Merry Christmas 2012

Merry Christmas!

 

From our family

to yours

 



Christmas Eve

 

Baby girl opening her Christmas Eve jammies.

 

Every year on Christmas Eve before bed we open one gift.

They are new jammies.

I usually pick a character theme of what they were into that year.

I think next year I may buy hubby Christmas Eve jammies and make him buy me some :)

Festival of Trees

I want Babygirl to experience so much of Christmas this year.

She is at such a fun age.

Everything is so new and exciting to her.

I know her and Daddy would be having a blast if they were together right now.

 

I didn't take very many pictures of the trees.

She loved looking at them all though.

She gets very excited over any kind of Christmas lights and décor.

If we are riding in the car and she sees any houses lit up or blow-up décor in the lawn she starts hollering and screaming over it. She has to be sure that I see it too and if I don't act beyond excited over it she ends up really upset. 

Waiting in line to see Santa Claus. 

She did so good meeting Santa Claus.

With a little help from me she even talked to him and told him what she would like this year. 

Her favorite part of the night was seeing the reindeer!

I am determined this year to find her some real reindeer to see. 

Papa and Babygirl riding the bike that lit up the tree behind it.

 

 

 

This is my song for hubby this year.

It makes me so sad.

Christmas Decorations

It is so hard preparing for the holidays without my hubby here.

Christmas is his favorite time of year and my heart hurts this year that he is so far away.

When he was deployed to Iraq, his R&R was over Christmas and New Years so he only missed Thanksgiving at home.

 

I normally decorate the house the night before Thanksgiving per tradition,

but after a trip to L&D and constant contractions,

I thought I should get things decorated as soon as possible.

I wasn't going to risk going into labor and then trying to decorate the house

with a newborn and a toddler.

So the décor went up the weekend before Thanksgiving.

 

I tried to take a video of babygirl helping me decorate the Christmas tree but that was short lived and I ended up doing it alone because she freaked out over the way the tree felt.

But I took pictures of everything so hubby can imagine what things are looking like at home.

 

Someone got into the holiday spirit for the occasion.

Pink tree in babygirl's room.

She did help decorate this one.

And I catch her all the time taking the ornaments off and pretending to decorate all over again.

Babygirl's special ornament this year.

Baby-Sister couldn't be left out!

She needed her own purple tree to match her room. 

A few new ornaments I picked up to represent this year.

I looked everywhere for a yellow ribbon but couldn't find one. 

Right before Babygirl was born we picked up this ornament at a craft festival. 

Baby-Sister couldn't go without either!
I was over the moon when I found the same stand at the festival.

Our finished tree.

Not sure why I didn't get a picture of it all lit up.

I am sure there will be plenty before Christmas is here.

I skipped my normal tree ribbon this year and bought

yellow ribbon.

I wanted to do an all-Americana theme but decided not to spend the money on new décor.

My yellow ribbon is enough for me. 

He may not be here, but his stocking still hangs.

My mother's quilt

Way back in August I started a Christmas project.

I knew it would take time. Lots of time.

Lots of time, money and energy.

Endurance.

Plenty of that too.

Have you ever made a quilt?

Yeah, me neither.

Until this year.

Some crazy idea popped in my head about making my mom a quilt for Christmas.

Too much pinning on Pinterest?

Probably.

That is a dangerous site I tell ya!

I ended up drawing her name in our gift exchange on Thanksgiving, so things couldn't have worked out more perfectly. There were so many set backs and errors. The blanket became a huge mess in my eyes and I was literally in tears trying to figure out why I started this stupid thing in the first place!

My daughter got her chocolate fingers all over the back of the quilt after I had just sewn together the white backing. I rushed it to the washing machine and the quilt ended up tangled in the washer.

Seriously?

What else could've gone wrong?

Oh yeah...

The fact that the chocolate and the marks from the blanket being tangled in the machine became permanent. Oh, and don't forget the batting separated because I wasn't done with the binding, so therefore I had lumpy batting.

Sigh.

Obviously my quilt wanted to have "character".

She loved it.

What mother wouldn't love something her child made her?

I guess I was heartbroken that, to me, it ended up looking like a home-ec project.

But that silly, shrunken, full of errors quilt brought tears to my mom's eyes.



Christmas 2011

Yesterday was an observed holiday for work since Christmas was on a Sunday. It was SO nice to be able to re-coop from the weekend. Christmas was awesome and very blessed, but also very long and little sleep. I am having some major bouts of insomnia lately and I'm not sure why. I have an idea..but I am just getting tired of it! (ha. no pun intended)

So I spent basically the whole day playing catch up on the laundry. I hadn't touched it all weekend, obviously (which is when I normally do laundry) Babygirl was busy playing with all of her new awesome toys!

Here's a few pictures from Christmas at my parents. I don't really have a post for Christmas besides my mother's gift. Which I will post later this week.

Christmas Eve 2011

Christmas Eve was spent at my in-laws house. We had a lot of fun and babygirl was more sociable that usual. I was so glad. This separation anxiety is just about pushing my last button.

Crazy girls dancing

Real classy, kid.

She doesn't get that from her mama!

I swear!

Santa Claus took a break from his very busy schedule to stop by the Carter house and bring the kids some special gifts! Lily was very excited, smiling and pointing.

Until it was her turn to sit on his lap.

Then it was terror, screaming and lashing.

Everyone else did great!

The older kids started yelling about who that costumed guy really was.

But Hannah (who is 3) was in awe of Santa.

It was a great Christmas Eve.

We were very blessed as a family.

It is always fun to get together as a whole family.

There are so many people!

Hopefully there will be a few more added next year..



Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours

DIY Sugar Scrub

Alright.

So I managed to put down book 2 of The Hunger Games and actually get some stuff done!

Thursdays are my day off so I usually do some housework or run errands.

We started off by going with hubby while he STARTED his Christmas shopping.

Men. ;)

We ran to the mall, Dicks, Old Navy and WalMart.

It was a successful shopping day.

Except that Shii was out of my precious Toms.

TEAR!

Hubby was going to get me another pair of Toms for Christmas but the style I wanted was all out and they said we weren't able to order them through the store. Hopefully we will be able to get them online.

Because these shoes are amazing. So comfy, I love them!

However, babygirl did manage to snag an extra gift at the mall today.

This was totally not on the list for today.

Most precious thing ever! Baby Toms!

So when we were done with our shopping and had some lunch we headed back home to chill out and relax. I figured it was close enough to Christmas to start the only project from Pinterest that I actually got around to making. I had SO many hopes, plans and projects I wanted to do for this Christmas. I guess I will have to start MUCH sooner next year.

I didn't pin a particular site for this DIY project so you can look at any one or even just google

DIY Sugar Scrub.

I used one cup of Organic Sugar Cane sugar and then just eyeballed the olive oil until it got to be the texture that I wanted. Then I literally poured some Pina Colada scented oil into the bowl until I thought it smelled good and strong enough.

There was really no recipe or instructions needed for this project. It was easy peasy.

I made it last night because I wasn't sure I would have time to do it during the day on Christmas Eve. Most of the stuff I was reading about the sugar scrub said it lasts between 2 weeks and 3 months. So I didn't want to chance it. Just be sure to not let any moisture in the jar and keep the lid on tight!

For the jars, I just picked up a 5 pack of plastic baby snack cups at Dollar Tree.

My total for this project was $13.

That included:

-Organic sugar cane sugar

-100% virgin olive oil

-Pina Colada scented oil

-10 pk plastic snack cups

(I only got 8 cups out of this)

I wanted to tie ribbon or put stickers on top with the writing all fancy-like.

I ended up just writing on the lid with permanent marker.

I'm so classy. ;)

I put them into small sacks because they were cute.



Pictures and Ornaments

Isn't the quality of this photo amazing?

I got an early Christmas gift.

From my amazing little brother.

On Black Friday when I was in line at Menards, he went over to Target and picked up this amazing Nikon CoolPix L105 that I had my eye on. It is an amazing camera! I am seriously blown away at my brother's generosity. Especially around Christmas time. He is such a giving person. He buys the best gifts, always! He is definitely the person you hope draws your name for the gift exchange. ;)

So when I got home on Saturday I wanted to play with it a bit since I was the only one awake in my house.

Gifts already bulging out from under the tree. Babygirl doesn't know what the date is anyway!

Lily's first Christmas ornament. Tiny handprint!

She was just 11.5 weeks last year. That is hard to believe.

Babygirl's ornament for this year.

We will buy an ornament for her every year. It will represent her interests/hobbies/milestones for that year. I really looked for a WonderPets ornament but didn't find one anywhere. I thought Dora was fitting for this year since she loves her and also most of her presents this year are Dora-related and everything for Lily under the tree is wrapped in Dora paper.

This ornament is for my sleeping angels.

It has made an appearance on my tree every year since I lost them.

So be on the lookout for amazing pictures in posts from now on! =)