Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Christmas Gear Up!

Well, the finger puppets, headdresses, and trivia went over great! The kids loved them (especially the headdresses)! I don't have any pictures yet but soon to come. It was a big help keeping them a little more calm too. I also printed off a lot of coloring sheets for them. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Pat and I got to attend two! My Mom always has her's on the Saturday after so everyone is not trying to fit in two dinners in one day. That was pretty difficult!

Now that we've got the bird off the table, we are getting ready for Christmas! Pat and I have decided to get a real tree this year. I have never had one before. We always had a fake tree. Pat use to have one when he was little. We are really excited about it! Pat has already found one he thinks will work. He'll go probably next week and cut it down. We are really excited about our first Christmas together! Another way I'm gearing up for the Christmas season is this weekend my sisters are all coming back to Mom's to make Christmas candy! I can already taste Oreo truffles and cream cheese candy! Here are some of the candies I'm going to make this weekend.
Oreo Truffles
Almond Sweets
Mock Toffee
Not sure if I'll try these Sandwich Cookie Pops  or not but they sure do look good!
I'll share all the delicious recipes next time! What are you doing to get ready for Christmas?

Jess

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Thanksgiving Shakedown

Hello all! As you know Thanksgiving is approaching. While this is a joyous time of to spend with family and friends it can also be very chaotic around the Ison household. With seven grandchildren between the ages of 4 and 10 you can imagine. There's usually a lot shouting, screaming, bumping, banging, breaking and so on. Although I dearly love all my nieces and nephews, I am going to attempt to capture their attention this year with these great ideas from Martha.
I would love to try this paper-bag turkey. They would love it!
They will have a blast with these headdresses!
Who doesn't love finger puppets?
For the older boys, I was thinking of giving them a little trivia.
I'll let you know how well it works! 

Jess

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Happy Halloween!

Well, Patrick and I had an excellent first Halloween! Between our party and our first trick-or-treaters it was a blast!! Here are some of the highlights of this Halloween season!
My costume was a big hit!
He finally caught me!
The cake was a disaster! It looks alright here but this was the day before the party. The next morning my nephew came and woke us up and said "Your cake fell apart. I want you to come and see how bad it is." He wasn't kidding either. Part of the cake itself had slid off and the house fell down!
I decided to turn it into a graveyard and be done with it! It still tasted good and that's what counts right?

The haunted basement was awesome! These bats guarded the entry way.
Can you guess what these brains are made out of?
My icy hands of death lost a finger. Glad it was only the index finger!
The shrunken heads turned out great!
I decided to make mustaches for everyone too, and they were a blast!
We also headed up to King's Island for their Halloween Haunt with one of our good buddies. It was awesome!
This was the first year we actually carved our pumpkins and got them out in time for our trick-or-treaters to see them!

We only had 54 trick-or-treaters but we still had a great time handing out candy. We're looking forward to all the other holidays we get to celebrate as a married couple. Hope you had a fun Halloween!