Christmas Whirlwind Part 3

Finally after all the preparation, baking and decorating Christmas day arrived!  Let me tell you… I had 95% of my Christmas shopping done by Thanksgiving so I could ENJOY the rest of the month before Christmas.  But with all the projects, wrapping and such time still flew by!

All the stockings were LOADED with love and affection and goodies for everyone

Dad camped out in his favorite chair waiting for the festivities to begin.

My three nephews and my niece were decked out in the Christmas jammies watching Spongebob while waiting to have breakfast so we could open presents.

Here’s Mom & Dad’s tree fully decked out with presents.

My cutie-pie niece Lilly Jo with her pigtails and dimples.  She gets embarrassed when “Auntie Kim” points the camera her way

The fun began with the opening of stockings.

My brother Thad holding his youngest – my nephew Cole.  He’s such a sweet baby boy.

I got the coolest little Nerf toys in some McDonad’s happy meals (which wound up as stocking stuffers).  One was a little plastic basketball hoop and ball and the other was a set of goal posts and a foam football.  Here’s Thad showing Lilly how to “flick” the ball.

The present opening “mayhem” starts

I think Cole had a fun first Christmas!  He was doing really good for being passed around from person to person.  He is such a blessing and we all wanted to share some love with him.

Here’s “Nanna Kaffy” (as my niece calls her) holding Cole after a wonderful Ham feast.

Ever the doting Mother AND Grandmother, my Mom just can’t get enough of her grandkids

And now it’s “Papa Tim’s” turn with his little grandson.  I just love the way Dad looks at him

And the way Cole looks at “Papa Tim” – “Yeah, I think he’s pretty okay.”

Cole kept sticking his tongue out all night!  It was cracking me up!  I have about 15 pictures of him with his tongue out so I had to share at least one.  What a bundle of joy!

Last but not least – someone actually pointed my camera at ME!  I’m usually the one behind it

Hope you all had a warm and wonderful Holiday Season!  Here’s to a Happy and Prosperous 2010!

xoxo

‘Tis the Season…..

Well it’s that time of year, for decorating, crafts, baking and shopping!

I’ve decided to go through some of my Christmas decorations this year and get rid of some stuff so I can decorate more “simply”.  I’ve had a bunch of “mish-mash” decorations for years and years now.  A lot of hand-me-downs that are tattered, broken etc.  I decided this year to simplify my decorations by going with a plain wreath with green LED lights and two wire/ivy trees with white LED lights on top of the piano.  I decided to go with LED this year.  While they cost more upfront they use a fraction of the electricity as regular lights do.  I’m kind-of a Christmas light freak so I figured I would save where I could.

I put this decoration together the other night after buying these two little trees at Fred Meyer for $9.99 a piece.  The planter is a Pottery Barn planter that I’ve had sitting outside since this past summer with nothing in it.  It was a gift from a family friend.  The silver ornaments are leftover from a few years ago as is the ribbon.  I’ve decided on a green and silver theme with a hint of red.  I have a couple of other “projects” up my sleeve that I will be blogging about later (once I buy the supplies to create them).

I am almost done with my Christmas shopping this year and it’s only December 1st!  I decided to get a jump start and I did a LOT of my shopping online this year.  I’ve been really happy with the results.  I’ve gone out to Christmas shop only once and it was NOT on Black Friday (NO WAY!).  I only have one more person to buy for (whom I am waiting for to give me some IDEAS).  Other than that I have a couple of silly stocking stuffer things to get.  I am really happy that I will be able to enjoy December baking and doing crafts instead of running back and forth from the mall and shopping center

Speaking of CRAFTS!!!  This is a little project I started last week.  I’ve had this pad of Holiday scrapbooking paper for a couple of years now.  I’ve used a few pieces here and there for cards and whatnot, but I’m not really into scrapbooking so I’ve been trying to figure out ways to use this beautiful paper (either that or give it away!).  I decided to cut up the 12×12 sheets into little strips to fold and make gift tags.  But I couldn’t stop there!  I cut little white squares of paper and used my Holiday rubber stamp collection to stamp images onto the paper.  After that I used an old paint brush, some craft glue and my Martha Stewart glitter to jazz them up a bit.  I may have gotten a little carried away…..but I was having so much FUN with this!  Aren’t they cute?!?!

I think the snowflakes are my favorites!  Some of them I drew myself, like this one.  I just drew the shape lightly with a pencil and painted the glue on before sprinkling the glitter.  The photo doesn’t show how sparkly and glittery they are.  They’re really cute!

This snowman turned out pretty cute too!  This one is from one of my rubber stamps.  Unfortunately I had to stop using the stamps because my stamp pads were all nasty from being in storage.  The foam was starting to disintegrate and make the stamping process pretty sloppy.

This was a great project for my ADD personality.  It gave me something fun to do for several hours a couple nights in a row and now I have a nice little collection of hand-made gift tags!

Happy crafting everyone!  Have a wonderful Holiday Season!

XOXOX

Kim

Halloween Festivities

My brother Todd was nice enough to invite me to spend Halloween night at their house in Bonney Lake.  They live in a beautiful neighborhood up on the plateau called Sky Island.  Every year they have DROVES of people drive up to the park’n'ride near their house, leave their cars and take their kids around Todd’s neighborhood.  Every year they get more and more trick-or-treaters!  It’s been well over 600 these past few years.  So the neighborhood goes ALL out with decorations for this festive holiday.

 

This is Todd’s house with all the Halloween decorations, isn’t it SPOOOOOOKY?    I just LOVE Halloween!

One of the MANY pumpkins they carved this year!  YARGH!

I just love that they have all of these cool decorations for Halloween now too!  Not just for Christmas anymore!

This is probably my favorite photo of the night as I was able to get the glow of the moon above this house.

This one is a little blurry as it was very dark outside, but I was trying to capture the droves of people under the street lamp.  It was unbelievable how many people showed!!

All in all I had a very fun evening seeing all the adorable costumes.  Afterward we gathered around the fire at my brother’s house, drank and laughed