Holiday Cheer

Our tree finally made it in the house this afternoon and took its place in the family room filling the air with the smell of fresh pine :)

With a bowl of freshly popped popcorn the kids and I got busy stringing long strands of popcorn together for garland...

to be hung along with pretty chocolate balls and candy canes.

It was so pretty this evening as we all sat in the dark with only the glow of the tree to light the room as we celebrated winter solstice and the return of longer days.

I've been promising to share photos of our decorations above our fireplace and the sun came out today and I thought if I don't get some good pictures now we may not get any light again for a while *grin* so here they are :)

I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my son was working on making a cardboard 3D silhouette of Rudolph to hang above the fireplace and it turned out fantastic!! I found it originally on pinterest but the link only gave plans for a very small one that you could print on your printer so he drew a larger one freehand and it must be about two and a half feet high filling in the mantle space right to the ceiling.

Another special ornament I made this year was all due to my lovely blog friend Amy who shared about the Finnish Stars she had made out of fabric and I was completely smitten with hers and had to make some of my own. Oh my word do I just love how these turn out and there are quite a few people on my Christmas list getting these this year *grin*.

I used heat 'n bond between my layers of cotton and linen, I'm not sure if she glued hers together this way, but I found that I could stick quite a few portions of each star together with little squares of the heat 'n bond in one swoop of my iron and the glue layers stiffened it up quite nicely :) They are a bit tedious to make like she had mentioned but after the first couple it seemed to move a long a little quicker but now that I've made eight of them I'm glad to be finished LOL.

Beneath the candy canes and finnish stars, rudolph we placed some of our mini gingerbread houses that we made last year and a few decorative trees and called it complete.

I wanted to keep everything really simple this year so the decorations are really minimal, not to many lights or knic knacs and most of what we used we baked, sewed or made from paper aside from a few sugary items. As I strive to personally keep my focus on the calm joy of the season and on family and faith I find it helps to keep all the surrounding noise of excess items to a minimum so I don't get distracted. So far so good *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Big Truck Christmas Parade

The kids and I snuck away for a night and had fun in the city :) It was my sister's birthday yesterday so we met up with my mom and dad and my sister and her husband for dinner and a little moonlight shopping and parade action *grin*.

It just happened that there was a 'big truck' christmas parade happening just before our dinner reservations so the kids and I thought that we would brave the freezing cold and take part in the festivities. It was so busy that we could barely find parking and ended up walking a block in the dark to make it to the main street just in time to see the trucks going by. It was actually quite cute as we made our way through the crowd in a long chain of four all holding hands :)

There were fire trucks, police cars, semi trucks, a cement truck, a backhoe on a flatbed Santa Claus and the Mrs.... what a great idea! What kid doesn't love to see all the big trucks decked out in bright lights and by the size of the crowd I'd say it was a huge success :) My little guy was just captivated with all of the action going on around us as we got to get an up close look at all of the trucks once they had finished their route. We had to rush off to dinner just after the parade ended but not before we got to see the big Christmas tree lit up in the town center.

It was a night full of surprises for the kids. First they had no idea that they were going to see the parade and then we all got to spend the night at my sister's house :) She has enough room for all of us to stay so they got to watch a movie, camp out in the living room and then we spend half of today with her before heading home. It was so nice to just hang out at her house that I could have stayed another night *grin*.

We had to get back though and it just happened that Hubby came home tonight to! Yay :) I think we have a couple of days with him before he heads back out on the water for one last trip north before Christmas. I can't believe how quickly this year is unfolding. Not to many days left for making presents so I better kick my butt into high gear! How about you, are you ready?? I'm not *grin*.

Hugs,

Rosina