Christmas Decor

I hope everyone had a great New Year's! :D

One of my goals this year is to post about my Christmas decorating before Christmas is over!

I wanted to share my photos with you. Plus I look at the pictures to help me come up with my Christmas decor for the next year!

Photos incoming:

On our kitchen table. 

I put some Epson salt in my jars with candles on top. 

It smelled so great! (Eucalyptus scent)

My cart got a cute towel from my mom. I added pine cones to my pitcher and a santa holding two kitties.

Our tiny nativity set. 

I was hoping to find one on Christmas clearance- none to be found

One of my favorite this year! Mardi Gras beads and a little gold ornament!

My birdy got some bling

Our mantle

Love!

We got a tree this year! :D

I didn't have too many ornaments, but I got some at Target on clearance for next year!

Oh, those glass presents light up too!

(my camera is not too great- the tree looks so much better than in this photo)

Pre-lit too! On sale after Thanksgiving. 

This picture doesn't capture how beautiful it is!

I loved turning it on every night! It even had the foot tap on/off switch :)

I love it! 

A gift from my mother-in-law!

A special ornament to me, my mom had an elf ornament growing up... 

so she got me one and it was a tradition to add them on the tree each year. 

 

Christmas tree topper- from my great grandma. 

I added some extra to my wreath

If your still reading, thanks! lol 

I hope you have a great night! 

Christmas!

Wow! I know I'm a little late in posting about this, but I didn't want to just skip over it :)

We had a very good Christmas(es)! We have a lot of family to see, so our Christmas time looked like this:

December 18th- I graduated from HBU! (Doesn't have to deal with Christmas- but WOOHOO!)
      - That night we had a Christmas Gala to go to
December 19th- Christmas with Joey's mom, Mike and Rachel
December 23rd- Christmas with my mom and grandma
December 24th- Christmas Eve party with Joey's step family
December 25th- 27th- Christmas with Joey's dad side in Austin
January 1st- Christmas and birthday with my dad- Yep, my daddy was a New Year's baby (not the official 1st, but still a great gift for the new year!)

So now you see why I haven't posted lately! lol

This year I plan on posting my Christmas decor actually before Christmas is over!

I got an awesome gift from my husband for Christmas/our anniversary :) He said it was just Christmas, but since it is a really nice/expensive gift I made it count for our anniversary too :)

Here she is:

I was shocked when I unwrapped it! 

I've been talking ever since we got married that I wanted one, but knew that it was too expensive!

Joey did an awesome job! I honestly expected the Classic, which is the most inexpensive(still expensive) one you can get! So to see the Professional caught me SO off guard! 

He did tell me that he got a good deal on it :) 

Here she is on my counter! I love the lift!

Oh, yeah and she can hold 14 cups of flour!!

I have already made 3 loafs of Zucchini Bread 

(it was so yummy- got the recipe from Better Home and G. cookbook)

and a big batch of cookies!

I love that it just mixes and I can walk away and prepare the rest of the recipe!

I definitely see more baking/cooking in my future! :D I want to try making white bread. I see another batch of cookies in my future (perhaps tomorrow). I use this recipe. I double it, using a whole bag of chocolate chips.

I also got a Scentsy warmer from my mom! :D I really like it! I have Sugar Cookie in it right now, earlier I had Peppermint in it. Walmart has some wax like the Scentsy blocks, so that's where the peppermint came from.  

We got a lovely gift from Joey's dad. He got a wedding photo, which we got from Evoke, framed for us! It is SO beautiful! I need to get a picture hook so we can hang it! It is going to go above our mantle, it will look PERFECT! :D I'll share a picture with you soon!

The kitties got a new present too. They were very excited (or I was) that their grandpa (my dad) and grandma (my step mom, Cat) got it for them. It's the Drinkwell fountain! It is a water bowl that also has a little fountain. The boys love it, since they love drinking out of the faucet! We set it up and they kept going back to it to see if it was still on! lol Daisy is just happy to have water.

I am very blessed to have such wonderful family!

My Apron!

Ok, I am really late in posting this! lol A month or two ago I entered a bunch of giveaways that yellow songbird had going on!

One was for one of lilac fox's aprons!

I received an email stating that I won! :D I was so excited! Not much later after that I received it in the mail!
I took photos for you too see! :)

It was wrapped so nicely!

This came with it! A cute little hair clip!

Here's the apron! I love the color, it is so fun!

She even has a cute label on the inside!

The apron has taken place on the cute little teapot hook! :)

This one (which is now on a wall of course)

Thank you so much Lilac Fox for the beautiful apron! You can click on her name at the top and it will take you to her Etsy shop!

Have a nice night! I'm going to go catch up on Bones!

Cuteness Overload!

I love our kitties so much! Sometimes they are frustrating and upsetting, but they are a blessing! They entertain Joey and I and show us so much love! One night I found myself in total bliss running around the house with the kitties' bug toy trailing behind me and having them run after it! I laughed so hard and was so full of joy! :)

Poor Burney had to go see Dr. Dietz yesterday and had another sleepover. Thankfully, we know what we can do know to help his system not get backed up again.

I love taking photos of our babies, so here I give you some for your enjoyment!

Burney lookin cute!

Burney saying  "HI!"

They love when the windows are open!

This was Halloween. They loved watching the kids!

Poor Burney did not like the trick or treaters, every time the doorbell rings he runs into our bedroom.

Yao is 7 years old- still such a kitten!
Daisy is 3 years old.
Burney is 2 years old

God has blessed us with such great kitties!

Our Fall Decor

Yes, I know, I'm a little late in posting this. It's almost time to decorate for Christmas! I don't believe in decorating for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. That and I usually don't have the time to! :)

Photos INCOMING!

This is what's on our formal table :) The table runner I got on awesome clearance last year. ($4.49)My cute apothecary jar filled with filler I got last year on clearance at Target($1.98). It's originally for Christmas since it has nuts and "cranberries" in it, so I just took out the nuts for Fall.  For Thanksgiving I added a turkey beanie baby! Hey- you have to use those things were you can! 

This is our normal table ( I forgot to clean before I took the picture). Those jars are actually 2 pickles and a relish jar shh! I love the glow at night time!

On my kitchen cart. Jar with leaves, dollar tree gourds and a sunflower to top it off :) My Etsy pitcher I added  some dollar tree leaves. 

This was for Halloween. I got some hard covered books and took the covers off :)

The one in the middle I usually keep there, but I love the height the other books added!

Dracula

Reader's Digest Book (from garage sale)

Obsessed - figured it sounded creepy :)

Our mantle. I added a little something for Thanksgiving. Sorry this pic was taken at night :)

I filled my Ball jar with leaves and the gourds. 

My cute plate I got at an antique shop with my dollar tree pumpkin.

"A good friend is like sunshine...always welcome"

Here's what I added for Thanksgiving

It's very simple to do if you have Scrabble. 

One thing I did not take a picture of, even though  I could run out a snap a pic in my PJ's, is our front door. I have a cute fall wreath and the planter has 3 mini pumpkins in it. 

I think I might add a little more to the wreath next year.Right now it is really cute and simple. 

 I love the full look of HOH's wreath (here)

I am really happy with it :) 3 packs of fake Dollar Tree leaves and 2 packs of fake gourds goes a long way :) I love that decorating does not have to be expensive and it can still look cute/nice! For the most part my decorating is just apothecary jars or jars that the fillers can be swapped out for each holiday. I like that since it is so versatile.

Have a great Thanksgiving! :D

New favorite blog!

Hello! I know it's been a while! I've been wanting to post more, but had the lack of motivation/energy to post anything! Soon I will post about the fall decor we have in our house, the cute sewing bag I found, and the good deal I got on Halloween clearance! :)

For now, I wanted to share this blog with you!  http://www.thenester.com/

It has helped me so much lately to realize that your home does not have to be perfect! I know that sounds like a "duh!". However all the reading I do with the craft blogs (which I am scaling back bc of this) has gotten me to think that my home is never good enough. I don't have that cute apothecary jar that she has, I can't afford to buy the cute new accessories or things to do a craft project. I don't have my seasonal things arranged for them to have the cutest potential.

Even though I am so grateful for what I have, it is so easy to get caught up in everything. The my house is not clean enough. I have messes around the house. I have dishes spilling out of the sink onto the counter. I felt like I was always behind in the house chores. That I have been just trying to play catch up.

Her blog has helped me a lot! Even though it seems like I should already know this, she blogs about how things in your house can be messy, but still beautiful. To enjoy life's messes.

Here are two posts I loved!
http://www.thenester.com/2008/05/imperfectly-beautiful-the-philosophy-of-a-home.html

http://www.thenester.com/2010/10/31-days-a-beautiful-mess.html

One big thing she helped me learn today, as I was going through her archives, was a houses here to serve you!(1st link)

Seems so obvious! However think about all the time you try to get your house to look perfect/nice. I know that I had an obsessive episode last week with getting the kitchen floor perfectly rid of litter. Her post (listed 1st) helped me see that lately I've been serving my house, not the other way around.
Yes it is nice to have your house clean and it is necessary to a certain extent.

Was I honoring God through my obsessive episode? No! God gave us this house! He gave it to us, for it to serve us. For it to serve as a place for us to live, stay warm, serve others, for us to have a place to grow as a family(one day), and so on. In fact I know the way I behaved that day did not honor God and the blessing He gave us. Being a slave to our house is not God's will. Houses will change, but what happens in them is what stays in our hearts and memories.

The Nester put it beautifully:
 It’s the same with having the goal of a less messy nest~there are two ways to get there:

1. You can learn methods and tips and tricks to help keep your home less messy.

2. You can lower your expectations and accept the fact that you will have messes and that each season of your family’s life will bring different kinds of beautiful messes.

Don't let your messes or your "imperfect" house from keep you from having people over or from creating new memories!

Have a beautiful night!

Going Silver!

Since I really don't feel like making a long blog post, but want to post something, you will get to see my birds and mirror I spray painted this summer! :)

I have talked about the birds before, just never showed you!

Bird 1:

Before

- He came from Hobby Lobby clearance! 

Back when they had the awesome clearance this summer!

 He was less than $3, if not less than $2. I don't remember!

- It was ok in red, but I didn't like it too much!

After

- I like the silver SO much better! He fits into our decor better now!

Bird 2:

Before

- See the clearance tag? That's my favorite way to shop!

- The black was ok, I had this great idea that I'd use up the rest of the yellow spray paint that I had. 

You know the kind I used here. After I did that. I realized it was UGLY!

After

- Bad photo. (That's our guest bathroom's light)

- It is painted silver, just like the birdy above :) I like it a lot!

Last I have a mirror to show you! Joey's aunt was getting rid of it last December, so I took it! Hey, it was free! :) So once I got it home I realized that the gold did not really go with anything we had. So I decided to spray paint it! The silver that I used for the birds is left over from this project!

Before

- I taped off the mirror part

- Note to self: wait till better lighting to take photos!

- A close up of the detail. 

After

- Wow! I should have cleaned it before I took the picture! Oops!

- Overall I am happy with it! It fits into the color in our formal dining well.

The light fixtures/hardware in our house are brushed nickel. 

Here's where I put it:

Eventually that wall will have more on it. 

I would love to have a family photo wall with Joey's family and mine. 

My thoughts are photos and items in shadow boxes/on shelves. Not too sure!

I also got a cute wall vinyl this past summer from Kohl's. It says "Bless This Nest"! :D I love it! Plus it was on clearance for $8.99! The only thing is, I'm not too sure where I want it!  On the wall or on something like a canvas so I can move it easily? We'll see. 

Ok, I am tired! So off to bed I go! I hope you liked seeing some of my spray painted lovelies :)

Have a nice night!