Happy Christmas

The three photos below I got out of order.

Here we are at the end of the day, still festive.

John took this photo. What a cool photo! It's amazing how it merges the reflection of indoors with the view out the window.

Looking out the window in the Centerville backyard. Tom and the boys are snowboarding. I found some plastic learner snowboards online. They were on clearance for $2 each, and on top of that they gave me free shipping.

Thanks, online toy store!

There were a chocolate frog (thanks, Tom!), a copy of a letter from the Ministry of Magic (um, I was getting really into typesetting with magical fonts), and a Daily Prophet for Aidan. All delivered by owl of course.

Aidan got to relax by the fire with the paper before William woke up. (After searching the internet I found a blog post that talked about this insert a newspaper in Texas did back in July when the last movie came out. I tracked them down, and called them for a back issue, which they didn't have. So they sent me to their librarian who found one copy. She mailed it to me. Thanks Victoria Advocate!). It's amazing to me what can be found with not very much money.

Well, I didn't get many photos of what the kids got, so I'll take some tomorrow.

As you can see, John got a moustache (I bet he always wanted that - my friend makes them, they are pillows and they are beyond cool!)

One of the items in this photo is an invisibility cloak.

As you can clearly see, we are having way too much fun.

Disclaimer: please don't copy these to Facebook. Sorry to be a scrooge - just would feel weird having my kids' stuff out there.



































This room was a collaboration - thanks mom for the DI stuff (trunks for $15!), thanks Sprouls for the bedspreads, snitch, hats, Sorting Hat, and brooms!

Thanks surplus sale for desks for $1 each!

The room was surprisingly inexpensive, due to the fact that so many of the items were either gifts (thanks again, Sproul granparents!) or thrifty finds. The biggest expense was the rug which was pretty cheap as rugs go (thanks, IKEA). WalMart had very inexpensive drapes for $9 a set (some day I'll iron them) . The murals were just labor, and materials used were things I already had. John painted in here with paint we already had. The shelves I picked up at DI for a couple of bucks. The funny table was a DI find plus spraypaint. We already had the globes.The internet gave us the banner ($11).

I never thought I would be interested in creating a theme room, but since it was something I also loved, I found it quite enjoyable.