Love them. I just do. These two are the sweetest, friendliest couple. Seriously. Besides my two redheaded nephews, cutest redheaded baby. Period. Oh, and this girl can cook and sew like nobody’s business. She’s like the second coming of Ree. You know, The Pioneer Woman. These three are truly a go-with-the-flow kinda family, and you can tell in everyone of their photos. Don’t they just ooze cuteness?

These were, of course, taken before xmas for holiday cards. Even for what seemed like a split second shoot the moments captured that morning are some of my all time favs.

This is where Baby C decided she was just about done with taking photos, and was letting it be known.

That’s what I named my tablescape.

On any given day you will most likely find our dining room table cluttered with diaper bags, baby shoes, cloth diapers draped over the backs of chairs drying, mail, and my current craft project. But since this was our very first Christmas at our house hosting others I wanted to make it a bit more special.

I’m not very good at putting a beautiful table together. I can just never decide on how I want things. Not to mention I decided not to register for fine china when we got married so I don’t have any of that fanciness. Nor do I have a ton of random decor stuff just tucked away in the house for random occasions. We simply don’t have the room for things like that.

So, here’s my sweet little table. Pun totally intended. Even my cute little moose got all gussied up for Christmas morn. I call her Bessie.

I’ve been dying to use my red and white napkins I picked up at Pier 1 last year after xmas. All the more reason to make my table a bit prettier. They look so cute all tied up with some jute and a candy cane.

I used a cream scarf from Old Navy as the runner. It had just enough whimsey to get the job done. I had big, giant coffee mugs at each setting ready to fill our bellies with coffee or hot cocoa.

And as the name states…there were quite a few candy canes on the table. I put a handful of small candy canes in two of my Crate & Barrel mercury votives. I wish it were okay to display snowflakes all year, because I would totally be leaving these lookers out. In the middle of the table was a cute Spode casserole dish.

Ahhh, my sweet little Spode dish. She played host to our cinnamon roll Christmas tree.

We also chowed down on a delicious breakfast casserole that Derek prepared for everyone. I love when a man cooks. Don’t you?

As I type this my dining room table has again become a miscellaneous item wasteland. Boo. It was cute while it lasted. Does anyone have any table decorating tips they could offer for a novice? Or just point me in the direction of a blog or website that can help my feeble efforts.

Here’s another super quick How-To on how to make a snowman ornament.

What you’ll need…

• clear glass ball ornament (any size)
• rubbing alcohol & cotton ball
• acrylic paint
• small paint brush
• baker’s twine (or ribbon)
• hot glue (& glue gun)
• faux snow

For my snowman ornament I first cleaned the outside of the ornament with rubbing alcohol, let it dry for a few minutes, and then balance on a small cup so I could begin painting. For the eyes I dipped the back of a small art/craft paint brush into dark gray paint and then touched the back of the brush to the ornament. I did this a few times until the eyes were the size I desired. Since I had the gray paint out I went ahead and did the dots for the mouth next.

With a 10/0 sized art brush (basically, a really tiny brush) I freehanded the nose. I allowed the nose to dry for 5 minutes or so and went over it once more to deepen the color and to fix any issues I noticed. Don’t worry about getting his nose perfect. I made 6 of these guys and everyone the nose is totally different. I think it adds to good ole Frosty’s charm.

Once Frosty was dry, I stuffed him full of some fake snow and then added his top. I also took a bit of baker’s twine and wrapped it around his top (where his hat would be) then added a dot of hot glue to hold the twine in place.

(here is the back of Frosty showing the dot of hot glue)

Once your hot glue is dry hang the little guy on your tree or anywhere else you feel needs a snowman.

These would make super easy and cheap party favors or even holiday gifts. You could even add a name or year to the back for a touch of personalization.  Go on, get your holiday on!

In the color of my holiday decor that is. In previous years I went with a more neutral/natural color palette, but this year I wanted tons of RED, WHITE, and GREEN. I wanted the house to be colorful and whimsical since we now have a kid running around the joint.

I told Derek that this year I was changing our christmas tree colors, but to be kind I would attempt to do it on the cheap. In an effort to save money I decided to make a large majority of the new ornaments, and thanks to Pinterest I did just that. And thanks to a 50% off coupon at Michael’s and previous training from my MIL I also made the bow that tops the tree. It looks a bit droopy because the wire in my wired ribbon is pitiful. It barely holds shape. As you can see.

I wanted to add big colorful ribbon to the tree, but I couldn’t find any that I just loved at a reasonable price. And since I’m trying not to spend to much on xmas decor this year I decided to nix the idea this year. Maybe I’ll find something during the after xmas sales.

I decided to go with some basic present wrapping since the tree was full of color. I wrapped all my gifts in craft paper (Actually it’s contractor’s paper I picked up at HD for like $10 to use when Gray wants to color or paint.) I tied a simple ribbon around the package and stamped each person’s first name using some lowercase rubber stamps I already owned and white paint. I got the basic idea here.

Guess who got to help decorate the tree this year. He mainly just shoved things inside the branches, but he sure looked cute doing it. I still find random items from time to time that he has shoved into the tree. I guess he thinks the tree is still looking a bit sparce.

He even threw on a festive outfit to add to the fun.

So, that’s our fun whimsical tree! Did anyone else make any ornaments this year, or even MOST of your ornaments? I wanna see.

I need your help. What color/type of ribbon should I add to the tree next year? Should it have a pattern, or should I just stay on the solid color train?

I’ll be back soon to give you a close up of all my handmade ornaments.

Guess who arrived at our house this morning all the way from the North Pole. Flip the Elf! He’s a handsome little fella, isn’t he?

I guess he got the name Flip by being a topped ranked Flip Cup champion, because our hidden cameras caught Flip challenging Rudolf to a Flip Cup tournament at the dinning room table last night.

Grayson found him this morning still sitting on his Flip Cup thrown from last night’s tourney.

He must want us to get going on decorating the house, because he dug our stockings out of storage in the attic and brought them down for us.

It seems Flip extended an invitation to the Flip Cup tournament to some of Gray’s stuffed animals. It appears that Beans even snuck out of Gray’s crib for a peek of the action.

As you can see, Flip is so good at this game that he even lands his cups in a pretty pattern. Not Rudolf, he could barely get one cup flipped correctly.

Although Flip rocks at Flip Cup he’s still and elf, and is not a winner in the height department. I see he found some of my new red bowls to give him a little leverage.

Rudolf said that although an amazing Flip Cup player; Flip is far from arrogant. I mean come on…he’s an elf. Elve’s are happy, fun, and kind little guys and gals. I can’t wait to see what our hidden cameras catch Flip doing tonight.

I’ll do my best to catch Flip in action overnight, but if we miss him goofing off I will at least post of pic of where Grayson found him each morning.

Thursday evening Derek and I came home to a shredded papery mess.  It seems that our little fur ball of terror, Wrigley, just couldn’t wait another day to open Christmas presents….so she tore into two freshly wrapped packages under the tree.  Thing is, neither one were for her.  DANG DOG!

Thankfully, she only shredded the wrapping and boxes.  The contents inside remained mostly unscathed.  There were some teeth marks here and there, but nothing to cry over.

This was a big scare since we have a BRAND NEW couch coming in the next few weeks.  See, we had to buy a new couch since SOMEONE ate the last one.  Hahmmm! Hahmmm!  Remember this post?  It’s been about a year since she has destroyed anything but a dog toy, and we thought it was time to go ahead and buy a new non-nasty couch.  Wrigley, please don’t prove us wrong.  Pretty Please!

One of the presents she tore into contained perfume.  I really hope it was her nose that led her to this trail of terror, and not her overactive puppy brain.

Since we have kind of an earthy/natural Christmas theme going on at our abode.  I’ve had the itch to make some of these terrarium ornaments for our tree.  They require zero care.  Well almost zero.  If you have animals like mine you gotta make sure they don’t clobber the Christmas tree, and break your beautiful creations.

I found this quick and easy little project on Design*Sponge (love that site), and wanted to share their “how to” for these Mossy Balls of Joy.

What you’ll need:

– clear glass ornaments

– dried moss

– twine

– pencil

– q-tips

optional- twigs, butterflies, feathers etc…

1. Tear off a small piece of moss and moisten slightly (this helps to keep the moss from crumbling a lot of dust inside).

2. With the eraser end of your pencil, gently push moss into the opening. Repeat this a few times until you have a forest floor on the bottom of your ornament.

3. Add any extras and poke with your pencil to style things as necessary.

4. Bend a q-tip and clean any debris stuck to the inside walls of the ornament.

5. Attach a piece of twine with a bow and hang.