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By Aimee, December 6, 2011

How can it be December already? This year has flown by so quickly, and I am trying to get into the holiday spirit, but part of me is still stuck in summer (or rather, wishing it was summer). With everything that has been happening, I want to call this the “missing year”! But I am decorating our home for the holidays even though I’m not in Christmas mode yet. Our decorations even include some “major awards” here and there. For example:

Yes, that is indeed a leg lamp from the movie Christmas Story! And the leg base lights up too. Right now it is waiting to be placed in the perfect spot, someplace where we can see it often and enjoy it.

We love doing puzzles, we finished an entire puzzle on Thanksgiving, and it’s a fun tradition for New Year’s in our home too. Last year for Christmas my parents gave us a Christmas Story leg lamp puzzle! It comes in a crate marked fragile and everything. We are so excited to do it this year.

And a very long time ago, I bought some little leg lamp lights that go into our garland. They are so cute. Yes, we might be a little leg lamp crazy! But we do regular decorating too, the tree, the gingerbread kit that my mother in law gives us each year (another fun tradition), and of course stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Do you decorate for Christmas? Have you already decked the halls?

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By Aimee, December 2, 2011

Do you enjoy watching documentaries? We love them because we always learn such interesting things. Recently we got the chance to watch Toyland. As the name suggests, it’s a documentary about toys and of course, toy makers.

The movie follows one toy maker’s journey (Tim Walsh) to create his toy, you get to see him create prototypes and pitch the product to big game producers. In between his story, we also get to look back at the people who brought us Slinky, Play-Doh, Radio Flyer wagons, Twister, Nerf, Ant Farm, Kerplunk, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Mouse Trap, Operation and more!

It’s really so interesting how some of the toys we love came about, and what happened to the people who made them. There were a lot of things we didn’t know, for example that there is actually a toy design college! And you really have to hear what happened to the inventor of the Slinky!

Big thanks to Tim Walsh for sending the DVD for our review. Here is a bit of what you will see if you choose to watch Toyland.