Well Hello Christmas!

I'm in denial folks.  Not only about the fact that I haven't posted since July..What?  But the fact that Christmas is next week is freaking me out a bit.  

We have yet to bake cookies and go look at Christmas lights in any shape or form.  The Christmas cards are addressed but not sent out and not a single gift is wrapped.   But…they ARE purchased.  Whew!

The one thing that was accomplished was the Christmas decorating right after Thanksgiving.  It's kind of the thing we always do on the saturday after Thanksgiving and it may just be one of my favorite days of the year.  A day of Christmas music, hot chocolate, big messes and a frustrated husband outside staring aimlessly at the pile of lights that he doesn't know where to plug in or where to hang them;)  

Yeah it's not all cookies and host chocolate is it.  The funny thing is that even though this season is a lot of work it really is the most wonderful time of the year!

I know I still haven't done a tour of the house after we finished building.  I guess I will be sharing it in little snippets over time.

It has been fun to figure out new ways to decorate this year with a new space.  This is our living room and really the only room we decorated for the holidays.

As you can see we haven't ventured into the land of window treatments or exciting treatments on the wall above the mantle yet.

We are still recovering from post traumatic building and financial stress.  Actually that stress is one of the reasons I haven't been inclined to post much since we moved in.  You could say I have had to sit back and undergo a little mental and physical transformation myself. 

I'll be honest I feel like the mantel is fairly blah but it was super duper blah before I spotted these sparkly gold huge ornaments on sale at hobby lobby. It added a perfect touch to fill up that huge blank space.  I almost bought a can of chalkboard paint the other day to through up above the mantle just to add some interest but I chickened out and ran out of time.

We had to get a new tree this year since we donated ours last year during the move.  Instead of a 7 footer we have a nine footer because of the taller ceilings in the living room.  That meant it felt like we didn't have many ornaments. We don't every do a theme with our tree(yet anyway).  Many of our ornaments are special ornaments from our little road trips and things that the kids have made or picked out each year.  I even have some from my childhood tree on it so we have quite the mish mash and we kind of like it that way.  But…it still seemed a bit naked.  So while perusing hobby lobby for birthday decorations for our youngest daughter I found this gold netting.  It was really wide and way too short so cute it into several thiner pieces.

I also purchased some fancy plastic yet super colorful bulk ornaments at target to add a little more color to the tree.  Instead of just spreading them out all over the tree I decided to tie them together in threes and actually attached the sets of three ornaments to the gold netting and hung it all at once.  I think that it added the consistency and repetitiveness that our new tall tree needed.

This room has really been bare since we moved in so it's nice to see a change in here!  I'm going to save my Christmas money for some curtains though.  Those windows are dying for some clothes. 

 

So there you have it.  A mini living room peek and a Christmas decor post.  Here's to a week off from school and work next week and lots of relaxing with the family.  I hope you are getting to do the same.

Merry Christmas!

Linked to:

Thrifty Decor Chick's Christmas Party

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!

Uhh...Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year?!

Hey fellow Homebodies!

You know who you are;)  Well let's just say I want to be more of one!  Whew can you believe Christmas AND all the New Year celebrations have already come and gone.  I have really mixed emotions about it all.  It comes and goes so quickly yet it is such a busy time of year that I'm often glad it's over.  I think it's the traveling thing that makes it rough right?  Or traveling with 3 kids hyped up on sugar and way to many toys maybe that's the kicker.  Either way we made lots of memories this year with our immediate little fam, friends and the rest of our family as well!  Our little man who's 5 almost broke my heart the other day when he said "You know that song that came on at the end of Polar Express?"(I'm not sure what the song is) "well it made me cry a little bit when I heard it because I'm so sad that the best Christmas ever is over."  Ah you remember that wonderful magical feeling as a kid right?  I still get a little twinge of it and I am so blessed to get to experience it again through the eyes of our kids.  It's awesome!

So in an effort to get back on the blogging bandwagon I am going to share a few pics of the memories we made this year with you and then some of that fun but less important but oh so fun "housey" stuff that we all love will be in the works!


We always start things out with lots of Christmas light lookin!
This wasn't our first adventure this season but I just love this pic of the beautiful lights in Johnson City that we try to take in every year.  Can you imagine getting to run around underneath all of those lights as a kid?  I hope ours will remember it forever.

We did a little decorating.  We kept it super simple and as minimized as possible this year in the rent house.  The thought of digging around in our "to capacity" garage didn't sound like fun.  Honestly it has been years since I bought any Christmas stuff so I guess for me I did splurge on the stuff to make that simple little garland. 

We did some more christmas light looking.  In Austin you never know what people are going to light up!   

This is a horrible phone pic but that's a little moped or whatever you call them...I lost the word..  

Then Bitty Baby turned 2!

She gets to start the gift opening early!

More lights!  This is the Johnson city trip with our three little goofballs.

Posers 

Our son loves to reenact things.  Can you guess the movie?

 Super random dress up and dance to Christmas music moments...Little dude has on a girly bib that I put wrong side up to act as his apron for baking cookies.

Getting their bake on..

 We did not attempt pretty cookies this year.  It was all about just letting them do it all!

We attempted to take pictures for a Christmas card and the process was true to form.  E dressed herself and then had no desire to participate and hubs and I tried to grin and bare it in hopes that out of 50 pics we could get a half decent one.  Well if you usually get a Christmas card from us you know the results;)  We weren't looking for perfect but there weren't even any amusing ones that we wanted to send.  So we just excepted the idea that our friends and family knew we wished them a Merry Christmas and went on our merry way.

I love the way little dude is looking up at me in this one.  Like he is thinking "good luck mom".

We did even more baking

Oh for the love of sugar...

and more light looking...there is so much to look at and so little time.  Bitty Baby ain't so sure about that creepy Santa behind her daddy.

I love this sweet one of the kids admiring the manger scene

It was cold(for us) and the kids were loopy!  You see that sign on the lower right?  Yes we are in Texas and it does say "Never mind the dog Beware of the owner"

Can you believe there was even more baking? No wonder my pants don't fit.  I didn't realize how much we did this!

I never want to forget those sweet little frosting fingers

Little dude's philosophy is E you decorate I'll eat...

hey look here we did do something besides bake and eat cookies...The santa hat was a part of little dudes wardrobe this year.

My mom and all her craftiness sent the kids this felt tree to decorate and redecorate as they pleased.

And then I wore it to our friends tacky Christmas party because well...I'm tacky like that!

We sprinkled reindeer dust on the lawn

Love the delight in little dudes eyes here!

We opened a gift before going to bed to wait for Santa

We did our Christmas morning free for all

Then headed out on a road trip to see some of our family in west Texas

and would you believe we were almost the only part of the country to have a white Christmas!  It was beautiful!

We paid visits to the grandparents..

I love bitty baby's determination here

Got tons of Rapunzel and Tinker Bell stuff

and of course some good ol' boy shoot em up stuff

played in the snow a lot more

and of course ate it for good measure

We also went to my aunt and uncles to visit more family...I love this pic of bitty baby for some reason.  The tights and boots always win me over.

and then we bid farewell to west Texas and headed back home to put up our new trampoline! 

No pics of that yet for some reason...Actually it's because I'm usually jumping too;)

But you wanna know one of the things I have been looking forward to about the holidays or really the "post holiday" season?  De cluttering!!!  It's that time of year again when you get totally overwhelmed with stuff (especially if you have kids) and if we don't control it....It controls us so it feels so good to all go through our things and decide what to donate.  Here is some of the damage that we did.  Can you believe all this stuff?  What is crazy is we are not huge consumers.  Like we don't really buy stuff often.  Especially kid stuff.  So how on earth does this happen?  

Who knows but it does and I am glad to have it gone.  Of course now it has been replaced with new stuff from Christmas that we will donate next year.  

I hope you and your family had a festive and meaningful Christmas and remembered the reason we celebrate at this time of year.  Here is to the goal of simplifying and focusing on the most meaningful things every day!