Almeida Family Christmas in January

We had a wonderful time the weekend of January 13th.  Hank took me out to breakfast for my birthday, then we drove to the Bay Area, went to the theater and saw War Horse, then we attended Joey’s winter school performance.

That night Joey had his Christmas singing event with his classmates.  These kids were adorable, especially Joey!!  We could hear him over the other kids and he was so animated… too cute.  Joey is the kid in middle pointing and holding the green jingle bells.  With a bunch of 3 year olds it was very interesting… some kids were petrified & screaming for their mommy, some were just staring and others actually sang!

The kids sang in one of the class rooms.  Check out these little tiny chairs that all the adults had to sit on… too fricken funny, but Papa didn’t mind and Alex had a good time with Papa.

Here’s a video of Joey, at times you can clearly hear him singing above the other kids… LOL

Joey singing his heart out at school

After Joey sang, we went to Red Robin for dinner and of course the kids got a balloon.  Alex (8 months) had so much fun with his balloon back at the house…. such a happy baby.

The next day we all went to Mike & Pami’s for our annual “January Christmas”.  We normally do this about 1-3 weeks after Christmas.  We rotate houses every 3rd year between ours, Pami, and Jimmy.  We have a January Xmas because understandably our  kids want to have their own traditions with their kids and with all the parents and in-laws, it just gets too crazy to try and squeeze everything in just 2 days (Xmas Eve & Xmas).  It works for everyone and we had a BLAST.

Lizzy has mastered her new bike and Charlie is awesome on his 2 wheel scooter.  It was a beautiful day and we spent a couple hours outside playing with the kids.

Here is Lizzy trying to “shake her bootie” with the hoola hoop.

Shake your bootie

The kids pulled out the Halloween costumes and got dressed up… Joey & Charlie looked so cute!

Here are the kids opening their stocking stuffers

OK Jimmy… whatever!!

We had a wonderful dinner, fun opening stocking stuffers & gifts and playing with the kids.  After the kids finally got to bed late, the adults got changed into our PJ’s and we were ready for our slumber party!!!  The girls ended the night dancing to the Wii in some fierce competition… it was sooooooooooo much fun!!!  We finally went to bed around 12:30.

The next morning the guys made breakfast and it was great.

Misc. Stuff & More Cards

We jointly celebrated Peter’s and my birthday on January 11th at our house.  They had an out of town guest staying with them for a few days so Janet came over too.  We had a lot of fun and Janet is a very nice and interesting person.  We had a good dinner and Kaija made a scrumptious dessert (as always).  We talked for a long time and played chicken foot dominos.  We finally got to bed around 12:45.  We are not used to going to bed so fricken late… we were dragging the next day for sure!  But it was worth it getting to spend time with good friends.

We get the most incredible sunsets at our house.  This was taken on January 10th from our front yard.  We have the houses across the street blocking us from the view of the valley , but they have fantastic views from their back yards.  We also get very pretty sunrises… we love it here.

We just bought these 2 big vases for the front yard to match the existing circular planter.  Because of the shading they look like they are different colors, but the set of 3 looks great.  I will put some sort of plants in the vases and re-do the circular with some nice plants.

This is our wet bar area.  The “Wine Cellar” stencil above the door was also at our other house.  Of course I couldn’t leave that behind either, so I remounted it and it looks great.

We just bought these 3 counter stools for the bar area.  Our guests can finally sit at the bar instead of everyone standing around the “party hole”.

We also found this great pub table and 4 tall stools, which is next to the bar area.  It filled up an empty area and is great for entertaining.

		Latest & Greatest Cards VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

My New Craft Room!!

I was so excited to finally get started on my craft room.  So in December we spent a couple of weeks putting it all together.  There is a small walk in closet and this is what it looked like prior to close of escrow.  The previous owners used it as their daughter’s bedroom.  It just had wire shelving to hang clothes.

I wanted shelving throughout the closet to maximize on the space and store all my craft stuff, sewing items, wrapping paper, floral, etc.  Once I designed it and measured everything, we began.

Here’s the closet finished, big difference and a lot more storage!

Hank built this shelf unit for me to hang on the wall to hold all my ribbon, ink, embellishments, buttons, and markers.  After the construction was complete I painted it.  Gotta love the lumber clearance bin at Home Depot.

I put this beautiful tree and butterfly stencils up at our other house in Lincoln and I loved it so much I couldn’t leave it there when we moved.  I painstakingly removed every leaf one by one.  Because I had taken pictures of it before, I knew exactly how to put it back together.

It turned out just as good the second time.  I had no idea that stencils could be used again… now we all know it works.

Here’s the final product.  My color scheme is a very dark rich raspberry, chocolate brown and olive green.  The colors are beautiful together so I want to decorate & accessorize with those colors.  That will be one of my next projects in my spare time (hee-hee – no spare time).