Christmas Decoraysh.

I took down the decorations today. I already miss it. Of course I took pictures so I can come back next year and see what I did. This year was my favorite to date!

The nutcracker tree.

 Our 2010 addition.

 My favorite glass ornament. I will cry when it breaks.

A very special bookcase. :)

My improved buffet decoraysh!

 Randy's mom gave me these nutcrackers. They are the real deal, very nice, so they are not allowed on the tree. :) Randy remembers them growing up. I *love* heirlooms like this!

 The banister with stockings. I'm so mad I didn't get one at night! What the heck!

Another fun addition: the felt mitten tree. Macey loved helping me make them.

The landing. One of my favorites to put up. I love that lil' Santa.

The kitchen is one of my favorites this year. I don't usually do anything, but this year I spruced up the lighting and hung a real wreath! It smelled so good and brought a lot of cheer into the room!

 This is a huge candle, it looks tiny in this picture.

 Christmas/Anniversary flowers. Oh so pretty.

And this brings us to our downstairs tree. This is my favorite tree because it's my sentimental tree! I started a tradition to make silhouette ornaments of my kids every year and I *love* it. Macey also adorned it with an ornament she made for me for Christmas at school and it just melted my heart. I got this tree on clearance for $7, so don't mind the Charlie Brown factor. It was the right price. :)

Our Christmas lights. Red and green. You can't see the green lamp on the other side of the garage.

And of course Collin's BYU football tree! I don't think I have any of these ornaments left. He had lots of fun playing with them and breaking them.

Macey's tree. She went through like 3 sets of ornaments this year.

This was on Macey's door. It started at 12 chains. She thought taking multiple off at a time would make Christmas come faster. Poor thing couldn't handle it!!

My house now feels very bare. Macey is already asking for Valentine's Day decoraysh. She cried when the pink tree came down and had to say goodbye to each nutcracker tonight.

Christmas.

Santa stayed up 'til 2 AM putting Christmas together. Luckily the kids slept 'til 8:30! I had put an alarm clock in Macey's room and said she has to wait until AFTER the 5 to come out. I ended up waking her up, her eyes got huge when she looked at the clock and said "Mommy I don't think it's time yet!!" Ha.

The first thing we checked was to see if Santa had eaten the cookies and drank the milk- sure enough! He had! Also, the magic reindeer food we put out just for Rudolph had been all gobbled up as well! It was time!

We made the trek downstairs to see what Santa had brought us... he did not disappoint! Even Tugger got in on the fun!

Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve. We read Twas the Night Before Christmas and then Luke 2.

Macey asked Santa for a doll house.
Collin asked for a "moster truck".
Randy got a deep fryer and hexbugs.
I was surprised with a smart phone ringing in the tree on Christmas morning!

I made both kids blankets and hooded towels. I also made Macey a nutcracker charm necklace and made a cupcake box to put it in. Christmas isn't Christmas without some stuff being homemade!!

We had a great Christmas! I love the magical feeling on Christmas Eve/Christmas morning!

Holy Behind, Batman.

And I'm not talking about butts. I am behind in blogging, way bad.

Looking back I realized I didn't blog about my Grandma Judy passing away in September. And I'm pretty sure I didn't take any pictures. Sad. My sisters took pictures that I'll have to steal and post. I was so happy for Grandma, she had been a widow for over 25 years. It was time. But it was still hard to say goodbye. She was my last living grandparent, and such a special woman.

I also noticed I didn't blog about our dog Tugger that we adopted. He's a yellow lab, 3.5 years old. His family was moving into an apartment and couldn't bring him so we adopted him. What drew us to him was that he was older (potty trained) and lazy. We like the lazy. Our last dog was so insanely hyper we just couldn't keep up with him. My only complaint about Tugger is that he's really hairy, but he can't help that. I just vacuum a lot more... and don't wear fleece around him ever. He is big, but Randy wanted a big dog that he could take fishing. He hates the little yappers. The kids absolutely love Tugger. Macey's highlight of coming home from school everyday is opening the door to a VERY excited Tugs. He is part of the family, hair and all. He has some awesome tricks that make up for his hairiness and he also puts up with my constant teasing, so he's a keeper. This picture is totally out of focus, but he's still cute.

And lastly, Thanksgiving 2011. We spent that at Randy's parent's house. Again, no pictures. My poor kids are going to ask me what we did with our lives these last couple of years and I will yell I WAS IN SCHOOL AND STRESSED OUT OF MY MIND, LAY OFF ME. ;) I am always really bad at taking pictures when we go to family functions, I'm always busy talking someone's ear off whether they like it or not. Thanksgiving was fun, and I am glad to say we didn't really do the Black Friday thing this year. There wasn't anything that we just HAD to have. But of course I couldn't handle not going at all since the stores opened so early... so Randy and I went to Walmart just to people watch at eleven PM. We were there to witness the electronic madness. Oh, it was so worth it. We found ourselves running to the madness just to see what everyone wanted so badly, and if there was something left, we'd grab it, just because. :) We ended up putting almost everything back, but some hot wheels for Collin and a barbie for Macey. Haha. So worth it.

And that brings us to Christmas. I actually have pictures of that, so I'll start a new post.

Halloween Costumes

I usually like the practical, make your own type costumes for my kids... but I had a 40% off coupon at Old Navy that was burning a hole in my pocket, and I am nearing the end of my degree which means I'm stressed for time (and out of my mind) effry. day. This year, I could justify buying costumes and not making one dang thing.

Macey was an ice cream cone. She was the cutest ice cream cone I ever did see. The sauciest one, too.

Collin was a hamburger, or "krabby patty" (from Spongebob), as he called himself. "I'n a KRABBY PATTY, mama!" He was so excited, he wouldn't hold still for nothin'. But that's normal.

The pair.

Randy and I followed our usual Halloween protocol, I stay home and hand out candy while he takes the kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.  Don't mind the picture of the Idaho Falls temple in the background. I realize that's not the most appropriate picture ever. Hindsight.

Randy said next year he wants to get a new costume. Heartbreak. There's something just so appealing with a man in a gnarly mullet, cut off flannel shirt, sweats.... no? Yeah, me either.

Walking out to go trick-or-treat. 

I was worried about Collin not understanding and getting frustrated, but Randy said he was so cute. He would run right up to the houses and say "Trick an Treat!" and then "Happy Hoween!" as he was leaving. Awww.

After they were done.

I love this picture. Collin, relaxing, airing his feet out after a long night. Skittles in hand.

After we're all settled back and it's mostly the older kids still out, Randy usually likes to dress up in his gorilla costume and go terrorize the neighborhood. This year he took a different approach. 

That's a Bob Dole mask. 

Random pictures that don't have a place: 

I went and helped at Macey's class Halloween Party. It was fun and she was adorable! She had to take off her hat though because she was so shweaty. Here she is with her BFF, Bre.

For dinner we got a Papa Murphy's pizza and made spoooky root beer.

The end.

Halloween Decoraysh

We had lots of fun this year and *loved* our new addition, the witch in the front yard with her cats. We found the templates off of Martha Stewart of course, and made them out of plywood and stuck them in the ground with conduit.

We'll start off with my pride and joy. This took me probably 3 hours or more trying to figure out what looks best. The lighting is bright so you can see the detail of all the decoraysh, but this looks rad at night.

I downsized the spider web from last year with a smaller, pre-made version from Tai Pan for $3.

My bookshelf in the front room and witch pillow in the rocker.

This was a pain in the butt, I got up on a huge ladder and was shaking I was so scared while I hung up those lanterns. It was worth it, but of course they decide to turn their faces away while I have the camera out.

My pumpkin tree.

Moving on into the kitchen. 

This was a new addition this year, I found some awesome old bottles from the D.I. and made an apothecary.  They are sitting on a ledge by my kitchen sink, so little hands cannot get to them.

And finally, outside:

 What you can't really tell from the pictures is that all the flood lights are orange, and all the lamp lights are green. The lights look white in a lot of pictures, but in fact, they are amber.

 We were mad to find that our fogger gave up the ghost this year, but we found an ok replacement: this witches cauldron, it changes colors and steams over the top. Spooooky.

 I'm laughing because Randy took these pictures for me... in his white trash costume. Just imagine the poses he was in to get these shots. HAHA. Also, in the next couple shots you see a red streak on our bay window, we had a flying bat with red eyes. It was awesome, but we couldn't get any good pictures... too dark and he was too fast!

Oh. My. Gosh. I just enlarged this picture. What is flying over the top of my roof? Is that a bat? Or a ghost!!

 One of my favorite decorations to put up every year. :0) To make it more real, Macey went and picked up a piece of old dog poop, and put it in front of the sign on Halloween day. Ha!

I'm always a little disappointed when I load all of the pictures... it's SO much better in person!

Halloween in my neighborhood is SO. MUCH. FUN. Lots of us get into it. My neighbor across the street actually GOT UP ON HIS ROOF, had a big fake bat on a wire and would scare the crap out of the older kids. It was so funny to watch.

Yay for Halloween decoraysh! Macey told me Halloween is her favorite season. :) Pretty true at our house since I start decorating in early September. It just takes that long!