Christmas Decorations: Complete!

I present to you...

1. Our tree, lights on:

and lights off: New star topper, silver bulbs and silver garland. I convinced Nate to have some color cohesiveness with silver, but he convinced me to use colored lights in addition to white. Compromise, people. The secret to not killing your spouse.


2. Our tree skirt: Bought it plain for $5 and I spiced it up with embellishments. Again, I wanted a non-traditional light blue but he wanted red. I was feeling quite generous today. Love the glittery snowflakes and little buttons. And I love my new hot glue gun.
3. My pride and joy: Our yearly ornament for our first year of marriage. This one took a while and I wasn't really sure how it would turn out. Love the brooch on top and the dangly beads on the bottom.
Up close of our ornament: "Merry [married] Christmas." And some leftover lace from my veil to help with the girlie-ness and frill.

3. My other favorite ornaments, which I did NOT make:)



4. My hurricane vase filled with my old pink/purple/teal bulbs. Nate banished them from our tree so I decided to make them even more prominent as a centerpiece:) I substituted this project for my wreath idea because the bulb wreath was going to cost me $30 or more. Not worth it, in my opinion.
5. Our stockings! Bought them plain for $3 each at Michaels. I was going to sew them from scratch like Jen suggested. But $3 a pop was just too good to pass up.
I used our old stockings for a backdrop to add some color. And to cover up a bunch of screws in the wall.

Nate's stocking, nice and manly with green buttons, ribbon and a snowflake on top. I got these monogram pins at Target for cheap. I like this better than spelling out our whole names anway.

My stocking made with my veil lace, again. Also used the same ribbon and a brooch for the top.

Up close of the colors:
And little Henry's stocking, complete with a doggy bone charm. The damn charm cost more than his stocking but it's adorable.

6. Last but not least, my "snow" banner. I decided on "snow" versus "merry christmas" because it was shorter and more appropriate for our location:)
By using ribbon, beaded garland, then cardboard, glitter snowflake ornaments, and paper I made this. I hung it on our mirror but I'm not sure if I'll keep it there.Here is a side view of my banner.
That's it, folks. The final products of my creative day. Glitter is still everywhere, including Nate's face and I don't have the heart to tell him.

And he informed me that we need to give the dining room table a substantial break from crafting for awhile. Which is probably best....unless I get randomly inspired again:)

It's beginning to look a lot like...

...Christmas, and freakishly cold weather.

I had to work yesterday and as if that wasn't enough of a punishment on a Saturday, I got the privilege to drive home during my first Wisconsin blizzard. Well, not really a blizzard but they called it a "wintery mix." Which means a nice frozen cocktail full of snow, ice, sleet, and rain. Which in my world means it took me one hour to get home instead of 30 minutes. Oh well, at least it made for pretty pictures. And walking around in four inches of snow is kind of fun, I suppose:




Then, this morning, Santa came to visit a little early! He was so excited to see us, and provided the gift of laughter:

Another one bites the dust!

That's what we used to say when people got engaged, but OBVIOUSLY an engagement isn't a negative happening. At all.

So tonight I got the call from my good friend, Kristen [a.k.a. "E-bug"]. She and her now fiance were celebrating their one year dating anniversary at the Boat House. They exchanged gifts and voila--E now has some major bling on her hand! She was SO excited that her words were running together but I heard something about the stone being round and the metal being white gold, and her family hiding in the corner taking pictures the whole time. She is going to be a planner extraordinaire, which will make me quite proud. I'm hoping she'll ask for my advice but I doubt she'll need it.

Here is E performing her duties as a wedding reader, at my wedding. She is so talented at this task that she has now read at three weddings. Yes, three. So she has plenty of experience being in the wedding spotlight.

Here are Kristen and Will, the happy couple.Awww, aren't they squeezable?


Now for those of you that don't know, we have a group of girls labeled "the fab five" [totally overdone, I know]. Well here we are showing our very serious faces:
So three of the five are officially married, and now a fourth is engaged. That leaves ONE [ahem, Lindsey] out of our five. And now that Kristen is engaged, Lindsey is next in line. Can't wait for that call as well:)

Here's to Kristen and Will: high fives all around!Kristen is one of my loyal blog readers who cannot comment due to work restrictions but I hope she sees this soon. Congrats, E-bug! Wish I could be there to celebrate with you!