Christmas Spirit

Decorating always gets me in the holiday spirit. We don't have much but I love what we have. Here's a bit of our decor for this year.

Christmas Goodies

After looking all over the net I found some great recipes for Christmas treats for us to make. We made out selections and our grocery list and got cookin' (well, melting and stiring, there was no baking involved.)

First was what I like to call "Millions of Mints". Very simple to make, just cream cheese, powdered sugar, food coloring and mint extract. We turned this:

Into these: (millions of these)

Then we made peanut butter squares, yum! Graham cracker crumbs, peanut butter, more powdered sugar and melted chocolate on top. I love these!

We made a coconut candy that seemed simple enough but required cooking sugar and milk to a soft ball stage. I'm pretty sure I cooked it right but the candies turned out kind of...grainy? Maybe it was the sweetened coconut.

And here's a big batch of everything we made. Dipped pretzles (the green ones are mint, yum!), candy cane bark, pretzle and butterscotch bark, and mint patties (easy to make!).

We had a lot of fun making these and took some around to our friends. I think we'll be doing this every year!

It's Christmas Time

I love Christmas, I really do...I'd love it better though if my family was coming down this year. (Guilt trip!)

Anyway, I love getting into the holiday season. Tonight we are going to our church Christmas party. I'm really excited about that, we couldn't make it last year but we'll be there tonight!

Tomorrow we are putting up our tree. This is my all time favorite part of decorating. We've got this adorable slender 6-foot tree that I just love. It fits perfectly in our small/awkward living room and it will be a great second tree when we have more space to get a larger tree, I've always wanted a big fancy tree in the living room and a fun kids tree in the family room. The last two years we decorated the tree with dark plum and pale green ornaments. This year we are doing blue, silver and white with a snowflake theme. I found old glass balls at DI and we got some inexpensive silver ones from the store. I also bought this really cute garland of silvery snowflakes from the dollar store that I am going to take apart to make them into individual ornaments. I'm excited to see how it will turn out.

Last night we went grocery shopping and bought ingredients for all these great Christmas treat recipes I found online. We'll be making treats tomorrow and maybe for a few days after (because we have so many). I'll be posting recipes and photos later.

Speaking of posting recipes...I decided to go ahead with the second blog with recipes and crafts, reviews and other ideas. I'm excited about it, so keep checking in for a link to that blog later.

Now, what do you all do to get into the Christmas spirit? What do you like most about decorating? The least?

For me, the worst part about decorating for Christmas is putting up outdoor lights. I've never done it and I doubt I ever will. My dad was always the one doing that part and now Nathanael does it. It's just not fun, and I hate ladders so it's scary too.

Some Ideas

I've been thinking about making this blog just about our family and then making a different blog about everything else. The other blog would have reviews, craft ideas, events, giveaways, and anything else I can think of that might be fun.

Does this sound like a good idea? Sometimes I want to post reviews and event info and fun stuff but I don't think it goes with the theme and style of this blog. I kinda want to kep this one family oriented.

Let me know what you think and I'll let you know what's happening.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We're spending the holiday with the in-laws, including Nathanael's brother and his family visiting from Ohio, and their new baby girl (yay!).

I love Thanksgiving but I admit I'm looking forward to Christmas already. I can't wait to decorate but I promised myself (and my hubby) I would wait until December 1st.

So are you all planning on going shopping tomorrow? I was thinking about it but I'm not sure now. I'm a little scared to, plus there isn't anything we really need. Oh, there's plenty of things we want, but do we need them? No.

I thought I'd make a list of things I am thankful for to honor the holiday.

1. Nathanael

2. Our families

3. Oscar

4. The church and the wonderful, thoughtful women in our ward

5. Sweet potatoes with brown sugar

6. Not having to work again until Monday

7. Christmas decorations

8. Blankets, movies, popcorn and hot chocolate (with marshmallows)

9. A car with a heater that works fast

10. Thrift stores

Meet Oscar, Our New Housemate

No, we did not invite Oscar the Grouch, or Oscar from the Office, into our home. But look how cute the newest member of our family is.

Isn't this next one the cutest picture ever? Nathanael put him in his shirt pocket and Oscar actually didn't mind.

Oscar is the cutest little guy ever, he's a gerbil and he's about three months old. We both love him. You can really tell that he belongs in our family because he watches Amazing Race with me and he doesn't use the wheel in his cage...he sleeps under it! He's our little baby.

Get Back Up

Sometimes life knocks you down (and then kicks you while you're there). And even if you don't think you can, and if you don't think you want to, you have to get back up and keep going. It's hard, but it's worth it.

After the Rain

"And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth."

~Genesis 9:16-17

Making Pumpkins

I wanted to make some cute decor things for Fall but I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I went down to the Dollar Tree (yay) and found these pumpkins and gourds.

Two bigger one and two bags of little ones...$4 total. But they were a little ugly...ok, they were a lot ugly. Well, a little paint and a little sandpaper fixes everything, literally.

Here are my super cute pumpkins after their makeover...

I put them in this wooden bowl I had painted a while ago (50 cents from DI) but they looked a little lonely and sad, so I ripped up stips of packing paper that Stampin Up uses when shipping stuff, crumpled it up a little, and put it under the pumpkins. Then I did a little top-of-the-TV re-decorating and...tadah!

I was worried at first about the teal and the orange together, but as soon as I put the pumpkins in the bowl I loved the color combination. The birds my mom gave me and the skulls were also a Dollar Tree find.

All I need now is something for the smaller glass jar. Any ideas? I love Fall, and I love Halloween, so I love decorating for this time of the year.

Thrift Treasures

I had some time to kill the other day and I made the mistake of going to DI. I say mistake because I always end up with stuff when I go to DI. It's always great stuff but really, I should finish my other projects before I ever set foot in that place again. The good news is this time none of the stuff needs a makeover.

Sorry for the state of these photos, I hadn't cleaned anything yet and I was in a bit of a hurry when I took them. But look at all my treasures! I was looking for little loaf pans like those on the right. I want to make little loaves of bread and little jars of jam as gifts (I already have the jars). The five pans were 75 cents for the whole lot, what a deal!

These were the fist two things I picked up. I saw them from another aisle and nearly jumped over an old lady to grab them. Why? They're antique pewter. The other really dark piece in the first photo is also antique pewter. Each only 50 cents.

All of these little glass bottles were sitting next to each other so I scooped them all. The tallest one will go with my bottles on the window sill, I think it will turn purple in the sun like the rest of them. The other will go around the house, I think the big square one will go on my kitchen shelf and the little tiny perfume bottle will go in the bathroom. That little perfume bottle almost didn't make it home, I was tryign to hold everything (because I didn't think I would need a basket) and I dropped it and it bounced, I'm serious. The glass is so thick that it didn't even chip. I was so relieved.