What's been keeping me busy lately...

I really love my job ....

Merry Christmas!

Life has been busy here in these last few days before Christmas - tomorrow we will begin many of our traditional festivities. With that being said, I'm planning to take a few days off from blogging. I know I'll have lots to share after Christmas but until then - I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas! For those that don't get a copy of our Christmas letter and photo - I've decided to include it below. This year I just wanted to do something simple so I typed a very quick letter and had copies made of a favorite photo from this past fall. So if you're interested - here is our letter and photo ... Many blessings friends!!


Dear Friends and Family,

We have had a truly blessed and amazing year and hope you have too.
Although God's Word never promises that life will be easy, and though we certainly face our share of heartache and pain; Still we see God's goodness and blessings continue to be poured out on us. We are thankful for good health, a comfortable home, great family and friends and a relationship with a living God who loves us and cares about every little detail of our lives.

Our girls continue to grow like weeds - well, more like beautiful flowers actually! They are into sports and music and reading and are truly the light of our lives. We have enjoyed some amazing times with them this year including trips to Canada and Bermuda. The photo included was taken at the top of a mountain in NH! Our hearts are continually filled with thankfulness for these two sweet, beautiful, healthy girls!
We wish you and yours a BRIGHT, MERRY & JOYFUL Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year!
With all our love, from our home to yours!

Get Real!

OH BOY! This post from Kimba is all me!

Take a minute to hop over and read her post ... then come back here ....

I seriously felt like that could have been ME writing that post! Yes, I love Christmas! Yes, I'm trying to focus on the joy of the season. Yes, I love snow and spending time with my kids and baking and crafting and sewing and all that fun Christmasy stuff.

BUT, yes - I have been a monster Mommy and a witchy wife lately. Yes, the stress of trying to 'do it all' can get to me. Yes, checking out other blogs can fill me with feelings of inadequacy and the desire to do more, be more, make more.

It's not that I'm being fake with you friends. Like I said, I really do love Christmas and all that comes with it. But the reality is that sometimes it doesn't bring out the best in me. And I'm ashamed to say that - but you need to know it so you don't think for one second that you are the only one out there who is stressed, tired, grumpy and overwhelmed!

The best news of all though? Grace. Forgiveness. New mercies EVERY morning. A chance to wake up and start over. Begin again. Be redeemed.

Praise God for that!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Today I slept in. We went to a very fun Christmas party last night with some friends in which we didn't even get home till about 12:30 - add that to the couple of fun drinks I had at the party and I was definitely glad to sleep in today!

So I woke up this morning and found out that snow is on it's way - lots of it! But being the crazy person that I am - I needed to go to walmart and the grocery store first! Yeah, I know, I'm totally insane - the last Saturday before Christmas, two kids in tow, right before a major snowstorm - not a good combo! The roads were packed, the parking lots were packed, the stores were packed, the lines were packed - craziness at every turn!!

I bought the girls a donut at the DD in the walmart and we were off and running to get everything we needed. I stupidly forgot to get myself anything to eat though. By the time we finished in 3 stores and got home it was noon. Noon - with no food in my belly and cranky from battling the crowds and wrangling two kids through stores with their 'oh Mom, can I get this?' every 5 seconds!! Don't they get it that it's almost CHRISTMAS??!! Of course I'm not buying the junk in the stores NOW - I've already spent too much on all their Christmas stuff!!

But now ... all is well. Everything is bought. We have food and goodies for the few days. We have Christmas movies to watch, gifts to wrap and snow on it's way. We get to kick back and really enjoy these wonderful last days before Christmas! Church will likely be cancelled tomorrow. We will be housebound. But it's the most wonderful time of the year and I am so thrilled to have this time with my family. Sometimes I think God throws us a big ol snowstorm just to make us slow down and e n j o y - with no distractions and no where to go - we simply share time and make memories together.

So here's hoping you and yours are enjoying every moment - whether you have snow to slow you down or not - relish these days. Remember the moments. Christmas comes but once a year!

Book Tradition - days ???

Just like the rest of you I am trying to finish up a lot of loose ends for our Christmas, plus on top of that I'm also working at the flower shop a lot for the next week. So that being said - I regret to say that I simply have not kept track of the books we've been opening each night! The girls still open one each night, and we still read them together along with a page or two from the ADVENTure of Christmas ... but I cannot remember all the titles - sorry!

In other news ... I finished my baking today. My shopping is done. I'm waiting on one or two more addresses for cards, but otherwise we've already mailed out about 100. I finished one daughter's blanket and am about halfway done with the other daughter's blanket. And I have about half of my wrapping done. SOOOO, I'm getting there! Had hoped to have ALL these items already checked off my list, but things have been busy around here and I just haven't finished it all yet.

Oh, and it's COLD here today. We had another weird 'warm' day with temps in the 50's ... but today we're in the 20's with cold wind and it feels very much like winter now!

Here's a random thought I was wondering about today ... for any of you that homeschool - do you take a lot of time off in December or do you press on and try to get studies done along with all the other stuff? I'm finding it very hard to get stuff done and try to keep any of us focused on school work. I sense that we are going to be playing catch up come January - but in a way that's fine, I like to enjoy this season and the girls have been great helpers for me lately.

I'm leaving you with a new fave Christmas song ... we bought the Taylor Swift Christmas CD and really like it so far - even if there are only 6 songs on it! Here is one of my faves ...

Date Night

Bob surprised me by taking the day off work yesterday so we could have a nice date night together. We went out to one of my very fave restaurants and had a really great evening. He even bought me flowers which he hardly ever does! It was really nice in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the busy Christmas season to have a nice, quiet date night together. I am blessed!

Partylite Goodies!

Remember I mentioned a couple weeks ago about having a Partylite candle party? Well all my goodies came today - I arrived home to see 3 large boxes on the porch - it was so exciting! The girls helped me sort which items go to which friends and then I got to check out my stuff.

Hosting the party was so easy and fun. And even though only 4 people were able to come I was still able to get 2 major items for FREE, plus for a very small amount of money out of pocket I got A LOT of votives and tealights. Just how many is a lot?? 7 DOZEN VOTIVES AND 3 DOZEN TEALIGHTS!!! I will have enough to burn them every day from now till Summer! =)

I'm so thankful that my friends were able to come too - we all had such a great night of fun and laughter.

So, here are the items I got ...

This item is a 3 in 1 thing - You have the large vase piece, the smaller vase and the small tea light holder. You can use them all separately or you can mix and match the items as you'll see in the following pics. I put some colored shred in the bottom of the large one and some cinnamon scented oil with reed sticks in the med one, then a scented votive candle in the small one. Check out the pics to see how you can re-arrange them ...





This is the other item that I got which I absolutely LOVE, I love it even more in person than I did when I saw it in the catalog. It's a large hurricane jar with a swirly iron pillar holder. So you fill the bottom with whatever you want, then hook the pillar holder over the side and put your candle on top. Sorry for the poor picture quality but it really is pretty!

And here are my 7 doz votives and 3 doz tealights! Partylite has some INCREDIBLE scents! Iced Snowberries, Acai Berry Mist, Cinnamon and Bayberry, Coconut Milk Chocolate and Berries and Bark are just a few of the ones I got. Even their tealights are scented and all of their candles burn SO nicely.
And this is the last item I got - the picture is terrible, sorry about that. They are cute little votive holders. They are a dark green with a pinecone pattern etched in the side. So pretty!

So in case you've never been to a partylite party ... you should really check it out!

Mitten Garland

Here is a very simple and cute craft you can make in just a few minutes - you could even get your kids involved it's that simple!

First, an admission. I had a similar mitten garland given to me a few years back - each mitten had a small circle punched out of the middle where you could place a photo. But as I pulled it out this year I saw that the photos in there were getting old and outdated and I decided to just start over with a new garland. So, that being said - I did use the old mittens as a template for cutting new mittens. However, even if I didn't have a template I think it would have been fairly simple to draw a basic mitten shape and cut it out.

OK, back to the directions. Cut our your mittens - make one, then use it was a template for cutting the others. I looked through my scrapbook paper stash and chose papers that were all sort of Christmasy.

I folded my paper and cut it out so that each mitten was two sided - gave it a little extra thickness too.

Next I printed out the words I wanted on my computer - I chose a fun font that made it look like Christmas tags. I printed in black and white then simply took some markers to fill in small portions to make them more colorful. Cut out your letters and stick each one to a mitten using double sided tape.

Then I added some cute white 'rick-rack' to the top of each mitten - once again this was a bit of a cheat move for me as I already had a pack of these paper strips that were cut out like that. So all I had to do was cut them to fit the top of the mittens.

Attach your mittens to some pretty yarn or string using small clothes pins and then hang it up! It would be super cute with photos - maybe one photo for each year of your kids?

Christmas Tour of my home!

Welcome friends! Today I'm linking up in a couple places! Amber's Friend Makin' Monday post this week is a Holiday Tour of Homes. Plus, the well known 'Nester' is hosting a Christmas Tour of Homes 2009. So I'm posting once, linking up twice! Are ya ready for a whole slew of photos??








This is perhaps one of my favorite things about Christmas time. Every year since my oldest was a baby, my mother in law has made an ornament with the child's photo and the year on it. When the girls were really small my Mother in law did all the work - but now every year the girls help make them and they give them to us on Christmas Eve. I was going to simply put them on the tree but I decided against that - I wanted to see them all lined up so you can see how much the girls have grown and changed over the years. I attached some greenery to my curtain rods in my kitchen/dining area and did one kid on each curtain rod. I can't wait to see what they've made for us this year!
Here is Hope's ornament from last year ...


OK, here is our Christmas tree in our living room ... This 'Joy' ornament is by far one of my favorites ... I'm definitely a person who likes to choose Joy and this ornament is a great reminder!
A prevailing theme in our Christmas decor is Snowmen ... we have them everywhere! How did this get started? When we first got married we had no Christmas decor. And I remember going to look for Christmas stuff and thinking that I sort of wanted to avoid Santa themed stuff. So, somehow I came across some cute snowmen and loved them and that got my addiction started. In the years since then I have stopped buying any more snowmen, but it seems that everyone who knows me always seem to find more and more snowmen stuff and buy them for me! My ever growing collection is getting too big at this point!



The tree lit up at night ...
Our hutch in the living room is covered in ... you guessed it - snowmen! My nativities are on the lowest shelf ...


We added lights and it looks pretty all lit up at night!
Here is our 'faux' fireplace ... haha - don't you just love that fancy word for FAKE?! Anyway, I don't care, I treat it just like it were a real fireplace ... I have a lot of greens, berries and pinecones on top with a row of pretty taper candles in back. I love my big mirror too ...

This are on my coffee table - my daughters MADE these for hubby and I for our Anniversary this year ... I really love them and think they did a fabulous job!
In my bathroom I have more snowmen and some yummy smelling candles ...
Also in my bathroom above the toilet I added some snowmen pictures to these shelves ...
And on the toilet are some baskets filled with potpourri, cinnamon sticks and pine cones ...
Spanning the area over my kitchen island is a mitten garland I made this year - more on that in another post - it says 'Merry Christmas' and is one of the first things you see when you come in my house ...

Above my stove in the kitchen ...



My kitchen table. I have fancier tablecloths and will have a fresh flower arrangement for the big day - but for the everyday I have this cute plastic tablecloth and my jars on the table ...
I was excited to find stuff to fill these - Christmas potpourri, pinecones and Christmas shred ...



And that's the end of my tour! I have often thought about starting all over again and going for a more simplified, elegant decor - but then I look around my home and see all the special things that I've collected or been given over the years and I feel such a sense of comfort and joy in those things. I love when the girls and I open the Christmas bins each year and with every item we pull out we ooh and aah and say 'oh yeah, remember this?!' ... Christmas memories and traditions mean so much to me - I may not have the fancy decor like in the magazines - but I have memories to last a lifetime!