Compare/Contrast

We live with my parents, aka Santa and Mrs. Claus.  My dad grew a beard, I think mostly so that as he continues to gray he will resemble the jolly man more and more.  So now we will compare and contrast the decorating prowess of the Claus couple with our own.  Pardon the blurry pictures.  Photography is not my forte.

The house were we live:

 
The decor in our two rooms:

Yup, vase with ornaments and berry things.  Don't worry, we have big plans for the house that is yet-to-be-purchased.  S bought a spool of lights on clearance.  You heard me right - a spool!

Good tidings we bring

We built a tiny house

To prepare for our regular-size house, S and I built a tiny house.  My family loves Christmas, I will show how much sometime this week, but in all my Christmasy childhood I never made a gingerbread house.  Never ever ever ever.  S bought me a gingerbread house kit and he got a gazillion points.

See how it looks just like the picture on the box?

Totally just like the box.

Well, sorta.

I gave the gingerbread woman a little handbag.  

Then she kept falling over and we noticed that it looks like she's drinking an alcoholic beverage.  

Then we realized that her gingerbread husband has a leprechaun hat 

and all of a sudden we had an Irish pub themed gingerbread house.  

Until I said "IT'S A HANDBAG NOT A BEER!"

I will eat you tiny gingerbread people!

Never mind, Buddy and I will just take a nap.

True love

True love is a mother-in-law who sends you flowers for Valentine's Day even though you haven't given her a grandbaby yet.

They were for S too but I'm the one who got to enjoy them all day today.  See my paperwhites beginning to sprout?  I think they were motivated by the beautiful flowers sitting next to them to be all that they can be.

S got me flowers also.  I got him a pizza.

More Valentine freebies!

I have much love for these artists who provide free printables for various occasions.   Here are two more!

First, an adorable vintage-inspired card and matching envelope. Get it here.

Second, amazing fruit stickers for Valentine's day.  So cheesy but so cute.  Get them here.

Did someone say FREE?

Amanda over at Our Humble A{Bowe}d periodically shares free printables for different holidays and occasions.  Today she is sharing some Valentine's Day goodies!  (<-----click here to get the PDFs)

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They are all formatted to print 8.5x11 and to fit in an 8x10 frame but I'm printing different sizes to use for different projects.  So cute, right?

Decorating for winter

Did I mention that I have a hard time coming down off of Christmas?  Well, I do.  To make matters only slightly worse, my work schedule changes every 6 months or so, projects end and things get rescheduled, so currently I am home all day and then work for about an hour each afternoon.

I do not like this schedule.

So I decided to cheer myself up preschool style with some paper crafts.

Side note: do you know why I could never be a professional blogger? I never take pictures of the process. Which brings us to...

So, after googling "how to cut a paper snowflake" and breaking out the white cardstock, I ended up with this.

 

Yes, that's a stick in a vase.  I'm going for "winter austere."  

Whatever, it points to the cheesy snowflakes 

hanging on the off-center ugly brass light fixture. 

 

Pretty, right?  RIGHT?

They make me happy anyway.  

And I'm rather proud of them.  

Do you see that detail?

Can't forget the front door.

On which still hangs our Christmas wreath on the other side.

It's "alive" so it's going to "live" there until it doesn't anymore.

Now everyone who walks by our house thinks a child lives here.

Or that Buddy is REALLY talented.

Yarn wreath inspired by Mrs. Priss.  

It needs some felt flower love to make it complete.

And maybe a different ribbon.

I used to make fun of people who decorated seasonally.  Then tonight I added white napkins with silver snowflake napkin rings to our table.  Not to use, just to look at.  

Myrtle, I think we have a problem.

What?  You want to make snowflakes too?  Well look no further!  There are great instructions here.

Merry New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Welcome 2011!

Happy 11th Day of Christmas!

We hope you had an amazing holiday season.  I'm having trouble letting go.  Post-Christmas is not my best time.  In fact, I secretly detest January.  Shhhh....don't tell anyone.  It's okay because I am stubbornly hanging on to the Christmas spirit and listening to festive music as I type.  What did you do for the holidays?  Did you have a family-filled hectic travel-about-town type Christmas?  Or are you more the stay at home for a quiet hunkered-down affair?  

We packed up the car and headed out on December 20th for a two-week road trip:

Tulsa, OK --> Hurst, TX --> Oklahoma City, OK -->

Richardson, TX --> Hurst, TX --> Slidell, LA --> back home 

Buddy loves riding in the car.  He looked like this for 13 hours.

 

Buddy and his new BFF Drake in Tulsa.

 After the Philip pick up, we drive to Texas.

My parents' beautiful Christmas tree covered in memories.

 Breakfast on Christmas morning and me looking appropriately maid-like.  I even covered my hair.

The always-important family Wii time.

Buddy loved the pig he got from his grand"paw"rents.  (Harharhar)

This his new human toy, which we also call Mason.

Happy family.

And I got to re-cover my parents' dining room chairs as part of my mom's Christmas present!

Now we're home and my past-Christmas blues have set in.  Do you get this affliction?  Or are you happy to finally move on?   I get it BAD.  This year it was tempered by new storage bins for our Christmas decor. 

They're purple!  S picked the purple.  Thank you, S.  

Also, this Pottery Barn tree skirt marked down to $29.99 from it's original $119.00 didn't hurt either.

So, now on to the new year.  2011 will be a year of change and uncertainty for us so we rang in the new year looking a little bit like this:

But more on that later.  In the meantime, we'll going to be working for more positive emoticons.  In the spirit of positive emoticons, on to the fabric store! :-)

See?  It's working already!

Poetic Justic continued

Add to the list of "things that make us all misty eyed":
Synchronicity Theatre's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever


It's really good. You should go see it.

Poetic Justice & It's a Wonderful Life

My mom gets made fun of a lot for crying.  At everything.  Her sisters call her a crybaby.  She will correct you that she is not a crybaby, she is just tender hearted.  I made fun of her too, I will not lie.

Then on Saturday night we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" on TV.  It's a good movie but you'll notice it didn't make my favorites list in the last post.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're all important, no life is a waste that touches some one else, blah, blah, blah.

But this year?  This year when Jimmy Stewart looked like this:

S and I?  We both looked like this:

 What is happening to us!?

Why this old thing?  This is what I wear when I don't care that I'm weeping like a baby.   

Sunday it snowed a little bit.  I cried.

Today I was listening to good ol' John Denver and the Muppets and I wept during this:

 

Okay, okay!  I'm sorry that I made fun of you, mom.