Monday Monday!!!

Today has been a BUSY day like all Mondays. I really do enjoy Monday's though because I love starting a new work week and getting Brock and Ava back into their weekly routine. I also like having a big to-do list for the week and every day I do a little until it's all done and then I can enjoy the weekend!!
My to-do list this week includes:
1. Our Christmas cards!!! Our Christmas letter is done but I haven't taken a good picture of Brock and Ava for our Christmas card, I need to get that finished this week
2. Ava's cookie party invitations, I need to get these mailed out ASAP because her Cookie Party is going to be on Sunday from 12-3. Last year she had her first cookie party. You can read about it here. I also need to bake ALL of the cookies for the party. I have a new sugar cookie recipe from Better Homes and Gardens that I want to try so I will post it if the cookies turn out good!!
3. We also need to get our outside lights up! Usually we have them up by now but it's been so cold and nasty here lately we haven't had a chance. Everyone else on our street has them up so we look like the Scrooge house-ha ha!!
I think that's about all but I think that list will keep us busy this week. I want to get a lot done this week because next weekend we have 2 Christmas parties to go to and Ava's cookie party! I LOVE the holidays but we are super busy in December!!

Brock and Ava's Christmas trees!!

I finally got Brock and Ava's Christmas trees decorated this weekend.  I got the trees for $15 each last year at Wal-Mart.  Brocks is navy blue and Ava has pink.  Ava LOVES helping me decorate her tree and Brock said he didn't mind having a tree in his room as long as he didn't have to decorate it OR help take it down-ha ha!  He sounds just like Graig. 

I had Ava take the pictures of the trees because I was talking on the phone with my friend.  Brock's tree looks crooked in the picture.  I promise it isn't really crooked, I think it's the way she took the picture!

Ava's tree is pink with silver, green and teal blue ornaments.  I also put some silver, green and pink bows on it.  I think it turned out really cute! 

Brock's tree is navy and has red and silver ornaments on it.  It's not 100% decorated yet, I still want to get a few more ornaments to go on it.  I think his tree looks cute too! 

I didn't do an advent calendar this year so the week before Christmas I might put a little present under their trees every night after they go to sleep.  I think they would LOVE that!

Christmas Greens

Yesterday I went to our town's garden club Christmas sale.  They had SUCH beautiful arrangements, wreaths and centerpieces.  I got there early and there were SO many different ones to choose from!  I knew that I wanted a centerpiece because I already have Christmas wreaths for our front and side doors. 

I found two that I liked. One larger one for our dining room table and then I also fell in love with a small one that I will keep in our kitchen.

Here is the one for our dining room table.

I LOVE this sweet little one, I am going to keep it in the kitchen. 

I also got some Spider Plant starters for $1!  Spider plants are so easy to take care of, that's why I like them :)

Then last night I went to a Girls Night Out and we made our own Christmas Greens!  It was a lot of fun everyone made beautiful arrangements!  I made two small arrangements.  I think I am going to put one in our downstairs bathroom (since I never put any Christmas decorations in there!) and I am not sure what I am going to do with the other one yet. 

Here is the two that I made.  I really like the way they turned out, they didn't take too long to make.

Today we have a busy day ahead!!  Ava has dance and she is making her First Confession and church and Brock has a basketball game and then he's going to a birthday party sleepover tonight!  Graig is having his friends over for poker tonight so Ava and I are going over to hang out with my friend Sabrina and her daughter Eliza. 

Have a good weekend!

Show us your life-Christmas Trees!

Today Kelly is hosting a Show us your life featuring Christmas Trees!!  I love our trees and this year I put them up weekend before Thanksgiving since we were gone Thanksgiving week visiting my family in Illinois.  We have 5 trees in our house!  I go a little overboard with trees but I LOVE them and I think they add so much sparkle and Christmas spirit to our house. 

I don't use real trees (which makes Graig sad because he spent his high school and college years working on a Christmas tree farm!)  because the first year we lived in our house our live tree fell over right on top of Brock!!  Graig was at work so Brock and I threw the tree out the front door and we haven't used a real tree since! BTW, it's REALLY hard to get a good picture of a Christmas tree so I took some with my flash, some without to try to get a good picture :)

Here is our big tree in the living room.  This takes so long to get up every year but I think it looks so pretty when it's all done.  I don't have themed trees I just use lots of different ornaments and lots of different colors.  Whenever we go on vacations or trips I get an ornament so we have all of those ornaments on this tree too.  My favorite ornaments are the ones Brock and Ava have made at school and church!

This is the tree in our office which is right next to our dining room.  We have big windows in there and you can see this tree from the street.  Brock and Ava love colored lights so this tree has covered lights.  We put presents under this tree for our extended family and friends basically everyone who isn't going to be at our house on Christmas morning. 

This is the little tree in our dining room.  This is the LAST tree I take down every year.  I think it's so sweet.  This year I did this tree in a red and green theme. 

Brock and Ava also have trees in their rooms.  Ava has a PINK one and Brock has a navy blue one. I will show you pictures of those next week when they are all decorated!

It will be fun to look through Kelly's blog and see everyone's trees this weekend!

Thanksgiving week!!

Brock and I got home from Illinois yesterday.  We had a fun time but we were VERY tired yesterday!!  We had to get up at 4am yesterday to get to the airport on time to fly home. During our trip we did a lot of eating, and shopping.  We also watched two movies, The Christmas Carol (which was awful!!) and The Blind Side, which is one of the best movies that I have seen in a long time.

We joked that all of the pictures that we took were taken around a table because we were ALWAYS eating!  I probably gained at least 10 lbs from all of the eating that we did during our trip.  I also picked up a few little Christmas presents for Ava.  She LOVES opening presents so I got her a few things on our trip.  I also bought her Christmas dress which has a matching dress for her American Girl doll.  She will LOVE it!!  We are going to let her open it on Christmas Eve so she can wear it to church. 

Here are some pictures from our trip.  I forgot my camera so all of these are from my sister Shelby's facebook page (Thanks Shelby!!).  I am not sure why these pictures are so small, she also posted about our trip on her blog

Brock and I during one of our MANY meals out.  As you can see he is having a great time-ha ha!

My sister Shelby with her mother-in-law Linda.

Me feeding the animals carrots at an outdoor light display that we visited.  The light display is the largest in the country and has over 1 million lights!

My sister's husband Ryan and Brock at yet another meal out

Me at Hobby Lobby.  I LOVE that store and we don't have one were we live. 

My sister Shelby and me

We had a great time visiting with my family but we are glad to be home.  We spent the day today getting ready for the week ahead. 

Copy Cat

I LOVE getting home decorating ideas from other blogs!  I was not blessed with a lot of creativity so blogs are a great way for me to get tons of decorating tips!  Last week Melissa from 320 Syacamore did a great post on how to make these adorable hurricane candle holders like the ones from Williams Sonoma using Dollar Tree supplies!! The post she wrote is here.   Since I live in a small town we don't have a lot of stores but we do have the Dollar Tree!  So as soon as I read this post I ran over there to see if they had the supplies to make these and they did!  I was SO happy!!

Here are the Williams Sonoma ones, they are really beautiful but they are $80!!  I can't imagine spending that much on candle holders! 

Photo from Williams Sonoma

Here are the ones that I made using the exact supplies that Melissa outlined in her post.  They were $3 each!  Here they are on our dining room table.  I LOVE the way they turned out and they took less than 5 minutes to make!  I love crafts like that :)

I am going to make a few more sets of these for Christmas gifts!  Thanks Melissa for the great idea!!

Weekend update!

We had a busy weekend!  We are getting ready for our Thanksgiving trips and I got all of the inside decorating done for Christmas!  Here's a little wrap up of our weekend.

Friday-Brock had a basketball game and Ava and I went to craft club.  We had fun and ate tons of great food!!  The craft was Advent calendars but I didn't even make one!  I tried to make one but I really don't have any room for it so I make a garland instead.  My friend Sabrina made a really cute one and I will take a picture to show next time I go to her house.

Saturday-Was a really busy morning!!  Ava started off going to cheerleading, while she was there I went to watch Brock's basketball game, then I left at half time to pick Ava up and we went to her retreat for first penance at church, then she had ballet.  I spent the afternoon and evening decorating our house for Christmas.  Ava had 3 friends sleepover and Brock had 1 of his friends sleepover so we had a houseful!!

Sunday-Ava went to Sunday school, and I spent the whole day finishing up our Christmas decorations.  I still have to do Brock and Ava's little trees and Graig needs to do the outside lights but other than those few things we are ALL done with Christmas decorating!!  I also packed a little for our trip to Illinois!  We are also having our family Thanksgiving dinner tonight since we won't be home for Thanksgiving.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!