The Rising Empress

My girls had the opportunity to be involved with a focus group for The Rising Empress. I was so impressed with the products. If you haven’t heard of it it’s a book of fairy tales, with trading cards for young girls. It’s beautifully illustrated, and is a tremendous way for girls to interact as they collect the different Empresses and their powers. The stories also instill important values, and encourage young girls to believe in themselves, love themselves, find their talents, and be kind to others. As they collect the cards they can go onto the Rising Empress website and research the empresses and find ways to turn the evil ones good again. This is something you won’t want to miss. It’s a great gift this holiday season!

Here is a short video about it. Rising Empress Video     

Living With Kids at Christmas Time

Design Mom has a segment on her blog called Living with Kids. She features some fantastic homes. This one has some neat design elements as well as beautiful Christmas decor. Check out all the photos here.

Vegetable Side Dishes

Are you still looking for that perfect vegetable side dish to compliment Tom Turkey? This year Roasted Brussels Sprouts will be a new addition to our table. Delicious! Below are more ideas to check out. Happy Thanksgiving!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients
1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts
3 tablespoons good olive oil
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Cut off the brown ends of the Brussels sprouts and pull off any yellow outer leaves. Mix them in a bowl with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Pour them on a sheet pan and roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until crisp on the outside and tender on the inside. Shake the pan from time to time to brown the sprouts evenly. Sprinkle with more kosher salt ( I like these salty like French fries), and serve immediately.

More side dishes:

Sweet Rosemary Acorn Squash

Roasted Asparagus

Stuffed Pumpkin

Caramelized Butternut Squash

Halloween Snack

If you are looking for a great snack or treat for kids this Halloween, we just made one of our favorites! They are Caramel Covered Marshmallows that I blogged about years ago. Here’s a tip if you do make them, we dipped apples in the leftover caramel and then rolled them in rice krispies just like the marshmallows. They were yummy too and healthier!

Happy Halloween!

DIY Valentines Tree

This is a simple DIY project that I threw together last year for a fun family night.

I cut some branches from a tree in my backyard and spray painted them white. Then I went down to Micheals and bought a package of foam hearts that were all different sizes. I also bought a couple of packages of wooden hearts, Valentine words and some silver string. I hot glued the string on the back of the wooden hearts and words.

The kids used their creativity to make their own ornaments. We took off the backing on one heart and stuck the string to the back of it. Then stuck another heart that is the same size to the other side so that it looks nice from both sides.

This is what they came up with:

Here’s the finished product!

Posted by Andrea

A Christmas “Wrap” Up

It’s January 8th and I am hoping that all of you had a wonderful Christmas break! Here are some of the fun things we did this Christmas. It’s a busy month and so we use our advent calendar to fit in all the activities we like to do.

We buy a real Christmas tree each year and I love it! I grew up always having a real tree and luckily Greg loves them too, so when we got married he was game to get one each year.

We filled pairs of kids socks with treats and toys and made blankets for the Road Home.

Going downtown to see the lights at Temple Square and Macy’s Candy Windows.

Great Christmas performances by Claire, and cozy movie nights catching up on all the Christmas movies.

The kids always love going to the cabin with their cousins for Mimi’s Sleepover Party where they each receive new pjs.

Luigi, our Elf on the Shelf, made our life exciting each day till Christmas.

We finished off the season re-enacting the nativity at Grammy and Grandpa Summerhays for Christmas Eve.

After Christmas we headed down to St. George for a little R and R and then brought in the New Year with lots of sick kids! We are nearly all healthy again and looking forward to a great 2013.

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

Posted by Andrea

My Favorite Christmas Movies

My two favorite Christmas movies are The Family Man and Miracle on 34th Street.

Family Man makes me realize how much I love my life even if it is a bit crazy, messy and far from perfect.

Miracle On 34th Street is so charming! I love the clothes, NYC at Christmas and of course the magic of Santa. (Claire and I love Susan’s hair when it’s flipped up. When we curl Claire’s hair like this we call it her “Susan Hair”.)

What shows make the holidays magical for you?

Posted by Andrea

Christmas Journals

The first Christmas Greg and I were married my mom gave us this Christmas journal.

It dedicates 5 pages to each year with spaces to write about visitors during the holidays, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, favorite gifts and things we don’t want to forget. The fifth page is for a couple of Christmas cards for favorite photos.

I haven’t written all five pages each year although I wish I had. When Christmas is over and I have cleaned and reorganized the decorations back into the crawl space I’m too tired to write about what we’ve done! I can remember thinking in years past–this was a great year, I could never forget all that we did. However, 335 days go by full of new memories and I forget so much that I’m glad to have our memories recorded. I love looking back at years past remembering the fun, crazy and not so fun things that have happened!:)

Our second Christmas together Greg and I flew out to Paris on Christmas day!

William’s first Christmas.

Christmas card 2006.

We gave our parents an ultra sound photo announcing the arrival of Mary in 7 months.

Christmas card 2010.

Christmas Journal Ideas:

Mary Englebreit Christmas Journal
Christmas Journal Cards
Scrapbook Christmas Journal

Posted by Andrea

Thanksgiving Centerpieces

Thanksgiving Centerpieces: What is your table going to look like this year?

Eddie Ross

Martha Stewart

Better Home and Gardens

HGTV

Posted by Andrea

Halloween With a Peanut Allergy

Hope you all had a Happy Halloween! Ours was wonderful. The weather was phenomenal. Seventy degrees in Utah on October 31 was record-breaking. We had dinner outside and no coats or even jackets were needed. In fact Max came back from trick or treating a little sweaty in his Harry Potter robe. That’s a first!

Mary wouldn’t pose for a picture so here I am trying to get her to smile in the photo of all the kids!:) She also traded out her Tinkerbell costume for a…well…we are calling it a carnival girl (its last years dance costume.)

My kids have returned home with oodles of candy this Halloween. It’s our first Halloween since Mary, my 2-year-old, was diagnosed with a deadly peanut allergy. We were consulted by the allergists to have a peanut free home. No food with peanuts enters our home. So this year we are sorting through the candy and putting anything with peanuts or traces of peanuts up in a cupboard to be eaten when Mary is away or asleep. Someday she will understand why she can’t eat certain foods and we won’t have to try to protect her constantly.

Trick-or-treat bag emptied:

Candy Mary CAN’T eat:

Her siblings are very overprotective. Claire was so worried that she asked at every house if the candy had peanuts in them.

I wonder how Mary will feel about Halloween as she gets older knowing she can’t eat a lot of the candy she gets.

Do you or your kids have allergies? This is a new world to us.

Posted by Andrea