Too much turkey!

It is the day after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and I am exhausted!!!

We spent the holiday traveling to my mom's then to see my husband's family so it was a lot of time on the road. A great time was had by all. We ate way too much and now really need to get back to the workout routine!

I have some great pictures from our travels. We stayed at my mom's one night and day and then at the in-laws River Place (basically a ranch in the middle of nowhere) for the next two days. We saw plenty of game, spent time by the campfire, and just enjoyed the company of family.

I spent today catching up on work for my business, getting laundry done and Christmas shopping. Tomorrow I need to clean house and get the rest of our Christmas decorations out. We put one tree up on Sunday night when we returned home as the kids were just dying to have a tree up. After that, we went to dinner and then drove around looking at Christmas lights.

I'll have more to say later and some pics to post, but for now...I am tired and need to rest!

Show and Tell Friday...

Today is Show and Tell over at There Is No Place Like Home.

Every house where love abides
And friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home sweet home
For there the heart can rest.
~Henry Van Dyke

I want to show you some treasures I found this week! I attended a Southern Living at Home party earlier in the week and the director who was hosting the party had this B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L fireplace screen for sale at a deep discount! It is new to the fall catalog so I got a steal with the discount! You cannot really tell from the picture, but my bricks stair step down and the screen fits in like it was made for the space under the lowest line of bricks!

At the same party, there was a drawing for a beautiful painted Gail Pittman Urn. My Aunt attended the party with me and she WON IT! Then, she gave it to me!!! What a great Aunt!!!! My new dining furniture is due to be delivered in a week or so and I am so excited to see how this is going to look displayed on the buffet/hutch with some pine boughs in it adorned with ornaments!

I found a few more treasures this past week that I just could not pass up. I am creating a family portrait wall between our entry and family room. I found a great wall plaque at deep discount while at Hobby Lobby. I paid...wait for it...$3 for this beauty! I LOVE what it says: Family: All Because Two People Fell In Love.

Then while at JoAnn's I came across this little goodie. It says: Family, One of God's Masterpieces. Again, found it on deep discount (the only way to shop!)

I hope you enjoyed some of my finds this week. I love decorating our home and it always thrills me to find items that really speak to me and make our home a warm and welcoming place for our family to come back to after a day of work or school!

Thankful Thursday...

Thanksgiving
The year has turned its circle,
The seasons come and go.
The harvest all is gathered in
And chilly north winds blow.
Orchards have shared their treasures,
The fields, their yellow grain,
So open wide the doorway
Thanksgiving comes again!
~Old Rhyme

Over at There Is No Place Like Home, Kelli has been hosting a 'Giving Thanks Week.' It is a great idea to prepare our hearts and homes for Thanksgiving. So many wonderful ideas and recipes have been shared there!

I am sharing decorating ideas. Here we have our breakfast nook where our everyday family meals are shared.

The basket on our table holds Autumn linens such as tea towels and napkins...I just LOVE my acorn napkin rings I found on sale at Kohl's last year after Thanksgiving! I think I paid something like 0.45 cents a piece for them!
I tied a fall foliage decorative pick to the back of each chair using a pretty fall wired ribbon.

Here is a close-up of the detail of the chair adornments:

And another one:

I have a chalkboard over on the wall near the table. I write menus or inspirational quotes on this board. I liked the saying I saw on the Warm Pie, Happy Home blog of "The Frost is on the Pumpkin" so that is what is on the chalk board right now. I have two wooden pumpkins hanging from the hooks, one pumpkin reads 'Autumn' and the other pumpkin reads 'Harvest'.

My home makes it easy to decorate for the Autumn months as my decor and colors tend to be very warm and cozy variations of reds, browns, sages, and tans. In my dining room I have this little vignette:
Here is a close up of the sconces. I bought the white pumpkins at Wal-mart and then simply tied a fall rust and cream checked ribbon around the stems and placed a few autumn picks behind them on the sconce:

I keep these toile buckets up all year on a wall in my dining room. I change the greenery in it for the seasons. Here I have it all dressed up for Autumn:

And here is my creation from Wordle. I found this through Heather and LOVE it! I used words here that represent the feelings I have around the Thanksgiving holiday. I will make a different one for Christmas and post that when I have it. I framed it and set it on my antique school desk in my entry. I found the wooden oak leaves and acorns just today on sale to set by the frame:

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my Autumn/Thanksgiving decor. Go visit Kelli for some more great ideas! Melissa also has her post up and still collecting comments regarding holiday decor! There are some great ideas out there in blogland!!!

Paper Craft - Christmas Gift Tags...

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other. ~Burton Hillis

My daughter and I thought it would be fun to make our own gift tags for our Christmas packages this year! Last weekend we gathered all our supplies, sat at the table, cut out tags and stamped away! It was so nice and such a good time just to chat and create. My daughter is 7 years old and LOVES anything crafty. I made sure we made very simple tags so we could concentrate on the 'togetherness' and creativity instead of stressing over the perfect overdone commercial-looking gift tag - and trust me, if you know me, you know how difficult it was not to let my OCD tendencies take over and turn the craft into a commercially, glittery, overdone, STRESSED OUT, mess that was no fun in the end for me or my daughter! I tend to like things, um...perfect, but I am learning to see the perfection even in the flaws. It is more important now that I am the keeper of these two little beings that I concentrate on the moment, the memory, and not the 'thing' we are working on! And you know what? I LOVE our little tags we made!
I found these great clear stamps from the Martha Stewart line in the scrapbooking section of Wal-Mart no less! We found the paper, stamping ink, acrylic blocks to mount the stamps, ribbon and cord all at Hobby Lobby.

We had fun cutting out decorative little snowball shapes with my craft scissors. My daughter picked to stamp the silver snow flakes and blue Joy on these then we punched the hole and used a blue glittery cord to attach to the tag.
We stamped 'To' and 'From' on the back.

Then we worked on these cute stamps with a red Merry Christmas and red cardinals. Then stamped a green 'To' and 'From' on the inside and tied with red glittery cord.

Onto our Noel tags with a silver dove and tied with the glittery blue cord. We stamped the 'To' and 'From' in blue.

Then the gold reindeer and green pine tree tied with glittery green cord and stamped with a green 'To' and 'From' on the other side.
Here are the finished cards! We have four different types and we made ten each. This was such a fun project to do with my daughter. I am so glad I chose not to 'go overboard' and instead practice what this season is really all about...not about 'things' but about moments - times spent with loved ones and special memories made.

Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time. ~Laura Ingalls Wilder

(I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. It was late when we finished so we had no natural light! I hope they show up somewhat!)

For more paper crafting ideas, go visit Kelli!

Sunday's Reflection...

Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

~Colossians 3:12-17 NIV

Photo Credit: Flickr

Show and Tell Friday...

Happy Friday!!! It is time again for Show and Tell Friday over at There is No Place Like Home.

Come along inside... We'll see if tea and buns can make the world a better place.

~The Wind in the Willow~

I have a special fondness for tea cups. I enjoy the images they provoke: good conversation enjoyed over a cup of tea, reflection, relaxation, introspection, comfort, quiet...

Today I will share some of the tea cups I have collected. The first one below is a simple cup from Garden Ridge that I just adored and picked up one day.

Strange how a teapot can represent at the same time the comforts of solitude and the pleasures of company.

~Author Unknown

All the cups below have special stories attached to them. My husband's grandfather bought antiques and we are fortunate enough to have some of the saucers and tea cups he had in his collection. The yellow rose tea cup and saucer:

The tea cup and saucer from Japan:
The tea cup and saucer with the dainty pink flowers:
And my favorite from my husband's grandfather's collection, this precious pink and white footed cup and saucer:

Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage.

~Catherine Douzel

Take a look at these six dainty perfect little cups below. These have a very, very special story, a story that in fact came as a beautiful surprise to me as an adult. My grandmother loved to go 'garage sale-ing'. She would take me with her on Saturdays (or Sairdees as she pronounces it in her leftover Alabama drawl) when I spent time with her in the summer. I remember finding many treasures on these Saturday's with my grandmother. Treasures such as dolls, books, and toys.

A little over ten years ago, after I was married, my grandmother gave me a box filled with six items wrapped in old brown paper bags. I unwrapped them to find these six sweet little cups. In discussing the 'gift' she told me that I had in fact picked these cups out at a sale on one of our Saturdays. She says I insisted I wanted them but I was just a little girl, younger than five years old. So unbeknown to me, she bought these, and put them away for more than 20 years and then presented them to me as a young woman starting a home of my own.

What a treasure these are to me. Not only are they a beautiful addition to the display in my dining room china hutch, but every time I look at them I am reminded of the wonderful memories of time spent with my grandmother.

I hope you enjoyed seeing a few of my special tea cups and saucers as much as I enjoyed the precious memories as I wrote about them. Now go visit Kelli to see more Show and Tell links today!

Another WIP...

I now have over 20 daisy squares completed for my daughter's blanket. I was stumped as to what pattern to create and use besides the daisy squares. I think I have decided on a granny square of six rounds - the first two rounds pink, the third round green, and the last three rounds pink. Then when I join all the squares I will make a border using green alone, then multi yarn with green and pink and finally the outside of pink alone using a scalloped edging. It think it is going to be so sweet! Her room is pink and green with daisies and a garden theme.

However, while trying to sort out the color design of the squares other than the daisy squares, I started another crochet project! If you are keeping count, I now have 3 projects in progress...I am trying my juggling skills ;-)

I thought I would 'practice' on the snowflake hexagon that I will need to know how to make for the snowflake afghan. Well turns out these are FUN! Plus, with all the Christmas commercials already on the TV, it put me in the mood to give these a go. I found my groove on them and have a few completed.

I am hoping to complete my daughter's blanket by Christmas and then dive into the snowflakes so that at some point this winter I can complete that blanket! Two down, and just 57 to go!

Show and Tell Friday...

Today, for Show and Tell Friday, I am sharing pictures of my hand painted fall goblets and two of my precious fall plates.

The plates are from the Johnson Brother's Friendly Village collection. The top plate is a vignette of an apple orchard. The plate on the bottom is of a pumpkin patch.

Here is a closer view of the apple plate.

And a closer view of the pumpkin plate. I won these plates off Ebay just this year and just adore the rustic, cozy, 'heartland' feel they lend to my fall decor.

Now onto the hand painted fall goblets. I have had these for many years now. There are four of them painted with two different designs of fall gourds, pumpkins, leaves, and acorns.

I adore the detail of the painted acorns even on the bottoms of the glassware. That way they look beautiful when out for use or when hanging on the glass rack!

I hope you enjoyed sharing some of my treasured fall dinnerware and glasses that adorn my kitchen all during the autumn season! Now, go on over to Kelli's and share in some of the other wonderful 'Show and Tell' posts!

Gratitude Garland...

Whew, I just finished cutting out 30 leaves and my hands are ACHING!!! But it was worth it. I finished the 'gratitude garland' - an idea I borrowed from Chris and which she borrowed from Heather!

Here is how I did it:

I found leaf templates, where else, but the Martha Stewart website. I enlarged the leaves on my copy machine to 145% to get the size I wanted. I then taped the leaves I enlarged to white card stock and cut out the shapes to form my templates. (I chose just three different leaf types.)

I used the templates I made to trace the leaves onto varying fall colors and patterns of scrapbooking card stock. I decided to make 30 leaves - 1 for each day in November.

I cut out each of the leaves, then punched holes in each, and finally strung them onto a fall ribbon. Each day, this will remind my husband and me to talk to the kids about what we are thankful for and we will write these things on a leaf.

Before our Thanksgiving meal we can read what we wrote on our garland throughout the month. I also figure this will be a neat keepsake to look back on over the years reminding us what our children were thankful for when they were so small. I think this will be a great yearly tradition!

By the way, you can find more great paper crafting ideas over at Kelli's blog so go give her a visit!

Also, Melissa at The Inspired Room has her Holiday Linky Love post up! Go visit her to get some more great inspiration for Holiday decoration. There are some crafty people out there in Blogland!