Pizza's, Parties and Pounding Headache's

We are SA-LAMMED this year with parties, photo shoots, church events, extra music practices, Dr.'s appointments and just the normal life on top of it all. It's easy to get overwhelmed with all I have going on, especially because I leave 6 days before Christmas so I have to cram even more into the time I'm here.

 However, I'm really trying to make this a fun Christmas season for the kids since they are both old enough to really understand--and, they're at easy ages, so we aren't as tied down by nap times, bed times, etc. I found a cute idea online about making Christmas-shaped pizza's and thought it would be so much fun to do with the kids.

(click on any picture to see all the pictures in this post in album form)

An awesome part about these pizza's was that I made whole wheat dough and the veggie's were the decorations--so they were super healthy!

 First up was our snowman

 I gave the kids piles of "snow" (aka mozzarella cheese) and they covered him well.

 He kept eating the cheese. What a surprise.

 Olives, carrots and zuchinni finished off our edible guy.

 Isn't he cute?

 Next was the Christmas tree, which in my opinion was oddly shaped, but I did the best I could.

 Us with our finished products...the kids LOVED making (and eating) them!

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On Monday evening we had a big young couple's party at our house. This is the second year in a row we've hosted it, and while it's a lot of work, it's so worth it for the great time we have!

Another cool centerpiece idea! Fill a vase with ornaments, water and floating candle. I put mine on a platter and put greenery and berries around it too.

This year I found lots of cute "Christmas" recipes to pass around for people to make. This one actually came out of taste of home--it was a delicious ranch dip. The funny thing was, no one wanted to mess him up and eat him! :)

 Because there were so many people, I wasn't able to get pictures of everything, but a little while into the food line I grabbed a picture of this veggie tray Christmas tree...

 A caramel cheesecake dip with heath and chocolate...this recipe is a keeper for sure!

 A chocolate mint roll made with andies mints--beautiful and delicious!

 I think including our babysitters who were upstairs wit the kids, we had 50 people in the house. So much fun!

 The gift exchange was fun because gifts could be stolen, but only 3 times. As usual there were the popular gifts that everyone wanted, like an ipod docking station, ULTA gift card, TX Roadhouse gift card, etc!

 Hosting and being a photographer doesn't really work too well, but I did manage to get someone to take a quick picture of me and my man :)

 Steve and Kelly

 Anthony and Nicholle

Sadly, I have no other "couple" pictures of the wonderful friends who filled our home that evening, but it was a great night filled with lots of laughs, way too much food (I woke up with a pounding headache the next morning from all of it--sugar, fat and salt--not a good combo when I don't normally eat much of it) and a great devotional by our Pastor about what we can add to our marriage to make it sweeter.