Wordless Wednesday: Santa & Our Christmas Tree

Christmas Eve, after the kids were in bed, my husband and I spent the night getting all the presents under the tree. He assembled the bikes and then I neatly placed everything around the tree.

Then thanks to a giveaway I won from Dawn's Daily Diggs, I uploaded a photo to ICaughtSanta.com and downloaded my free photos of Santa in front of our tree. The kids got a kick out of it.

The Post Christmas Blues

I love Christmas. I love everything about the season, I love shopping for gifts and watching my kids open presents in a crazed frenzy on Christmas morning. After months of planning, shopping and decorating, it is all over in such a flash. The day after Christmas I always feel a little sad that it is all over.

The house is totally trashed. There are new toys scattered across the family room floor. The kids are in their glory but all I keep thinking is where the heck am I going to put all this stuff? So now comes the daunting task of cleaning out and organizing the  playroom to make room for new toys. My goal this week is to get that done and weed out some older toys that are not used anymore to bring to the consignment shop. Granted these are things I should have done before Christmas, but I am a porcrastinator.

Then there are all the holiday decorations and the tree that soon will need to come down. It takes me days to decorate our monstrous 9 foot tree, and the process of undecorating it is one I dread. This year I was lazy and didn't even put all the ornaments on, so maybe that will shave an hour off of the time it will take to get it all put away. But I am not looking forward to this at all.

So what do I do when I am feeling blue? I eat chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. And my mother's amazing chocolate mousse is helping me with that. But I really need to shake this and get to work. After one more bowl of mousse, of course.

Do you get the post Christmas blues? What do you do to get out of the funk?

Today's post is brought to you by Pro Dunk Hoops, makers of adjustable basketball goals. Perfect for families, the goals can be lowered down to 5 feet. With four active boys here, you know I will need one of these some day. Anything that will keep them out of the house for a bit is sure to please any mom. 

Our Elves on a Shelf

Surely you have heard all about the Elf on the Shelf by now. It seems like everyone has one and everywhere you look people are sharing picture's of their elves. Is your Facebook news feed filled with elf pictures too?  I read a blog post last week about overachieving elf on a shelf moms that had me laughing so hard I was crying. Because everything she wrote is so true. I give these mom's credit for going to great lengths to find fun and mischievous scenarios to put their elf in. That is just not me. In fact, I'm lucky if I remember to move our elves. After spending three days in the stocking over the fireplace, my six year informed me that he thinks the elves are stuck in there. Mommy remembered to move them that night.

Last year is when we started our elf tradition. While I was at Home Goods I picked up two Anna Lee elf dolls. To be honest, that official Elf on the Shelf dude give me the creeps. Something about the eyes I think.  Our elves, Peppermint and Spearmint, appeared to my children one morning on the fireplace ledge with a note from Santa explaining their mission. The kids had a great deal of fun searching for them every morning.

This year I had hoped to be a little more creative in their nightly placements, but as I stated I have a problem even remembering to move them. These are just a few photos of where they have appeared this season.

This is our kitchen chandelier that they are hanging out in. They always make an appearance here as well as in our dining room chandelier. Yeah, I am really creative.

The banister was a new one for me this year and it was cute. The boys loved seeing them first thing when they came downstairs in the morning. Of course this was probably the closest to their level they have been and my six year old spotted the tags.

"Why do they have tags mommy"?

"Um. So Santa knows which elves they are."

Whatever, it worked.

This was my favorite by far. And it killed two birds with one stone. They other day the twins came home from preschool with Ziploc bags of cookies they decorated at school. Cookies covered in frosting, then green sprinkles, then jelly beans, M&M's and marshmallows. Bleh. All garbage. L actually did not want his (he isn't much into sweets) so he gave one to his big brother and one to his baby brother. I tasted the third and oh my gosh it was disgusting. So J still had his cookies. He ate one the first night and another the second night. But I really didn't want him eating anymore of this junk. So last night after they went to bed, I took that last cookie and broke some crumbs into the plate. The rest of the cookie went into the trash. Then I placed the elves on the dining room table with the plate of crumbs.

When they spotted the elves this morning they thought it was hilarious that they had eaten the cookie. Well, everyone but J did. He was mighty pissed that they ate his last cookie. He got over it though and laughed with us later.

Some other places the elves have been spotted this year is in the stockings, in the big Christmas tree and in the Star Wars tree, sitting on top of the TV and sitting on top of a curtain rod. Like I said, all pretty boring. I enjoyed the cookie scene though and so now I am racking my brain trying to think where I should move them too tonight.

Does your family do the Elf on the Shelf? Where are some fun things yo have done with your elf?

Minted Holiday Photo Cards Review & Discount

With the holidays upon is, it is about that time for doing something I dread this time of year. Family Christmas photos. Do you know what an ordeal it is to get four boys dressed up nicely and then sit for a photo session? We originally used to bring them to one of those mall photo places which was always a disaster. The picture was always decent but so not worth the blood, sweat and tears. Last year we decided to try an in-home session with a local photographer. Having the photographer come to us made the world of difference. The photographer was nice and we loved the photo in front of our tree, but she designed an awful holiday card for us. Awful. So this year I have decided that my sister-in-law will take our photos with my DSLR and then I will order them myself online.

Send out this year's holiday greetings with style. Your special photo will look great in these unique and modern holiday photo cards created for you by Minted's global community of independent designers.

I have ordered our Christmas cards from a variety of places over the years, both online and in store, and I get so tired of the same boring designs. Minted offers a wide selection of unique holiday cards using a seamless design and ordering process. There are several card types to choose from: flat, folded and folded with storyboard. They even have an option for you to upgrade to 100% recycled paper. You can use their many filters to narrow your search down to cards that meet all of your needs and they have card that accommodate one photo or multiple photos.

I spent some time scrolling through their many card designs and I found there were so many that I really liked. Usually I have trouble finding one that I think is worthy of my photo, but so many of these were really great. Pictured above are a handful of my favorites. Believe me, I could have added more.

One of the most tedious parts of designing a card online can be uploading your photo and then testing how it looks in several different layouts. When you are limited to only seeing one design at a time, this can take a while. Minted has a "find it fast" feature which lets you upload a photo just once and then on one page it displays how your photo looks in a bunch of different cards. We have not taken our 2011 holiday photo yet, so I used our 2010 photo to see how this feature works.

I absolutely love this feature! In once glance I can quickly see which cards don't go well with our photo or that I just don't like and immediately take them out of the equation. This saves so much time as now I can just focus on the designs that look the best. Of course the computer doesn't know where to crop your photo so these quick glances might not look perfect, but it gives you enough of an idea to be able to make a decision.

After scrolling through the find it fast preview that Minted gave me, I decided to try out this photo card. I felt the presents were a good match for our Christmas tree photo. It took me just a few minutes to edit this card with my photo and text. Be sure you upload a high resolution photo for the best quality. What's nice is if you decide you don't like the card you are working on and go to customize another one, you don't have to re-upload your photo. It is already saved in your session which is yet another nice time saver. Once you finalize your card and options like the back of the card and envelopes, you can submit your order. It will then be sent to a professional graphic designer to typeset and they will email you a digital proof to review.

I am really excited to order our Christmas cards from Minted this year. I have not been happy with our cards the past few years but I know this year I will love them. We don't have our Christmas photo done yet; we usually put our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving and then we will be able to get the photo taken. I still need to figure out our outfits for this year too. Once I have my Minted cards in hand, I will update this post so you can see how they turned out.

Shop
Minted flat holiday cards start at 25 for $64 and are available in increments of 25.

Discount
Minted is offering Green Mama's Pad readers 15% off their holiday orders. Use code READERS38. Expires 11/28/11.

Please note that the opinions and views expressed in this review are my own and based on my personal experience with the product and/or company. I received free product to review.

Happy 4th of July!!

Wishing everyone a very happy, safe and green 4th of July!! We're laying pretty low today, but we took the kids to a local carnival last night and they had a blast.

Happy Easter!

Wishing you and your family a wonderful and very happy Easter! Try not to overload on chocolate and candy, although I probably will. Chocolate is my addiction.

How to Have an Eco-Friendly Easter

When you think of Easter gifts, what comes to mind? Plastic baskets, filled with plastic grass and plastic toys and candies made with high fructose corn syrup and lots of other artificial yucky stuff. I don't know about you, but I'm done with those things. With less than 2 weeks till Easter, let’s look into some ways that you can make your Easter celebration more green and eco-friendly.

Coloring Easter Eggs. It's hard to resist the traditional egg dying kits adorned with cute litle bunnies that make egg coloring so darn easy. But I have to onder, what the heck is in those fizzing little tablets? So I am skipping them from now on along with other artificial food colorings, even ones from the grocery store. Personally I am trying to limit Why? Well for one, Red Dye #40 is thought to cause behavioral issues in children. Not that anyone is eating egg shells, but you don’t know what can leak into the egg and in general, I just like to avoid it. Visit your natural food store of choice and see if they carry some all natural food coloring. In my online searches, unfortunately they do tend to be a bit pricey. Though I did find a plant based egg dye kit at Nova Naturals.

Feeling a little daring? You can also try using foods to color your eggs. You will need several stainless steel pots, one for every color, water, white vinegar and of course eggs. For colors, you can use the following:
Red onion skins (for red)
Yellow onion skins (for orange)
Red cabbage (for blue)
Spinach (for green)
Carrot tops, orange peels or lemon peels (for yellow)
Purple grape juice (for lavender)
Beets or cranberries (for pink)

Put enough water in the pot to cover your eggs and add one teaspoon and the item you are using for the dye. Bring your eggs to a boil and then let simmer for 15-20 minutes. Not only is this natural, it is also fun and educational for your kiddos. If you have compost, you can throw the scraps of onion skins, spinach, etc. right in. I haven’t decided if I want to color eggs this year, but if I do, I’ll be sure to take pictures to share.


Baskets. Head into most stores right about now and you’ll find loads of plastic baskets. Now instead you could make your own, but personally I am not gifted enough to do that. I bought some wood Easter baskets a few years back and I just reuse them every year. They are not a very green choice, but I already have them so I’m gonna use them. Another idea I had was buying a reusable shopping bag and then putting all the goodies inside. Envirosax has a cute line of kids themed bags that I think would be perfect, and then they can be reused over and over. I actually really like his idea.

Easter Grass. Please, please skip the plastic grass. After you toss it in your garbage it is going to sit in a land fill for thousands of years. I’ve read some things about growing some real grass to put in your baskets. Pretty neat idea. But I found another one that I like even better – shredded paper! We have a stack of old documents waiting for me to run them through the shredder so how cool to be able to actually put those into use. I can fill the baskets with the shredded paper and then toss them in the recycling bin when we’re done with them. Love it! Even better would be to add it to your compost (I really need one of these). Now shredded documents might not look very much like grass, so I see nothing wrong with shredding up some green paper, as long as it is recyclable paper.

Candy. Now I am not one of those crazy people that doesn’t let my kids have treats every now and then. Heck I am a chocoholic so it would be quite hypocritical of me to forbid it. I just don’t like to give them sweets filled with artificial colors and flavors. Instead, go for organic candies like Surf Sweets who has some yummy jelly beans. If you are looking for some lollipops, check out Yummy Earth. Best lollipops I have ever had. And Easter is not complete without chocolate right? This time opt for some that is fair-trade and organic. I just came across Sweet Earth Organic Chocolate online who has some really cute Easter chocolates. Once again your local natural food store should have something yummy or head to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. Oh what I wouldn’t give to have either of these near me. {sigh}

Toys. Now this is the point where I ask myself “do the kids really need more toys?” The answer is no. And they certainly don’t need cheapie plastic toys. How about a good book instead? Or maybe some art supplies? Stubby Pencil Studio has tons of eco-friendly art supplies and other eco-friendly toys. They even has a section dedicated to Easter where you can pick a basket and the goodies to go in it. If you want to go the book route, I have had great success at the Target Dollar Spot. They almost always have some small books in there. I recently got the boys some animal/science books that I tucked away just for Easter.

So there you have it, just a few tips to have an eco-friendly Easter. Do you have any tips of your own? If so, I would LOVE to hear them. So please share them with us and have a happy, hoppin, green Easter!