Monday, November 29, 2010

A Wild Hair...

...a sudden decision that is not expected. I had a wild hair on Thanksgiving night. We spent the day eating and being with my side of the family, then went over to my in-law's house around 8:00pm. After eating desserts and socializing with family and friends, my MIL and I settled in to peruse the Black Friday ads while our guys watched some football. My MIL came across the Wal-Mart circular which advertised a Cricut Expression machine for about $150 less than you can usually find it. She showed me the ad and we both exclaimed what a deal that price was. (A Cricut is an electronic die cutting machine used for paper and fabric crafting.)
I've been wanting a Cricut machine for the better part of a year, ever since I used my friend Allison's machine to make letters and shapes for the baby blocks shown here. I'm not a Black Friday shopper so I totally dismissed this deal, thinking that I would never capitalize on it. UNTIL, my MIL suggested that I try to get one. Ha, yeah right, you see I'd completely dogged the practice of Black Friday shopping all day long when the topic came up in random conversations. But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I would probably never find one for that price again. But I didn't want to get up at 5:00am to go to Wal-Mart. (Who wants to get up at 5:00am on their day off, much less go to Wal-Mart at that hour?) My MIL pointed out that some of the Wal-Mart sales began at 12:01am on Friday morning and the Cricut was included in that category. It was already around 10:00pm when I decided I was going to go for it. So, Tom and I watched TV and cat napped in my in-law's living room until about 11:45pm after which we got up and went to Wal-Mart so I could start my hunt.
Tom dropped me off at the front door, I went in and nabbed the merchandise, placed it in my shopping cart, and headed to the front of the store. As I approached the line I immediately thought, "you've gotta be kidding me!" The line was forever long and definitely made me 2nd guess my decision. But I was there and the thrill of finding my deal overtook me. I called Tom, who was waiting in the car and told him to go home and come back later to pick me up. At 2:00am, after I had stood in line for nearly 2 hours, I left with my loot. I am now the proud owner of a pretty aqua colored Cricut Expression and a $2.97 2-quart stainless steel Rival crock-pot. I saw the small crock-pot while standing in line, which is what they want to happen. Yeah, I know, I'm a sucker. It was such a good price and I've been wanting a small crock-pot for when I make party food like BBQ little smokies, etc. And it was under $3.00. That's less than a drink at Starbucks!
Hooray for Black Friday success!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

It's Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas

It's officially Christmastime in our household. Which means we put up our tree and decorations to the tune of the Carpenter's Christmas Portrait, which by the way happens to be my favorite Christmas album. As a child, I remember my dad playing it every year while my family put up the tree. Listening to that album brings back memories of all my past Christmases. I didn't put quite as many decorations out as I normally do. I decided against putting greenery and berry garland on all my ledge shelves. Here are a few quick phone pictures of what we did today.
Our skinny little tree
Nativity set on the piano
Ornaments in a hurricane
Holly berry plates on kitchen wall
Ornaments in an apothecary jar on kitchen shelf
Ornaments in an Arthur Court bowl on the kitchen island
Berry and snowflake wreath on the front door
Star berry wreath on the back of the front door
Ruby's first experience with Christmas
My "helpers," don't they look thrilled?
Ruby is even ready for Christmas with her new collar
She laid like this literally the whole time we decorated

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Preparations

Well, here we are the weekend before Thanksgiving. And how in the world did that happen? 2010 has literally flown by and it is now ALMOST time to start decorating for the Christmas season. We always put Christmas up the day after Thanksgiving.
We had a busy Saturday yesterday which started for me with an 8:30am choir practice at church, followed by breakfast, lawn mowing, winterizing the flower beds, taking down the fall decor and packing it up, cleaning the house, washing the sheets and towels, getting the cars washed, and getting my front blinker and headlight replaced. Phew! It was nice to get cleaned up after all that and eat some Falcone's pizza while watching the Sooners beat Baylor.
In preparing for my Christmas decorating, I've been thinking about how I am going to hang our stockings this year. We've been in our house for a little over 5 years, and we've never had a fireplace mantle to hang our stockings on. In years past I've hung them on the old glass block divider wall that we once had prior to our kitchen remodel. After the wall came down we hung them on a decorative wall shelf.
But I don't want to do that again this year. I've been thinking an iron stand would be perfect. So, I googled stocking stands, and I didn't love what I saw. They all had something cheesy about them, like a santa or Christmas tree figure at the top.
I decided to go with a telescoping wreath stand with a nice tasteful finial on the top. I ordered two, I'm thinking I can hang two stockings on each stand. And I can use them in all seasons with all types of wreaths and/or hanging decorations. So they're versatile. My favorite trait in a decoration.
We have four needlepoint stockings. Two are monogrammed already with our names. And hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will be able to monogram the other two with our children's names. The stockings my brother and I had growing up were needlepoint, made by my maternal grandmother. I wanted to keep with the needlepoint stocking tradition with our family. I ordered ours from Lands End back in 2006. This Christmas will be our first one with our puppy, Ruby, so I need to find her a stocking as well. So fun! :)