Merry Christmas!

I just wanted to drop in to say Merry Christmas to all of you!  This is the first time in several days that I have had  "down" time!  All of the gifts are opened, the kids are happy, everyone enjoyed a ham dinner and I get to relax for the evening.  Yay!

Here are a few pictures of some of my ornaments around the house.  I decided to  post tonight because I am "that" person that takes down all of my decorations the day after Christmas and declare my life back to normal :)

This is the baby tree in my kitchen.  I decorated it with vintage Christmas cookie cutters held on with twine, a set of vintage measuring spoons and a super cute star Christmas ornament that looks like a cookie.

This is our Christmas tree with a couple of close ups on some of our ornaments.

Here is the mantel in the video game room where I hung my kids stockings.

A gingerbread house that the kids made a few years ago.

A Santa door knob hanger.

I made the wooden coat hanger that is behind my front door.  It holds my baptism dress from when I was a baby all year long and during Christmas time I add some greenery.

Some Christmas garland randomly hung around the house.

Christmas decorations on the front porch.

A snow shovel (I will never need to use this thing being I live in Southern California, I guess its a good thing....I wouldn't know how to use it anyways)  hanging out with my grandfathers canes.  

And lastly....Meet Ellen.  My beautiful niece that is in high school always thinks of me while making things in her ceramics class.  Ellen was an amazing gift from her one year and I adore her.

Thanks for stopping by.....Enjoy the rest of your evening and have a Very Merry Christmas!

Christmas for Thanksgiving!

I made it to the new Hobby Lobby that opened up 20 minutes from my home and it was the most wonderful place that I have been to in a while!  It was so hard to contain myself and not to fill my basket full, after walking up and down each aisle I realized that I had been there for nearly 2 hours!  Their Christmas selection is super big and that inspired me to begin decorating for Christmas (We always have an artificial tree for various reasons, the biggest being that my daughter is allergic to pine!)  

Here is my Christmas tree.  My tree is very kid friendly with all of the traditional colors.  Our tree is filled with ornaments that we have made, bought or received throughout the 20 years that we have been a family.  It looks like we will be needing a bigger tree at some point because we are almost out of room for more ornaments....or.......maybe we can get a second tree!!  Great idea!!  Happy Holidays!