Christmas Photo Shoot

We made our second annual trek to the Muttart Conservatory with the Gowdy's to take a few family photos.  It's a good idea, in principle, but it is often hard to get the kids to cooperate.  I find, however, that bribery works wonders, at least for the first ten or twenty minutes.  After that, it doesn't matter if I have promised a prize from the treasure box or cold hard cash, the boys seem unable to stay still for any photograph at all.  So we work fast.  And we usually capture at least a few good pictures. 

But here's one of the first photos we took. Everyone is looking at the camera and not too overly squinty. (My oldest has a tendency to squint in almost every picture). And then it went downhill from here........
 
This particular day, the boys seemed to take particular joy in posing for a variety of fighting moves for the camera.

Backhand

Punch

Nose Pinch

Knee

Smother

Strangle

Christmas Ornament Webisode

There's a great new webisode on the Canadian Scrapbooker website where Jackie Ludlage demonstrates how to make some really easy and gorgeous christmas ornaments from paper.  This is a great way to use up your paper scraps and impress your kids!  :-)

Christmas Tags

if you've got some Christmas related odds and ends laying around on your scrapbooking table, put together some tags.  They look great hanging on your tree or stick them onto a christmas present for that extra special personal touch.  

An old photo of the boys with Santa makes a cute tag.  The sticker is from October Afternoon, and the candy cane, I just downloaded from the internet after googling a candy cane image.  I resized and printed it and then decorated it up a little with some glitter glue.

Making Memories paper, paper holly and sticker, a free vintage Santa clipart image downloaded from the internet and some golden dewdrops from Robin's Nest.

This Santa image is from Crafty Secrets.  It's covered with a couple of coats of ultra thick embossing enamel, which I then just cracked after I put it in the freezer for a few minutes.  It's actually left over from an article I wrote five years ago for the inaugural issue of Canadian Scrapbooker.   The cracked UTEE technique doesn't take too long and it sure gives a special look to a wintery image.

The Gerbils

My youngest desperately wanted a pet gerbil.  It was one of the top things on his list to Santa that he started writing in October.   I was a little concerned as to how Santa would transport a gerbil through the cold snowy days of December so I checked on Kijiji and happened to find a gerbil with accessories for sale for a low price nearby where I lived.  So, gerbil #1, christened Shadow because she is black, came home as an early present.

Naturally, his older brother also then wanted his own gerbil, so I checked Kijiji again and found a free gerbil with cage and accessories in Edmonton, so gerbil #2, Toffee, came home.  So far, it's been great.  The gerbils are low maintenance, not smelly and very cute.  They are easy enough to take care of that the kids can do it themselves, with a little help with the cage cleaning that we do every few weeks.  Part of the deal of acquiring the gerbils is that each boy has to spend quality time socializing with their gerbil every day.  If they don't 'have time' because they are too busy playing video games or whatever, the gerbils will go away to somebody who will take care of them properly. 

One of the concerns I had about bringing small rodents into the house, is how safe that would be with our two cats.  Knock on wood, but it seems to be all right so far as long as the gerbil is safely enclosed.  Charlie doesn't seem to pay much attention to them, but Rusty is fascinated by the gerbils and spends hours sitting by the cage.   Or on top of the cage.