Merry Christmas!

It's going to be a busy few days here at the Ish house, so I thought I'd post a holiday greeting to you all today. We are hosting a traditional Italian Christmas Eve again this year and we are expecting quite a full house, so we are on cleaning, vacuuming, dusting, shoving-crap-in-closets duty right now. Ish is helping out by dumping buckets of toys all over the house so that me and Matt have even more to clean up at the end of the day. But he's also telling us he loves us and randomly kissing and hugging us, so we're letting him get away with murder.

So, if you celebrate, have a very Merry Christmas! Our NY forecast calls for flurries and snow showers over the next few days, so hopefully we'll get a white Christmas this year. I hope you all get what you want this year too.

Wordless Wednesday: An Ish-Picked Ornament

Cookies Cookies Cookies

We headed over to grandma's house today to make some Christmas cookies with the all the girls. Ish's best bud was there of course.
Mare Mare was there too - showing off her new standing talents.
Ish insisted on sitting next to Alex at the cookie table.
He was excited to try out all the cookie cutters and the paint brushes.
He didn't quite get the concept of painting gently, so a lot of the cookies were smooshed early on.
Annalise and Mare Mare weren't part of the cookie making action - they just hung out with Pop Pop, ate Goldfish and watched Noggin.
Alex and Ashley painted like pros.
Ish not so much.
His cookies were really just blobs of color.
And the chocolate chips meant for the cookies never made it to any of his.
A lot of sprinkles went missing too.
But in the end, he made a pretty colorful tin of cookies for Christmas.
Thank goodness that spit, drool and nose germs bake out. ;-)

Meet Squish

This is Squish. He is Matthew's little brother Noah. He will be here late April 2011.
Matthew says Noah can come live in our house but he cannot sleep in his crib, share his room, play with his toys or watch his dvds. But he does say that he loves baby Noah and is excited to meet him. The other stuff will just have to work itself out. :-)

Wordless Wednesday: Test Drive

Christmas Home Tour

I discovered an awesome blog hop today - hosted by The Nester. It's a Christmas 2010 Tour Of Homes. There are a lot of wonderful blogs participating, so I thought, why not us too!
So welcome, to Ish's Christmas Home Tour. It actually started to snow when I went outside to take this picture of our house. Very fitting. You can't see them in this pic, but all the windows have a single candle in them.
We bought these little lighted trees at our church's tag sale last year. They were new in the box and I love them!
Our front path is lined with candy canes and classic Christmas bulbs.
On our front door is a wreath my aunt bought us as a housewarming gift 3 years ago.
Inside you'll find our tree in the family room. You might notice a bunch of candy canes bunched on the bottom - I let Ish help me with those.
I bought a new card holder this year.
I love cute little wreaths - I have quite a few scattered throughout the house.
I'm also a fan of doorknob hangers.
We bought a ton of wall art last year at the after holiday sale at Wal-Mart. I think they add a nice touch to our decorating.
Our stockings are hung by the chimney with care.
And there are a few other knick-knacks on the mantle as well.
Our kitchen has quite a few decorations as well, including another wreath - this one on the food pantry.
I can't remember where I got this towel, but I think it's the cutest!
Above the sink, Santa hangs out.
And even the china hutch has a few ornaments of it's own.
Our guest bath is pretty cozy with decorations too.
I have a million holiday hand towels. These are new this year from Target.
And even our toilet is in the spirit this year!
I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peek into our holiday decorating. I'd love to see what you've done at your house!!

Weekend Warrior

Ish is getting pretty handy with his tools. So much so that Matt let him "help out" on a quickie little project this weekend - hanging a small coat hook. Ish loved being allowed to hit the walls without getting yelled at.
Since Ish has little skinny arms, Matt had to do some of the finish work.
But that didn't deter Ish from his task at hand. He was happy to be part of the team.
Nail #2 was just as exciting to Ish as the first one.
Of course, he's still just 2 years old - easily distracted. Every time a car drove by he stared out the window for two minutes.
The drill work bored Ish. So he took a quick rest while Matt turned the screws.
Then it was back to hammering.
Just a few more tap tap taps...
And VOILA!! A little mini coat rack for all our important stuff.
That important stuff being Ish's jackets and my purses, of course.