A Little Bit o' Christmas

Usually every year by this time in December, my house is all decked, my presents are all wrapped, and we are fully immersed in fun Christmas crafts, cookie making, and holiday outings.

This year we are doing everything low key. Make that really low key. Of course, that is not by choice, just the circumstances we are in at the moment; I'm not going all bah humbuggy on you.


Ho, ho, ho! It's Santa Brennan.

As of today, I have no wrapping done. Actually, I don't even have any wrapping paper, and some of my need-to-wrap gifts won't even get here until after Christmas. We haven't done any cookie baking yet. I do plan on doing that soon. (The commissary here has several gluten-free flour options. Yay!) Brennan has decided Santa needs chocolate chip cookies this year. Sounds good to me. :)

As for all the other trimmings, I don't have any Christmas-y smelling candles, or a mantel to hang our stockings, or even a Christmas tree. But we have had a fun time making a couple craft projects to make it a little festive around here.


On our daily outings to the playground, Brennan has been collecting pinecones.


I told you it wouldn't take long to use my new glitter!




We've also made some paper chains.


Easy pack Christmas decor. :)


And we made a felt banner.


Banner making.

I was also able to mail over a couple of our favorites.


Our Christmas advent tree.


The snow globes we made last year, and our tiny first Christmas tree.


Brennan's nativity...and Spider-man gloves, and Matchbox cars, and Transformers. :)

And as is our tradition, our Christmas ornaments for this year.


Our family ornament. Fitting for all the National Park exploring we did this year. We found this leaf at Bryce Canyon National Park.


Brennan's ornament. Since we are now international, Santa on a globe was perfect for this year. Brennan has had concerns that Santa won't find him. I think the little man will be getting his yearly email from Santa any day now. :)

He will not, however, be getting the skateboard that he put on his Christmas list. I don't think my Mommy nerves are up for that yet. Yikes.

Our New House

The title today pretty much takes care of the intro...so here it is - our new house!


The front of the house. Complete with sunshiney day. :)


The back patio.


The humongous banana tree.


The backyard. See Chloe checking it out in the corner?


Come on in! Like my new wreath? The Community Center had a Wine, Cheese, and Wreath Making night this past Saturday. It was fun!


The kitchen.


The dining room. We built a new dining room table before we left Utah, and I refinished the hutch and buffet. (I know, finally!) I sure hope it all fits in there.  All the furniture we have in here now is loaner stuff.


The living room and a goofy Brennan playing PBS Kids. Poor kid - it's been raining,  he's not in preschool, we don't have a tv at the moment and most of his stuff and our art stuff isn't here.  To combat boredom, his normal hour of computer time a day has been expanded a little. We still get our daily dose of Curious George though. Thank goodness for streaming Netflix!

...and that's all I have for now. We also have three bedrooms upstairs, 2 1/2 baths, lots of closets and storage spaces, and a laundry room. When we get all our things here, and I get everything all snazzy I will give you a full tour.

Though that will probably not be until sometime around Valentine's Day. In the meantime, I'm sure it will continue to be interesting. Without all of our stuff here, we're learning to do a lot of improvising.

Like this:


How about a pot of brownies? We have no mixing bowls in the house, so a pot worked in a pinch!

They were still yummy, of course. :)

Decorating: Chalking It Up

As you all know, we just moved to our new house in November.  Right after we moved in and got our furniture arranged, we decorated for Christmas.  After the holiday decorations came down, the whole place looked pretty sad and barren.  So you know what that meant?  Yay, time for some decorating!

One of the things Jason and I worked on before he left was this handy-dandy chalkboard. (Why, yes, we do watch Blue's Clues around here quite often...and, yes,  I also have a handy-dandy notebook.)



While it would have been nice to have a vintage schoolhouse slate chalkboard, No. 1 - I've priced them, and they are way out of our budget, No. 2 - Jason still has several years left in the military, and I hate to imagine how much a slate chalkboard would add to our household goods weight.  So...we did the next best thing and built one ourselves.  We went to Lowe's and bought a piece of smooth plywood cut to size, and some trim.  Then since our Lowe's doesn't carry chalkboard paint, (I know, crazy!) we went to the Home Depot and bought some chalkboard and trim paint.

A side note to my mother-in-law: Yes, Jason and I miter cut trim together, and yes, we are still happily married. : )



I love having everything right there on the wall.  This is our ongoing agenda for the Winter.  Brennan is finger painting right now, so needless to say we don't always do the right thing on the right day, or maybe we do some things on several days.  Only our Friday lunch dates are non-negotiable.  Brennan's pretty good at knowing the days of the week, and if he knows it's Friday, he knows that means Chick-fil-a or McDonald's.



It's a great place for doodling...





For Brennan, too, ha!  Even though he has his own chalkboard that he loves, and it's right at his level.  I'll show you that soon.



Of course, I had to dress it up at little bit.  I can't wait to change decorations with the holidays.



The clock is just stuck on the board with a Command strip.  Have I ever told you Brennan has a huge fascination with Command strips.  He does.  I have no idea why.



♥♥ I love our new chalkboard! ♥♥

Linking At:

Spidey Sense and Other Randomness

Recently, we bought a shelf and hung it over the couch.  It looked perfect and made me happy, and I filled it up with goodies right away and loved it.

Unfortunately, there was an unforeseen dilemma with my decorating plan.  Every time someone is sitting on the couch it freaks me out a little.  I don't know why.  Maybe because it's a floating shelf that doesn't look like it should be able to stay up?  A trick of the mind, even though I was the one who hung it up, and my mind should know that it is securely anchored to the wall and fastened to it's metal cleat?


(This is like the fourth arrangement of things I've had up there.  I was hoping I could convince myself it was just the contents of the shelf, and not the shelf itself.  It didn't work.  Also, the shelf really is centered over those ceiling tiles, it just doesn't look like it in this picture.  Anyway.)

Understandably, Brennan being the boy jumping bean that he is, could knock something off.  But even when I am sitting on the couch, being still, all by myself, that shelf makes my head tingle, like I've developed spidey sense all the sudden. I have since read that hanging a shelf above your sofa is bad feng shui.  Apparently I have a feng shui sensitivity.  I had no idea.  So it looks like my new little shelf will be looking for a new place to hang, and I will have some big holes to patch.  Not to mention that now I have to figure out something else to hang up there.  Boo.

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I posted awhile back that it was about time for me to invest in some warm boots.  My trusty rain boots just weren't going to cut it for winter wear this whole season.  (Even though I still wear them often.)



So now I have not one pair of new boots, but two!  The first ones are snow boots.  With fuzzy stuff in them. I've worn them several times, and they are so warm.  Great for building snowmen and for all the snow shoveling that I will inevitably be doing in the coming months.



The second ones I found yesterday at Famous Footwear.  They were 50% off and  I had $5.00 off in reward points.  Oh yeah!  But...   I have no skinny jeans or leggings to wear them with, and my old standby boot cut jeans just don't look right tucked into them.  So they are on the sidelines at the moment waiting for a wardrobe update.  I can't wait to wear them!



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Last week we went treasure shopping at an architectural salvage shop in Salt Lake City.  There was so much old stuff...chippy paint, weathered wood, and it all had a history.  As soon as we walked in I fell in love with two pieces.

They came home with us.

A leaded glass mirror from the 1800's.

There are not words.  Except I already think of her as another family member. : )

& Co. Sign.

We bought this complete with bird poop on the back.  And FYI, there wasn't a discount since it had been pooped on, ha.  It really bothers Jason that it doesn't say anything before "& Co."  But that's why I love it so much.  What happened that the end of this sign got cut off?  What happened to the rest of the sign?  Was there a big blow up fight and a breakup, or did someone die, or retire?  Hmmm...we will never know.

We also got a wooden shutter, but a picture of that will have to wait for another day.  It needs a little work, and I don't know yet where it is going to live in our house.  You just never know, it might end up above the couch. : )

Hello January

I'm still in a little bit of denial that the new year is here.  Is it really January?  And just where did December go?  It has all just zoomed right on by.  Crazy.



I hope everyone had a wonderful time over the holidays.  Our's was nice; very low key and quiet.  We watched lots of movies, played games, ate lots of yummy food, and just enjoyed hanging out.  The weather did not cooperate and give me snow for Christmas.  Nor has it snowed since then, but I did see on the news that Florida is expecting a hard freeze in the next couple of days.  Weird.  Yesterday we did drive up into the mountains, and there was plenty of snow to see up there.  Snow on the Aspen trees...so pretty.



On New Year's Eve I gave up and went to bed before midnight.  I did make it until midnight Eastern time, so I did see the ball drop.  That counts for something, right? : )

The fortune from the first cookie we opened on New Year's Day.  How great is that!  I hope this comes true for everyone.



This week we have lots of appointments and errands on our agenda.  Jason will be leaving for deployment soon, and our time is growing short. : (

Since we have so much going on, I will probably take a blogging break the rest of the week.  I'll be back soon though.  I have lots of crafts, decorating and project ideas in my head, and I just know you just can't wait to hear all about them.

Please keep Jason in your thoughts and prayers.

Our Thanksgiving Mantel

I was going to preface my mantel pictures, by saying that our mantel this year is pretty much the same as it was last year and then link to that post...but then I went back and checked, and apparently I was a slacker and didn't do a post about our Thanksgiving mantel last year.  Oops!

While I was checking on that, I also noticed that I jumped the gun and started blogging about Christmas on November 4th.  Aren't you proud of me, we're a third through the month and nary a word about it, even though I have been working on some Christmas craftiness!  (That just means look out come December, haha.)

So, back to our Thanksgiving mantel.

Ta da, here it is!

I made the burlap thankful banner last year with some stuff I had hanging around.  The pilgrim people are the first Thanksgiving decorations we owned!  Jason bought them for me, well, let's just say, a lot of years ago.  I had to give both of them a makeover, Mr. Pilgrim was losing his head, and the Mrs. was showing her age.  A little glue, paint, and sealer, and they are both strong and youthful again.  (If only it worked that way for real, right?)

And here is the bottom.

Some little homemade fabric pumpkins.

Come back next tomorrow to see the rest of our Thanksgiving goodies.

Pumpkin Time

Is it pumpkin time yet?

That's been Brennan's question every day.  Pumpkin time (aka Halloween) is a pretty big deal this year.  He remembers all the fun stuff we did last year, and can't wait for it to happen again!  We have his costume all ready, he's already got one Halloween treat bag at school, and we have a Fall Festival to go to this evening.  Yay, pumpkin time!

The anticipation is even worse because we put up our Halloween decorations over the weekend.  It's looking all kinds of festive around here!

Here's our mantel this year.  Most of it is the same as last year, except those pumpkin trees on the ends.  I found those at the Target Dollar Spot, AKA: The $2.50 Can't Walk Away Without Buying 4...5...6... Things Which Makes it at least the $10 Spot.  Or is that just me?


These pumpkin wands are new.  I saw this Pumpkins on a Stick post over at Sweet Something Designs, and I  had to cute-ify some for myself.


Boo-tiful Desk


The iron piece above our TV.


Big Tray o' Pine Cones


The Front Door


Entry Cabinet

That tree has already hit the floor.  : (  We've had the windows open and a wind gust took it down.  Now the base is full of rocks. : )

Entry Mirror

Brennan and I had fun making the little ghosties this year.

Pantry Door

I made this banner from some felt bags.  I've had the bags for years and it was time they became something useful.  I originally got them for secret pal and boo presents, but they never seem to hold enough stuff.  A couple of cuts and some hot glue, and ta da, now we have a Halloween banner.

The Kitchen Hutch


And there you have our Halloween tour.  I left out a couple of areas, but you get the idea.  I bought mums way too early and they are already dead and there are places inside my house that are too cluttered to be photographed for posterity.  I thought I would spare you those scary scenes.  Nice of me, right?

Have a great weekend!