Our little family Christmas

I just realized that I never posted Christmas last year! So I don't make that mistake again, I thought I'd share it right now. :)

This last weekend, we had a snowstorm. This prevented us from going to church (we go into the Cities about 40 minutes away), so we decided to celebrate Christmas. We are never home ON Christmas since we are either at the ranch with Mark's family or in Wabasha with my family. Sooo we decided this year to make a new tradition: after December 10th if we get a significant amount of snow, we'll celebrate our Christmas. Well, to do this, I "quick" trip to the store to get some of our normal "Christmasy" food and pick up the stocking stuffers as that was the only shopping I had left. :)

Here's my trip to the store:

The Lake

 

 

On the way home was worse. I didn't take too many pictures because it had gotten a little slipperier and I couldn't see as far ahead of me. Craziness.

Opening presents

Figured I should take a picture to prove I was there, too :)

 Playing in the snow

The flash kept bouncing off the snow... it wasn't as dark as it looks in these pictures.

 I turned off the flash but it was having a hard time focusing, but this is a better picture of how it was out.

Aw my cute family. Bodie was really crabby so he went back inside and played leapster. :)

 

It was just so pretty.

toward the lake

Bodie with his new cowboy hat or "cowboy" as he calls it.

 New jammies

We watched a couple Christmas movies "How the Grinch stole Christmas," "Frosty the Snowman," and "Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer" throughout the day intermingled with playing with our new stuff. As a family, we bought each of us a nerf gun, so after we came in and ate supper, we opened that last present (they were all in a big box). Then we ran around "nerfed" it up. It was soooo much fun. And out of 105 bullets, we are only missing four! 

We plan on having another war tonight. :)

We have two more Christmases and Sutton's birthday, so it's nice to spread them out. :)

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Just some things

August was full of nothing in particular.

Park Playing

 This swing was putting them to sleep. :)

Zucchini Bread Making

Trail Walking

See not too interesting, but fun anyway. :)

The (almost) Finished Product

This is what the basement looks like now.
Here's the hallway. The wall on the left and and on the left of the door all had lots of mold growing that they cut out. The wall directly behind me also did, but the picture would just be a wall so I figured that you didn't really care to see it.

Sorry that this room is such a mess. It has become my craft room. It was Mark's idea - God had completely blessed me with a sweet husband who cares enough about my interests to think that I should have my own space for my projects! ...Or maybe he just wanted them out of the way in the rest of the house. hehehe No, he really did care....
Anyway, there is a huge table right in the middle which takes up most of the room so I couldn't get any good pictures. But I'll still show you what I took. There were two walls that they cut in this room, this isn't one, but it looks good! :)

They cut this one, but of course, you can't see it because it's covered with chairs that I haven't figured out what to do with (that sentence just doesn't sound right...).

Both of these walls were cut also. As you can see, I haven't gotten my craft room organized at all. That will come. I'm hoping to get lots of shelving/drawers and maybe some more work surfaces at garage sales and other types of thrifty places.

 At least you get to see our new sump pump and back up. Isn't it just so pretty and exciting!?

And here's the guest room.
For my birthday (since it's on Thanksgiving and we'll be visiting his fam at the ranch), Mark gave me all last Saturday (the 17th) to work on projects. He took care of the kids all day and all I had to do was fun stuff. I got so many projects done that were in my head and on my sewing machine (which I can see again! YAY!) and just laying around everywhere. Some of those projects are in here.
 It looks slightly better than it did when it was in all it's 90's glory. :)

I'm going to do something to those lampshades because they're silky (but you can't tell in this picture) and it just isn't quite right with the rest of the room. Also the bed needs some throw pillows. I have leftover material from making the couch pillows, so then they'll match those. I just have to get more pillows to cover...to thrift store I will go. :)

Mark's Grandma Muriel's picture. She got it in Mexico years ago. I think it's what started Mark's love of ships.

The crib turned into a couch. Eventually, I'm going to move things around a little to make it even more couch-like, but this is good for now. I got this idea from googling "cribs turned into couches (or benches...I can't remember)." I learned how to make pillow covers here. And then decided it needed a skirt, but I made that up as I went.

This is the spring from the crib. I got the idea for this here.
I tweaked it just a little because the silver/grays she used didn't quite go with this room; neither did the white computer paper that I printed the ships on. So I had to figure out how to make the paper look older (without spending money) - I painted and dabbed it with coffee and coffee grounds. Besides the coffee making it tan, it made it crinkled, which I thought looked nice.

It's all been a bit of an adventure but a very fun one!
Projects like these are my new hobby which I never knew I liked or could even do. Thanks to to the internet, things are so much easier than they used to be. It's not always good, though, having projects for a hobby because once the wheels in my brain start turning, it's hard to think about anything else! Not a good thing when you're a mom and wife and have lots of other things you NEED to think about. :)

I'll make a post with a few more projects some time in the future, but I think that my next post will be continuing with August. I need to catch up since it's November! Goodness!