Watching: Strangely enough, this video. Brad and I laugh about it all the time. Not only is about all things spooky {and our little girl has been known to be frightened of a loud sneeze}, but the song itself is hilariously odd. It’s slow and soft, yet surprisingly upbeat all at once. “Spooky things doing a spooky dance….” Kills me every time.
Singing: Right now, every song she hears. This little lady is a total music lover who chooses to watch music videos over television and can often be found dancing and singing while doing other activities. New favourites added to her repertoire include Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Rock-a-Bye Baby, Spooky Spooky, and I’ll Love You Forever.
Playing: Dress-up. Constantly. Poppop recently made her a wooden dress-up centre and she got all kinds of costumes and accessories for it for Christmas. It’s not unusual for us to have a fairy, jester, or cat roaming around the house nowadays. In fact, yesterday I took a pink poodle out for a walk around the neighbourhood.
Talking about: Everything. Non-stop. Our days are question after question after question. “What’s that?”, “What’s it called?”, “Why for?”, “Who’s dat?”, “What his name is?”, “What dat sound is?”, “What’s Mama talking about?”
Reading: Goodnight Goon by Michael Rex. She and Papa picked it our at our latest library visit, and despite the fact that she can be ultra sensitive and the book is about a ‘cold gray tomb with a black lagoon, and two slimy claws, and a couple of jaws’ etc., we’ve read it every day before both nap time and bedtime since we checked it out.
Eating: During our 3 weeks of vacation, I think she ate her weight in pistachios, cashews, and other fancy nuts we don’t normally keep around. Now that we’re home and getting back into a routine, we’ve been making smoothies each morning (which has been great for getting a good amount of green veggies into our breakfasts) and she loves the whole process – gathering ingredients, making the smoothies, and slurping them up.
♥
Danielle from Sometimes Sweet, a blog I’ve followed for a very long time now, does regular Currently posts which inspired my Gracen-modified ones. ☺
Our house is still littered with Christmas things and bags waiting to be unpacked, but ahhhh… Does it ever feel good to be home. It was back to business as usual today – morning park visit, a trip to the library, hot drinks and treats at 
I’ve seen snow ice cream floating around the web a lot lately (like 
Here’s our line up of ingredients… Cream, vanilla almond milk, pure maple syrup, pure vanilla, and some really good cinnamon. 
Oh, and a bunch of this – light and fluffy freshly-fallen snow.
To get us started, Gracen poured both the cream and vanilla almond milk into a large mixing bowl.
Then she added some pure maple syrup…
Some pure vanilla…
And a few pinches of cinnamon.
Then she stirred everything up.
The next step involved adding the snow.
The monkey requested a mitten in order to get the job done.
With all of the ingredients added, it was time to mix, mix, mix.
We found that alternating mixing with a sort of mashing motion worked really well and broke up the clumps at the same time. Here’s what our batch looked like once it was ready.
To serve it, I added a little sprinkle of cinnamon (Miss G loves it and it has great health benefits, so we add it to a lot of things) and topped it with a pecan.
Not only was it delish, but it was a really fun snowy day activity.
A couple of days ago as Gracen was emptying and restocking Grandma Charlotte’s pantry shelves just for fun (obviously), she came across a can of condensed milk. GC had no idea why she had it or what she’d ever do with it, but I had an idea… Shiny homemade paint!
Here’s what you need to start with… A can of condensed milk, some food colouring, some small bowls or cups (muffin tins work well too), and some teaspoons.
To get started, we poured a little bit of condensed milk into each cup.
We went with 5 separate cups this time around, but you can choose to do more or less.
Next, Grae squirted in about 5 drops of liquid food colouring (more for an extra vibrant finish and less for a more pastel look).
We stuck to the basics and added purple, but obviously you can create any colours you choose.
Then my little helper gave each a good stir.
Here’s what we ended up with.
With our new paints made, it was time to get creating.
I’d say she was pleased with the results, wouldn’t you?
The other fun part about these paints is that they drizzle really nicely due to their thickness… And who doesn’t love some messy fun, right?
Here’s the end result. A beautiful masterpiece created by our beauty. ☺
Most people walk their tushies to an actual hill. We, on the other hand, pile heaps of snow onto the deck stairs, send Brad down a few times to pack it in, and tell Grae that she now has her very own sledding hill. 
Afternoon walks with Grandma Charlotte have become a routine around here… Each day, G returns with a lapful of hay for ‘Santa’s reindeer’ (a white-tailed doe and her fawn) and sets it out on the snow-covered lawn so we can watch them eat it up in the evenings.
Miss G was so spoiled at Christmas that we’re still slowly pulling out new treasures, removing the packaging, and playing with them for the first time. Early this morning, she went down to her room {here at Grandma Charlotte and Poppop’s house}, retrieved her little wooden 
In addition to the mailbox, we collected a few different envelopes, some paper (both lined and coloured), a notepad, some pens and pencils, and some stick on labels.
Miss G got busy writing letters, stuffing envelopes, and adhering labels right away.
Once a letter was done, she’d either pop it in the mailbox, deliver it straight to the recipient, or place it in the ‘to mail’ pile…
So far, she’s absolutely been loving writing letters and drawing pictures for all of those she loves…
Even Bella’s received mail. ☺
Though it feels like we’ve had a good, long winter vacation already (because we have), we’re lucky enough to have one more week to spend in the Okanagan before Bradley’s return to work. And while we’ve been doing more than our fair share of relaxing (and indulging – oy!), we’ve also been trying to make the most of our time with the snow, because before you know it, we’ll be back to our city of rain, rain, rain. 
Today we tried something new – snow spray painting!
In order to make the paint, all I did was pick up a couple of cheap spray bottles (I made sure to give the triggers a little squeeze in store first – some are little hand-friendly, and others are not) and filled them with some cold water and food colouring.
Then we headed outside {in pajamas} to decorate the freshly fallen snow.
We played with the nozzle on our spray bottles to get the flow just how Miss G liked it – in a steady stream in order to achieve maximum distance. ☺
Her goal? Covering as much of the snow in snow spray paint as possible.
“A new spot now!”
Though using a fine mist is a little trickier (because you need to be quite close to the snow for it to show up well), it makes pretty cool results…. Pink snow anyone?
Of course when you’ve painted your little heart out and you’re ready for a break, you can always topple over in a snowbank and have a rest. ☺
Making a bonfire with wet wood in freezing temps isn’t easy.
Four excited little munchkins.
Chay Belly and Miss G having a good laugh together.
Fire success!
Auntie Roz made sure we were a noisy bunch.
Someone went to bed for the last time in 2012 with a noisemaker in hand. ☺ 
Only 6 weeks apart and absolutely smitten with one another.