Merry Christmas

This is the first time we have had a fireplace to hang our stockings!

Will have all the kids together by tomorrow night. The plan is to spend a quiet Christmas and enjoy having family together.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

On the front porch

Santa greets you as you come to the front door - the wreath lights up at night

There is a cart full of ornaments beside the door

moving across to the middle of the porch - this little tree has colored lights on it at night - these are the only colored lights I have - everything else has white lights. (I would have left these all white too but hubby set it up)

This tall, skinny tree also lights up at night

Another Santa greets you on the side porch

The wreath I have on the side door (I think I showed both wreaths a few posts back when I made them - the red and white one is on the front door. I failed to take a photo of it when I was taking these)

Another cart of ornaments by the side door. The plant in the corner, along with all the other potted plants on the porch, have been moved to the garage due to freezing temps the last few days. 

I was really not feeling the whole Christmas thing and didn't really want to get everything out and decorate but hubby and the kidlet pulled everything out over Thanksgiving so I played along and we got it all done. It really does look pretty at night.

We picked up baby boy and his bride Saturday night (I think technically it was Sunday morning) after their flight was delayed by three hours. We had already left the house before the delay was called so we took the middle kidlet to dinner and hung out with him until time to head to the airport. They landed just after midnight and we made it home right at 3:00am. We are enjoying them here for a few days, then we will have to share them for a few days but they will be back for Christmas and the other two will be here by then. Love it when they can all be here together - it doesn't happen often so we try to soak it all in while they are here. It always seems to pass by so quickly!

Hope you are having a great week!

New this year

There are a few new ornaments on the tree this year

All were from kits I purchased at quilt festival in November - and I actually got them finished and on the tree this year!

Are you ready for Christmas? I'm so not ready!

A little Christmas Outside

 Picked up this little cutie the other day ( on sale - 70% off!)

 In the daytime - I need to download the rest of the pictures from the porch in daytime.

 Need to light up that gable on the left side but we ran out of lights - maybe next year

We did have enough to go all the way around the porch. I love my porch!

Christmas 2106

Thought I would show you our trees for this year. They are basically the same as years past but in a different location.

 First there is my little sweet tree. I have it on the bar in the kitchen this year.

 Also in the kitchen this year is one of the 'twin' trees that used to be in my dining room (no dining room here)

  The other 'twin' is hanging out next to the fireplace in the family room.

The fireman tree is also in a corner of the family room. (it's a big room)

 The little feather tree is on the desk in the back/side entry.

The little wire tree is again in the master bedroom.

and then there is the big tree. We have the family room kind of divided and we are using part of it as a dining room. We turned the table in the other direction and put the big tree behind the sofa. I can't get a shot of the whole tree without moving furniture so I'm showing the top

and the bottom. :)

I have a few new ornaments on the tree this year. I will try to show those later along with pictures of the outside of the house. 

We get to have all the 'kids' for Christmas again this year. Love it when they are all in the house together!

It's getting a bit nippy outside!

The weather has finally caught up with the calendar around here. Cold and rainy here this weekend. 

We will have to turn the heat on soon - supposed to see 20s at the end of the week (didn't see much of that in Houston!)

This might not seem like such a big deal to some of you but to me it is huge - hubby got out in the garage yesterday and moved stuff around so I could finally park in there just in time for winter! I've been parking on the street ever since we moved in.

Still have a long way to go before he will be able to park inside but he is sweet enough to let me have the only inside spot!

I'm still not all unpacked and put away but I've been working on holiday decorating and shopping. Not anywhere close to being finished with unpacking or shopping but I'm done with decorating. I need to get the pictures from my phone to my computer then I will do a post with holiday photos - hopefully one day this week.

The big 3-0!

Today is my baby boy's 30th birthday. I so wish I could spend the day with him but he is off following his dream. I'm proud of him and miss him at the same time. We will celebrate when he comes home for Christmas.

Love you more than you can ever ever know, Jason - you will always be my baby boy. I hope you have an awesome day!

Happy birthday, Ashley!

Wishing my beautiful daughter-in-law a happy birthday today.

Seriously

The nerve of some people. This little pot of faux (sounds better than fake!) flowers was sitting right outside our front door on top of a little green stand. Noticed the stand was missing yesterday. Can you believe someone would just walk right up to the front door and take it? They also took another (live) plant and plant stand. Know they were there Monday night since we sat out on the porch handing out candy. I guess someone came too late for candy and thought they would just help themselves.

We are now in the process of installing cameras.

Sunday happenings

Unpacked my scissors today!

From my front porch

It's nice outside today so I thought I would sit outside for a little while.

We put the barn quilt squares up over the weekend. I have a spot for one more - already ordered and will be waiting for me at quilt festival!

A little fall

I'm not much of a  decorating mood - not many flat surfaces to display stuff at the moment - but I was unpacking a box the other day and came across some fall stuff so I plopped some fabric pumpkins

and a little scarecrow up on the mantle. 

Boxes, boxes and more boxes!

I wish I could tell you that all the boxes are empty and everything had found a new home but I can't say that. :(

I did find one box with stitching goodies in it.

Not that I have a place for them or time to  use them at the moment.

I posted these two pictures on Facebook. My sister said I have a problem. Huh? 

I've opened all the boxes that were marked either sewing or craft room but I haven't found my framed stitcheries that were hanging in there. The only boxes I can find that I haven't looked through are the ones that have hubby's name on them and I didn't pack those so I know they aren't in there. Guess I will have to go upstairs and see if he took a wrong box up there. They have to be here somewhere. I'm pretty sure that would have been a box I moved and didn't let on the moving truck. I've been thinking I must have put them in the storage unit but we emptied the last storage room yesterday and I have looked through those boxes. I'm trying to keep calm but if they have been lost I'm not going to be a happy camper. (I've found a few things that were broken but I have no way of knowing if it was during move #1 or move #2. Thankfully they have been things that weren't terribly important.)

Time to get back to unpacking. The chaos is doing a number on my anxiety and that's not a good thing.

Daily life

While this has been going on

My sister brought me this - I commented that I had broken mine while packing for the move and a couple of days later she showed up with it. :)

and my aunt sent me this - just the lampshade (isn't it awesome?!) that isn't the lamp I am going to use it on, just one that was handy to take the picture 

and I've done a little, and I do mean little, bit of this. Sorry about the weird angle - trying to get a pic without too much of a shadow.

We have about two more carloads of stuff in storage - at least I hope we can get it in two cars so we only have to make one more trip - then we will have everything here. Not sure where I'm going to put it all, but it will be here. It's easier moving into a larger house than it is going backwards! Yes, there will be a garage sale coming around soon.

Hope all is well with everyone out there in blogland (and everywhere else as well!)

Do you have a favorite?

I don't know why but I've always loved yellow houses. They just look happy to me. 

Our first house wasn't yellow (we were just happy to have a house) and our second didn't start out that way (it was gray when we bought it - again, just happy to find a house we could afford) but when we left it, it was yellow with a big front porch and back deck.

Our last house was yellow but finding a house that wasn't brick wasn't easy. We had a tiny front porch and we added the back patio after we bought it. 

The porch on this house called my name. It wasn't yellow (all beige, walls, trim, ceiling and columns) but I knew I could paint it - I just wasn't sure if it was going to work with yellow. I didn't really see it as a yellow house but I finally found one I thought would maybe work. 

Banana Cream on the house, Alabaster on the trim, and Hinting Blue on the ceilings. 

I was nervous, I don't know why. I'm usually pretty certain once I pick a color. I've only gone wrong once - I painted our bedroom (in house #2) yellow but it showed up with a green tint so I repainted it the next day. 

As soon as they started spraying the first wall, I knew I was right!

I love it! 

Now if it will just cool off enough to light that fireplace!

Have a great weekend!

Another direction

I was going to show some painting progress pictures today, then baby boy's bride posted this picture on Facebook yesterday. It is such a good picture of them I couldn't resist sharing. 

I miss them. 

The Blue Door

Had the house painted last week. I need to get out and take some photos but I did snap this pic while the door was drying yesterday. It's kinda blue. I've had dark green and a red that leaned more towards maroon so to be different I went for blue this time.