It's official...

We've been very busy getting the house ready to sell and now it's official! Our house is finally for sale!

We've been busy cleaning, and selling off stuff, and organizing the house in preparation to sell. You can see my post about about our preparations HERE.


We've been so busy here that we have let Chinese New Year pass us by but as Valentines Day approaches we will have a few things to share...until then I've a few walls to wash but can barely wait to get back to crafting with my kiddos. They've been so patient as we do SO much prep work!

I find it amazing just how quickly "stuff" accumulates. Have you seen the video for the "Story of Stuff"?
It's quite interesting.

With packing, and thinning out and selling off you realize just how much "stuff" we have...I am sooOOooo looking forward to building our Earthship and living a simpler life...full of love, happiness, wonder, creativity, imaginations, nature...and way less "STUFF"!

Happy New Year!

We wish you all a very Happy New Year! Filled with love in even the most least expected places :) Here's where we found our unexpected love this New Years eve...inside a walnut :)

We stayed home tonight and had a couple of local friends come over and two friends flew in from Toronto, for a "quiet" night at home. All the kids were having too much fun to make their new years shakers so we skipped the activity :(

We did enjoy a lovely turkey dinner again (we really enjoyed our Christmas dinner with Gordon Ramsey's help and could barely wait for New Years to do it all over again).

All the recipes for the delicious dinner we had can be found by clinking the titles below. We enjoyed Gordon Ramsey's delicious roast turkey with lemon, parsley and garlic, roast potatoes with Chili and Tumeric, and pancetta chestnut brussel sprouts (which we substituted for walnuts). It was all delicious!!! For those of you saying yuck to the brussel sprouts...give this recipe a try. I am the only one who actually likes brussel sprouts but everyone loved these and even asked for MORE!

Liz who detests brussel sprouts having seconds by request!

For desert and because it was New Years we had Strawberry Margarita jello shots in real strawberries...they were yummy! I got the idea HERE and the recipe is there too. They are a little time consuming to make but OH so good!!! Even for those who said no they didn't want any Tequila, tried them and gobbled them all up! I made two dozen and they didn't last long!

 We had some insides from the scooped out strawberries left so...

we had to make regular Margaritas...can't be waste after-all and we always jump at a chance to pull out the Vitamix ;)

Mmmmmm me and my Margarita

We had a wonderful quiet evening at home...and we hope you enjoyed your evening as well! Happy New Year everyone! 

Tobogganing at Hemlock

Today we headed to Hemlock to go tobogganing.

We've never been to Hemlock before but we had a great time. It's $12 per person over the age of 5 so for us we paid $24 for our family of 4. Sierra and Aayla were both free! Hemlock also provides tubes for you so you don't need to bring a toboggan. Since it's a one time thing for us this winter we didn't need to go buy anything to go and have fun. Biggest plus...you get pulled back up the mountain.

Sierra getting pulled up the mountain

Aayla and daddy on their way up.

Sierra coming down by herself for the first time

Let's go again!!!!

Fun! The nice thing about living in British Columbia is for someone like me who doesn't really like the cold and the snow...I can go to the mountains and get a little fix of it then say goodbye and go home :)

Merry Christmas everyone

We had a wonderful Christmas eve at my mom's, set out our cookies and milk and wrote our letters to Santa.

Then we said our goodbyes to Elfie...hopefully he'll show up again next year and headed to bed :)

In the morning we awoke to stockings full of goodies :)

Santa brought Aayla an IPad...lucky girl! She loves it of course but we love it since she has Apraxia and there are so many apps to help her with speech.

Since Aayla got an IPad, Sierra got a new 3DS and she blew us away. The first thing Sierra said was, "Aayla you can have my old DS now that I have a new red one just like Nana's". WOW we were impressed with her generosity as although we hoped to encourage her to do that...she came up with the idea on her own and that is a major accomplishment for Sierra :)

{FYI normally we wouldn't encourage such extravagant computerized gifts but with our travelling and moving and downsizing we told everyone that DVD's and DS games and perfect for the girls this year since we will be selling off alot of our possessions to start our new chapter in our lives this Spring so I guess Santa heard us}

Bluebell got some new bones.

Daddy got a new book called The Joy of Hobby Farming from the girls. It will be very helpful as we build our Earthship and start our own hobby farm :)

 Both Sierra and Aayla received knitted skirts from Grammy Sue.

 Aayla's top gift (after the IPad) was probably her Thomas boots. She had an old pair she outgrew and wore into the ground. These boots proved to be hard to find and Aayla was extremely happy to receive them :)

Nothing beats laying in a pile of paper
 and starring at new Thomas boots :)

 Daddy helping Sierra to learn a new DS game.

 The floor after the hurricane :)

 Aayla loving her new mushroom house and play set! I actually bought these for the girls for Easter last year, but never ended up giving them to them so Christmas was the perfect time. I also ordered some wooden goodness from Mamakopp but they didn't arrive in time so we will save them for another day :)

 Sierra giving Grammy Sue her bouquet of flowers we made for her.

Aayla modelling her dress Sissy meadow sent her...it goes perfect with her Thomas boots :)

Mom gave me a feather from a Blue Jay. I love Jay's and these Blue Jays are only from the other coast so we don't have them here in BC. I had the perfect way to display it which I saw on THIS blog! Unfortunately for that blog owner you can't see her pictures as she has an issue with google friend...you can read about the issue on her blog. If you'd like to see her ornaments you can still see a picture on Crafty Crow HERE.

 Sierra sporting her new dress from Sissy Meadow.

 TV head...part 1

 and part Two!

We had a wonderful Christmas dinner as well. Ian tried something new this year after watching a Christmas show by Gordon Ramsey and we had the most delicious turkey and gravy and roast potatoes EVER!

Wishing everyone a Very Merry Christmas!!!

Tradition sausage rolls

A family tradition...making sausage rolls... just like Ian used to do with his dad.

Daddy made them himself this year as we had company pop in and Sierra was too busy playing with Max to help daddy. She did however take a few minutes to make our jingle bell bracelets. Max did too :)

Afterwards we put on some Christmas music and they had fun dancing around the Christmas tree.

This morning we found Elfie huddled in the fridge with the whipped cream :) mmmmmm!