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Archive for December, 2012

Christmas Wishes and Giving

After a restful weekend at home, I’ll be spending the week busy preparing for a very long upcoming weekend of Christmas celebration. I’m thoroughly looking forward to it! One of my favorite parts of this season is spending time with our large extended family. Since most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins live all over the place, it isn’t often we get to see each other. It makes these gatherings even more special and precious to me.

I wish everyone a beautiful, joyous Christmas filled with peace and love!
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Also, as many of you know, I’m originally from a very small town which I love and will always call home. Growing up in a small town, I feel we are all intertwined in one way or another. Matt Pohler, also from my hometown, is only 17 and he was recently diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. He is currently going through chemotherapy and fighting the fight of his life. The medical bills are staggering. If you can offer any help, it would be greatly appreciated! His story can be found here: MattPohler.org Family and friends are trying to help by putting together a raffle and you can also donate as well. If you’d like to support this beautiful family, go to MattPohler.org

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Heavy Heart

After what happened yesterday in Newtown, my heart is very heavy. I meant to post our Christmas card yesterday but out of respect for what happened, I decided a day of silence and prayer would be better. What is happening here in front of our very eyes with this nation? When is more aggressive action going to be taken?

Today all I want to do is hold my girls really tight and be thankful for them!

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We had a lovely Thanksgiving! But as soon as it passed, we began our Christmas celebration. From visiting Santa to decorating the house, it definitely feels like a cheerful time of year!

St. Nick (to read more about him, go here) stopped by last night. He brought a few goodies for Livy and Avery and he wrote a special letter to Avery about her inability to listen so we’ll see if her listening skills improve. Santa has brought the girls so much over the past years that I’m not sure what he could possibly come up with this year to bring them. His little elves are really having to think hard this year. On that same note, I think Avery is old enough to understand the joy of giving and how meaningful it is so perhaps we will start introducing a “giving day” where she can pick some things to gift for donations to other children.

I decided to go more towards natural elements for decorating this year. I ordered Burlap stockings that were handmade on Etsy and a beautiful burlap treeskirt with cute buttoms on Etsy as well. I also love a lot of greenery!
Starting to feel like Christmas around here

Last week I went to Anthropologie to do a little shopping and I noticed they had these cute faux snowglobes made out of Mason jars and other jars. They were $28 per jar and while I love a splurge from Anthropologie, I couldn’t justify the expense because I wanted a lot of them. I had a lot of the stuff needed to make these already at home and ran to Michaels to get the snow glitter and more jars. I made a grouping for the kitchen with only Christmas trees and I made a grouping for our family room. I think they turned out really cute! And considering I made 10 of them, that’s $280 worth of faux snowglobes for only about $30-40 worth of supplies. The most expensive part was the Lennox trees but I used a 40% off coupon from Michael’s.
Supplies (jars, cooltouch glue gun (don’t want to burn yourself!!), trinkets or village christmas trees, snow glitter, OH! and apple cider for sipping while you work) :
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One of my groupings:
Got a little crafty late last night making snowglobes

She moves too quickly! The lighting was low and I couldn’t get a good shot of her admiring the tree so it’s a bit blurry (and I was too lazy to go get my other lens):
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Last weekend, we had a very nice weekend at home and I promised Avery that she could decorate a Gingerbread house over the weekend. She couldn’t wait! She’s been wanting to do this for weeks. We picked up a house from Whole Foods. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a kit to go with it so I went to their bakery and they packaged some frosting for me and we picked out some fun treats to decorate it with a la carte.
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I love how hard she is concentrating here. This one was taken with my iphone:
Concentrating very hard!
The finished product turned out pretty cute! I straightened out the roof shingles just a tad:
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