Christmas Recap

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We certainly had a wonderful Christmas filled celebrating the birth of our Savior, spending time with family and friends, entertaining and rest. We had company for half of my Christmas break and then the other half has been spent recovering from a terrible sinus infection. I'm thankful for the time off work to be able to rest! Now that Christmas has come and passed we don't have any more guest planning on coming to town anytime soon so we are officially beginning to transition one of our guest rooms to a nursery. I am SO excited to get things started! I spent a full day cleaning out that room and figuring out where to store things. This weekend Justin and his parents are going to paint the room a blush pink color. After that it will be time to have the carpets cleaned and set up our crib that has been sitting in our garage patiently waiting to be set up! 

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and hope that you all have a Happy New Year! We will be having a semi low key New Years spent with some friends cooking prime rib and playing games. Oh how times have changed! 

Christmas Weekend

Okay, so this post was supposed to be up on Monday, right after Christmas. Things did not go as planned though when my computer crashed (for the third time in a few months). Here we are a few days later all fixed up and with a brand new laptop! Let's call it an unexpected but necessary late Christmas present to myself. Moving on with the Christmas recap... because it has to be documented of course! Better late than never. 

Can you believe Christmas is already over? The whole month of December just flew by despite my efforts to slow down and enjoy every moment. Justin and I had a very Merry Christmas. It being the first Christmas we are married made it just that more special! We spent Christmas Eve at home opening our gifts to each other and celebrating with Justin's family. His side of the family gets together every year for dinner and gifts and sometimes do a theme. This year the theme was Tacky and a few people sure did go all out! I felt it would only be appropriate to have a photo booth if the theme was tacky so I used some leftover wrapping paper and got to work. J's dad cooked a low country boil for dinner that was of course just delicious. The night was just perfect! Sorry for the picture overload that is about to happen!

Can you say best dressed family award?! Not pictured are the Santa red pants and the remainder of Carlee's one piece red jumpsuit. Hilarious..

 How many people can you fit on one couch?!

Christmas morning Justin and I were up and on the road early heading to my parent's for the remainder of the weekend. Mom had the house beautifully decorated as always and prepared a mouth watering brunch including her famous tomato gravy (that I am determined to learn how to make this year). Christmas night my sister and I invited our two best friends over which has become a tradition the past few years. Now everyone has husbands/ boyfriends in the picture so we had some boys joining in on the fun also! (; I'm not quite sure they could handle all of the girl talk/wine but don't worry- we will break them in!

 Henson has the best grandparents ever! He was gifted his very own personalized tote bag. Yes, he is spoiled rotten

 Yay for matching jackets! My mom, sister and I all have the same jacket in a different color. 

As a joke we gave my dad and Justin a pair of very, very VERY large briefs as a gift. HA! 

DIY Christmas Golf Ball Ornaments

I just LOVE homemade gifts! It shows that someone put their thought and time into making something just for you. We all know there is never enough time in the day as is! My creative sister came up with the cutest homemade gift idea for the golf lover in your life. She made the most adorable golf ball Christmas ornaments decorated, some as Santa and some as a snowman. I tell you, she is the queen of homemade, thoughtful and creative. I convinced her to share the how to with you all because they really aren't that difficult and turned out adorable. They are also a great way to use up the hundreds of unused golf balls laying around!

You will need several golf balls (don't use expensive ones because you will be painting them anyway), small and large picture hanging hooks, acrylic paint and accessories of your choice for hats (thin fabric, felt, pom poms, etc), a hot glue gun and string. 

The how to:
1. Paint golf balls white and let dry. 
2. Screw in the picture hanging hook to the top of the ball. You can use a screwdriver and a screw to break through the hard outer shell and then finish screwing in hook by hand. This is the hardest step but still not that bad. 

3. Paint the balls the design of your choosing. Ginny did a decorative one, a Santa and a snowman but the possibilities are endless! I'm currently begging her to make me a chocolate lab with a Santa hat on it. How cute would that be! 

4. Add last minute accessories such as hats made out of fabric or felt. The snowman hats can be found pre-made at Hobby Lobby. 

these aren't finished yet but I can already tell they will be adorable! 

Can you believe Christmas in only three days away?! I certainly cannot! 

Christmas cards and festivities

One of these days I am going to get back to blogging regularly. With work slowing down a [tiny] bit maybe today will be the day! 

One.
I have a confession to make... I may be the crazy girl that had our Christmas card picked out and ordered about two months ago. I just LOVE all that Christmas brings and can't wait to get things started. Our cards sat addressed and ready to go for over a month just waiting for the day after Thanksgiving to mail them. I LOVE the way this year's card turned out.. with wedding pictures it was such an easy process! 

2014 Christmas Card

Two.

This weekend Justin and I traveled to Reidsville to kick off my Christmas break with my family and to see some hometown friends. The weekend flew by with several holiday parties and spending time with friends. The food has been heavy and the wine has been flowing. My diet has to start NOW. Not a bad problem to have though right?!

Three.

A few weekends ago we hosted a Tacky Sweater party that never made it to the blog. So here ya go! ..the infamous tacky sweater party that is always way too much fun. 

Christmas 2014

This year I was able to spend Christmas Eve in our new house with Justin's family and then wake up and travel home Christmas morning to spend Christmas with my family. I was worried how I would balance Christmas with two families in the mix but it worked out just perfect. Christmas Eve we had all of Justin's family over to our house for dinner, drinks and gifts. I was thrilled to get to spend part of Christmas with them for the first time ever. To keep things simple but also delicious everyone brought their own steak and potato and we had salad, rolls, tons of appetizers and butter finger pie. 

Christmas morning I woke up bright and early to head to my parents house. Justin couldn't join this year because of his work schedule. Fingers crossed that he can next year! Even though we could not be together I was so happy to be home with my family. There is just something peaceful about being "home" with your family. My mom made a big lunch, a yummy limoncello drink and we exchanged our gifts to each other. The past few years it has become a tradition to get together with our best girl friends Christmas night for a cocktail. This may have been my favorite year yet... so much fun with these girls!! We could talk for days on end and never run out of things to say. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking. I'm so thankful for such wonderful family and friends who made Christmas 2014 one to remember! 

Christmas House Tour

Merry Christmas friends!! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas celebrating with family and friends! This year I have been so blessed as I was able to spend Christmas with not only my family but Justin's as well, and with close friends. I have been a little absent from the blog enjoying every minute of the Christmas season but I am back and can't wait to share about my holiday! Those that have been reading know that Justin and I bought a house back in August; read here. This was our first Christmas together in our house and definitely one to remember. We had so much fun filling the house with Christmas decorations and starting traditions. I snapped some pictures partly to show off the Christmas decor and partly to show off how the living room and dining room are coming along! I hope you love it as much as we do!! 

So with this picture you can see our new Everett foyer table under the TV and our new chair. Next on the wish list is the matching couch, a side table and wall art. We're getting there.. one piece at a time. (: 

You can read about our hunt for a chair here. This is the Bennington chair from Rooms to go.. I LOVE how it turned out!! It is SO comfy and the perfect size to cuddle up in. 

Everett foyer table..this is probably my favorite piece of furniture in the house. I love love love it! It fits perfectly under our TV.  

 Do you see our NEW farm table in the dining room?! My future father in law built that for us for Christmas. Full post to come.. he did an awesome job!