12 Projects of Christmas: Wood Ornaments

One of my goals for myself is to complete 12 projects before Christmas and blog about them.  I'm going to try to involve my kids whenever possible.  They love to help.  By involving them in creating gifts for our friends and family, they can learn how much fun it can be to give (especially something you worked hard to make!).

On pinterest, I saw a cute project Mod Podge, scrapbook paper, wood ornaments likes these.

My local Joann's and Michael's didn't have anything similar and I didn't want to wait to get them from some place online.  So instead I found some wooden stars in the regular wood cut-outs sections.  After attempting the original project by myself, I decided it would be too frustrating for the kiddos.  So I replaced it with washable markers.  I also had picked up a couple packs of assorted ornament shapes to color.  (My 4

          

It was easy enough that Jack, my two year old, was able to participate.  Carter, my four year old, was busy working on his ornaments for over an hour.  

I plan on using them as gift tags for our presents this year.  

Appraisal

The new house is getting appraised today.  I'm extremely nervous about it.  We're 99% sure it won't appraise for the price we've agreed to because of the comps in the area.  We're hoping to be able to negotiate to whatever it actually appraises for.  The seller so far has proven to be very stubborn, so the whole deal could fall apart.  I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but Tim and I both can imagine our future in this house.  

Waiting

We playing the waiting game again.  We place another offer on the same house we were trying to get before.    Two weeks after we had originally walk away from negotiations the sellers had lowered their price.  Tim and I hadn't been able to get this house out of our head.  Even though Any house that was in our price range and in one of the school districts I would be okay with the boys attending we had already seen.  So we started negotiating again.
Our biggest issue has been the difference between what the seller thinks the house is worth and what the house will probably appraise from.  We finally worked out a deal that we would split the cost of the appraisal,so if the seller can't agree to sell the house for the price it's actually worth, we wouldn't have wasted as much money.
The appraisal was ordered Monday, so now we're just waiting to get it scheduled.  

Recap

We moved out of our townhouse a week and a half ago.  Tim and I were a lot more emotional about it than we expected to be.  It was the first place we lived in together.  The place where we brought our babies home from the hospital.  The place where we remodel together.  Even though we had outgrown the space, it was still hard to say goodbye.
We are currently living in my parents until we can close on a house.  (Which has it's own set of challenges that I'll write about another day.)  The house we put an offer on over a month ago is back to negotiations.  It's any one's guess whether this will ever end up as our home because we still have many hurdles to jump in the negotiations.  If all goes well, we could be moving in December.  The market is really slowing down for the holidays, so if this deal doesn't work out, we may have to come up with a different short term plan.
The boys are handling it about as well as a 2 and 4 year old can.  Carter is very moody these days.  Pretty much anything can cause a meltdown.  (A bad cold is also contributing to this, too.)  Jack has almost completely stopped napping and is up 3-4 times a night screaming.  They're trying to be so good, but living at my parents' house screwed up pretty much all routines in their lives.  I am thankful Carter has school three mornings and week and Jack has ECFE one morning, so we have at least one thing that has stayed constant for them both.