Christmas Cheer

It's by far my favorite time of the year!  I love the shopping and the baking and the parties and most of all the decorating!  My Christmas decor was out Thanksgiving weekend, which seems like just yesterday actually.

It's all about red, white and silver:

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I actually made these pillows out of placements.  It's such a simple project, you just open the seam of a placement, stuff it with pillow stuffing then sew up the seam:

I bought some white iron-on letters to add to my stockings that I bought last year.   I never thought about doing that until my friend Monica showed me how she used the same type of letters on her stockings.  She used letters with adhesive on them.  When I went to Hobby Lobby I found the iron-on letters and I thought I would give it a try.  Well it worked perfectly:  they look like the letters are hand stitched!

I went with all white/silver ornaments on the tree this year.  Different sizes and different textures added some nice drama to the tree.  You can't really see it in the pictures but there are a  lot of ornaments -- it's a 9 foot tree.  I also added some red-glittered pine cones in the tree.  Of course, in between the white/silver, there's the super heros and the Cowboy and Cardinal ornaments.  It's really quite stunning in person.

I think these are card holders but I like the way they look here on my end table:

The nativity always sits on my entrance table.  It's one of my favorites:

I added some string and mini clothes pins to the sign at the front door to hang incoming Christmas cards:

The wreath at the front door is simple but festive:

Grievous was helping me take pictures.  Isn't he a handsome boy?

I heard that I can store this poinsettia in the garage after Christmas when it goes dormant.  Apparently I'll be able to use it again next year.  We'll see how that goes....

I love adding a little bit of Christmas to each room in the house.  Even if it's adding the red-glittered pine cones here and there:

For the dining table, I just added some faux winter greens to a bowl and dropped in a few ornaments:

Oh, this was a coaster project that my friend Monica and I worked on.  We bought white tiles and mod podged some scrap paper on them, sprayed them with clear acrylic, and added some felt to the bottom.  I personalized the ones I worked on with initials that I cut out using my Cricut:

I love how simple the centerpiec is:

Of course there is Cowboys stuff all over the house:

I kept it simple this year by just placing ornaments through out the media center:

And a bunch of red ornaments in a silver bowl:

The self in the kitchen also had some faux winter greens with a yard wrapped candle and a nutcracker:

I hang this ornament here every year:

The table in the hallway also gets a bit of Christmas cheer:

In the guest bathroom, I added some Christmas red and candles:

And the spoiled puppies got new beds for Christmas.  Two for our bedroom and two for the office where we all spend a lot of time.  I have secured them in the guest bedroom for now because they can't have them until Christmas....

Red and white jingle bells in a basket:

I wrap berry garland around my candles and it gives them just enough cheer:

Merry Christmas!

1st Annual Wrapping Party

I usually have a one-woman wrapping party.  I sit in front of the tv and just wrap and wrap and wrap.  This year, I was super excited because I had company!  My best friend and I had our first annual wrapping party this past Saturday.   We planned this party early on in the season -- we planned to wrap all our gifts as we watched movies and drank wine.

I decided if we were going to be drinking for hours on end that we would need some food in us too.  So I set up a couple different platters of snack foods:

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I made some mini Tarragon Chicken Salad sandwiches and served them with some fresh fruit, raw vegetables, salt & pepper kettle chips and a vegetable dip for the veggies and chips:

I decided since it was a "party" I would pull out plate tray stand and my white plates to make it festive:

After Monica got here and the wine was poured and we had something to eat, we started the first movie and got started on wrapping.  Now, my Christmas gift list consists of 20 people, excluding Sweetheart.  It's not a huge list but it's a good share of shopping and wrapping.   I started piling all my stuff to be wrapped on the chair in the living room, which looked like this: 

This is what it looked like when I finished.  I kept it very basic; same green wrapping paper for all the gifts, with a gift tag tied on with twine, finished off with a cute bow: 

This is what Monica had - for her two kids and one brother-in-law:

Sweetheart thought she was moving in as he helped her bring in all this stuff!

This is one-third of what she had wrapped about half way through our night.  She had like 10 different rolls of wrapping paper in various colors of red and silver and she intended to add fancy ribbons to each gift:

This is what she still  had to wrap after I was completely done with my stack......

We couldn't stop laughing at the magnitude of her gifts compared to mine.  Sweetheart stayed in the office while we wrapped.  He would come out every now and then to visit the snack trays and would laugh at the mess we had everywhere!

All in all we had a wonderful time.  We are already looking forward to next year's party!

Christmas Cards

One of my favorite things to do at Christmas is craft my own Christmas cards that I mail out to friends and family.   This year I kept it very simple because we had so much going on the past few weeks.  I also kept to the Christmas tree theme colors:  red, white and silver.

I always start with a protype before I decide on any color combinations.   When I showed Sweetheart my idea for the cards, he quickly pointed out that the colors were not very "Christmas-y".....

I decided to go with a white card with a red velvet NOEL, with a glittered NOEL shadow, a white dove and a gem for the dove's eye.  As the words were getting cut, I stamped all the cards:

While the cards were drying, I worked on a pillow project.  Super easy and super cute AND very inexpensive:

You'll see the finished product in the Christmas decor post

Then the assembling begins:

Here's the finished cut out.  It's hard to make out the glittered shadow because of my poor camera skill:

The inside of the card:

And the backside:

And the envelope:

Oh and by the way, we finished the guest bedroom.  I just LOVE it!

More on this room later!