Christmas Decor 2010

I wanted to be a part of the big Christmas tour of homes at Nesting Place, but I think I'm a little late. I thought I'd share anyway.

I feel like my decorations are even done really. I didn't include a pic of my stairs because I only have naked garland wrapped around the railing and a bow tied with the ribbon spool still hanging off of it. I couldn't commit to the ribbon, so it's been that way for a couple weeks now.

Anyway, on to the pictures....

I showed you my mantle and new stockings,here.

Here's the living room tree. Every year, I say I'm gonna get a big tree during the after Christmas sales. Our ceilings are so high that this 6 ft tree looks like a dwarf. We'll see if I get one this year.

I added some green ornaments this year. Most of them I bought at the Dollar Tree and Walmart had some great glittery ones for $1.

One of our nativity scenes.

I love to see how the figures are rearranged daily. Notice the optimus prime next to Joseph. He was there at the birth of Jesus, right?

Here's our upstairs tree with all our family ornaments. I used to put up a larger tree, but half the lights were burnt out so I picked this small table top tree at Goodwill for $5. It was prelit with colored lights (oh yeah) and was still in the box. The only bad part is that all our ornaments didn't fit. We just picked out our faves and it was all good.

I really wanted one of these Little People nativity sets last year, but they were sold out. So, when Target had them for half price at $13 a few weeks ago, I snagged one up! I love to watch my 2 year old play with it!

He always puts the sheep on top of the barn where the angel is supposed to go. He also likes to put most of the characters in a big cluster. Apparently, we've lost Mary. That's never good.

Well, those are the highlights. If you want to see some really awesomely decorated houses, go here!

Introducing...

Vintage Merriment

My friend, Nancy and I just opened an etsy store.

Click on the links on the sidebar!

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Christmas crafts

Well, we are really getting ready for Christmas this year at our house. I really wanted to do an advent calendar with the kids this year. I haven't found a ready made one that I really like. I wanted to make one and found some awesome ideas for them all over blog land, but there was one problem....it was November 30th when I finally decided to do it. So, I didn't have much time to be creative.

I was browsing the aisles at JoAnn and found an advent calendar kit for like 5 bucks.

It took about 26 hours to put it together. Not really...it was more like 2 hours, but still. I think I might could have made one of the other super cute ones in the same amount of time. I still think it turned out cute and it was totally fool-proof because I didn't have to think a bit- just glue all the pieces together. The only thing I changed from the original design is I put burlap over the white polka dotted chipboard back pieces.

I decided to put verses in each pocket rather than candy or anything like that. My kids have really enjoyed reading them every night. I hope this will be a great new Christmas tradition. Maybe next year, I'll make a cute one! For more advent ideas (for next year of course!) go here.

I also made new stockings this year out of burlap and some trims that I had around the house! It was fun, except for cleaning up all the burlap fuzz!

Go here to check out some other great Christmas crafts!

Our Christmas Mantel

The Lettered Cottage was hosting a mantel party yesterday and of course, I am late!

I decided to decorate our mantel a little differently this year. If you want to see last year's mantel, click here. Because our tv sits right on top of our mantel (not too excited about that, but it is what it is), I can't use really thick garland or the remote doesn't work...which makes hubby and the kids upset. So, I went with a skinnier garland and a few red bulbs scattered throughout.

I saw these topiaries on a blog (I thought it was How Does She but can't find the post now.) and decided to make some of my own. ((( ----Found them. It was here.)))

I only spent $4 at the dollar store on glitter and 2 styrofoam cones. They are placed on top of some brass candlesticks spraypainted cream. The larger round topiaries are made from some old forms I kept. I stuck them in my trusty white Ikea pots and threw some moss and ribbon on them. I think they might need a polka dotted bow tied on the stem. Don't look too close- I ran out of glitter!

Next to the topiaries, I put some milk glass vases each with a silver ball ornament on top

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I bought these stocking holders last year at Target after Christmas for like a buck a piece. Although the shapes are kind of cute, I was afraid they were a little too juvenile looking.

So, I peeled off the felt backing on the bottom and unscrewed the metal weight.

Then, I unscrewed the decorative piece and put it all back together.

I had been wanting some stocking holders for a while, but they can be so expensive when you have to buy 5 of them! This was a great fix and they are plain so they are versatile with any Christmas decor.

Speaking of stockings, I made new ones this year out of burlap. I made each one a little different and accented them with trims and buttons that I already had.

I like the way it turned out this year!

Go on over and check out everyone else's mantels to get some great ideas!

2010 Christmas Cards

Well, it's almost the end of November, so it's time to start thinking about Christmas cards. This was our card last year.

I loved the way it turned out. I just made it in Photoshop, but I think I'm going to try out Shutterfly this year. They have some awesome designs to choose from.
I"m trying to decide between this one, this one and this one. There are so many great designs to choose from. I love the ones with several pics, but we'll see how well my kids cooperate for more than one pose!

Don't forget to check our Shutterfly's wall calendars and canvas wall art. Both would make great presents for grandparents!!

Do you want to get 50 free Christmas cards from Shutterfly this year? Check this out : http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/

Do you send Christmas cards? Do you send photo cards or premade cards? Well, it's almost time to send those babies out, so you'd better get to it!

Halloween at our House

I have been such an amazingly bad blogger lately. Oh well, there are more important things in life. I do love documenting our outings, projects and just everyday life, though, so I'm attempting to get back at it.

Here are some pics from Halloween:

Beetle decided to declothe (Is that how you spell it? ...if that's even a word!) himself and jump on the trampoline while K & E drew faces on their pumpkins.

Then there was the messy part.

I think this was the first year that they actually pulled most of the guts out by themselves.

We had a variation of costumes this year
E and B were Jesse and Woody for our church Fall Festival.

K was originally gonna be Buzz, but I think he decided that might be a little juvenile for a mature 8 year old and decided to be a basketball player.

On Halloween night, E switched it up and was a ballerina, I think. K was still a basketball player and the Woody costume was falling apart by this time, so I just threw a jersey on B.

We had a great time and still have LOTS of candy left!

Well, we'll see if I can keep up with blogging a little better. I have some updated house pics to share, so I'm going to try to get those up soon!

Where did October go?

It's been over a month since I have last blogged! Trust me, I've been busy. So here's what's happened since September 13th (my last post).

This boy turned 8!

We went to a lot of football/cheer practice and games.

We had a great fall break where we went to Gatlinburg!!

E's cheer squad took 1st place overall at cheer competition!

Then she turned 6!

And finally, my friend and I participated in a craft show at her office. We had tons of fun and actually sold stuff!

During all this, our church was going through the book, Radical by David Platt. As a church we have several commitments (you can find them here)- two of which are reading through the Bible in a year and praying for the whole country throughout the year. This really has been an awesome experience so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how God uses it to bring us all closer to Him and to make more of a difference!

So, that's it in a nutshell! Hopefully I will be able to keep up with blogging a little better, but we'll see!

Family Night

Kris and I have been talking lately about how we felt like we weren't being as intentional in discipling our kids as we once were. With football/cheerleading 3 times a week and on Saturdays and church on Wednesdays and Sundays, it is just so busy. So, we decided to have a weekly family devotional time on Friday afternoons. We plan to do it pretty soon after the kids get home from school so that if even if there is something else going on that night, it won't get in the way of our family time. My friend Kelly and her husband, have a great website called Family Muscle. It has plans for family nights all laid out for you. It is a really awesome tool to help bring your family closer to each other and God. So we decided to try one of them out. We chose to do the Back to school Family night, even though school has been in session for a month or so!

I only had a day to pull together decorations. I just used stuff I had and a couple things from the dollar spot at Target. ( I will go ahead and apologize for the poor quality of the pics! I realized right before dinner that my good camera's battery was dead, so I had to use my son's old point and shoot!)

I really wanted to find some school trays but didn't have time to really search them out, so I just bought the styrofoam ones. We had rectangle pizza, corn, salad, school bus cookies and milk.

The food was really good! So good, that I think we'll have it more often!

After dinner, we took all of our broken crayons and melted them into round disk crayons. The kids really enjoyed doing this.

Once the crayons cooled, they really liked coloring with them.

After craft time, we played a few games like show-and-tell...

and Red Rover, Red Rover.

We ended with a devotion and talked to the kids about obeying their teachers, leaders and of course, parents!

We really had a great time and look forward to our next family night!

Now go check out this website and get started planning your family night!