Today's little Pinterest project

A few weeks ago I pinned how to make felt tea bags for Madeline's tea set. Honestly, I wanted to make them a part of the Christmas gift but time got the best of me.
Today I finally got around to making them with her. She was so excited! However, after helping trace the pattern and pick the colors she was done because cutting the felt with her safety scissors was a bit difficult. She was very into watching though. It started off as a super easy project but by the end my sewing machine and I were at odds. Don't get me wrong, I love learning with my machine and this project was simple but I didn't plan on learning how to take apart the shuttle on the machine and then do it about a million times because my machine was hungry for the bobbin thread...by the way, if you know how to fix this issue comments are SO very welcome!

At any rate, I finished and the results turned out pretty cute, if I say so. They are not perfect but the do the job:-)

PS- we put tiny dried beans in the tea bags to make it look like there is tea in them:-)

Santa, snow & German dinner

Christmas Eve

Here's a few picture from church, new pjs, reading the night before Christmas and Santa's cookies and milk

Cookie decorating night

The kids waited, not so patiently, for us to decorate our cookies for Santa. I didn't bake anything else this year because I didn't have anyone to feed it to so we didn't need it. But, you have to make Santa cookies:-) Madeline was all about it, while Ben put a few sprinkles on one cookie and then ate it the rest of the time, lol. Adam even made the Hancock building and a cubs cookie in honor of our first Christmas here. Santa's going to love his cookies!

Downtown adventures

Yesterday we went downtown to experience Chicago @ Christmas. We saw window displays, had hot chocolate at Ghirdellis (sp?), helped Santa out a bit ;-) & went to chriskindlemart. I only wish we could have really enjoyed the market but EVERYBODY was there & we could move. But, it was still cool. We will go back for sure next year; but, during the week.