I’m still here…

Well, I haven’t posted on here in around two months, so I thought I’d get on and let anyone visiting this blog know that I’m still alive.  After a busy holiday season and out of town family visiting, we decided to buy a new (to us) house, so things have been too busy to post much.  I’m hoping to put some photos up on “Wordless Wednesday” since that should take less time than writing up a post.  That will probably be more letter writing/envelope decorating than house seasonal decorating since right now my decorating is “packed box sheik” .  After we move I hope to get back to more regular posting.  I’m researching how to decorating libraries since we’ll have one in the new house.

Christmas Envelope

I didn’t decorated most of my Christmas card envelopes (since I couldn’t figure out a way to match) but I did write a letter last week, and found a fun way to decorate the envelope.  The tree was a stencil, but I free handed the rest, I just used a pack of gel pens.  I think it turned out pretty cute, and was quite easy.  I ended up extending the snowflakes up to the address which I wrote in a matching pen.  Below you can see how it matched the paper.  I just think doing something like this really dresses up a letter almost like wrapping a present or decorating the inside of a mailbox.

Christmas House Tour

Well, it’s time to give an overview of our house decorated for Christmas (Note: the bold, colored text will take you to a photo & post about it).  Last year I started the tour in the kitchen, well, I’ve already covered the kitchen as a whole, the top of the china cabinet, and the hutch, so I’ll skip it and you can see it in the links.  I also did a post about our table, but now for what  I haven’t posted yet.  You can see our tree at right and below, I didn’t do a separate tree post this year since it is almost the same as the tree we did last year, actually it just had less ornaments…

Kitchen for Christmas

Here’s how our kitchen is decorated for Christmas.  You can see the hutch just inside the door, and more details on the top of the china cabinet/tall hutch in my posts on them.  I also posted about our table that is in another room.  But here’s an overview of our kitchen all decked.  Here you see the corner inside our door where we lay things like purses and keys when we’re getting ready to go out.  The cookie jar belonged to my great grandmother.  We use a modified sugar cookie recipe of her husband’s which we bake on cookies sheets from another great grandmother’s. Well, let’s get on to the rest of the kitchen…

Metallic Christmas Table

So, here’s our Christmas table.  I decorated it a little later, I’d done something simple, but then I decided to ratchet up the decorating. My grandmother gave me the trays and we had some balls left over.  Since the table runners I already had on, and our china from my great grandmother had silver on the rim, so I decided to go with a metallic look.  One great thing about this table is I just used things I had on hand, so it didn’t cost me anything, yet I think it worked out well.

 

Top of China Cabinet

Well, I don’t have a mantel in my house.  We live in a farm house, parts of which are 100+ years old, but there are no longer any fireplaces.  So I have a couple substitutes: this China Cabinet/hutch and the other hutch in the kitchen. The other hutch has a more refined-fancy look, but with this I decided to go for a more classic colors and look on this one with a focus on children.  Ice-cream doesn’t really make me think of Christmas, but that’s where the churn stays, and children enjoy ice-cream, so I thought I’d leave it. I hope to post about the rest of the cabinet later, and if I do I’ll add

Christmas Hutch

In the past I’ve looked at the date for Christmas linkys I’ve thought, “But I’m not all decorated by then”.  Well, this year since we didn’t get to make the trip to visit family for Thanksgiving, and wanted to be ready early since I had my wisdom teeth out last week, we were almost completely decorated before December came around.  This is the hutch just inside our main door.  It’s supposed to be a staging area, but I’ve been keeping it pretty decorated for holidays this year (Valentines Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Summer, & Thanksgiving) so that hasn’t worked out to well.  The runner is the same one I used for Valentines (it’s the back of the one I used for Thanksgiving.). The sleigh is where we put the cards we receive until they are open and hung in their place (we tend to open the cards together as a family).  This is the nativity scene is one I picked up a few

Good mail month

I’ve seen some blogs that put on a report of their daily or weekly mail.  I thought I’d put on a tally for November.

My family:

Sent: Thanksgiving cards-8, Christmas Cards-42

Received:  Thanksgiving cards-4, Christmas cards-1

PERSONAL:

Sent: Thank you cards-1

Received:  Birthday Cards-6

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, it’s Thanksgiving, so I thought today would be a good time to give a wrap-up of my Thanksgiving posts.  Here is an overview and links to my Thanksgiving Cards and the envelopes I decorated with the computer, markers, or watercolor.  Here you can see my Thanksgiving Hutch.  And here you can see my fall photo craft/tree. 

I’d also like to take a chance to reflect all that I have to be thankful for.  As I mentioned earlier this year on Memorial Day, I’m very thankful for the freedoms I have in this country.  Thanksgiving is a festival that is around the end of harvest, and I’m thankful that, unlike so many in the world, I have plenty to eat, a safe place to live, and plenty of people to love and be loved by.  I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend. 

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

I’m linking up to:

Thanksgiving cards

Unlike last year when we were able to make the trip back to Ohio for Thanksgiving,  and unlike the year before, we don’t have friends whose family was also out of state to come for dinner, so it’s just us this year. So, our visiting has been done via cards.  I’ve found that stores don’t seem to stock many Thanksgiving cards, so most of these are ones I picked up another year when I found them so as to have them on hand.  I decorated a number of the envelopes, you can see my posts on the ones I decorated with: the computer, watercolors, and markers.

While doing these cards I found that there aren’t really any good stamps to use for Thanksgiving cards.  A couple years ago they had these Thanksgiving stamps from the US Postal Service. I bought a sheet and used it for a year or two, but I used them up, (I was thinking the cost