Easter Decorating (Do I really have enough to even call it that?)

I hate to disappoint you all, but this is it! This is all the Easter decorating I do! It's practically nonexistent!

Do you remember this scale from Christmas? It had red ornaments in it back then. Well, it has fake eggs in it for Easter! Orignal, right???

By my laundry room there are some cubbies that we put our shoes in and hang our backpacks, etc. in. Well above the hooks we have these little cubbies I have never put anything in yet. So, I put all of the cute little stuffed bunnies and chicks we have gotten from grandparents and other loved ones over the years.

It is all kinda tucked away from the world, yet the kids can enjoy all that the pastels have to offer during this holiday! Do you decorate for Easter and if so do you do a bunch?

Holiday Round-Up

Well, seems like a lot happened in the last few weeks before Christmas. We had a couple of more family gatherings in the days leading up to Christmas Eve and Christmas.

Christmas Eve we hosted lunch for my husband's brother and his family that live in the same town we live in. This year we had sick grandparents that couldn't make it for the holidays :(

In the late afternoon on Christmas Eve we went to our church's candlelight service.

Keeping with Christmas Eve tradition, E.T. and Baby Girl put on their coordinating Christmas pajamas as usual. My Mom and her husband came over for dinner that night too and then we opened our non-Santa gifts after dinner.

We also made our annual gingerbread baby cookies for Santa. My kids love the Jan Brett book Gingerbread Baby!

We had to decorate them too. . .

Yummy! Don't these just make you want to eat them, especially since two five year olds decorated them and had been licking the icing off their fingers the entire time they decorated them. . . poor Santa!

How did your Christmas holidays go? What are some traditions you have? Did you maybe start some new ones this year or revive some old ones? Whatever you did, I hope you were able to take this time and reflect on why we really celebrate Christmas. If it were not for Jesus' birth, we would have no reason to celebrate and because of his birth we can really celebrate the gift of Christmas in our lives every single day if we chose too. I hope you chose to celebrate the gift of Christmas and what it means to Christians every day of the year. That is my challenge to me and to you too. . .

Thanksgiving

"Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever." Psalm 106:1

Now that is something to be thankful for! How awesome is it that God's love endures forever!?! It is hard to wrap your mind around what exactly forever means! We have a hard time just enduring things for 30 minutes, and hour, or even a day. As I reflect on things to be thankful for this holiday season, I am thankful for the typical things, of course. Most of all I am thankful for God's love and grace in my life and the opportunity that He has given me to experience it this year in a real way like never before! What have you been thankful for this year?

Let me share quickly what we did on Thanksgiving Day. You already saw the post where we ran the 5K that morning. Here is what we did for our meal. We had 10 people for dinner. I decided to pull out dishes my mom gave me. She had them in her hope chest since she was a teenager and then had them on her hutch in her dining room over the years when I was growing up. Our family ate on them maybe 2 times (That might be stretching it. . . ) For dinner we had a ham, (no turkey) an attempt at cornbread dressing, broccoli with cheese, homemade mac and cheese, oriental salad, layered salad, rolls, pecan pies, and banana pudding. Some recipes were new and will never be used again and others were favorites that have been used year after year.

Here is a close up of a dinner plate in the set of dishes that were my Mom's. When I was growing up I thought these were ugly! As I have gotten older and started decorating my home, I have fallen in love with antique transfer ware, especially brown! So, now I have this set from my mom that I have used to decorate with in my kitchen and now I have actually served a meal on them! I totally appreciate them now and find them beautiful!

Meet The Flintstones

Last year we did The Wizzard of Oz for Halloween. This year we are the Flintstones with a borrowed Rubble (Bam Bam).

Do I make a pretty prissy Wilma Flintstone? Check out Fred and those sexy legs. . .

Bam Bam and Pebbles are sure proud of their costumes this year! What did you dress up as for Halloween?