A meaningful Christmas

Hi Folks.  It's Friday and that is a good day around here.  I am off on Fridays now which allows me to have some one on one time with our shortest short person!

We are attempting to get into the Christmas spirit in the midst of not knowing if we are moving anytime soon or not and having most of our decor in unreachable places in the garage.

This year we decided to change it up since we won't be getting all of our Christmas decorations out.  We donated our artificial tree a while back because different sections of lights were out, we had had it for about 8 years and it was taking up precious garage space.

So in instead of buying a real one that we may have to decorate, undecorate, and move we opted for this precious guy.

Not the kid..the Tree. Although that kid is pretty precious too.

It's our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree!

 We decided to get a potted tree that we can plant at the new house when the holiday season in all over.

I'll admit that our son cried when he first realized that this was THE TREE we would have.  "It isn't a Christmas tree" he said.  Then we attempted to convince him that this was a special tree and we would have it forever (if we don't kill it that is).  He now loves it and can't wait to see it when he gets home from school.

You may notice it's missing ornaments?

We also decided to make it more special by only putting meaningful decorations on it.

I was blessed enough to get to go to a "Meaningful Christmas" party last night.

Have you heard of this?  

Two moms Carrie and Brittney decided to write a small book to help families walk through a 24 day advent devotional.  There is a scripture for each day and quick little devotional for your family to do together. Just to make it even better there is a special ornament devoted to that scripture!  How awesome is that?

One of my girlfriends decided to organize a party where 24 of us got together and made an ornament that we thought represented the scripture that we were given.

This was my interpretation of my scripture.

Can you guess which scripture it was?

John 8:12

When Jesus spoke again to the people he said, "I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life."

I googled the heck out of "meaningful Christmas light of the world ornament" and didn't come up with much so I had to get creative(or got to;)!

I had a crafting fail when I attempted to make a "world" with a clear glass ornament and some craft paint.

In this pick my world was still looking awesome but I added a little water to spread everything around better and it still hasn't dried...Days later.  My intention was to somehow attach these little battery operated lights to the top so the fake flame would light up the world but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make it happen.  I tried a couple of different glues but just didn't get it right.  I think it could be really cool but I just didn't have time to do all of this with 24+ ornaments.

I also attempted to use the tops of the glass ornaments I bought as a "crown" per say on the "candle".

I thought it looked cool but I didn't want to have a bunch of glass ornaments without their tops and when I found packages of just the tops at Michaels they were all different sizes.  This could still be a great option for someone as you can easily puncture a whole in the middle of the metal top and then glue it upside down over the flame.

Anywho it was back to the drawing board and Hobby Lobby for me.

Thankfully I spied these little glass nativity scenes for 50% off of $1.99.

 I purchased some glittery silver ribbon, attached it to each candle

then I ended up just hot gluing the it all together.

HELPFUL HINT:  These babies ain't gonna hold up!  I didn't have time to do it but I'm thinking model glue may be better for this.   It just has a 2 hour drying time:(.  I would also try to buy electric candles that are flat or smooth on top as mine had a ridge that caused an issue with every variation of this ornament I attempted;)  I mean really it wouldn't be a craft without a couple of craft fails in the process would it?

So I warned all the lovely ladies that these may very well fall apart but at least it wouldn't be the glass that falls;)  They are all prepared to attempt to glue it back together if this happens!  

So what do you think?  Isn't this a fun party to kick of the season.  Our kids are so excited about these ornaments and I'm so excited to have a special tree that only has these very special ornaments on it!

A little construction update

There is a lot happening these days.  Funny thing is it still feels like it's at a snails pace.  We are supposed to move out of our rent house at the end of this month...So uh by next weekend.  Talk about adding a little stress to the holidays!  The plan has been to move into pods and then live with the inlaws but we began second guessing that decision as we were trying to pack and can't figure out how on earth it's all going to fit and what to pack and what to pack....yadda yadda.  So that is where our mental state is at the moment.  Crazy!  

In the meantime the stucco guys have finally gotten to work.  They started and then their mixer broke and we haven't seen them in a while.  

This is what they call the skim coat of concrete and sand.  The final coat will have the paint color incorporated and honestly I think it's going to look a lot like this skim coat when it's done but I've been wrong before.

We had to have 75 % stone per the HOA and they considered stucco stone so we went with a stone and stucco mix on the exterior.  Would have loved all stone but man rock is expensive! Our goal is to have a smooth more modern looking stucco so it doesn't move towards looking spanish.

Another big decision and issue this week was the mantle.  You see we bought this 100 year old piece of oak that we wanted to use.  The problem is it is not perfectly straight nor level.

The white on the end is just sheet rock dust.  It's a really cool old piece of wood.  It's super heavy so it had to be bolted into a header from the back of the fireplace before they could finish sheet rocking. 

The first mission was to establish how high we wanted it.  It was temporarily bolted in so we could take a look.  This is my sad attempt at showing the hubs how high it was while he was away for work.  It was also my attempt at comparing it's height with our mantle at the rent house since I didn't have a tape measure on me;)

Apparently I told the subs something different than what hubs told them so there was some slight confusion.  Silly little things like how high and which side goes on top can hold things up and that has happened quite a bit.  I think it is just part of it?  

If you follow on facebook you've already seen these sneak peeks because I just can't help myself.

As you can see they got busy on the sheetrock too!

Here is the master bathroom before the taping and floating.  I'm still trying to figure out where to put what tile and where to start and stop it in this bathroom.  I really need to figure this out like tomorrow(but I'll be at work) sooo....I'm hoping for a vision tonight.

Some of these are phone pics on a cloudy day.  I think it's going to be brighter than this in the master bath or at least I'm hoping!

Now that's more like it!  Here is "boogers" showing of her light and bright room that's been taped and floated.  Yay for progress shots!  I can't tell you how disappointed we were to come out to the job site for weeks and each and every time be disappointed that nothing was happening.

This pic below is what keeps us going.  Visions of the kids out and about  and exploring their surroundings is motivation enough to keep our heads up and know that soon enough we can move in and settle in to to make lots of memories here!

Next up: Texture on the walls, finishing stucco and dealing with some extra cabinet costs we've run into.  Fingers crossed it happens this week!