Here Comes Rudolph {Late Christmas Edition}

So several months ago (all the way back to November), I had the bright idea to make us ladies in the family some Christmas shirts.  Ok, so not entirely my own idea,  I may have gotten the idea at a craft show in Oklahoma while standing at a booth that had red baseball type tees with a sparkly reindeer on them….

Proudly wearing our Rudolph shirts!

Ok, so back to MY idea.  My mom and I shopped around for a bit looking for the perfect red sleeved, baseball t-shirt.  I think we finally purchased the winners from Academy and Old Navy. 

Hobby Lobby was our next stop to find the bling-bling sparkly iron on transfer sheets.     The design I saw had the reindeer in both silver and gold.  I chose to do silver for the girls (CJ & Sophie) and gold for myself.   My mom was making her and Addy’s shirts.   

I found a reindeer silhouette printable online and printed it out.  I used that cut out to trace around onto the iron on transfer.  After everything was cut out, it was time to iron on the pattern to the shirts.  

I used my printer to enlarge the image

I had to be extra careful not to 'remove' any of Rudolph's antlers 

I have used a similar sparkly iron on transfer previously for CJ’s 1^st birthday party (see it here), but for some reason the snowflake design didn’t adhere well to the shirt and is peeling at the ends.  I was hopeful this one would be better. 

Everything ironed on like a charm.  And since this wasn’t just a plain ‘ole reindeer, I had to add a bright red nose to make Rudolph.  I had some scrap red fabric and cut out the tiniest of tiny little red noses and used fabric glue to make it stick. 

Missing the Red Rudolph Nose

I love how the shirts turned out!

They have been through several washes and so far so good.

Kid approved!

Christmas in Cataloochee

Yes, this is a post about our Christmas vacation.  And yes, I know it's February.  And yes, I'm writing this anyways.  Deal.

Once a long time ago, my family had a short lived tradition of taking Christmas vacations instead of doing the whole gift exchange thing.  It has been several years since our last trip but we wanted to start the tradition again this past Christmas.

In the past my family would go to New Mexico to a ski resort area.  We have been to Taos, Sipapu, Angel Fire and Red River.   Those are some of my favorite Christmas memories.  We even ventured to Gatlinburg, TN one year.  While my family isn't a huge snow ski kind of family, we do love the snow.  Snowmobiling, snow tubing, ice skating, etc.  We love it all.

It may be because we spent a few years in Alaska when I was younger.  For those of you that aren't familiar with my families history, I'll fill you in.  I grew up in SE Oklahoma, the youngest child (only daughter) to educator parents.  My father was my principle (my school was teeny, as in super tiny, my town didn't have a stoplight small) and my mother was my both my PE (physical education - yes, I am older....) and my driver's education teacher.  Needless to say, everyone knew us and we knew everyone.  Anyways, trying to make a long story shorter, when I was in third grade, my parents decided they needed a change of scenery from Oklahoma.  And a change, big change, happened.  We moved to Alaska.  And that may have just started my families love affair with the white powdery stuff.

Kuskokwim 300 - Akiak, Alaska

No clue & no clue, just found it in our old pics!

Back to present day (well maybe technically it was last year), we rented a awesome cabin in the mountains of North Carolina.

what an awesome cabin!

great porch for viewing the fog

My family drove in from Oklahoma, picked my cousin Angie up on the way and met us in Atlanta for the short (JD will probably disagree onto 'short' term) trip to Cataloochee.  We drove through the north Georgia mountains and ended up near the towns of Waynesville, only 30 minutes from Asheville, NC.

While we were hoping for snow all we were treated with was a ton of fog.

called the Smoky Mountains for a reason

Maemae and Me

We took the girls sledding one day.

See the super small pink dots at the top? That's the girls 

Addy first one down! {far left} 

Sophie's turn! 

and back up the hill again, thank goodness for a moving sidewalk

CJ even got to do some sledding, thanks to Maemae

love those pink cheeks!

took about a dozen photos and this was the only one with all 3 girls looking 

Mommy & CJ

two cuties

Angie, JD and I road tripped to Asheville another day.

And we spent a ton of time together playing games.

sisters and cousins 

looks like homework

Addy & Uppa

I absolutely love our family trips and hope we can continue to do them every year.

Does your family have a family trip tradition for Christmas?  Tell me about it!

***If you are missing the red 'corrections' this week, it is because I am out of town and JD isn't available to proof my post***

Snow, Seating, and Stats

We have a lot of ground to cover today, so let's just jump on in.

CJ's first birthday was over a month ago and after I wrote my last post, it occurred to me that I should have posted her birthday stats.

Christmas was great.  We celebrated at JD's folks house and then went to his Aunt and Uncle's place later for dinner.

JD got a new bag for Christmas….Sofie loves it!

happy to have her own apron

um, yeah, I'm not sure what's going on here…. 

My family was able to come to ATL for an after Christmas visit.  I was so excited to see them.  Addy hadn't seen CJ or Sofie since the previous Easter.  I love having my family coming to visit.  As a matter of fact, I love having visitors anytime of year.

family pic time!

Addy and her daddy

Cousins!

Since my mother was in town for a few days, she was able to help me finish up one of my many projects.  I currently have 5 4 (WAY to many) chairs that need recovering.  I was able to knock one of those chairs off of my 'to do' list.  I started working on it last July, so it only took me about 6 months to finish.  In the beginning I was really into documenting exactly what I did so I could do a 'how to'.  Towards the end, I just wanted the darn thing done (me2)!

Sofie modeling the chair

first, I removed all of the chording

then all of the panels of fabric

thankfully, I was able to use the old padding

I used the old fabric as a pattern for the new

only took me 6 months!

Christmas came and went with no snow to be seen.  And then January happened.  Or rather Snowmagedon, Snowpocalysp….or whatever other crazy term it was called.  I know the people from the north called it stupid.  Why? You may ask.  What can bring the bustling city of Atlanta to a standstill?  What can make the real life look just like a take from The Walking Dead?  Snow.  Two measly inches of snow.  That's right two inches of the white fluffy stuff shut down the city of Atlanta.  It was all kinds of craziness here, people blaming others left and right for the chaos.

We had friends that were stuck in their cars for 12 plus hours.  Pregnant women gave birth on the side of the interstates.  And strangers opened up their homes to others.  A coworker had spent 10 hours trying to get home and we told her to turn around and come back to crash with us.  She made it to our house in 20 minutes and stayed for two nights.

Anytime it snows, Grant Park turns into a winter snow sledding land for all the kids, ok, adults and dogs too.  We have some great hills in the park and they are fully abused anytime there is a smidgen of snow covering the ground.  This time was no exception.

Not only is where we live great because of the park, but we can also walk to several restaurants.  We were lucky enough that one was open right down the street from our house.  We all bundled up (JD made some Christmas Story joke about how I dressed CJ), and headed for some yummy food.

and then we were back to normal

That was about 2 weeks ago.  Well guess what?  It's about to happen again.  As I am typing this I am staying at home due to inclement weather heading our way.  This time it's supposed to be much worse in the way of 2 inches of ice.  That's the not so pretty cold stuff that falls from the sky.  Ok, sure it can look pretty, but man can it do some damage.  I just pray our electricity doesn't fail us this time around.