Christmas Gift Guides

12/16/2010

(Picture taken on December 13, 2010, the morning after Nashville’s snow storm. We got about 1.5″ at our ranch.)

I’ve seen lots of great gift guides out there this year but two blogs, A Cup of Jo and Design*Sponge, seem to stand out above the rest. Great ideas, wide ranges of prices and broken into creative categories. In case you’re still shopping:

Cup-of-Jo Gift Guide Part #1: Your Beautiful Mom Who Gives Pitch-Perfect Advice and Has a Secret Crush on Niles from Frasier. (from Cup of Jo)

Cup-of-Jo Gift Guide Part #2: Your Hilarious Younger Brother Who Rides a Yellow Motorcycle and Dressed as a Bedbug for Halloween.

Cup-of-Jo Gift Guide Part #3: Your Twin Sister Who Loves Hiking by the Ocean and Wept When She First Met Your Baby.

Cup-of-Jo Gift Guide Part #4: Your Best Friend Who Wears the Prettiest Lipsticks and Knows (and Keeps) All Your Secrets.

Cup-of-Jo Gift Guide Part #5: Your Awesome Dad Who Makes the Best Family Lunches and Always Has a Good Book Recommendation.

Cup-of-Jo Gift Guide Part #6: Your Favorite Little Dudes Who Love High-Fives, Zerberts and Giggling Just ‘Cause.

Cup-of-Jo Gift Guide Part #7: Your Beloved Husband Who Makes Peppery Eggs, Sings The Rolling Stones to Your Baby and Can Always Make You Laugh.

Design*Sponge 2010 Gift Guide: For Flower Lovers

Design*Sponge 2010 Gift Guide: AC’s Guide for Guys

Design*Sponge 2010 Gift Guide: Gifts by Color

Design*Sponge 2010 Gift Guide: For Animal Lovers

Design*Sponge 2010 Gift Guide: Crafts

Design*Sponge 2010 Gift Guide: $50 and Under

Design*Sponge 2010 Gift Guide: $25 and Under

(More Design*Sponge guides here.)


Shiny and Bright Christmas Tree

12/07/2010

Every year at Christmas I love to unpack and admire the Shiny Brite ornaments that I inherited from my mom’s mom a few years before she passed away. Jason and I have come up with a few creative ways of displaying them the past several years. (Three examples here.)

This year we decided to copy our mid-century modern loving friends in Cincinnati and get a vintage aluminum Christmas tree on eBay. We don’t have a color-wheel light for it; maybe we’ll get one next year. It’s so sparkly and shiny just on it’s own. I love it!

I think our Shiny Brite ornaments look so at home on it’s metal branches.

 


Phone Photo Friday

12/03/2010

Two cameras at one time.


A Baby Shower for Eliza!

12/02/2010

Two Saturdays ago I hosted a baby shower for my sister-in-law and my little niece, Eliza (with lots of  help from Ginger’s friends and Eliza’s grandma and my mom.) Baby girl is due around Valentine’s Day so we decided to go for a love-hearts-valentine theme. I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have but thankfully our dear photographer friend, Beth Rose was there with camera in hand. Here are some pictures I did take.

One of the food tables, before guests arrived:

(Do you love IZZE as much as I do? Just fruit juice and carbonated water. And it’s pretty, too!)

Tables set up before guests arrived:

The favor and craft table. We had two crafty activities: a hair accessory making station and a bunch of handmade Valentines and a mailbox for welcome notes and prayers for baby Eliza.

My beautiful sis-in-law Ginger, the mom-to-be!

Guests:

We played two games. The first one everyone had 5-10 minutes to sculpt a baby out of playdoh. That’s all the instructions I gave. Once everyone was done, I asked Ginger to select the most realistic, the funniest and the most hideous. The other game we played was baby shower bingo, where partiers mark off items on a pre-made bingo card as the mama is opening her gifts. I downloaded the bingo cards free from here.

In the hallway we set up a photo “booth” with silly props to encourage ladies to pose in front of the camera. It turned out to be a lot of fun. These photos were taken by Beth Rose Goin:

Ginger and me:

Ginger and her sister Crystal (Eliza is the one with the glasses and mustache):

I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the photos BR took. But not as much as I’m looking forward to meeting my baby niece in a couple months! It was a really fun time and most importantly I think Ginger felt the love for her, Eliza and dad-to-be Daniel from their friends, family and co-workers.


Our Little Focus

12/01/2010

I took a picture of our car. While we were in Pigeon Forge in October amidst the beautiful trees I had an impulse to take a photo of our car. We’re not car people and we’re not in love with our car; it just needs to get us where we’re going. So, we didn’t really have any intentional pictures of it.

This little green Ford Focus has taken us on a lot of journeys; about 150,000 miles worth. She was Jason’s and my first big purchase (read: first big loan), six months after we got married. This car drove us from Erie to Nashville and back many times before our move in 2004. It drove us up to my parents house in Pennsylvania for holidays, to my sister’s wedding reception in Philadelphia, on vacations to Virginia Beach, Hilton Head Island, Cincinnati and many a day trip to Atlanta. The weekend of this photo it took me halfway across the state to spend a much needed 3-day weekend with my husband. It has carted many friends and family members around to work, to church, to homes, to stores, to the airport and back. It’s carried amps and guitars, groceries, lumber, straw bales, 100s of pounds of rocks, loads of IKEA purchases, packages, luggage, dogs and moving boxes. It’s had it’s share of problems through the past seven years but our little vehicle has been good to us.

In the season of thankfulness, I’m extending some gratitude to our little engine that could:

Dear Green Meanie,

Thanks for running strong these seven years, for carrying us and our treasures all over the place, for stopping on a dime and taking off fast, for not quitting us even after two hit-and-runs, for turning sharply enough to parallel park in one try, for chugging along despite your bolted-up rather than truly fixed back windows, missing lug nut cover, cracked and dented front fender, dashboard stickiness from many a drink spill, and overdue oil changes. You’ve been the setting for many kisses and fights and important conversations. You’ve been sung in, slept in, kicked, washed infrequently, snowed on, rained on and hailed on. You’ve been worth ever payment we made, the chili cheese fries we ate in celebration of paying you off, and for every dollar we’ve paid for repairs and maintenance. Yes, you’ve been a good little car.

This year you got a new battery, a new alternator, a new driver’s side mirror, a new fender, new tires, new brakes and some other new parts I can’t remember the names of. Now, please accept this long overdue tune up as a token of our appreciation … and continue on for the next seven years!

Sincerely,

Your Drivers

 


Busyness

11/30/2010

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. (Has anyone even noticed? I’m sure you’ve all been busy too.) My amazing husband has been home a little over a week and I haven’t figured out where to reinsert blogging into my schedule. I’m still soaking up all the evening and weekend time I can with him. We had a great Thanksgiving. Jason smoked a 13 lb. turkey (it took 8 hours!) and we enjoyed all kind of deliciousness and fun times with his parents, my parents and a sweet family of 6 from our church (including a precious 2.5 week old baby girl that I had the privilege of holding for a wonderfully long time.) We put up our Christmas decorations, tore out some walls, chainsawed up some bushes, polished the cloffice (it’s almost done) and caught up with friends and family. It’s been a good week.

How was your Thanksgiving?


Owls, mushrooms and flowers

11/22/2010

Over the Summer, Jason and I picked up several small pieces of art at an estate sale with pressed flowers, mushrooms and owls. (Closer up pictures here.) At another yard sale we found these plastic owls. I got tired of seeing them stacked up in storage so I made a hasty decision to hang them in the hallway as a collection. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. What do you think? Too busy? I’m not sure what else to do with a bunch of tiny frames.

The baby owl is living in the hallway with the art but I decided to put the mama and daddy owl in our bedroom, above the cross stitch sampler the Jason’s mom made as a wedding gift for us. Someday I’ll put the baby with the mama and daddy… you know, when it makes sense.


Phone Photo Friday

11/19/2010

Guess who turned 6 years old on Wednesday?


Happy Birthday, Jessica!

11/18/2010

Happy birthday to my favorite big sister today! I miss you, Jess. Glad we’ll get to roll Swedish meatballs together again this Christmas Eve.


Where have you been?

11/12/2010

Sorry for my absence this week. Aside from my day job I’ve been soaking up lots of Jason time: going out for dates, meeting up with friends, taking a day trip to IKEA, working on landscaping projects in the dark, entertaining new friends at our home, watching shooting stars from a hot tub on a cool night … we’ve been been busy, y’all!

Where have YOU been this week?

Bonus phone photo this week: Lucy sticking her tongue out at me after I gave her a bath and a haircut.