Merry Christmas from the Cardon's

With being near the end of a pregnancy I was a little slow to get out Christmas cards, so here is our Christmas letter.

Click on me to make me larger or to print...

Some Christmas pictures from this year.

Livvy and Lily at the temple lights

Livvy, dad and Lily

Liv and Lily at one of Liv's dance performances.

Hair Cut

So, Thanksgiving was a fun day filled with cooking and crafting by the girls and XBoxing by the boys and playing with pup-pup for the little girls.  We enjoyed a lovely turkey dinner and Liv and I made some Thankful wreaths.  (For some reason I didn't take any other pictures...)

Livvy's wreath

My wreath

 So, it was a lovely day.  We put the girls to bed that night and I could hear that they were awake, but they were just quietly talking so I didn't think much of it.  Well, about 9pm we hear Liv go into the bathroom and Lily come's out and climbs on Marcus lap.  He is a guy, so he looks at her and say's "what's wrong with your hair?"  After a minute of him staring at her trying to figure out what is wrong, I lean over and look at her.  Immediately it is clear to me that what is wrong is that a lot of it is missing.  I walk over to the bathroom and pick the lock.  I asked Liv what had happened, to which she replied she didn't know.  Seriously!?  She finally admitted to cutting Lily's hair, and I notice a little of her own.  I asked her where the cut hair was so I could throw it away and again she didn't know.  Can we say "I know I'm in trouble so I'm going to plead the 5th..."  When I told her that it would attract bugs who would want it to make nests she suddenly remembered where it was.  I couldn't look at it too closely that night.  It was one of those things as a parent where partly it is hilarious but then also so not!  So the next morning I look at Lily a little more closely and Liv had given her bangs from behind one ear, across her forehead, to behind the other ear.  It made an absolutely fabulous mullet!  But it didn't stop there.  I think she wanted to layer it because where we part Lily's hair was cut all the way back to the crown of her head like .5 - 1 inch long!  She also layered the back so it had a sort of jellyfish look.  It was very skillfully done, if this was 1982.  Looking at Livvy that moring I notice that she had cut her own bangs and done a little layering on her own hair as well, but not nearly as much.  So, it is the morning of Black Friday and I think to myself, how on earth an I going to find someone to fix this!?  The ladies in the neighborhood who do hair are probably with family or out shopping and I'm a little nervous to take her to a random salon and have them try to fix it, if I can even find one open.  Anyway, I texted a friend who I usually have do their hair and luckily she wasn't busy.  I took the girls over and she tried to cut Lily's hair into like a bob, but it still looked too goofy.  She shortened it a little more and it was still goofy.  She did that like 4 or 5 times, and finally we just had to go with a pixie cut.  I'd rather have it be short and cute, then keep it long but weird looking.  She did a great job fixing Lily's hair.  I never would have cut it that short out of my own choosing, but it did turn out really cute.  Marcus and I keep joking that we can see he face now!!  (The pictures really don't do the fabulous 80's-ness of it justice, they really really don't...)

This is Lily earlier this month with her hair long.

Bangs to behind the ears.

If you look at the crown of her head you
can see how short it is.

Lily's new bangs.

New hair.  It is messy morning hair, but you get the idea.

Thanksgiving/Craft Day

Jonica came to our house for Thanksgiving this year.  Moni brought her silhouette so she could help me finish a couple projects I'd been working on.

When Ann was here a couple of weeks ago we started making these cute Christmas countdown calendars.  I accidentally bought letter and number stickers, which didn't have all the numbers needed, so Moni cut them out for me on sparkley scrapbook paper.  Now we just need some candy to hid in there!

I decided a while ago that I wanted to redo Liv's chore chart.  I just wasn't in love with how the other one turned out.  I got a sheet of metal from Home Depot and framed it.  A miter saw would have really helped with that step, but since I couldn't get accurate enough cuts we just made the frame fun, totally works for this project I think.  Moni again helped me with cutting out all the circles of paper, the vinyl words, and the cut paper flowers in the corner.  I think it is a winner, at least for now, since Liv has been very excited to move her magnets!

I did this earlier this month, but still thought I'd share.  I had wanted a Family Home Evening chart for a while.  Moni cut out "CARDON" for me as well as the St. George temple on scrapbook paper and then all my vinyl words.  Each of our names are on a little piece of wood covered in paper that hangs from a hook so they are easy to change.  It's pretty simple, but I like how it turned out.

Happy Halloween!

Surprisingly, or not, our Halloween's have been themed by Liv the last couple of years. This year she wanted to be a princess, and so did Lily and I she informed me. :)  Daddy couldn't be a princess so he got to be the king.  It's nice that he is such a good sport.  I like to make our Halloween costumes and I knocked Daddy's out real quickly a couple months ago, and then nothing.  October began and I still hadn't started on the girls or my own.  My back was hurting with being pregnant and the idea of sitting down for hours to trace, cut fabric and sew everything together was just not sounding magical, so I kept putting it off.  Luckily Kirk and Ann came for a visit in the middle of October and Ann cut out all three dresses for me!  What a life saver!  After that I sewed each dress up in a few hours.  I was very happy I had thought ahead when buying the fabrics and gotten A-lined dresses.  It fit fabulously over the baby belly.

On Halloween night we had a fun neighborhood pot luck dinner.  Everyone came and ate and the kids did a parade and some prizes were given out for the costumes.  It was lots of fun.

After the pot luck everyone went trick or treating.  My girls would have stayed out all night!

Happy Halloween!

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Crafty Wednesday

So the other day I decided that I was tired of finding my girls bows all over the house. "What to do, what to do," I asked myself. I had seen a cute bow holder at a friends house and decided I was going to make one. I found an old frame in my closet, got some paint for the frame, some fabric and ribbon and got to work...

       Livvy and I starting to paint.  She was working
on a project while I worked on mine.

After wrapping the cardboard that came with the frame
in batting and fabric, I started to cut ribbon.

I glued one side of the ribbon to the back,  wrapped
it around the front and then glued it to the other
side on the back

Liv got a shot of me in action!                                        

                                     

  All done - well except for the frame                             

Frame dry, ribbon done - we have a bow holder!!      

When we were getting the things I needed for my project, we picked up a little wood frame for Liv to paint.

Working hard on her stencil butterfly.  It was lots
of fun, because we got to mix paint colors to
make ones we didn't have!

All done!  Liv did her frame all by herself, with a little
help from me holding the stencil.

We didn't make this today, but I thought I was also fun.  I made this for my sister for her birthday.  It has a small diaper changing mat that fits inside one side of the holder.  The other side of the holder holds a small wipes case and a couple of diapers.  The ribbon on front is also not glued down all the way across so you can clip things to it - bows, paci's, etc

                                                                                     

                                                                                         

Rainbows

So lately Livvy has had a fascination with drawing rainbows.  Today she came into the office from the kitchen and handed me a picture.  She had drawn and written the words on the picture all by herself and she couldn't have been prouder!

She then informed me that since she had drawn me such a wonderful rainbow that I needed to draw one for her.  She has been carrying it around since...

Chore/Responsibility Chart

So I decided I wanted to make a chore chart for Liv. I wanted one a little more interesting than just a Calendar sort of set up. I wanted her to be excited about it so she would actually do the stuff on it :) Anyway, I couldn't really find what I wanted, so I just made one up.

We keep all the flowers on the bottom till she
completes something.

I didn't want it to just be plain white, so we added
some ribbon to the bottom.

After she has completed something, she gets
to move the flower up to the top part!

We'll see how this goes and if it helps get things done.  I need to figure out some sort of reward system.  I was thinking of at the end of each day writing down how many flowers she has at the top and then giving each one a value.  Like 1 flower = 5 cents.  So at the end of the week if she has had 50 flowers then she gets $2.50. She is only 4 though and I know she'll just spend that money on candy, gum and cheap crappy toys.  Maybe she has to save half for a trip or something short term, but not right now. I don't know yet.  If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them.

Also if anyone is curious, these are the items in the flowers.  Get dressed, go to bed on time (not playing for 2 hours after we get in bed), practice letters or counting (something school related), read a book, make bed, play outside (or active play), take a bath, clean up toys, brush teeth in the morning, clear dishes off table, brush teeth at night, and put dirty clothes in hamper at end of day.

Projects

It's been so long since I've blogged that the thought of "catching up" is a little too scary. So I decided to post one one of some of the crafty things/projects I've done the past few months.

For Halloween (yes, Halloween, I'm way behind!) we were a Tinkerbell theme. Liv was Tinkerbell, Lily was Tiger Lily (the little Indian princess kidnapped by Capt. Hook) Daddy was Peter Pan and I was Tiger Lily's mom. Why wasn't I Wendy you ask? Well, I thought about it and at first walking around the neighborhood in a blue nightgown seemed a little weird, but at the end it would have just been easier. For next time then..

In February I got a crafty bug and made skirts for the girls...

And a little onesie dress for my brand new baby niece...

A scripture bag for Liv...

and a swing set...

This past week I decided to make a bed. It's sort of a long story, I do weird things like that sometimes. It's a little more rustic looking than I generally would go for, but I think it turned out pretty good! (just ignore the messy nightstands...)