Making christmas presents!

I made a couple of presents over the weekend. My sister-in-law is a pre-school teacher, so I wanted to make her a treasure chest for her class and fill it up with books and goodies for her for Christmas. So here it is! It says "Mrs. Blalock's Treasures"

I just used mod podge and put peices of scrapbook paper all over it! I'm gonna make myself one for my future classroom as well!

I made my fahter-in-law a much smaller box too, that we are going to put a scrapbook and some handwritten letters in for christmas. His says "Poppy's Treasures"

This is the box open, the inside of it and the lid.

I had so much fun making these that I have decided to make more! I got little jewlrey boxes and treasure boxes for my nieces and my own kids. I think they will be fun! Plus they are so easily customized to whatever the person likes! I got elephant papers for Starla's and Monkey papers for Romans, etc, etc.

Micheal's has really cheap wooden boxes (the smaller ones anyways!). Plus they always have the 40% off coupons each week. (I used their 50% coupons for this weekend on the large boxes, they were normally $50, so I got them for $25! Woo hoo!!)

Black Friday

So Black friday is not only the greatest time to go shopping, but it is also teh traditional day that we put up our Christmas tree! Alan actually got the lights put up on the house that day too, amazing!

These pics are a little out of order, but oh well! Here is the tree without the angel on top!

I love all of my ornaments! I love that my tree is made up of cartoon characters, pictures of my kiddos and handmade ornaments. They all bring me such joy!

Here is Roman the elf helping me fluff up the tree!
Roman and I (Don't I look cute, hair not fixed, no make-up!)

Alan puts the angel on the top of the tree!

Isn't she pretty!

My merry little elves

Bourbon helps put the ornaments up

Starla wants to help too!

Starting in 1998 with Bourbon just being 3 months old, I have an ornament with a picture of the kid(s) on the tree, with the year on it. I love that my tree is covered in pictures of my kids!

We also have lots of strwberry shortcake, smurfs, raggedy ann and andy, disney characters and star wars on our tree!

Let's not forget spiderman and rubber ducky either!

And the homemade ornaments that the kids have made over the years, I love this santa Bourbon made with his handprint back in pre-school! New to our tree this year is Dora the explorer, which is Starla's favorite at the moment!

I love our stockings too! I have tinkerbell, Alan has longhorns, and Starla has hello kitty!

Bourbon has Red Sox, and Roman has Big bird, and Tex has his own doggy stocking too!

I love christmas!! I love all the decorations and traditions and lights and music and everything!!!

Thanksgiving

I really didn't get many pics of our thanksgiving! Which stinks, but oh well. Here are the boys helping me in the kitchen. They pretty much made all 3 of the pies by themselves!

Roman loves this apron, which is pretty neat since my grandma, who passed away when Bourbon was 9 months old, made it. Roman never got to meet her, but he connects to her through this apron.

Bourbon poses with the chocolate pecan pie
Bourbon puts the carmel in the bottom of the turtle pumpkin pie, yum!

Starla wanted to help, so she plays in a roasting pan!

Here's Starla with the Thanksgiving meal spread!

The kids 'table' which was just some TV trays thrown together at the end of the big table! My parents, my aunt Theresa, my neice Destiny and my best friend Jamie all came over for the meal.

After dinner there was some mad Wii action. Jamie had lots of fun! Yes, that's Alan asleep in the chair in the background, lol.

Jamie with 2 of her godchildren, Bourbon bailed out.

Our Little Family on Thanksgiving Day!

The sun was bright, we were all squinting! lol

Overholser Project

This is the front view of the Overholser Mansion. It is very nice. This is the side view, from the carriage house.

I had never been there before, but it is really neat! They are open to the public and give tours tues-sat. The cost is $3, If you have never been there, you should check it out! If you haven't ever learned about Henry Overholse, it's pretty interesting. Overholser, Shartel, Classen and Colocord were all instrumental in getting Oklahoma City up and flourishing. Here are some views inside the house!

We started out at the mansion, the kids were supposed to be there at 9:30am and each group was stationed in a different part of the house. The kids were going to break off into small groups and visit each of us. We also had a group out in the carriage house that were going to teach the Charleston, play games from the early 1900's and make a stainglass project.

Here I am with my classmate Lori. This was before I got my big floppy hat on. I was the nanny, and she was Mrs. Overholser.
This was in the carriage house, before we made it into the mansion. We got ready in the carriage house.

This was our group from 1915, and the 2 girls from the 1940's group. We are standing in front of the parlor, where we were supposed to do our presentation. Our group consisted of Mrs. Overholser, Mrs. Classen, Mrs. Shartel and then me, the nanny!

Here are the maids, the girls from the 1910's who were teaching the Charleton and games, and the flappers from the 1920's!

The maids again

The cooks, who were the 1930's group inside the house. This is in the kitchen, and that is the actual stove from the 1900's! The house isn't so much restored, it is preserved, almost everything in it is exactly how the Overholser family left it.

Here are the 1940's & the 1930's groups!

Here are the 1940's girls in one of the bedrooms upstairs

At about 9:45, the kids hadn't shown up, and the lady who runs the place (who was a bit unorganized it seemed) told us that the kids didn't get thier permission slips, so they couldn't leave the school. So we would be going to them. Instead of working inside the house, with props and such to make it easy to act, and working with small groups of children, we now were going to the school auditorium in front of all the kids at once. We didn't do as well as we could have, but it still went ok.


Here is my group, we went first since we were 1915. We talked about the men who started oklahoma city, and oklahoma history and what was going on at the time. We borrowed one of the other girls, who was dressed up as Henry (the daughter) and she sat on the stage as our prop, since I was her nanny. I got to talk about her and what she was doing as a 10 year old in 1915. Now I have my big floppy hat on!

Then the 1920's flappers went, then the 1930's cooks, then the 1940's girls. Then they broke the group in half and some went upstairs to the library to do the stained glass project with the maids, and the rest stayed in the gym and learned how to dance the charleston and learned some of the games kids played back then. It was a big chaotic, but it was alot of fun and I am so glad that I got the opportunity to participate in it! It sure beats taking a final!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I love handprint turkeys!

I love thanksgiving! I love making turkey handprints and other crafts! I love cooking! I love the parade! The boys and I are making the pies tonight. And the homemade rolls. We will make the dough tonight, get them all formed and then just take them out tomorrow and let them rise and then throw them in the oven. We might even make some homemade cinnamon rolls while we are at it, so that breakfast is easy in the morning! I am trying a new thing with the turkey. I read all this ttuff about brining the turkey after I saw a recipe in one my cookbooks about brining. It says that soaking the turkey in a salt and seasoning 'brine' for 24 hours prior to cooking makes it all moist and juicy. It went all into the science of it, that through the brine the flavors can infuse through the meat through osmosis and such. I don't have to understand the science to try it! So our 18 pound turkey is sitting in a bag of brine in a large stockpot in an ice chest on my kitchen floor. We shall see how it turns out! Here is our thanksgiving menu:

Roasted Turkey

Bourbon gravy (we like to cook things with Bourbon's name in it!)

sausage & spinach stuffed mushrooms

Hawaiian sweet bread stuffing with sausage and cranberries

Zuchinni & yellow squash cheesy casserole

Bourbon pecan smashed sweet potatoes (again, Bourbon!)

Sauted asparagus in olive oil

buttered brussel sprouts with bacon

sweet buttered corn

Mashed potatoes

Homemade yeast dinner rolls

Pumpkin pie

Turtle pumpkie pie (you can never have too many kinds of pumpkin pie....)

Chocolate pecan pie

Yum! I am so excited! I can't wait to watch the parade too!!!

Hope everyone has a happy thanksgiving!

Starla learned a new song while she was at Duncan last weekend! (Aunt Kim is a pre-school teacher!)

Thanksgiving week!

I am so excited about Thanksgiving! I love cooking, so it is one of my favorite holidays. And now that I spent ALLLLL weekend long doing schoolwork, I am so ready to do andthink about something else. I am so excited that all of my big projects are wrapped up as of today. I still have some work to do in my math class, and then a final in there and a final in Children's Lit. But all in all, it's a downhill coast for this semester. Woo hoo!!

Here are some thanksgiving treats we made last year. Aren't they cute?

And our turkey kabob! I actually had 3 of these for table decorations! Last year, we hosted it for my family and alan's family, so there were like 30 people there (if you came to Starla's birthday party you don't even have to imagine what that looks like in my house! lol) and we had 4 tabes set up in my dining room & living room. And a children's table set up in my bedroom. It was crazy! This year we are just doing a small quiet thing with us and my parents. But I am still cooking up a big meal.

I love the holidays! Tomorrow Starla & I are going to drive to texas for the day to go visit our friends Jenny & carter and for some shopping at Ikea and the outlet malls! Woo hoo!

Then of course friday is black friday shopping, which I always love. And of course this weekend is the time to pur up the christmas tree!! I can't wait.

My Book

So one of the projects that I had to do in my art class this semester was a bookmaking project. We had to write a short little story, do a storyboard of how we wanted it to layout, and then create a picture book using several different medias (watercolor, tempra paints, collage, drawing, etc). I got mine back today, my teacher loved it so much she wanted to keep it, but I wouldn't let her. :) I worked hard on that book, and I liked it alot!!! So here it is:

Starla & Veruca

The Fairy and the Pixie

Written and Illustrated by

Tonya Little

Starla Harmony is a fairy. She has little colorful wings like a butterfly.

She lives in Sweetbriar Hollow. Lots of other creatures live there too.

Starla's Best friend is a pixie named Veruca.

Veruca has long, thin wings like a dragonfly. She also lives in Sweetbriar Hollow.

Starla & Veruca like to sit in the lilygradd next to calliope pond.

They eat roasted sugarbean nuts and make up stories about the old yetti that lives up in archaic mountain.

Sometimes the fairy and the pixie help the willowby bears tend their gardens.

Sometime they go listen to the gnomes tell stories in the forest.

But whatever they do, they do it together, because everything is more fun with your best friend.

The End

So the novel that I am working on deals with the same characters in the same place, just written for a bit older audience. :)