Sunday, November 27, 2011

It's Beginning to Look A lot Like Christmas

Now that Thanksgiving is over we are officially in full Christmas mode! I keep calling Ben, Clark (Christmas Vacation) because he spent all day yesterday working on decorating the outside of our house. I may be partial, but I think it looks really good.
Other than the outside here's a look at our trees. So far I have three up, but I'd love to put one in our bedroom too, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Here's our "big" tree in the living room.
Owen's tree is all Santa's. It's pretty cute.
And sister's tree is all bling. :) I love her name in the tree. A nice find at TJ Maxx.
Here's our stockings. I really want new stockings, but I'm thinking I'll wait until the after Christmas sale to get them.
I've also put up my Christmas village and I'm loving my little entryway, although I'm wanting to find a cute tablecloth or something to cover the table.
I just love having all our decorations up. This is the first year in two years that I've really felt like going all out & decorating & I'm just loving it!!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Thanksgiving & Shopping Extravaganza

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Our's was eventful to say the least. Between taking Owen to the ER to transporting the turkey (while cooking) from our house to my mom's to going Christmas shopping & running on a few hours sleep, it was quite a day. Thankfully Owen is starting to feel better. He's had a bug the past few days, but Wednesday evening thru Thursday he kept running a high fever. It would only go down for like an hour & then shoot back up. After talking to the pediatrician on-call & one of doctor friends, we were advised to take him to the ER. We're not ER goers, but he was just pitiful & I think we just needed some reassuring that we were doing all we could do & we were, so now he seems to be feeling a little better, but I hate that he missed out on some of our Thanksgiving festivities. :(
Here's Ben, Olivia & our nephew Sam over at my in-laws. He's so stinkin' cute! Olivia kept saying last night, "I need to see Sam." :)
We didn't take any pictures over at my grandparents house, but the kids had a ball! I have three little cousins ages 5-10 & Olivia thinks she's just as big as they are.
After we ate, my parents took the kids home with them & Ben & I headed to Paducah to do some MAJOR Christmas shopping!!
Our first stop was Wal-Mart. They had waffle makers for $2.84 & some other goodies I wanted to score. The sale started at 10:00 & we arrived around 9:00. It was total chaos!!!! Ben & I split up so when the workers tore off the plastic we were able to get what we wanted. After trying to text & call one another we finally found each other & made our way to the check out line. It was ridiculous!! I'm a black Friday shopper fanatic, but unless Wal-Mart is giving something amazing away, I doubt I'll ever go back.... way to much chaos!! 
After Wal-Mart we made our way over to Toys R Us, Of course I'd already scouted out the deals & had my list. We stood in line for about ten minutes, but then we made our way into the store. They are by far the best & most organized black Friday store. If you couldn't find what you were looking for they had enough workers & help available. They had people stocking up the shelves as soon as they were emptied. I wish every store was that organized! We only stood in line for about five minutes to check out. It was a nice shopping experience. After we left there we went to our final stop, Kohl's. As usual, it was packed, but they had almost everything I wanted & we got some really great deals!! Other than standing in the check out line for an hour & a half, it was a great trip.
This was the view from the passenger seat in our car on our way home Friday morning. I really wasn't sure if it would all fit.. it almost didn't.
And here's most of it unloaded on our bed. I'm still not sure where we're going to put it all. We got home around 3:30 Friday morning, but our Christmas shopping is pretty much done! Yay!! I've only got to get a couple more little gifts & then I'm done.
After a few hours sleep, we went and picked up these two turkeys. I can't wait until Christmas morning to see the big smiles on their faces. 
Now onto decorating for Christmas.... Stay tuned ;)

Monday, November 21, 2011

Christmas Door Tutorial

So I'm loving Pinterest. I love all the cute, crafty, creative ideas that I find. It helps me get my creative juices flowing. If you know me, then you know that I LOVE to decorate for Christmas! It's one of my most favorite things! However, the past two years I've been either preggo or taking care of a newborn, so this year I'm going ALL out for Christmas. I've had my trees up for a week now, but today I decorated my front door and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out so I thought I would share.
First I attached my garland to the frame around our door. I bought my garland last week at Hobby Lobby for 1/2 price.. $3.50 per strand!
(Please ignore the broken light, it's getting replaced this week ;)
After it was secured to the door frame, I started with my deco mesh. I took one end of the mesh and used floral wire and attached it to the top of the garland. (I started from the top & worked my way down each side). I then made "poofs" & used the garland to secure them.
After I finished with the red deco mesh I interwove the green mesh. I attached it to the top with floral wire & made a "faux bow". I made one big poof & then when I started down the other side I made another big poof & it looks like a bow on the top, but it's just two poofs.

After I got both the red & green mesh attached I then attached ornaments with the floral wire just to give it that extra sparkle.
I've since added more ornaments since this, but it's too dark for me to get a good picture. I'll do a post on my trees & such later this week & show the updated version with all the ornaments.
I hope this tutorial helps. It was a lot easier then I thought it would be and I did it all while the kiddos were napping which makes for one happy momma. :-)
 Happy Decorating!!

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Random Thoughts

I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving!! Where has this year gone?
Olivia now counts to SEVEN in Spanish- thank you Dora!
Owen is getting so big! I can't believe he'll be ONE next month!!
He's now standing on his own!! I figure he'll be walking soon. :-/ it's bittersweet!!
Im really hoping to get my Christmas decorations up this week!! Early? I know, but I just can't help it- I'm in the Christmas spirit. :-)
Not a whole lot going on around here lately. We've just been hanging out and taking it easy. It's been nice. :)
Like the title of this post says, "Random Thoughts." I hope you have a great week!!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Halloween Fun ~ Trick or Treating

We spent Halloween night over at my boss's house, eating and trick or treating in his neighborhood and let me just say it was an experience. His neighborhood goes all out for Halloween and there was people EVERYWHERE!! It was lots of fun. This was our first Halloween with both of the kids and I've always wanted our entire family to dress up and we did just that. We dressed up as characters off of The Wizard of Oz.
I was the witch, Olivia was Dorothy, Owen was the cowardly lion and Ben was the scarecrow. Thanks to Jamie & Shannon (my boss and his wife) for letting us borrow the costumes. I couldn't find ANYTHING ANYWHERE for us to wear so they hooked us up. :)
Here's my two loves. Aren't they cute?
Before we did any trick or treating we chowed down! There was so much food!! I wish I would have taken some pictures of the food. It was all delicious, cute and festive!
Look at my sweet Owie?? He was so adorable!
 I wasn't sure how they would do actually trick or treating, but they did really good. Allie & Austin came with us, so kudos to Allie for taking some pics of us!
Olivia would whisper "Trick or Treat" and then she would say "Thank You." She was too cute. We took the double stroller with us so Austin and Allie kind of tended to Owen and the stroller. :)
Are they not the cutest?
I had bought some glow sticks to put on Owen and Olivia's buckets, but Olivia thought they were drum sticks and she kept acting like she was playing the drums. She would say, "one, two" and then start moving her hands like she was drumming. I think she makes her daddy and Uncle Aust proud. ;)
We had so much fun! It was definitely experience. I can't wait until next year!
Happy Halloween 2011!!!!


Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Olivia's 1st Haircut!!

Last week I took Olivia for her first hair cut. It was a happy and sad moment for this momma. Her hair is kind of crazy. She doesn't have a lot on top, but it's real bushy in the back so thankfully my cousin is a beautician and she could fix it.
Olivia really didn't know what to think about it. At first she wasn't that happy, but she sat in my lap the whole time and all in all she did pretty good.
She just trimmed up the back a little bit and now all of Olivia's little curls are really showing. And I'm not sure who she gets this from, but her hair is starting to be strawberry blond! I have to say, it's pretty cute. :)