Tuesday, December 16, 2008

What my Christmas sweatshop has produced today

Well, its christmas time, and when you decide that you want your gifts to be "meaningful" you end up making alot of them yourself. (which sounded like a good idea at the time, but now.... I mean yikes! I have so little time). So, here are a few of the creations. First up are my thumbwrestler luchadores. You wear them on your thumbs when you thumbwrestle. These are the only ones I could scrounge up for the camera. The others are camera shy. I am growing very attached to these guys. I have even started naming them. I know, I may be spending too much time indoors with them.


Anyway, these guys are small, but its alot of detail work.

Okay and here is the yoda keychain, he might be my favorite. I am going to also make set of yoda, leia, chewy, and R2 as refridgerator magnets if I can buy a few hours from the next couple of days. At the same time that I am doing these, I am thick in dressmaking land.
These next few pics are all of the pieces to a magnetic fishing set I made. Each of the pieces has a magnet inside and then each set has a "pole" with a magnet painted like a bobber.

Starfish

Jellyfish
Seahorse and Starfish
Fish
Okay so, hopefully I will put the finishing touches on the six dresses I am also in the middle of. I am in it deep this year, next year I will have to start in like April....

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Coppocks Christmas Letter 2008

a View of our front yard....... didn't the tree turn out lovely this year?



Dear loved ones and those we just tolerate,

It’s been another amazing year for the family and while I haven’t bothered to call or email most of you, I hope you know that you are on our minds and hearts. I hope your year has been as fantastic as ours has. I know that since winning the lottery last spring we haven’t been out as much, please pardon us but we didn’t want any of you to find out and come begging for money. You can’t imagine the pain of having to shove your own dear, money grubbing Grandma out the front door when she comes begging for money.

Thankfully all the extra money has been wonderful to fund our globe hopping. We choose a different exotic destination each month.

We are so lucky to have such wonderful children. Amazingly, after the birth of our last child, my body sprung back to a size zero and you can bounce quarters off my rear end. The doctors are calling it a medical miracle. Although the children should only be in elementary, thanks to the miracles of home schooling, all three of them will graduate high school next month. John has decided on Yale. When he isn’t practicing his world class violin skills, you can usually find John at the kitchen table working Calculus proofs. Thankfully, like all of our family John was born with perfect teeth, and god-like good looks.

Chloe is still a little scamp, but we have turned her natural flair for the dramatic into a hobby. She has the lead in the latest version of “Annie” on Broadway. She is such a good girl; she has taken up sewing so that she can make blankets for orphans in Uganda.

Emma of course is still as thoughtful as ever. She has been accepted to MIT at the age of 7. We couldn’t be prouder of her. She works with her father and I every weekend designing better, safer aircraft. She is tentatively scheduled to go up in the space shuttle this spring. We are so proud of the children, we have had to expand the library wing of the house to hold all of their many and varied awards.

Brian got a promotion and now makes an eight figure salary. We truly are blessed. Frankly we are convinced that God likes us a lot better than everyone else. He got his Christmas wish this year, a rock hard set of abs. Thankfully he was able to complete the roof on our ranch in Oahu in November so that we will be able to have Christmas in Hawaii. Having Thanksgiving in the South of France was really quite a disappointment when we had dreamed of Hawaii. Oh well, I guess we just have to make lemons from lemonade? Despite all of the things on his plate, Brian always manages to make it to EVERY SINGLE ONE of the kid’s events. I have never seen a more dedicated husband and father. We could not be more in love, each and every evening I am treated to wild, hot, monkey marital bliss.

It has been an amazing year for me as well. I won a blue ribbon for my apple pie at the Betty Crocker Bake off. However I don’t plan to rest on my laurels as I plan to win the Bunko tournament in Prague this year and I am already choreographing a mind blowing set of dance moves to “Blinded me with Science” that will take the dance world by storm!!!!!

And that concludes another year in the Coppock household! We hope you too have had a wonderfully blissful and rewarding year just like us, but we rather doubt that you will. We hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

With lots of love until next year,
The Coppocks

Friday, December 12, 2008

Not my words, but it meshes with my thoughts....

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly;
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
"My Symphony" by William Henry Channi

My new pet

Use your mouse to click and feed him, he is so cute and cuddly. I find him relaxing and a little mezmerizing to watch.....

Thursday, December 11, 2008

christmas decorations....festival of lights

I hate to pick on Christmas Decorations because its such a fun time of year. But sometimes my dark sense of humor takes over. We took the kids to the festival of lights and they had this photo op spot with santa and mrs claus.... cute right???
Except when you get in closer, Santa's eyes are a little, um.... scary. I think he is trying to eat my soul....... He whispers bad things to me....... Tell me that is not disturbing!


they had a cookie decorating station at the festival. The kids LOVED that! It was their favorite part. John had a hard time seperating from his icing container.


More of John and the icing.. he does his cookies like I do my spaghetti, seperately. He eats his icing and his candy seperate from his cookie. I eat my spaghetti with butter and my sauce in a bowl like soup. My husband finds this unnatural.



Emma decorates and eats her cookie without getting a drop on herself. I have no idea how she does it. I can't even do that.











Oh, shes watching while I steal my sisters candy.... look pathetic.....that always works..






















Im not sure why the geese were following us, but all the kids thought it was a BLAST!









Emma took this picture. She is just now starting to try out picture taking.










Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Snow Land, Snow Land, Wonderful Girl and Boy Land.....

If you happen to live somewhere that is snows regularly, then you will surely be laughing at all this enthusiasm.....

IT SNOWED!!!!!!!!!! SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW!!! A Christmas Miracle!!!!!! I'm a little excitable.

It was actually really perfect. Emma and I decided to decorate the tree tonight, and I made hot chocolate and wassail. (hot chocolate recipe will be a the bottom of the post). We were listening to carols, and we went to take the puppies for a walk when we realized it was snowing. We ran home, woke up Chloe and John and ran outside to play in the snow!!! It was awesome, and my children are sneaky snowball throwers. It was also extra nice because I had all the hot drinks ready and we were able to share with the neighbors and this was nice, they were very impressed. See, normally, I am the slacker mom padding down the driveway in my Snow White PJ bottoms and Brian's old tshirt to grab the trashcans at noon thirty, so it was nice to have the brief facade of pulling it all together :).


Excited just doesn't even begin to cover it!

Is it just me, or does he look like a purpley striped Jawa from Star Wars? Oh and he was the biggest snowball thrower ever! SUCH a sneaky pete.





Snow Angels







John in his sisters Purple fur coat.... yeesh




My decorating helper.







The Mantel







The Stocking Advent Calendar







The Tree. We learned last year to put the tree up high. Last year we had this awesome tree that was like 7 foot tall. Every morning I would find broken ornaments, branches gone.... This year we wised up and did a four foot tree on top of the entertainment center.





Hot Chocolate
INGREDIENTS
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1 pinch salt
1/3 cup boiling water
3 1/2 cups milk
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup half-and-half cream

DIRECTIONS
Combine the cocoa, sugar and pinch of salt in a saucepan. Blend in the boiling water. Bring this mixture to an easy boil while you stir. Simmer and stir for about 2 minutes. Watch that it doesn't scorch. Stir in 3 1/2 cups of milk and heat until very hot, but do not boil! Remove from heat and add vanilla. Divide between 4 mugs. Add the cream to the mugs of cocoa to cool it to drinking temperature.










Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Its looking more like Christmas......

We got the outside lights up. its our first year to decorate outside, so this is really exciting for the kids (and me). We are making some snowmen over this weekend too that I will have to post about. And we are decorating the inside over the next few days..... I love this season!!!