Christmas 2011

Christmas is simple this year around our place. No garland, simplified decor. I'm going for easy, homemade and CHEAP! Here's a little glimpse into Meliza Christmas this year!


I'm into yarn lately. Not a great picture, but I am enjoying the jingle bells, cranberries and yarn balls this year. Goes with the cheap, simple, homemade theme this year.

My Black Friday buy! This is all I went out to buy black Friday and I saved $5 too :) Didn't want to go with the bow, so I tried my hands at some posies. I was inspired from thepleatedpoppy.com. One of my favorite blogs to follow.

My posies up close. I love them.

We found it! Took a bit of looking. The place we went I don't think shaped the trees at all, which is fun to have a natural looking tree, but I wish I would have taken a pic when we got it home. It was wild and outta control when we got it in the house. I did some major pruning and shaping and this is what we ended up with.

Pretty!

When we went through the stuff in the garage, we found Steve's old ornaments. These sweet little skates were recovered and I am just in love with them.

Well that is it for now. Stay tuned as I may add more as we actually get closer to Christmas. But first, did you catch Linus' monologue on what Christmas is all about? No? Allow me to link you. I am simply in love with this kid and his delivery of the Christmas message.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn10FF-FQfs

Merry Christmas!

Giving Thanks

Well, we hosted our first official Thanksgiving this year. If you don't count the one we did in April for Dad's birthday. I think it turned out pretty well. Here's a little glimpse at what our celebration looked like :)

Here is the whole table. Before I remembered that people need silverware to eat. I kind of forgot that detail as I was having fun figuring out how to decorate the table.

Aren't they cute little turkeys? Found this easy and cheap craft projects from a website called OurBestBites.com

Steve is my baker. I am the cook. But when it comes to a BIG cooking task, he enjoys the challenge. I didn't tackle the turkey until it was on my plate! It was delicious too! It looks like they were getting along great without me right?

Everyone being a good sport about my photo taking as they are ready to dig in!

And that turkey cooked up some yummy homemade broth for soup at the end of the night!

This and That

Well, I have nothing much to report on exciting things in life. End of October and beginning of November were SUPER busy working with Compassion First for their banquet. Thanks to all who joined us and helped us raise just over $172,000 for our girls in Indonesia. And since I was so busy I have no pictures...

... except for what busy little beaver Steve has been up to with home (well, garage really) renovation.

Here is a little bit of what weekends have looked like around here.


Operation clean up and clean out.

This has been so far the least fun part of re-doing the garage. It was a LONG day but we got rid of lots of unused stuff, donated more and found ourselves some more SPACE!

Here is what things looked like after being cleaned out. Then things started looking worse as Steve is getting into the project. But that is how it always goes right? Things have to get worse before they get better.

All the old particle board came down and new OSB went up.

Here is where we are now in the project. OSB is up, new sub panel is in and conduit is almost all up. I am not doing much to help on this project. Me and garage dust/wood dust just don't get along. But I am excited to see a pretty work space out there and MAYBE get to have some input on how to organize out there. Oh and don't tell Steve I called his workshop pretty.

I have been doing some crafting. This is my latest crafty thing. Maybe in the future I'll post my Thanksgiving table (we are hosting this year) and my kitchen craft I am working on. Pinterest is just a fantastic place for homemade ideas. Love that site. Ok, one last pic of my craft. A new way to organize earrings and I LOVE it!



Hope you all have a happy Turkey day! Gobble gobble. It's my favorite meal of the whole year!!!