I did it!!

So for the last two or three months I have been making my own laundry soap! It's SUPER cheap, and I cannot believe how clean my clothes are. Seriously, I've compared this to store bought stuff and it really gets things out. For the last little while I've just been using it in powder form. Borax, washing soda, and fels-naptha soap. You can find the recipe right here.    But, it's SUPER annoying to grate the soap and it takes way to long-- this lady grated it a lot bigger than I did, I found it works better if it's grated really small using the zest grater thingy-- anyways, I ended up just grating a little for each load...which isn't really cost effective, because I had no idea how much I was really putting into each load. 

SO, finally last weekend I buckled down and made some of the liquid soap (here is the recipe for that kind). 

 It got really foamy on top and took overnight to settle down. 

 The finished product on my shelf! I like it in this form. It's a lot easier to work with. But it's really really thick....I think next batch I will try a little more water and see if I can thin it out a little more....right now it's plop-ing out of the jug :) 

And because what fun is a blog post with no little kid pictures??? 

NO FUN AT ALL :)

Here are some pictures from playing bubbles yesterday!

 We were trying to catch them on our feet!

Pretty sure Cole just likes watching them fall down.

Here he is trying to catch one!

Oh yeah, don't mind the red eye...I'm really lazy with photo editing and don't like going through and fixing that! So, pardon the evil eyes on the kids and just enjoy the pics! 

Homemade finger paint

We made some homemade finger paint! This stuff was interesting, in that it wasn't like normal paint at all. It was kind of jelly and not liquid. We had fun with it though!  

The first time we played with it I had bad timing and little man needed to eat and go down for a nap. Luckily Oma(grandma) was there to play with Lucy while I did that. 

Rainbow, circles

Keeping it fairly clean...

Then the following day I pulled it out again and let Cole get in on the fun. 

 Lucy got a lot more messy with it this time!

 Cole wasn't as big of a fan and I thought he would be. 

 He was content with his straw and patting the one little pile I gave him

 We got it in toes and everything!

 We had fun! The stuff was smelling kind of funny one the third day so we threw it out. I think we'll experiment with this a little more and see if we can get it less goupy and more liquidy!

'Gingerbread' Nativities

Forgot I had this in my Drafts!! So here are the Gingerbread Nativites a little closer up and you get to see who made which one! 

This was so much fun thank you everyone for doing this!

Cloud dough!

So there is this thing called Cloud Dough, 

it's all over Pinterest, but I got it from this lady. It's just four and baby oil, but it makes this incredible cool 'dough'.

 If you run your fingers through it it feels like flour, 

but it's mouldable, and light, and smells great! 

(it will make your whole house smell wonderful too!) 

We had lots of fun playing in it. 

The downsides we ran into were that Cole just wanted to eat it the whole time...not sure it would hurt him but the label in the baby oil said not to ingest--so I found myself just constantly telling him not to put it in his mouth--

and then they kept getting it in their eyes! 

Which is no fun..So we ended up in the shower after every play session! Which was definitely a fun activity, but after three days of showering three times a day we decided to pack it away an wait a couple of weeks before we pull it out again. I'm tempted to try it with regular oil and see if it works! That way Cole can eat to his hearts delight and I won't have to worry so much.

Christmas

Christmas was SUPER fun! My sister Esperanza come out from Alabama to visit and Patrick and Whitney (devin's bro & fam)  came out from South Carolina to visit also! It was SO much fun to see everyone and get to spend so much time with everyone.

 We made Gingerbread Nativities! Such a fun activity! I think we might make this a tradition :)

 Here is the array of nativites made. I think everyone did an amazing job! It was so cool to see what everyone came up with.

 Eve holding a very tired little Cole-mister.

 Lucy wore this bow for quite a while and carried this toy around with her the whole night.

 Cole thought Chastity's decorations were pretty fun!

Lucy and Sam throwing balls down the hallway! They did this FOREVER!!! 

 We got to participate in TWO nativities (both of which Lucy was Mary) and we had a blast. The result of her being Mary for both of them has been her running around the house all day long putting things on her head and saying she is Mary. Mommy and Daddy are now Wisemen and Cole is Joseph. She also has a purple baby that she has permanently named Baby Jesus :)

 Nativity with the Wilsons!

 The beautiful Angels -- they did such a cute job! 

Sam sat on the couch the whole time!! Haha, he just watched everyone.

 Mary and Joseph

 Shepherd's  visiting the stable

Angels and King Herod ( I LOVE Megan's costumes every year! For some reason Herod is always obese, but it is so fun to see what she comes up with!)

 Mary holding baby Jesus - Cole and I were sheep for this one

 Devin was a shepard in both! I think he fits the role pretty well don't you!?

Here is the Moss crew - Herod who I think was undergoing some extreme liposuction at the time :)

Christmas Morning these two were the first to be awake (no surprise there!) so we sat quietly in the Den and while they ate some of the stocking candy. Lucy ate this whole candy cane while Cole gorged on some crackers.

Opening some gifts...I think this was the only one Lucy actually opened!

She just wanted to sing and play! We had SUCH a blast. Such a wonderful day and break! We were VERY sorry to have gotten everyone sick! I'm pretty sure during the month of December we spread our cold around the WHOLE country! Sorry to everyone that we infected.