Christmas Aftermath

Table runners in progress

I'm getting ready to tackle a huge pile of laundry. I'm pretty sure half of the clothes in our house are in it. How does that even happen? Later today I'll continue organizing the girls rooms. I bought a dozen clear colored bins to store their toys in. Needless to say I'll have to buy a few dozen more before the whole process is through. It's crazy how many wonderful toys these kids have. They added a pirate ship & a few princess & mermaid sets to their ever growing Playmobil village. Not to mention their new obsession with Little Woodsies. My mom bought them every single family for Christmas & I bought the last of the furniture sets so now they have a whole little village. Little Woodsies look a lot like the Calico Critters from when I was a little girl but they are a fraction of the price. My girls love them & play with them for hours. Santa brought Aris some more sets of furniture for her Fisher-Price dollhouse. She almost has everything for it. I'm kind of obsessed with sets. I hate having random toys. I have found that when you have sets of toys for the kids to play with they do just that, play with them more. I know I'm a little weird but it works.  Zoe got an awesome trick bike & Sloan's favorite gift (other than the 19" flat screen Santa brought her) was her gently used but new to her Barbie dream house. I couldn't find a new one & looked on Craigslist in desperation. I found one! It came with a bunch of really great Barbies, 2 cars, furniture & some clothes for $40. Sloan was so happy. I wasn't going to get her one, she's almost 12 & I know she probably won't want to play with it for much longer. Then it hit me......she won't want to play with dolls for much longer...........insert sad face here. Kids grow up so quickly these days. Might as well let her play with them as long as she wants. Especially since she wants me to teach her how to shave her legs. Did I mention the stocking full of makeup Santa brought per her request? I Also realized this is the last Christmas we'll have a baby in the house........insert sniff sniff here. 

I loved this Christmas. Even though we didn't get to celebrate with our families we had a fun time with our little family. Dean came to church with us, we had the missionaries over for dinner on Christmas day, and Grandmas & Grandpas spoiled us from afar. The only thing I'd do differently next year is to make gifts for family and friends. I should probably start now. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I'll be back in the new year with a ton of new tutorials & hopefully a new look to this blog. Oh I have big things in store for my little Artfulife!!!