Our Newest Addition - Tugg

We are the proud family of a new puppy!!!

I got a "wild hair" (if you wanna call it) concerning my husband's Christmas gift this year.  English Bulldogs are my husband's most absolute favorite breed, always have been and probably always will be.  I also knew that my husband wanted an all white, male puppy (if he could be picky).  While I was online last week I got a pop-up for petfinder or some other pet website and a white bulldog puppy was on the picture, so curious me clicked on it (just to look).  I sent the pic to my husband of the puppy and all I said was "isn't she cute".  He got back to me "yeah, whose is it?"  I just had said "urs, for a whole lot of money"  (I knew she was way out of reach.)  Well later that evening he said to me "when you sent me that text of the puppy my heart dropped, and I thought you got me a puppy for Christmas!"  I didn't mean to lead him on.....but out of the rest of that conversation I realized how much my husband was excited at the thought of that puppy...I knew that I had to try and look into this somemore.  I didn't think so close to Christmas I'd find exactly what he was looking for, but I did.  The next day I looked online for breeders in my state and found some who had puppies available.  I called a few and came across this little guy.  I arragned to "go look" at him on Saturday morning and as soon as I seen him and that he was what my husband wanted - I had to get him.  That afternoon, with a lot of help from my wonderful family, we suprised my hubby with his Christmas gift and he literally had no clue!

We've never owned a puppy before and even when I lived with my parents - we always adopted dogs, so this is new for us. 

Well - that's kind of a lie.  Four years ago my husband and I bought an English Bulldog from a breeder, took him home on Friday, went to church on Sunday and the puppy died in his crate.  The "breeder" came and got the puppy and had an autopsy done on him..to find out he had a heart condition called cardiomyopathy.  This wasn't something the vet could detect at his puppy check ups, so no one had any idea.  My husband and I put off getting another one, that kind of just left a bad taste for us.

My daughter wanted to name him cupcake (and if he was a she - we would so go with that name), but we decided on Tugg.

-Mamma G- 



Mommy & Me Monday: Christmas Cookies

Hosted by Krystyn at Really, Are You Serious?
Last weekend my little one and I baked cookies for Christmas, and I realized I never took any pictures and we don't have anymore cookies left.  So......I was determined to make some more cookies for Christmas, Santa, my hubby (who ate most of them), and to get some pictures of this tradition!

So we only made chocolate chip cookies this time around (my hubby's fav).  I couldn't believe when I went to the local major grocery store they had ran out of Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chips...at Christmas time!  So I went to my normal grocery store, and of course they didn't fail me...never do.

So here is us making our cookies:

Of course we have to eat the batter (I used to be a stickler about this, but that is part of the fun of making cookies):

Some of our yummy cookies:

So now we are all set with cookies for daddy and Santa!

-Mamma G-

Trains, Cookies and Asparagus

I just realized that I haven't posted anything all this week.  Time has just slipped by this week.  But I wanted to share this awesome thing my daughter made at her school for Christmas and the story behind it.

This week one of the themes is trains.  So the stories, arts, snacks, etc. are all having to do with trains.  So they made this fun "advent" train out of candy and she can eat one piece a day.

I just think this is such a cute idea.  It would be neat to make these as gifts for her friends some year.

But her and the other kids were in a discussion and they were being asked: 1.-If you took a train ride, where would you go? and 2.-What would you take with you?

My daughters lovely answers....."I would go to the park and take cookies and asparagus."

I just love the way she thinks.  I don't know where that came from.  We do eat asparagus in our home, but we haven't had it since the summer time.  We don't go to the park as much as we'd like to, and we probably haven't been there since early fall.  We go when it's warm, but it's kind of a treat to go to the park for a few hours.  And I looked over all the rest of the kids replies and they were things like:  grandmas, blanket, food, dog.  They were general and "normal" things. 

So today what I will tell my child is...don't loose your creativity.  Don't let it "grow up" while you grow up.  Don't be influenced to not think out of the box. 

-Mamma G-

Christmas Cards!

Ok, I'm finally posting my Christmas cards for this year.  I didn't want to put them on here until I knew people actually received them.  The pictures don't do them justice at all--you can't get the full effect of the colors and embellishments.  They aren't real fancy, but I was so tickled with myself for doing a pop-up Christmas card.  So here it goes.  The front:

The "Merry Christmas" was stamped and then embossed with white powder, those three little dots are little pearly gems that look fabulous with the colors of my cards.  I did use different patterned papers so all of my Christmas cards are different.
The inside:

I also stamped and embossed the words on the inside.  The Christmas trees are stamped, embossed with golden stars on the tops and then just colored here and there with colored pencils.

I love them.  I already have my idea for next years Christmas cards and I will be starting on them once Christmas is over so I can get a jump on them.  I'm thinking I'm going to do less stamping because it is very time consuming and more of using my Cricut machine instead.

-Mamma G-

My Husband Needs A Murse

It's official - I have decided that my husband needs a murse!  (Murse = Man Purse, for those of you who don't know.)  My husband crams sooo much stuff in his pockets.  He used to wear regular jeans with the 4 pockets, but he has out did them and now only buys carpenter jeans because of all of the pockets to stuff all of his crap.  I have taken a picture of all of the things he stuffs his pockets with on a normal day before leaving the house.  He will come home with loose change, drill bits, tools, screws, tape measure, and the list could go on.

Us women can carry a lot of stuff and I don't know about you - but for me:  the bigger the purse then the more I collect.  I think it's justifyable for us to easily do that because we have the room.  But my hubby doesn't have the room in his pockets and he absolutely refuses to carry a murse, man bag, duffel, cargo bag, guide bag, wallet bag, etc.  I know he has no intentions of cutting back on the things that he carrys with him, so we'll see - I may end up sewing a slew of pockets on his jeans.

Maybe he'll consider a jean purse (I mean bag), it could blend in with his jeans:

Or we could just bring back the MC Hammer pants:

Um no.

-Mamma G-

Mommy & Me Monday

Hosted by Krystyn at Really, Are You Serious? Todays meme by Krystyn for Mommy & Me Monday  on Really, Are You Serious? is Christmas Tree Style.  We are to pop infront of the Christmas tree with our little ones and get a picture of us with them.

So we put up our tree 7 days ago and I realize after looking through my wonderful pictures - that of course there is none of mommy.  I have pics with just daddy, pics with just the little one, pics of just the tree, and pics with daddy, the little one and the tree all together.  But none with me in them.  So I had to snap one today!

- Mamma G -