For the past three months, I was quite busy, from the online course I had for Fall to the kids and their programs and classes and best of all, my mom was in town since September.

The busiest was the past three weeks that my father was in town and my aunt and her family joined us from LA for 10days. It was a nice and enjoyable family gathering, especially for my children who don’t have a that many family around.

It is amazing how kids sense the family bonding, how they get friendly and comfortable so quickly around family. Even my son had his guards down after couple of hours of seeing my aunt and her family for the first time. I can say this was a first for him. My husband and I were quick to notice the difference in our kids in how they are more happy and playful and how they love the crowd and family around them.

Now that I’m writing everyone is back to their home, and here life is back to normal. Although I’m not sure what normal is, is it the way I live my life here alone with the kids, programs, play dates and our friends or the way I spend my past three months adding my family to the mix. What I really like is to have at least my parents around full time so that I can live a normal life around them. Now, when they are in town, I change our routine and our life to be with them because: 1- Our normal routine doesn’t include them  2- We want to spend as much time as possible together to make up for the times we are not together.

This year was a blast for my family as we got to decorate out Christmas tree with all the grandparents from both side. I decided to put the tree earlier than usual so that my family could also join us. I was so enjoying having all of them together to decorate the tree for the first time that I didn’t mind what they were doing with the tree. To us this is the perfect tree because we had fun with our family decorating it. When the tree was all done, my four-year-old son turned off all the lights in the house except the Christmas tree lights, told everyone to sit and look at the tree.

Then he said, “This is a happy time we have our family here and the tree”

This is going to be a great Christmas especially now that my sister in law said they are coming for Christmas, we will have family around to enjoy on Christmas eve too

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas with his or her loved ones.

Merry Christmas

I usually buy fresh young turkey, and marinate it just before I want to put it in the oven.

Marinate: (make a day earlier)

Add a ½-tea spoon of each of the following: grind black pepper, poultry- seasoning, sage, thyme, 1teaspoon of salt to one stick of butter, well softened, and mix well.

Wrap the butter in a roll in wax paper as best as possible, and refrigerate it for the next day.

Just before you want to put the turkey in the oven, slice the butter in 1-inch disks. Try to insert the butter disks under the washed turkey’s skin as much as possible. The best areas to insert the butters are top of the breast, entering from the neck skin and thigh and lower part of breast from the skin under the thigh. The trick is to be patient and very gentle not to break the skin and just loos the skin from the meat. Leave some butter to rub the outside of the bird before putting in the oven and then brush from time to time while in the oven.

Stuffing:

Normally I have stove-top stuffing and stuff the bird for flavouring. Season birds cavity with salt and pepper and then stuff it with cut up pieces of carrots, onions, celery, flat leaf parsley(with stem, the stem has more flavour), and couple of garlic. This will give the turkey a great flavour and the vegetables can be used on the side. Read the rest of this entry »

I like nice table settings but don’t like to waste or spend too much money on it. As I had limited time this year, I came up with this cute easy, green and with almost no cost table setting. I created this look with whatever leftover I had from our craft projects.

To keep the mood in harvest colors, I picked a burgundy napkin, wrapped it around the cutlery and then secured it with a piece of raffia and made a bow tie.

For glasses I made a cranberry wine charm. I pulled a cranberry through a  jewelery ring that has a loop at one end, and then bend back the open end to be able to hang and secure the ring on the neck of the wine glasses.

The centerpiece was very simple and yet elegant, it was a dark wood oval shape bowl full of green apples. Sorry forgot to take a picture.

Be creative and have a happy Thanksgiving.

Until later,

This is a very cute and easy craft, my kids did this jumping up and down, couldn’t wait to finish the project.

And of course then the attention was on something else!!! What should I expect from a 4.5 years old boy and a almost a 3 years old girl???

So, the craft! You need:

Construction paper

Googly eyes

Colourful feathers

Glue

Red crayon

Pencil and scissors Read the rest of this entry »

Our toddler Halloween party was a success. The kids ran around and played, there were screaming, laughter, and a lot of running.

However, the party turned out to be completely different from what I posted before. I had too much to do and a very short time so I compromised and did something simpler but with same amount of fun.

Here is the simpler version:

Instead of make it yourself pizza they had Mac and cheese with hotdogs.

Instead of foam door hangers, they decorated lunch bags with Halloween theme foam stickers to make their own goody bag.

They made pumpkin faces out of paper plat (colored in orange) and cuts of black paper in the shape of eyes and mouths. They had so much fun working with glue and get to create all different kinds of faces and they got to take the crafts home. Read the rest of this entry »