Enjoying the Season

I love Christmas decorating! Whether its decorating my house, or presents or gingerbread houses it just makes me happy.

Our town has a great Christmas parade.  It's so fun to go out at night and see all the floats lit up, plus I think my kids got more candy from that parade than they did at Halloween, now what we're going to do with it all is beyond me.

This year for our Advent calendar, we mixed squinkies in with some different Christmas activities (most of which we would have done anyway).  Somehow having those activities come from little boxes made them even more fun.  Some of the things we did with the advent calendar were make gingerbread houses, play Christmas charades, eat a snowflake, play pin the nose on Rudolph, have a Christmas movie party with red and green popcorn, get peppermint milkshakes, take treats to neighbors.  I am really loving doing the advent calendar this way, it has definitely helped me get into the Christmas spirit.

Santa take two.  We were doing a little Christmas shopping at Bass Pro Shop.  So we decided to check out Santa's workshop, the kids had so much fun at all the games, on the carousel, coloring and of course seeing Santa, I think Owen might have added a few things to his list since last time.

Brooke made her Christmas presents for her friends, her teacher, and Owen.  I forgot to get a picture of all the notebooks before we gave them away, but here is a picture of the notebooks she made for Owen and herself.  She did such a great job decoupaging them all and it was so fun to work on this project with her.  I also think they turned out pretty cute!

I am really enjoying the holiday season this year! What fun stuff have you guys been up to?

Copycat

'Tis the season!  I saw both of these DIY wreaths on line and they looked so cheap and easy I had to try them.  I think they both look really cool, see what you think.

Split Pea Wreath
From See Kate Sew

Coffee Filter Wreath
From Lowes

Santa Pictures

Success! We haven't had the best luck at getting pictures of our kids with Santa, but I was determined this was going to be the year. And after standing in a ridiculously long line at Dollywood, right during Owen's naptime, miracle of miracle we have a halfway decent picture.

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Owen has been really funny about Santa this year.  I think he thinks that Santa is like his own personal genie.  He keeps telling me he needs to see Santa again to ask for more things from a new toy, to shoes that fit, to more apples and ice cream, it's kind of funny!

Our Christmas Tree

I was dreading putting our Christmas tree up this year.  I kept thinking about how little and ugly it is and how we really NEED a new Christmas tree, and how it was going to look so silly in our living room with our higher ceilings.  But somebody went a little over budget on Christmas shopping this year and we're trying to save up for a few things so the line was drawn at getting a beautiful, new 9 foot, pre-lit Christmas tree.  So we put up our little 5 1/2  foot, little Christmas tree.  And you know what?  I love it! Looking at that tree reminds me of when we bought it.  It was our first Christmas after we were married, it was early to mid November and it had snowed.  So Reid and I were out sledding one Friday night, when we started talking about how excited we were for Christmas and we decided to go get a Christmas tree right then.  So we went down to Big Lots and bought a 6 foot (there is one branch at the top that sticks up about a foot so even though it is only 5 feet, it counts as 6) Christmas tree for $25 which was basically a small fortune to us at the time.  We took it  home with the lights that we had bought and set it up and later we painted wooden ornaments to hang on it.  Looking at that Christmas tree brings back so many memories of how excited we were to spend Christmas together and how beautiful I thought that sad, little Christmas tree was.  It helps me to remember that it isn't all about how gorgeous and big and fancy your Christmas decorations are (not that there is anything wrong with a 9 ft. Christmas tree) but the memories that you create that bring your family closer together.