We Christmased...

Christmas Eve found us at Bass Pro Shop taking pics with Santa...We had so much fun and it wasn't busy at all, surprisingly!  There was so much FREE fun to be had!

The carousel was adorable!

There were all different animals.

Violet loved it!

Did I mention it was FREE?!?!

I was so happy that Violet did well with Santa!

Not the best pic, but with four kids, you get what you get!

There are crafts there, too!  This day was cookie decorating...

So fun and saved me from having to bake later.

The kids in their Momma and Nana-made Christmas Eve Jammies!

Flannel sheets from Target make for cheap yardage.

I love these peasant style gowns.  Caught Violet mid-yawn.  Ha!

The boys...

The kids left goodies for Santa!  

Lilly wrote a letter to Santa...

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE what she wrote on the inside!!!  Warms my heart so much!!!

Santa came!

The table all set for Christmas brunch...

Christmas Brunch is always the same...sausage balls, muffins, and fresh fruit.

The mirror got gussied up with paper snowflakes from Wal-Mart and a sign I made.

The hutch...little crooked, oops!  Shouldn't take photos at 3am!  Hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas!!!

12 Days of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts...Days 11-12

Day 11...happy, scrappy signs.  Since my Cricut took a nosedive on me, I had to go to my local scrapbook store to cut the letters.  I just bought some wood, had it cut to size, painted it, and Mod Podged on the letters.  I drilled a hole to put the wire thru to make the signs hangable{which is apparently NOT a word-ha!}, and tied a bunch of ribbon on.

Day 12...I bought candles from Wal-Mart, which smell AMAZING, took the labels off and glued burlap and/or ribbon around them.  Simple and cute!

This one is for Jackson's teacher.  She has a more rustic/natural Christmas theme, so I thought the burlap and yarn would be great.

For the rest of the teachers, I used a fun polka dot ribbon.

The packaging.  My camera seriously hates me.  I think a kid got a hold of it or something, because I cannot get a focused picture for anything!  Anyway...I printed off tags that said, 

"May your days be Merry and Bright!  

Happy 12 Day of Christmas!

Love, 

Lilly{or Jackson or Fisher}"

That, my friends, completes the 12 Days of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts!  This was a lot of fun, but a LOT of work!

Come back soon and I'll show you our home all decked out with Christmas Cheer and share some other good news!

12 Days of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts...Day 10

Day 10...Wooden Nativities.  I found the tutorial, or basic instructions, here.  I glued my people together, as I didn't want them to wiggle or come apart.  I also sanded my wood, but the original maker did not.  Other than those few little differences, I mostly followed her instructions.  I love the simplicity of these!

This is how I packaged them up.  I printed the passage of  Luke 2: 8-14 and stapled it on.

⁸ Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. ¹⁰ Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. ¹¹ For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ¹² And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”

¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:

¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

12 Days of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts...Day 9

Day 9 brought the teachers pumpkin bread.  I got the packaging from Michael's...a Martha Stewart Christmas clearance!

12 Days of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts...Day 8

Day 8 brought felt snowflake ornaments from Target, along with Hershey's Kisses and peppermints.

I put them in a quart size Ziploc bag and stapled a doily to the top.  A stamped tag finishes it off!

12 Days of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts...Days 5-7

Hey there!  I hope y'all had a great weekend!  We did!  We had two cookie exchanges, so it was a super busy, fun time!  

Day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas was snow globes!  I'm sure you've all seen these around Pinterest and other blogs.  I love them!  They are super simple and inexpensive to make.  I saved my jelly and spaghetti jars, so it brought the cost down even more!  I just took the labels off, washed the jars really good, and spray painted the lids.  Then, I took trees from Wal-Mart and glued them to the lids, added in a little snow, screwed the lids back on, and voila, a cute gift!

I loved this packaging!  I took small tags that I aged in coffee and cinnamon, stamped a 5 on, then tied them to the bag along with a snowflake ornament, and grey ribbon.

A little closeup...the snowflakes came from The Dollar Tree in a pack of six.

Day 6 was yummy, homemade cookies!  You can tell I went all out on the packaging!  Haha!

These cookies are seriously yummy! You can find the recipe here.

Day 7...I decoupaged ornaments with book pages and glitter.  I then printed out the Noel on the computer and strung it all on twine.  My inspiration came from Pinterest.

I just nestled these in some kraft paper shreds in a cellophane bag tied with twine.  Simple and beautiful!

12 Day of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts...Day 4

Day 4...I made tags that the teachers can either tie on a package or decorate with.  My personal favorite is the snowman.  I just found a vintage snowman postcard, saved, and printed it to size.  Then, I just used a glue stick to adhere it to my tags, which I soaked in a bath of coffee and cinnamon to age, then used good ole Elmer's to make a bead around the edge and sprinkled glitter.  LOVE how it turned out!

I wrote a little poem, then stapled it to a fun cellophane bag.  Ready to give!

12 Days of Christmas*Teachers' Gifts, 1-3

I got this hair-brained idea to do a 12 Days of Christmas gift giving extravaganza for the kids' teachers this year.  You know, cause I'm not busy enough!  Aren't we all, though?

So...Day 1 was homemade hot chocolate mix, that I just put in mason jars and added cute lids.  The little bags hold marshmallows and Bob's peppermint sticks.

Day 1 all packaged and ready for gifting!

Day 2...Decoupaged initial ornaments...

A closeup of one...

Day 2 packaged up!

Day 3...Christmas Popcorn!

I have lots more ideas up my sleeves so y'all come back!

We Made Merry...

I am finally getting around to posting about Christmas. How about that?? Now we can move on along...Above is our tree all lit up on Christmas Eve. I love how my camera hates me and I cannot get a decent pic to save my life. ;) Maybe that will be this year's goal, to learn my camera.

Here we are with a flash. Same time as above...The dress hanging on the window...I made that Christmas Eve Eve, intending on taking the kids to see Santa the next morning. Nothing like the last minute!! That plan went to pot, much like this whole 2010. I think I was running behind most of the year. No matter, though, this is a new year with new beginnings. And...we didn't actually get to see Santa. Why?? Let's start by saying the week of Christmas, or maybe the week before, heck the whole month of December had someone sick at some time. Well, Thursday before Christmas, my husband came home early. Sick...Then, Christmas Eve, I awoke to my oldest saying something about seeing Santa. I knew immediately that I wasn't feeling well, then proceeded to get sick myself. Nice...Luckily, I wasn't sick long, but felt poopy the rest of the day, tired, achy skin, fun stuff...I couldn't hardly pull it together to wrap gifts. Thankfully, Cory felt a little better and he did most of the work.

Here the kids are in their Christmas Eve jammies. My Mom and I made them. I had the idea to use flannel sheets from Target instead of buying fabric by the yard. One little ditty praising Target...Cory and I did the bulk of our Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving{a great feeling!!} with coupons and sales. Well, Black Friday rolled around and I happened to be in Target and noticed a few things were on an even better sale, but sold out. I took my receipt to customer service and they refunded the difference in what I paid and the current sale price!! Isn't that great!! They do price adjustments within a 14 day period.

Lilly was quite excited to get a Barbie movie!!

Jackson playing a game on his DS...

Violet loved to lay under the tree gazing up the lights!!

Fisher was quite content playing with his choo-choo...

These are the pillows I made for my Mom. Those are the only handmade gifts I gave this year, aside from a teacher gift and Christmas Eve jammies. How sad is that??

I have to give God some props here...I went to Ingles one morning to get a few necessities and decided to look at hams. Originally, we were supposed to go to my Mom's house on Christmas day but with all of us getting sick, and my stepdad having a double bypass, it wasn't prudent. Anyway, most of the hams were $1.69 a pound, but this ONE was marked down to $1 lb. How wonderful that God knew how our Christmas was going to be and gave me a ham on an even better sale!! We also had green bean casserole and corn casserole. Yum!!!

Lilly was so cute, she sat the table with napkins and forks. On the napkins she wrote everyone's initials. I tried to photograph them, but you know how this sentence ends...:) The day ended in snow falling, a Christmas miracle!!

Anyway, that was our Christmas wrap-up...Hope your's was wonderful!!