Christmas Decorations

Here are a few peeks of my Christmas decorations. I mostly like to post these for myself to look at next year....fun to see how I do different things with the different items every year.

I always do my entry with my Eiffel Towers. I have one for each year we've been married. I hang them on a vintage mirror we keep up year-round. I am starting to run out of hanging room, though, so next year I might have to change things up a bit!

The table is decorated with "naturey" stuff--pinecones, silver spray-painted leaves, rocks, bark pieces, tree stumps, etc.

Here's this years' Eiffel Tower. I actually MADE it this year! Shopping around I didn't see anything that was different from the ones I already had, and I am majorly in love with burlap, so I decided to do one out of that. I used a textile marker to write "Joyeux Noel" all over a piece of burlap in cursive. Then I printed off an outline of the ET from Google Images, cut it out, glued it onto a piece of cardboard, cut that out, glued THAT onto the burlap (with spray adhesive) and then used Elmer's to trace the outline and sprinkled glitter all over it. Hole-punched the top and VOILA! I love it and I feel like it also is very representative of the past year for our family--we've been doing a lot of cutting back--on stuff, on obligations, on time away from home, on busyness--and so a homemade ornament is perfect this year!

Here's my mantle. I used my favorite shutters, glued on some vintage knobs, tied a piece of lace across it, and hung on some vintage Christmas cards I've had forever and never have found anything to do with. It looks so pretty when the candles are lit, but I keep forgetting to take a picture at night. I didn't do stockings this year....Just decided I didn't want them up this year.Here is one of my built-ins. I didn't do anything to the top shelf, but the others I decorated for the season. The second shelf holds my favorite Christmas pictures! The bottom is my Christmassy bird shelf.
Incidentally this shelf and all its belongings are no longer there....Matt and my dad replaced the leaking water main into the house, which is directly behind the built-in.....So right now it is just a bare piece of paneling until Matt finishes replacing everything.
I need to do some pics of my other built in and my dining room, etc. To come!

Matching shoe girls

Quinn got shoes to match Oma's for Christmas!

At Chuck and Lois's

We stayed with Matt's Uncle Chuck and Lois in Missouri. Here are some pics at their house.

Missouri Capitol Building

During our time in Jefferson City we went and explored the grounds of the capitol. We've been there several times before, but the gardens were so pretty with all the leaves and Quinn hadn't seen the Missouri River before.

Missouri is the land of leaves bigger than my children's heads.

Matt and Q by the Louis and Clark statues. Notice Q with no shoes. She was being a turd about kicking her shoes off so Matt told her fine, she could go shoeless. He told her she could ask for her shoes at any time cause he had them in his pocket. It was COLD out that day. Like high 40's. And she is so stubborn she went for about 20 minutes on brick and cement and across grass shoeless before she would finally ask for her shoes.

Here's one from Matt's phone of her shoeless-ness.

Trent teases Q that he's afraid of bears, so the second Q spotted this bear in front of the state building she HAD to get a picture with it for Trent.

Checking out the Missouri River.
Bakey was cozy warm in the moby the whole time, snoozing away!

Birthday Festivities

Thursday night was my nephew's first birthday party!

Beck discovered the hazards of sitting on Daddy's lap during ice cream eating time!

Our gift to Luke was some handmade hardwood blocks. He climbed right into the box and looked so cute in amongst his blocks!

Some holiday festivities

Mom and I lived on the edge and went to the grocery store on Friday night. It was a madhouse. But we got all our groceries, the baby slept the whole time, and we kept our sanity! We only had to make a run to another store for a bag of hashbrowns cause HEB was out. I meant to document us by our full cart, but we were so excited to gt checked out and home to pick up the boys and take a Chinese food run that I totally forgot to snap a pic.

After Chinese food we went to watch a light show at a local church. Q got to get out of her carseat and climb in front for a good view. When it was time to put her back into her seat she pitched a HUGE fit (it was after 9pm, for the record...). Suddenly she turned the wailing and flailing off and said in the sweetest, calmest voice, "Well that was sure fun, wasn't it!" Stinker.

Here she is with her newest victim to be the boss of in her playroom--Aunt Linda.

Her gingerbread man! She LOVED doing this!

Beck at 4.5 months

This little guy is a quick learner. Everyone in my house knows it's just easier to cooperate with Mama's photoshoots because the sooner
you smile the sooner it's over. :) After a 30 minute family portrait session with grandparents and cousins, he still had a couple grins for me!

My Christmas Baby

The littlest guy in his Christmas pj's....hand-me-downs from his sister's first Christmas!

And another of my Christmas babies! Alie-girl wanted to pose for a picture, too!

Merry Christmas!

Two versions of our Christmas card....gotta distribute the kissing equally among our boys, ya know!