Bless This Mess

Well, I know I posted at least 52 times this year!!!  Not that they were interesting posts and the vast majority of them were posted later than I had planned, but I did it!  I did my goal for this year!

Now what!?!  I need to decide if I want to set another goal for this blog for next year.  Any suggestions?  Crafts, more miscellaneousness, weight loss, other miscellaneousness, photography themes, miscellaneousness of sorts?  I’m open for suggestions if anyone has ideas they’d like to share.

For now, here’s the last Monday Moments post for 2011.

Our Christmas weekend!!!

Mandy helping me in the kitchen before the big Christmas Eve dinner.

Waiting for everyone to arrive.

These skirts are the same as the Halloween skirts, only different fabric.

The feast, soups, bread bowls, ham, and salads.

Aunt Sandy did a White Elephant game with the kids.  They were nice gifts for it being a ‘white elephant’.

Karl and Mom.

One of the most wonderful, handsome, classy, humble men you’ll ever meet… my grandpa!

Singing Christmas songs.

All the cousins sang ‘Christmas Bells’.

Eric sang ‘What Child Is This’.  If you haven’t heard him sing, you’re missing out.

My Grandma read a story.

The Hurst Family sang ‘Shepherds Carol’.

Mom shared a story.

Janina and Michael played some duets.

My girls sang ‘Could I Hold The Baby’.

Grandpa read the Christmas Story from Luke .

After everyone went home, we got the house back in order, moved all the tables out of the living room and brought the couches back in.

Then we opened our new pjs.  This has been a tradition of ours for the last 5 years or so.

Paul looked like a deranged Easter Bunny.  For those of you who have seen ‘The Christmas Story’ with the red rider bee-bee gun.  Complete with the bunny feet!

And as our tradition goes, we watched ‘A Muppets Christmas Carol’.  I LOVE that movie!

CHRISTMAS MORNING!!!

Ashley asked for a ukelele.  In 5th grade, they teach the kids the ukelele, and she wanted one of her own.  It’s white so she can decorate it with vinyl, like we did her violin.

Trinkett wanted to be with us, but it was still too early for her.

Can I just say that ruffle fabric is totally AWESOME!

Paul got his hands on an Etch A Sketch.  Not too shabby!

I forgot to blog about our most recent addition to our Christmas decor.

This year I made a large Grinch and Max for outside!

Yes, Max is a bit too dark, I’ll be fixing that before next year.

The Grinch is 5 feet tall!

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

P.S.  Here was our Christmas Card this year.

Just in case I’m too lazy to post again…

Have a wonderful New Year everyone!

I really should be cleaning, but I decided to take a break and finally do the Monday Moments for this week.  You know, 30 people being at our house for Christmas eve, and my house is still a mess.  But I’m not stressing out!!!!  My hubby is already on his way home from work and he’ll be able to help, or at least keep the kids busy while I clean.

This is mostly just a post for my reference.  Mostly just Christmas decor.

Here are just a few pictures of the girls decorating our family tree.

And on with the show!  Oh and all these pictures were taken at night, so they aren’t the best.

This tree below, we’ll call Tree #1.  It’s in our front entryway.

This pretty white tree below is Tree #2, or our Santa Tree.  It’s in our living room.

This is the living room fireplace/mantle.

I love that red wreath.  I got it from Target.

These awesome candle cups are from Down East Outlet and so are the candles.

These white reindeer weren’t originally white.  They were brown.  I got them from Hobby Lobby.  I’m thinking next year I’ll paint the swirly designs on them red.

Here’s what they looked like before the spray paint.  I like them better white.

Here’s Tree #3.  On our front staircase.

Here’s our family room mantle.

Here’s Tree #4, in our family room.

Tree #5 isn’t pictured here.  It’s in our upstairs hallway.  The girls decorated it with teddy bears and tiny porcelain dolls.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas holiday full of joy and time with your loved ones!

Back to cleaning I go!

Only one more Monday Moments lefts!

Hello Everyone!

Only a few more days till Christmas!!!

Here’s what I meant to post for last weeks Monday Moments.

I had a birthday last week!  Yay me!  But, got sick on my birthday and ended up spending several days in bed.  As nice as it sounds, spending several days in bed, this was not pleasant, and let’s leave it at that shall we!?!

But that’s okay, we celebrated my birthday the weekend before, so it’s all good!

Paul and I took Ashley to go see Blue Man Group.

Word of advice… don’t go see it.  Ashley really enjoyed it, Paul thought it was okay-ish, and I was down right bored.  Except for the times when they were actually drumming on things, that was cool, but that was less then a 1/3 of the time.

But at least Ashley enjoyed it and that’s all that matters.

Sorry, these are cellphone pictures.  I totally, accidentally left my camera on the kitchen counter.  BOO!

After the show we took Ashley home to the babysitter and Paul and I went on a date!!!  And of course I forgot my camera AGAIN!  I gotta stop doing that.

We went to dinner and then to another concert.  I’m happy to say that the concert we went to was so much more enjoyable!

Just this year Paul discovered and introduced me to Michele McLaughlin.  She’s a piano soloist who is local.  I found out she does concerts right out of her home, so that’s where Paul and I went!  She had another pianist there to play as well.  It was a wonderfully relaxing evening.

If you’ve never heard of Michele McLaughlin, her songs are beautiful and somewhat haunting.  Most of them have a pattern to them and aren’t difficult to learn, but they sure are fun to play.

I’ll blog later this week with M.M. #51.

P.S.  This is my 200th post on this blog!