Tour De Trees

Welcome to our Christmas Home Tour! Christmas is a big deal around our house, and we love to decorate! Here is a little photo tour for those we don't get to have visit over the holidays!

These are the three little trees that are in our entryway.


walking down the hallway from the entrance is this arch/doorway where I like to tape up all the Christmas cards we get. It makes me feel popular, which I only feel about 2 weeks out of the year when I'm getting lots of Christmas cards.


This is that archway from the otherside-from the family room. It's lit up real purdy. To the left you can see the doorway to the office.

The office I was mentioning both above and below. This is our "formal" tree filled with lots of colored balls, snowflakes, poinsettias and angels. Matt has the lights programmed to about three different songs, but we can also just set it for all the lights to be on, as in this picture.

This is the "pencil tree" that is in the dining room. Also known as our "giving tree," it is decorated with ornaments that I buy to give away to everyone who comes to our house over the Christmas season. (assuming I remember to offer it to you before you leave!).

The dining room and dining table. When we got our floors tiled this fall, Matt put an outlet in the middle of the floor, so we could do something like this. The cord is ran up thru a tiny space between the leaves of the table and then ran under the table-runner. I love how this turned out, it was our first year getting to do our table this pretty!

The tree in the basement, with most of the "pretty" a.k.a breakables on it.

The family room, with a cozy fire, my Santa collection, our "fun" tree loaded with airplanes, Disney, Hallmark, and homemade ornaments, and the awesome stockings my Mother In Law made for us last year. That woman is handy with her embroidery machine. She's made me a mantle scarf with amazingly detailed Santas on it that I will get to put up next year too.

Also scattered around the house are various knicknacks, our snowglobe collection, and a good collection of the (claymation/original) Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer cartoon figurines. A few "Christmas Story" figures here and there, as well as a Disney village, and a tree in Brooke's room. I have a regular village but just don't have a good place for it right now with Hannah.

And finally, the Reason for it all. The Nativity. The Baby Jesus, born in a dusty dirty manger, sent here to save us, God's love in flesh. More on that tomorrow... But here is my nativity.

To cap off this photo tour, I'd like to give away a little prize. The winner will recieve a $5 gift certificate/e-certificate for winkflash.com (assuming they still do those, I haven't checked for awhile). This is where I get most of my pictures printed, and so this will get the winner on their way to actually getting some of the pictures from this Christmas printed...scrapped...framed...photo albumed, etc.

To enter the contest; please leave a comment answering this question: What was on your Christmas list this year? Winner will be announced sometime on Christmas day, entries taken until 11p.m cst on Christmas Eve!

Now, cross your fingers for a white Christmas!

Gorgeous

I've got several things to post about and hopefully I'll get it accomplished in the next few days, but for now I wanted to post this picture of Brooke's hair:

Isn't it gorgeous? I love her hair. After a bath or shower, we blow dry it a little bit. Lots of times I'll put it up in a bun for bedtime, and in the morning when I pick through it- this is what it looks like. Just plain gorgeous.

Now if only she weren't so tender-headed!!

Tree Decorating and Favorite Ornaments

This post is a little delayed considering the fact that we started decorating for Christmas the first week of November.

It was fun having the girls help us with the ornaments on the tree in the family room.

Notice how they got several ornaments on one branch. There was a little rearranging done after they went to bed.

My absolute favorite ornament in this entire house is this one:



Kind of ties it all together doesn't it? Love it.

On the family room tree one of my favorites is this one:


It's a Small World

These were made by some lady when Matt was about Brooke's age. His mom is a Wizard of Oz fan. When asked who the lady was Matt says "I don't know, but she was old back then!". Old lady, whoever you are, we still love these ornaments. Hannah looks at them and says "pretty!".

There are so many ornaments in this house it is hard to show all our favorites.

And here are a few pictures of my Santa collection up on the mantle:

Soon I will post a tour-de-trees for your viewing pleasure.

In the meantime, have fun and drive safe whilst out finishing up your Christmas shopping!

Little Monsters

One of my all time favorite cookies is Monster Cookies. One of my all time favorite cookie doughs is Monster Cookie Dough.

When I pull out my mom's old monster cookie recipe, it makes my brain hurt. It is a massive recipe-- 12 eggs, 1 pound of this, 1 pound of that, etc. Problem with this recipe is a)it's massive b) it hurts my brain to try to scale it down and c) I never have "1 pound" of something. Even if I buy a 16 ounce tub of peanut butter (which is a pound, right?)- rarely is the peanut butter tub full when I go to make cookies.

So today I bring you Little Monsters. My own, much easier variation, on the monster cookie. The point is to get all the token elements of the original recipe into a more manageable recipe-- that would be peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips, and MMs. At least in my book.

Mom also made hers quite large -- monster sized-- and I'm going to make mine the same size I always do, using my handydandy medium Pampered Chef scooper.

This is not a photo recipe. I'm tired and don't have the attention span for that. But while one sheet of these is in the oven right now, I thought I'd quickly share the recipe.

Little Monsters
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup softened margarine
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 cup peanut butter.
Blend all of the above together, then blend in
2 eggs.
To the wet ingredients add
1.5 cups flour
2 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
and mix well.
Then add in
1 and 1/4 cup oatmeal
1 cup MM's
1.5 cups of mini chocolate chips (I use semisweet in nearly everything)
Mix well

Drop by large tablespoons (or medium pampered chef scooper) onto cookie sheet (stoneware). Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. You just have to watch them, wait till they're starting to turn golden brown all over but don't let them get too dark!

Take out of the oven and let set on the cookie sheet a few minutes before removing to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

Nudist Colonies

I've been thinking... (Matt always gets worried when I start a conversation like that).

Do nudist colonies really exist? I know there are some nude beaches, but what about nudist colonies?

How did my random train of thought get here? Simply by thinking of the several things that people in nudist colonies don't have to worry about:

1. Tanlines, or lack thereof.
2. Their children growing out of clothes faster than they can buy them.
3. Their child being long waisted, so even the "fits great" jeans still show plumber butt when she sits down.
4. they never have to wonder when their favorite pair of, well-broken-in, jeans is going to bite the dust i.e rip in the crotch, lose the button, etc. that's such a travesty, when we have to say goodbye to great jeans.
5. they probably don't have a drawer full of things that are just a little too tight.... probably because they don't need clothes at all
6. Matching. So not a problem.
7. Getting dressed in time for the bus. So not a problem. there's no "hurry up and get your socks on!" going on in the homes of a nudist colony.

Do you think people in a nudist colony are fat or skinny? Do you think they care? Do you think they see some people coming and go "ooh! put some clothes on!"

I was just wondering. I'm nothing if not random!

An appropriate posting, don't you think, for a day where the high is going to be 15 degrees? For the record, no nudist colony experimentation going on in this house today :)

Make it a great one!

Embrace your girliness!!!!

I'm sitting on my couch in front of the fire enjoying a diet dr. pepper and unwinding after a fun girls afternoon out.

For Christmas, my dad told me to get my step mom some "girlie" stuff. Diane is not a very pamper-yourself girly girl like I am. So I thought and thought about what to get her. I got her some comfy lounge-around-the-house jammies, and some candles, but needed to get her one more thing.

I finally thought "what is one of the girliest things we can do?" and the lightbulb clicked on. a PEDICURE!! So today I treated Brooke, Diane, and myself to a pedicure. Then Diane treated us to ice cream, and we capped our girls afternoon out off with a stop by Target. We had a great time and Diane thoroughly enjoyed her first-ever, and much-needed, pedicure!

I found out while we were there that she has only gotten her hair done at a salon-- as in CUT or styled/colored-- a few times in her life. She cuts her own hair. I've got to work on this girl.

Because it is great being a girl. We need to embrace our girliness, and pamper ourselves! We work hard as women and mommies, and we deserve some pampering!!!! I always say, when life is spinning out of control, the kids are driving us nuts, the husbands are being buttheads, that we need to at least lock ourselves in the bathroom long enough for a good soak in the tub and some toenail painting.

SO...amidst the busy hubbub of getting ready for Christmas, don't forget to take a few moments for yourself to be GIRLY!! Put on some mascara and lipstick, even if you're just running to walmart in your sweats.

Go ahead, call me brilliant

If there's one thing I have hated about getting ready in the mornings (well besides getting up at 710 a.m.), it is getting a sandwich made for Brooke's lunch. I love lunchables. But some days, we just don't have any!

Since Brooke was little, we've cut the crust off her bread. We were eating whole-wheat bread then and actually, even I don't like the crust on that. Right now I'm on a regular-wheat bread kick, so she could probably eat the crust. But our oldest child is a MAJOR creature of habit, and to get her to eat it at this point-- not going to happen.

You might say, let her pick her own crust off, she's five. True true. But Brooke also rushes through things, and is not real meticulous, so if I did that, she would eat MAYBE half a sandwich by the time she was done. It's just better for me to cut it off.

I hate the mess that crust-cutting causes. I hate forgetting that I need to cut the crust off and throwing the mayo knife into the sink. And then -sigh- I need to wash it off or get a new one.

About two weeks, I had an epiphany. Here it is for you in pictorial form.

Joila-- a happy uncrusted sandwich in perfect form. I did it one day and Brooke was tickled pink at her round sandwich. It works best with the big rubber-handled metal cookie cutters like this one. One day she might open that lunch box and find a sunflower! I should get a Christmas tree one. BUT the CIRCLE really creates very little waste beyond the crust, and it's made sandwich making a whole new ballgame around here.

Okay so perhaps it is not brilliance.... but would it kill you to call me brilliant anyways? just to humor me!?