ended up ruining a bunch of the snaps. Eventually, I ran out to Joann's to get the kit which helped out a lot. 

I never actually finished this page because I realized that the snaps were too hard for Koala and would just frustrate her. Even I have to push hard to get it to snap all the way so I decided to set this activity aside and work on pages she can do now. 

Since I had already cut out some 8x8 sheets, I didn't want to waste them so I made some 8x8 pages that didn't require a lot of detail.

One of my least favorite pages is this Elmo puzzle: 

It came out crooked and not as cute as I wanted. 

I started off by finding a picture of Elmo on the Internet and zooming it on my computer screen to the size I wanted. Then I look a piece of paper and put it on the screen and traced the image with a highlighter (so that it wouldn't mark up the screen like a pen and wouldn't bleed like a marker). This is how I made a lot of my templates. 

I then cut out the pieces and traced them to felt and cut those out. 

Elmo was better proportioned when I first started but somehow when I cut up the puzzle pieces, I sewed the eyes and nose too low so I had to make the mouth smaller. 

For the background, I just sewed yellow to the pellon and made an outline with ribbon. 

I couldn't really get the ribbon to stay in place even with pins so it looks crooked and even got bunched up but I didn't care to redo it lol- which is why this is my least favorite page. 

Koala knows the pieces go in the boxes but doesn't quite get matching the pieces to make a picture of Elmo so it ends up looking like Picasso Elmo lol. I thought about putting a picture of where the pieces go on to help her match the pieces but I ran out of time. Maybe I'll do it when I get home- I find these pages are a work in progress. 

Gender reveal & Koala's birthday party

October was a busy month so I decided to have a joint birthday party for Koala and a gender reveal since I could only find one day that I could have it. 

Initially, I planned on having separate parties so I already had planned the themes- Pororo for Koala's party and a fall pumpkin theme for the gender reveal. I decided to keep the themes separate so that later Koala wouldn't feel like she was being pushed out by her new sibling.   It worked out because I only had to bake one dessert and split them between the tables!

The dessert table for Koala's party. For some reason, it looks pretty bare compared to the gender reveal side. 

For Koala's party, I used the fondant toppers that I had from our immediate family celebration and added some new cupcake toppers. 

I decided to have oreo truffles and use them as the bodies of the characters and just print out the heads for them. My friend Maria came and helped me with the desserts! 

Maria made the oreo truffles and matched the colors  to the bodies perfectly! 

More oreo truffles 

Maria is an awesome baker so she convinced me we needed (and had time) to make sugar cookies too. 

I later took all the leftover desserts to work & got the most compliments on how great the cookies tasted!

The cake was similar to the small party I had except I ordered this one instead of making it. It was chocolate chocolate chip with raspberry filling and buttercream frosting. 

Gender reveal

The gender reveal dessert table 

I wanted to do a fall theme and came across some ideas on Pinterest. I decided for the menu to do a Chili bar. We had regular chili and white chicken chili, baked potatoes with onions, chives, cheese, sour cream and fritos for the toppings. 

Sides included bread, corn bread, and a veggie tray. We had cold and hot apple cider for drinks.

I also made a fruit arrangement with the #2 for Koala's birthday but I guess it also works for baby #2. 

(My feeble attempt at chalkboard art 10 mins before the party started) 

Plates, bowls, cups and utensil station

For the desserts, I wanted to go with fall type desserts. 

We made mini caramel apples. I used a melon baller to make the mini apples.  Initially I made them with pretzels as the stick but I later realized that was a bad idea because the pretzels got soggy. In the end we decided to use lollipop sticks and straws.

Mini caramel apples attempt #1

The caramel apples were a lot harder to make than I thought. I thought I could just dip them in caramel but the caramel is very finicky. It would either not stick or would stick but then would run off the apples. They tasted ok but I don't think I'll ever make them again!

We also made mini apple pies and mini blueberry pies. 

Prebake

Finished product in the background

The mini pies were so yummy! I wish I was eating one right now! 

The cupcakes were actually pumpkin muffins that I put cheesecake in the middle. 

We topped the muffins with buttercream frosting and either a Pororo fondant topper or pumpkin topper. Koala approved of them- she ate one (without frosting) and was walking around the house saying 'mmmmmm' as she ate it.

 

Cupcakes with the pumpkin toppers

I had leftover cheesecake mix to make a cheesecake as well. 

The gender reveal table also had fresh homemade (not by me but by the apple farm) doughnuts. 

For the actual reveal, I took a pumpkin and carved it from the bottom. At the ultrasound, I had taken two brown paper bags- one with Pororo in it and one with Petty. 

I asked the ultrasound tech to write yes on the bag that has the correct gender and no on the other bag. Then when I carved the pumpkin, I put the bag in and dumped in the toy. 

The pumpkin was the centerpiece of the gender reveal dessert table. At the party, we carved off the top and Koala pulled out the toy to reveal....

... It's a boy! 

(Sorry, not the best pic) 

All in all, it was a fun birthday/gender reveal party.