Christmas 2011

It always comes and goes so fast doesn't it?  We had such a great holiday with our family this year and I still can't believe how spoiled we are.

The day before Christmas Eve we always go out to dinner with my family.  We went here for the second year in a row, and as usual it did not disappoint.  

We spent Christmas Eve with my hubby's side of the family decorating cookies for Santa, eating munchies, and opening our Christmas pajamas.

Christmas day was action packed this year.  The moment I was waiting for all holiday season was for my daughter to see her kitchen from Santa.  The first thing she did was run over and give me a big hug.  It was so sweet!

 We opened our few gifts then got ready and went to a short church meeting.  It was wonderful, lots of beautiful music and narration about the birth of Christ.

Then we headed over to my parents house for our traditional breakfast....crepes, berries, breakfast casserole, muffins, sausage, orange juice, chocolate milk, so much food and I always eat too much!  Then it literally takes us about 2 hours to do our gifts.  We do it one at a time and my parents do sooooo much (almost too much) that it just takes forever.  But I love it.  I love seeing my family enjoy what we have given them.

My brother and his new wife.  Cute newlyweds!

Me and the hubs

 This was a running joke all week, we just can't get off the smart phones!

These are the hats we got for my brother and his wife.  Every time the family plays games, one of these two will win.  And I mean EVERY time.  But somehow they do it under the radar, so therefore, their nicknames are the Silent Killers.

This little collage shows the gift that was a hit with the folks.  We took pictures of each of the kids and framed them separately.  The kids also wrote a love letter to each grandparent (with our help, of course) about what they love about them.

You know it's a hit when Mom gets emotional!  :)

Then we headed over to my in-laws house and did the whole gift thing/dinner with them.

These are the quilts Mark's Mom had made for him and his siblings.  They are made out of their dad's old t-shirts.  Rob passed away this past January so it was very touching.

 My sister in-law made these darling skirts for the girls.  You can't see the red ribbon on the bottom, but they turned out darling!

And as always we went back to my parents for game playing until around midnight.  

It's a long day but I love every minute of it!

Hope you had a great Christmas!

The Simple Things

My sweetheart and our oldest enjoying the lights.

I hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas!

Participating in Rebecca's The Simple Things link party.  This is my first time participating in this challenge, hopefully my photography can get better!

Love

I pinned this video on Pinterest yesterday, but had to share it here as well.  For the full back story, go to Becky Higgin's blog (hopefully it's ok that I post it here!).  I found Jenny's story so inspiring.  And she looks so much fun!  How awesome would it be to document a vacation this way?  Definitely more fun than showing people a slide show of pictures. :)

Buried--And What I've Been Pinning

I've been gone for awhile.  We finished our house and moved in and instead of giving you all the boring details of how behind/unorganized/scattered I feel, I'm just going to jump right into some new posts.

Lately I've been addicted to Pinterest.  If you want to follow me click here:



Here are some fun things I've pinned lately:

• Cute hairstyle tutorials from The Small Things Blog.  Seriously, her stuff is darling and here's the kicker--they are totally doable.  Even for a hair-styling-impaired person like myself.  I'm going to try this half french twist this Friday night for our annual Christmas dinner.  I've also done this and this recently and love them!

• Doesn't this candy cane trifle from the The Scrap Shoppe Blog look amazing? I'm going to make it Christmas Eve.  YUM!

• The fashion on Pinterest is so inspiring.  I have yet to actually copy an outfit, but I'm always drawn to the more casual looks that still look put together--something that seems like such a challenge for me lately:

• I somehow stumbled upon Sara at The Yellow Cape Cod, and I love her style.  I'm thinking about incorporating a lot of her ideas into our new house, particularly these striped drapes:

• And finally, a little humor:

Source: someecards.com via Amber on Pinterest

11:11 on 11/11/11

Took part in the Dear Lizzy 11.11.11 Challenge and took a snapshot of what we were doing at such a cool moment in time (which was not much of anything).  What were you doing at 11:11 on 11/11/11?

What I Want/What I Get

What I Want:

(From JCrew)

What I'll probably get:

(From Payless)

My Alder Door Makeover

It only took me a month (eesh!) but my door is finally finished.  I started with this:

First I sanded the original stain off, which I'm estimating took me 7-8 hours total.  Then using a stain called American Walnut, I stained the door, door casing, door jam, and hand railing for our stairs.  That was followed by one clear gloss coat, one coat of a glaze called Santa Fe, then 2 more clear coats.  I have to thank the guys at Jones Paint and Glass in Provo.  Not only did I walk in one minute before closing, but I had all these questions because I had no idea what I was doing.  They helped me figure everything out and were great.

Here is the end result, I'm quite pleased.  It's not perfect (and if you visit, I may ask you not to look too closely), but it's better than what we had before.

Things are still moving along with the house, however, we've had a major hiccup with kitchen cabinets.  It currently looks like this:

Yeah.  I know.  Long story short, the cabinets went in, weren't the color I thought they'd be and the cabinet guy had to get some guys to come in and paint.  Let's hope it all ends up well or I'll be majorly disappointed.

We're off to a family party today.  I made these little candy corn rice krispie treats.  They are good but on the verge of killing you with sugar overload.

Our Halloween Costumes

Last week I took my two little ones, and my niece and nephew out for a little photo shoot in their Halloween costumes.  I didn't have high hopes because...well it's best not to get my hopes up when taking pictures of little ones. :)  I'm not professional by any means but I think we got some great shots.

Here's my little Tinkerbell:

And my little police man:

And here is my darling niece in her Mary Poppins costume, and her brother as the chimney sweep.  My sister in-law did such an amazing job putting this together.  She made Mary's hat, bow tie, skirt, and the bird on the end of the umbrella.  The chimney sweep was pretty easy, she spray painted a new toilet brush and then put black all over his face.

Happy Halloween!

Do you Pin?

After hearing about this addictive site for months, I finally joined Pinterest....at least I tried to.  I was all excited to join and then I get an email saying "you're on the waiting list".  It felt a little anti-climactic.  I have been browsing a little bit anyway, and wow there are some amazing images on there.  I can see why it is so addicting.

I wish I had taken this photo. Via Pinterest.

Side note: is it just me or is there a lot of nudity on Pinterest?  I entered one totally innocent search and got back at least 10 nudy pics--not really my thing.