Thursday, December 15, 2011

christmas time is here

Can you believe there are only 10 more days til Christmas? Where has time gone? I can't really say I've felt much holiday spirit the last few weeks. It's been hard emotionally on me. But, when I loaded the pics from my camera tonight, I noticed that there have been a few bits of Christmas fun all nestled in with the hard stuff. So I thought I'd share what we've been up to.

One of the things I was responsible for getting ready was the favors for the ladies' luncheon a few weeks back. My level-headed friend Barb convinced me that the Creative Memories punches were the way to go and we ended up making about 85 or so of these paper ornaments. The theme was "Repeat the Sounding Joy" and I wanted them to see joy eveywhere. These were all hanging on a tree that everyone saw as soon as they walked into the room. But first, they had to go through the Wendy Bergland assembly line.


I loved my table this year. I used the cricut to make the Joy signs. Then I coated it with Martha Stewart glitter. That stuff is a.ma.zing. It's fine, like a powder. And oh, so sparkly. I had glitter on my face for days.
The day after that we got the tree. Noble fir. My favorite. I hung the 700 lights (down 200 from last year) and Phil505 put the angel on top.
Then it was time for the icicle lights. Our new house has a water feature right outside the front door. That made things a little tricky for my exterior decorator. But I am happy to report that he did not end up in the pond and the lights look fabulous. (I have yet to go outside and take a picture of the final project, but I will. Don't worry.) Look at him being all kissy-face behind the Japanese maple.

 One of my B's. This one's on the wreath on the front door.


And here are some pics from inside. I was all being a camera snob with this one. Trying to act like I know what I'm doing with my fancy-schmancy camera. All I did was turn off the flash and I got some bokeh. That's the fuzzy light look for those non-camera snob people out there. I didn't count, but we did say lots of times how much fun it was to decorate our home this year. Trying to find where all the decorations were going to go was pretty exciting.


So here's the living room for all of you who have been waiting to see some pictures of our house. The walls were beige, now they are turquoise. I love, love, love the wall color. It goes so well with our furniture and it plain and simple just makes me happy. We decided not to put the tree in front of the window and I kinda like having it in the corner by the half wall. Plus, we didn't have to rearrange the furniture, we just moved a bookshelf into one of the bedrooms.



We have an ecclectic mixture of snowmen and Nativities. I put the Willow Tree Nativity on the piano again.

The house got decorated just in the nick of time because on Sunday I had my second annual Christmas cookie exchange. There were nine of us all together with seven different kinds of yumminess. And yes, I bought new roses and reused my candy cane centerpiece.


This year we had Andes mint chocolate goodness, shortbread cookies, Reese's cup filled ginger cookies, almond balls, pretzel/rolos/pecan treats, cupcakes, and almond joy balls. No one made the same kind of cookie as last year and several of us tried new recipes. It was so much fun! My friends come over and I kick Phil505 out the door which he doesn't mind too much because when he comes home he gets to sample everything. Definitely a tradition I plan to continue.

1 comment:

Kellie said...

LOVE THE CREATIVE CHRISTMAS PHOTO WITH BOKEH.. yeah, lovin' it. Love that you were able to decorate YOUR home. :) I have prayed for you all.. I know it has been hard. Hugs to you, my friend. Your HOME is beautiful!!!