Cookie Baking Adventures

On Monday, we had a cookie baking adventure at the little townhouse. The night before Sienna started coming down with a little fever, so we decided to stay in all day and let her rest. Cookie baking was a perfect activity for her!

Sienna loved using her cookie cutters.

Nana rolling out the dough. Mama and Nana took turns.

Making lots and lots of cookies.

Chai Guy waiting for some cookie dough to fall down.

Mama's collection of moose, bears, foxes, hedgehogs, squirrels, snails, and moons waiting to be iced.

Getting ready to eat her hedgehog sugar cookie!

We are still enjoying eating our sugar cookies and Sienna is feeling much better, too! We think she may be starting to get new molars.

Sienna Ballerina

In October, Sienna discovered Angelina Ballerina with the book Angelina's Halloween. Since that special day one of Sienna's favorite things to do is dance ballet. She puts on her white wedding dress and white ballet slippers from Auntie Jenn's wedding and dances around the living room.

Her all-time favorite Angelina Ballerina episode from television is called Folk Dancing. Sienna loves the gypsy dances!

So, for one of Sienna's Christmas presents this year Nana took all of us to see The Nutcracker performed by The Olympic Ballet Theatre. Sienna had lots of fun seeing real ballerinas!

Nana and Sienna waiting for The Nutcracker to begin!

Mama and Papa all dressed up!

We had balcony seats.

Sienna's cute expression.

Now, our little Sienna Ballerina has her very own Angelina Ballerina doll, Angelina's Christmas book, and Angelina Ballerina: The Show Must Go On movie. Thank you, Auntie Jenn and Uncle Eric for Sienna's new ballerina must-haves.

Sienna Ballerina and Angelina Ballerina.

(She's even wearing her very special wedding dress over her Fancy Nancy pajamas.)

We can't wait to see her start ballet lessons when Nana signs her up next year!

(She has to be 3 at our local dance studio.)

A Magical Christmas

After a long night (Sienna had a difficult time going to sleep in anticipation of Santa's arrival), we went down the stairs of the little townhouse and found this ...

Sienna looking at all of her wonderful presents.

An unwrapping adventure.

This year's hearth.

Sienna very pleased with her fairy dollhouse from Santa Claus.

Mama and Papa in our jammies in the early morning.

There was definitely a woodland theme going on in the little townhouse this morning. There are lots of little toadstools in the woodsy fairy dollhouse and many, many new owls.

The newest additions to our owl collection of ornaments for our animal tree and a woodsy owl candleholder. Thank you to Nana, Grandma & Grandpa, and Jenn & Eric.

Owl jammies for the whole family. (Mama's second pair!) Thank you, Casey and Mark.

We are having a very happy and cozy Christmas in the little townhouse.

We wish everyone a Happy Christmas and look forward to many more posts in the New Year!

Happy Christmas!

Wishing you a Happy Christmas!

We had a very joyful Christmas Eve in the little townhouse. After Nana came to visit we had lots of fun celebrating a very special day. Mama's grandma, Ann was born on Christmas Eve in 1917. If she were still alive, she would be 93 years old.

The days events included decorating the front door with letter magnets, eating homemade (made by Daddy) pizza, baking yummy goodies, watching a little house favorite "It's a Wonderful Life," opening a few presents, and being entertained by our little ballerina.

The decorated front door.

Nana bought the letter and number magnets at the teacher store.

The last piece of homemade cheese pizza.

Nana's yummy caramel corn, a yearly tradition.

It's a Wonderful Life, another tradition.

Merlin enjoying one of his many new toys.

Chai Guy amid a sea of presents.

Sienna playing with Nana's cookie cutter collection. She loves angels!

Our beautiful little one.

Such a big girl!

Our silver fir animal tree before Santa Claus arrived.

We hope that your Christmas Day is a joyful one!

We'll be adding more photos later on today ...

Love,

Our little family

Blog Hiatus

Just checking in to let you know that we're okay over here at the little townhouse.

Our laptop was slowly dying and Sienna helped finish the job by knocking it off of our coffee table a few times. So, we are now operating on my old desktop, which is pretty slllloooowww.

We'll try to be back soon with a few new blogs. I'm not sure if I will be able to upload photos yet to this computer due to the slowness and timing out.

But, a few things I'd like to share once I figure all of this out ... our little Christmas-y townhouse, cutting down our Christmas tree in the forest, decorating our Christmas tree with the animal theme (once again), the upstairs of the little townhouse, and I'm sure that there will be much more once I upload the photos from my camera.

So, be sure to check back again very soon!

Raining Cats & Dogs

Today it rained cats and dogs in the beautiful Pacific Northwest ...

Sienna and I started out this morning on a little adventure to buy two baskets for our bookshelf. One basket for our seasonal books and the other basket for our library books. We were then going to go to the library for the first time. But, the rain just got in our way!

It was really raining very hard. Sienna was very cute! She kept asking me if it was snowing. There has been a lot of talk about snow lately and we may be expecting some very soon. Then, she was asking if it was Winter now. We've also been talking a lot about the seasons and she knows it's Fall.

Since the weather was so horrible, we decided to make a little change of plans and pick up some rainy day essentials at the store.

On the way ...

By the time we returned to the little townhouse from the store, Sienna was fast asleep. I think that her cozy little bear jacket (that's what we call it) and the pouring rain lulled her to sleep.

The little sleeping beauty.

While Sienna rested for two whole hours Mama cleaned the kitchen and set up our rainy day essentials. Can you guess what we made?

Our rainy day essentials.

Once Sienna woke up, we made My Big, Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies from the Food Network.

Mama's recipe box.

Sienna and Chai Guy helped to make our delicious cookies. Sienna folded in the chocolate chips for Mama and stirred the dough. She's getting to be so big!

Helping Mama make the cookie dough.

Chai Guy helps clean the floor when something falls down.

While we waited for the cookies to bake, we ate yummy macaroni and cheese and walked to the mailbox two times. Walking to the mailbox is still one of Sienna's favorite things to do!

Soon the cookies were baked, but Mama only let Sienna eat one cookie. We saved the rest for a very special treat.

After dinner tonight, Sienna had her first cup of hot cocoa with marshmallows and Mama and Sienna shared a big, fat chocolate chip cookie.

Sienna set up the napkins for us.

I think she's excited for our rainy day treat!

Her first drink of hot cocoa.

And a chocolate mustache, of course!

I think she may just hope for it to rain cats & dogs every day!

Now, it's off to finish watching Harry Potter with our little family. Mama and Daddy are gearing up for a special Harry Potter date ...

The Little Townhouse: A Cozy Kitchen & Dining Space

Welcome to our "little" townhouse kitchen and dining area.

Yes, the word little is in quotations, because it is a pretty small space. I think it is a very standard looking apartment. But, after coming from the little house, which had a rather large kitchen and dining area for the square footage this space does feel a tad bit tiny for my taste. Unfortunately due to the smallness, we won't be moving our refinished farmhouse harvest table into this apartment. We will be keeping our little dinette set until our next big moving adventure.

My favorite spot in the kitchen is the window over the sink. I love seeing nature from my window and hope to someday own a little house with many, many windows.

Our kitchen window.

A few months ago, Grandma Diane and Grandpa Paul bought us two very nice baskets for holding potatoes and onions from the garden. This one is actually the onion basket, but we are temporarily using it for potatoes since our kitchen is small. The potato basket is even bigger. When we have our own garden again, these will definitely be handy for storing our harvest.

Our potato basket.

The kitchen in the little townhouse.

A new kitchen rug and Chai Guy.

We have quite an extensive magnet collection. I don't think we even have all of our magnets on the refrigerator. This is one of Sienna's favorite things to do in the kitchen. She organizes the magnets, dresses her snowman, and gets a bag to pretend shopping for magnets.

Our magnet collection - Part #1.

Our magnet collection - Part #2.

Finally, we have our teeny tiny dining room. Our table and baker's rack fit just perfectly. Mama is still working on making a curtain for the stack washer/dryer, which is tucked inside a little closet to the right.

The dining room in the little townhouse.

And that completes the tour of the downstairs with the exception of a half bathroom. Our living room may be changing a bit after this weekend when we pick up another bookcase and linen cabinet that Mama found on craigslist for a very good price. Maybe it will help us get the upstairs (particularly Sienna's bedroom) organized. The current state of her bedroom is a hodgepodge of boxes.

So, the tour of the upstairs will begin sometime next week. I may pop in with a blog or two in the meantime though.

See you in a few days ...

Saturday Finds

Today was a day full of Saturday finds.

The first find of the day was a new brand of cat food for the kitties. For the past year or so, we've been buying Natural Life cat food. But, now that the Skagit Valley Food Co-op is not so convenient, we were on the hunt to find another (reasonably priced) natural cat food. Daddy found Taste of the Wild Rocky Mountain feline formula at Arlington Health Foods. It's made from roasted venison and smoked salmon. We'll see if they approve...

Find #1 - Taste of the Wild kitty food.

I *think* Chai Tea approves!

Our little family then ventured out to Silvana's Viking Hall for an indoor swap meet. We each found a treasure there! Sienna also came home with a new friend. His name is Nuts and he's a mini beanie baby squirrel. A nice gentleman at the hall let her pick a toy from a basket full of beanie babies.

Sienna showing off her little friend, Nuts.

Showing off her very cute outfit.

Onto our finds ...

Sienna is going through a ballerina phase right now and loves all things Angelina Ballerina. I think we'll be signing her up for ballet in a year or so ...

For Sienna ::

Find #2 - Angelina Ballerina's Dancing Game. ($2.00)

For David ::

Find #3 - A Men At Work tape for his work truck. ($1.00)

For Mama ::

Find #4 - A Matryoshka (nesting) style Santa ornament. ($0.25)

Afterward, we decided to continue our little adventure to a few other cute shops and thrift stores in downtown Arlington.

At one of the thrift stores we found Mama this snowman garland. It is so cute! We have quite a few snowman decorations for Christmas, so I think it will fit in just perfectly ...

For thesunflowercozy ::

Find #5 - Snowman garland. ($1.00)

So cute!

Overall, it was a pretty good day of (cheap) Saturday finds! Now, we can't wait to decorate the little townhouse for Christmas. It's just around the corner ...