Thanksgiving day Adalyn took her first solo steps. Time is just flying by. Everly starts school this last week. Last week we also had our first snow flurries. We found a butterfly living in our office. I am betting it’s the offspring of one of the many bugs Everly has captured and brought inside.

I cut off a bunch of my own hair and im flabbergasted that Christmas is just a few short weeks away.

I’ve been working hard at planning and prepping for our new advent tradition… The advent basket.

The concept of the advent basket was gleaned from Pintrest. The idea is an item from the basket is opened each day in the count down to Christmas. Depending on your family values and preferences, your basket can be new trinkets, treats, experiences  up-cycled things, recycled things, saved things and more…

Our family is doing a combination of things in our advent basket.

You see, we already have a bunch of stuff that we have each brought to the family, like holiday books from our own childhood, movies, activities and such.  I’m even making a few gifty things, for example…

• I’m crocheting a christmas colored checkers set now for the advent basket. Will share the pattern for the crochet checkers set soon!

• I also have a up-cycled sweater purse in the advent basket that is stuffed with craft supplies for that particular day’s activities. I made the purse from a old sweater and the instructions can be found here if you’d like to try it too.

All our existing holiday movies and books are wrapped up, I used Everlys various painting and drawing papers to wrap them up. All that is left is to wrap and decorate are trinkets that symbolize the various experiences that are planned throughout the month. I made up easy printable numbers for Photoshop that you can download and edit here (a .psd file) if you’d like.

Our experiences for the basket include:

• making candy cane mallows
• going on a holiday lights excursion complete with hot chocolate to sip
• painting the house windows to look like snow and frost
• making and decorating holiday cookies
• writing letters to santa to send in the mail (If you mail them to Santa Claus, Indiana before 12/15 they will be answered for free!)
• making handprint ornaments to give as gifts and for our own tree
• having the kids go through their toys and choose which ones to donate to the less fortunate

On the first of December we unveiled the advent basket and Christopher Popinkins together via a surprise breakfast that our “elf on a shelf”, Christopher Popinkins, made for us. It was a crockpot french toast breakfast that cooked all night, Christopher made it *wink*.

The table was decorated for Christmas, the basket was displayed and the girls got a kick out of the whole thing. We are excited to bring this new family tradition to the mix and Everly really seems to be enjoying it.

The post Post turkey day reflections & a new holiday tradition: The Advent Basket appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Can you believe there are only a few days left until Christmas? We managed to get lots of stuff taken care of this weekend and we even got to see a holiday show while we were at it.

We saw the Evansville Dance Theater’s Performance of The Nutcracker on Saturday night. We were expecting some more like this video.

What we got was not the traditional ballet presentation we were expecting (I am a ballet snob being a trained dancer and all) but it was cute and entertaining. It was also cool to see such a wide range of dancers executing the still being perfected technical ballet stuff they teach you as an aspiring dancer. Kids from about 5 all the way up to teens performed in this and some really are on the way to being stars!

Then we had a nice dinner out at an Italian restaurant and blitzed Walmart at midnight for some stocking stuffers and pet gifts. We got a ton of cat toys and also grabbed Dixie a soccer ball and some big bones to chew. We also found a fun “parents to be” ornament for our tree that we liked.

Sunday N helped me color my hair after we did some house cleaning in preparation for the holiday. I’ve been waiting several weeks for the green light on hair coloring. My doc said hair color in the 1st trimester is not proven safe so I waited till the 2nd trimester to dye away my gray hairs. They were getting bad and I started to joke that I was looking like a hobo with my frizz and multi-colored hair.

We cannot believe that after the holidays I’ll be 4 months pregnant. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long at all, it also means we’ll only have 5 remaining months to get all our ducks in a row. Oh and Christmas is only 3 days away! Time flies.

Oh, the mold tests are looking moldy. It seems we have some mold spores in the basement that are different from those naturally present outside, you can see this in the varying colors of mold growing. Here is what they looked like over the weekend:

The outside sample test resulted in only black and white mold growth, the basement one resulted in black, white, greenish/ blue and yellow mold growth.

Our second basement mold test is sill incubating.

So how are the holiday preparations shaping up for you? Got everything you need? Do you still have baking and wrapping to do? I am trying to stratgize the holiday stocking thing right now. How do you normally handle stuffing and presenting stockings?

The post Getting the holiday ducks in a row and not looking like a hobo anymore! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

We also went out and bought our christmas tree from a local boyscout troop. We didn’t cut our own tree down this year as we usually do since we didn’t have a feel for out new home town yet and we didn’t have time to file for a permit. Next year we will try to follow tradition again.

Anyway we are drinking eggnog and decorating the tree up tonight and we didn’t get any snow. And the basement is full of water again since it rained last night… We expect more water down there tomorrow morning.

Good thing we have a letter out to the landlord about the flooding that will start the resolution process. The thing is the basement looks like it was finished back in the 70’s or 80’s so if it has been flooding and soaking all the wood paneling and carpeting since then we are bound to be growing som mold back there right?

Know where we can get our hands on a mold test kit? We do want to make sure we aren’t breathing in mold that has grown as a result of past years flooding. If we are watch out, I am going to raise holy hell!

The post NaBloPoMo ends and I made it! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

This house would be a nice started home for if it was not so over priced. It’s a 2 bedroom, 2 bath little home outside of town. We want to live outside of town because we enjoy the wildlife and the forest living. Maybe when the housing market drops more so will the asking price of this place!

We put up or store bought Christmas tree (we could not make it out to cut or own down in the weather) last night with the fire roaring. The fire is still going and we are keeping warm while looking at the tree.

I also published the December edition of Motivational Writing over at Gather. If you are looking for some advice or tips on getting through the holidays while staying positive and happy you should check out the article!

So today I have to figure out how to get sweat stains from the arm pits of shirts. I have a few shirts that are pretty awful looking and I am afraid they have gotten so bad that they can’t be cleaned. I have tried soaking them in bleach and also in peroxide.

 Now I am turning to my online friends for advice.. What is you best homemade remedy for pit stained shirts? Please help!

Oh, if you want to see a video of my doggie and boyfriend shoveling the snow you can by visiting this link that takes you to my gather contributions.

The post Today is a snow day!! It's still snowing! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Well, today has been stormy and interesting. My dog ate some chips last night and got very sick today while we were gone. We crate train her so she is in the crate when we are gone.. It’s a very big crate but not big enough when you are having stomach trouble and leaking from both ends.. She made a stinky mess of her crate, bedding and the pillow I made her. She is better now but it was a messy and dramatic situation.

When I was meeting N for brunch today some lady gunned it into the parking spot I had been waiting for. It was a stormy day so driving and parking was difficult. Anyway this upset me quite a bit. Some people are just so nasty and rude. This aggravates me even more during the holidays because that is when everyone should be displaying “good will towards men” and all that… Lately people have just been the opposite.

Our Christmas tree plans are still up in the air. If it snows a bunch on Sunday we wont be going out to cut our tree down… We will have to use my fake tree instead. Well we will see how the weather plays out. How has your day been?

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