10 days until Christmas!!

Survival Tip #9: If it is gray outside, enjoy decorating inside.

I am beyond excited for Christmas! This is the first year I have purchased my gifts for Vander before he bought mine... he has wrapped all of mine while I am still waiting for his to come in the mail, but that is besides the point. I am typically a last minute shopper, but not this year. Most of it is done, and the house has been decorate for a while now. 

We haven't been able to buy much in the way of decorations until this year because we've been more preoccupied with buying gifts than decorations, but this year I had the green light to go all out. After 2 hours at Target I managed to purchase some garland, a wreath, some little odds and ends and various hosting supplies (we're hosting 2 parties this year). I even made my own tree skirt (got to love felt by the yard). The thing I am the most proud of though in our center piece.

Now it is not normally on our floor, but I was trying to find a bad bulb so the 1/2 lit string was already plugged in. I bought a really cool vase and filled it with various gold and clear ornaments. I was inspired by the glass floats that people collect. 

I also purchase some frames and took pictures of ornaments and enlarged them to 8x12. The one below and the primary picture when you open this site (O Holy Night) are two of them.

I also framed this photo from our tree cutting adventure last week in a 5x7 frame:

Finally I couldn't help but print our annual "this is our tree we're about to cut down" picture.

It was really fun to decorate! We've already hosted our bible study party and tomorrow night is our family "Boobie Prize Party". I will explain more about that later :)

Hope you have had as much fun decorating this year as I have!

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice...

Survival Tip #8: Help others to celebrate your friends.

I was just about to post a Christmas post when I noticed I never published this one!! It's a little old now, and since writing it Baby Colette was born! Congratulations to Dane and Christina!!

In November I decorated for a baby shower to celebrate friend from church, Christina. I've been given opportunities to help with decorations for a few events this summer and fall and I have discovered I really love it! It is so fun being creative and stretching myself to thinking up different ideas. Janet, the shower host, gave me free reign to do what I wanted to decorate which was so fun! From facebook I knew Christina and her husband Dane have a green, brown and pink nursery for their little girl so I used that as a launching point. I like to be inspired by phrases or songs when I decorate, so I used "Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice" in coordination with the colors.

Inspired by a friend's decorations for a 1st birthday party, I bought a pad of scrapbook papers that were girly and matched the nursery colors and cut them into circles. I then embroidered them onto various green ribbon and wrote "C" for what is the baby-to-be's tentative first initial, or cut letters out.

The vases you see are filled with sugar, tea (loose leaf), and candy to mimic the rhyme, which was written on circles on the table. I also used Baby's Breath for the flowers, which seemed appropriate for a baby shower : ). I also purchased some receiving blankets that matched the nursery to put under the vases. In case you are in need of cheap vases, these are only $2.99 each at Target!! Super great deal!!

The shower was a lot of fun, and lots of women from our church came. It was so fun to be able to celebrate Christina as she gets ready to welcome her daughter into the world!

 Christina with Mollee, and her mother in law Denise.

 Em, Lou and Olivia

Christina with a sweet gift! Baby girls get the cutest things!