Season's Greetings!

It's that best time of the year again, isn't it? The season of appetizers, stockings, twinkling lights, vast arrays of cookies, listening to Tran Siberian orchestra on repeat for an entire month, laying around on the couch for days at a time with your family members the weekend after Christmas. The tree at our house fell down a total of three times, two of the times were on top of our own dear Paisley. Luckily she was never hurt, and would only shout in surprise from underneath the tree, "OH NO! Christmas tree fall down AGAIN!!!"

Our Christmas has been lovely. We've been spending time with family, playing new games, eating too much food, watching It's a Wonderful Life, and fighting over who gets to snuggle with my mom's new kitten.

And so here we are, Merry Christmas from us! Here's a few pictures of our festivities. If you were wondering where Paisley got her extremely adorable Christmas outfit, my own dear mother made it. Including the little black velvet jacket!



And here's the Christmas post from last year! Fuzzy memories, and the like.

Thanksgiving with the Pointses

In my true, regular, Liz Points fashion I am just now posting our Thanksgiving pictures. Since Christmas is a week away. Being timely is my extremely large talent! It was a very special Thanksgiving this year, as Brian's brother and his wife and family were on leave from Japan. We hadn't seen them in two years!!! And Paisley got to meet her one year old cousin, Cally, which was amazing and adorable. She calls her CAH-EEE, and still asks about her every day.

We of course had to get some snow pictures, since those are the best types. The brothers took turns tossing their children in the air, and Grandpa made multiple trips up and down the driveway with the sled.

If you are getting a little bit of a deja vu feeling, it's because there were Thanksgiving with the Pointses snow pictures last year too! Which I also posted several weeks after the fact in true, regular, Liz Points fashion.

And here's all of us! It's a framer.

A first time for everything!

So I participated in my first craft show last weekend! It was held at a local church here in Cloquet, and I had a great time. The hubs helped me create this awesome display to showcase my note cards and prints. And my mom stayed home with my noisy, albeit lovable toddler! Thanks guys.

Please to observe pictures below.

Overall I was pleased with how things went! This being my first time, I was just hoping to cover my costs to purchase my spot in the event, but I was pleasantly surprised by my profit. Yay! I'm hoping to do more shows in Duluth this next year. Up nort ya know.

I haven't shared a ton about my art or projects lately, but I wanted to give a little update of the new items in my Etsy shop! We've got a few Christmas cards, and a new hummingbird and robin that weren't in there before.

Check them all out here to shop for your Christmas cards or unique gifts for your pals and fam!!

Oh, and happy turkey week, folks.

my christmas candles are still locked up tight

And so winter has arrived, with much to do. Six inches of it! Paisley was absolutely thrilled, a little more thrilled than myself, but that's usually what being a toddler is all about. Being thrilled about things that create work for your parents. And while the plus side of our new place is that there is about 60% less snow for us to shovel than our last place (or should I say, for the hubs to shovel), the downside is that we only have a small, old, one car garage with no garage door opener and a tiny driveway on a horrible slope that makes it hard to dig our two cars out of and get them out of the driveway without a good push.

And despite it all, despite the slippery roads and the necessity to give yourself twice as much travel time to your snowy destination, despite the mitten-less fingers that freeze as you scrape windows and buckle seat buckles, I'm not feeling quite as put out about it as I usually am. Instead I'm feeling a little bit...cozy? Dare I say...even a little bit Christmas-y? I am typically one to give an absolute strong "NO" to any type of Christmas ANYTHING before Thanksgiving is over, but this year I'm having a hard time not turning on the Christmas music. I'm trying to find the strength to turn on my chai tea Scentsy instead of pulling out my Christmas tree candles. After playing out in the snow yesterday we came in and started our fireplace and made hot chocolate and cuddled in blankets on the couch, and I was wishing that we had our stockings hung from the mantel with care. Christmas cookies, I want to eat all of you. What's happening to me? What is this place?

Here's Paisley's expression when the snow first started falling on Monday. Maybe it's the pure joy and glee of my child that makes me a little less of a snow grinch this year?

Well all I can say is that hopefully these cozy feelings last, because I'll bet my bottom dollar that we won't be seeing anything but white on the ground until April.

160 kids later, and I still had like ten pieces left

A week late, yes, but I couldn't resist sharing these photos of Paisley on Halloween. She calls this her "fwa fwa fee costume." Fwa fwa fee is Paisley-talk for butterfly, and I sincerely hope that she never learns the correct way of saying that word.

Also. Speaking of toddlers. And learning...we started the dreaded potty training. I'm not going to get into any nitty gritty details here...but I will say this:

For the love of everything, please send help.

Seriously, are there people out there who potty train toddlers professionally?? As their job?!? Because I will hire them. You wouldn't even believe how fast I would hire them.

Anyways. Here's Paisley running around trick or treating with her dad, and handing out candy with her mom! We handed out that candy like a couple of bosses. Our neighbors counted the amount of trick or treaters that we got on our street and it was 160. WHOAA! I went back and forth frequently between handing out candy by the fistfulls (we don't need all this candy in our house!!) and handing out only one piece per kid (oh no I'm running out, only one piece! Only one piece for everybody!!!)

By the way I'm not serious about hiring a potty trainer, however much I would love to be serious about it. Ain't nobody got money for that.

Except maybe celebrities and presidents and royalty and the like.


Just for kicks, here's my Halloween post from last year.

And one from 2011! I guess this blog is getting a little old?

From the mouths of babes + fall

So Paisley has started singing! Little bits. Here and there. This is something that I've been looking forward to ever since she was born over two shortish-longish years ago. Her first song was...wait for it...Baby by Justin Beiber. Ya girl! Such is the life when you are on the Young Life music team and you play the Beibs fifteen times a day in your house so that you can sing his song well enough to lead it in front of a bunch of teenagers who have probably known it by heart since they were 9 years old.

It was just such a special moment for us, my little girl laying on her changing table crooning to me "baby baby nooooo!" My heart.

The second song I ever heard her sing was "Happy birthday," randomly in the kitchen to no one and so, there's that.

Ahh from the mouths of babes.

Anyway. I've been obsessed with taking fall pictures lately. I love it. Every single leaf! Every tree, every giggle of delight from my toddler. I LOVE our new neighborhood in the fall. I LOVE walking through the piles of leaves at the cemetery and reading all the grave stones, some of which are almost one hundred years old. I LOVE that our yard got completely covered with two inches of beautiful, crisp yellow leaves that were raked into the most perfect and hugest of leaf piles. And I also LOVE that our yard is small enough that it only took one lovely Sunday afternoon to get them all raked up and into bags. 

And so I have been taking all. of. the. pictures. Hundreds,  probably! Much to your great relief, I have edited the amount down to a fairly reasonable twelve to be shared in this post. All of these were taken around our yard, local park and neighborhood, excepting the very last one which was taken at my mom's house - my sibs' and my fall stomping grounds of years past.

Happy fall, folks.

Friends are nice

So I logged onto Blogger today to write a blog post about fall and put up all of my crunchy leaves photos, when I noticed that I had started this hiking post and had never finished and so, here we are! We have to keep things in order around here folks, and so fall pictures will be coming next week.

Way back forever ago, all the way back in September! We had my best pal, her husband, and their two little sweetie girls over for an extended weekend. Let me tell you, going from having one toddler in the house to three was quite the entertaining change! The days were filled with hikes and adventures, coffee shops, day trips to Duluth, working out little girl conflicts with great patience, eating snacks, kissing ouchies, and taking pictures of our cute kids. The nights were filled with trying new sleeping arrangements each night, good music, delicious drinks, excellent conversation, and a few games of Settlers of Catan thrown in there for good measure.

Here's a few pictures of a morning trip that we took to Jay Cooke State Park! It was a beautiful weekend weather-wise, so we got lots of that good-for-the-soul outdoor time in.

And now we miss our friends. Come back!

I just love that my best friend has little girls because now our kids will automatically without any choice of their own be best friends and isn't it just great how life works out sometimes?