Take time today to remember the reason we celebrate, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I wish you a VERY Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year!!

My Secret Santa Gift...

Despite a little mix-up (my hubby didn't tell me a package arrived for ME!) I received my gift from my Secret Santa partner. THANK YOU! I received two wall transfers one reads "God is love" the other, "Pray often, work hard, trust God", a handmade card and a Christmas ornament in my favorite color, red! I have you know, "trust God" has been the theme for my year... it has been a tough year of changes (forced by the economy) and I've had to TRULY trust God and put my words into action. SO, you picked the perfect wall transfers for me! :-) Thank you for my thoughtful gifts and Merry Christmas! And thanks for giving me a favorite postcard from your childhood!

Vintage Thingy Thursday AND Our Christmas Decor

This Thursday I'm sharing another item I got at the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) holiday bazaar. Unfortunately I don't know much about it as far as the year it was made? It is a beautiful red placemat made out of felt (I think) it is cream with a second piece of red felt, with snowflakes cut out of it, sewn on top. Anything red catches my eye, I had to have it! This Christmas it has found a home on our end table in our family room. Happy VTT and MERRY CHRISTMAS!



*Edited to add Rednesday, decided to join in at It's a Very Cherry World




I had SO much fun decorating for Christmas this year, I had to share! :-)

It's Secret Santa Time!

Well, the time has come for Secret Santa surprises! My gift has been delayed BUT my Secret Santa was kind enough to send me a Christmas card with a little treasure tucked inside, a beautiful Vintage Christmas pop-up postcard of the Nativity scene (you've been reading my blog! :-) I LOVE the postcard and it has found a home within our Christmas tree. I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my gift, just the idea that a package is coming for ME is gift enough (and not something I have ordered for the girls!). Thank you Secret Santa!

Christmas Traditions...Final Holly Bloggy Christmas Bash

I can't believe this week is just about over and Christmas IS ONE WEEK AWAY!! Where did this month go?!?! Anyways...

Each year we take a visit to see Santa Clause at Sleigh Bells in Sherwood Oregon. It is one of those Christmas all year around gift shops with a tea room and Christmas tree farm. The Santa there is the "real" Santa! It is so neat because there is never a line (maybe one family ahead of us), it is $5 and you get to take as many pictures as you like. If there is no one behind you, you can visit with Santa as long as you like. About two years ago, we were the only ones there to see him. We got to spend about 30 minutes with him, it was great! After our pictures with Santa we let the girls pick out their ornament for the year and get some sort of treat. This year they both picked a ballet slipper ornament and we had red and green popcorn for our treat.



The girls hanging their ornaments




Another tradition (this one from my childhood) is to have Aebleskivers for dinner on Christmas Eve. They are a Scandinavian dish. Kind of like round pancake balls. You need a special pan that is indented (I received my pan as a Christmas gift the first year I was married). The Aebleskivers are served warm with butter, sugar and jam for dipping. You can fill them with applesauce, bananas or leave them plain on the inside. My favorite is plain with lots of jam! We are Danish, my grandmother came to the United States when she was 16 years old. My mom started this tradition to have a simple dinner on Christmas Eve, since it is a busy time of year. I have continued on the tradition with my own family. Adding an egg casserole to go with it. I would include the recipe however I typically just use a pancake mix (it is suppose to be a simple dinner! :) In recent years I have discovered an Aebleskiver mix made by Columbia Empire Farms They even have an Aebleskiver Kit, complete with a small pan, in case you wanted to give them a go, they really are yummy!

Vintage Thingies Thursday and a Holiday Pie Recipe

This week for Vintage Thingies Thursday over at Colorado Lady I am sharing a vintage song sheet I picked up at a holiday bazaar. This November the MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group I'm a part of hosted a holiday bazaar. One of the vendors specialized in antiques. She had a few of these cool song sheets. She said they dated back to her childhood which I believe would be the '50s. They were SO neat I had to have one (so did Grace!). I let Grace decide which one and she choose "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem". I wanted to use it in my Christmas decorating so I placed it behind my Nativity scence (fitting, I thought). We even got to use it and sang the song on Day #3 of our Advent Activities.






Every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas I bake the pies, a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie. This year when I went to bake the pecan pie I realized I had everything BUT the pecans! I did have walnuts. So I followed the same recipe replacing the pecans with the walnuts and YUMMY! I think from now on I will make it a walnut pie on purpose!

Walnut Pie Recipe



1 cup Karo® Light OR Dark Corn Syrup
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1-1/2 cups (6 ounces) walnuts
1 (9-inch) unbaked deep-dish pie crust

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix corn syrup, eggs, sugar, butter and vanilla using a spoon. Stir in walnuts. Pour filling into pie crust. Bake on center rack of oven for 60 to 70 minutes, tap side of pie, it is done when center springs back. Cool for 2 hours on wire rack before serving.

Candy Cane Place Holders

Even though we will have a small gathering for our Christmas dinner, I thought it would be fun to have our own place holders at the table. Grace LOVES to have them too. I decided to make candy cane place holders, they are super easy.

I bought over sized candy canes, 3 for $1 at Fred Meyer. I already had, green floral tape, red berries, green leaves, thin green ribbon, red ink and white tags. I was going to use pre-punched tags but they were too large, instead I punched 6 tags using my Stampin' Up 1 3/8" circle punch.

I took three red berries, one leaf and twisted them together with the floral tape. I then wrapped the berries around the candy cane. After punching out the circles, I inked the edges with red ink, punched a hole in the top and wrote each persons' name. I took about a 2" piece of ribbon and tied the tag and berries to the candy cane. There you have it! Easy!






This Thanksgiving we did a kids' table for the first time (it was great!) I covered the table with white butcher paper. Grace helped me trace turkeys using a turkey cookie cutter and she hand stamped each child's name. I then taped them to a small pack of crayons. The kids felt special having their own place holders and got to stay busy drawing on the "table cloth". The same could be done for Christmas, using of course, a Christmas design.

Our Christmas Tree

Ever since I was a little girl I have wanted a really tall Christmas tree. The front room in our new house has a high ceiling so this year I told Jeremy, "please lets get the biggest tree we can find" and we did! 15 foot tree! It is bigger than I thought it would be, we had to rearrange the furniture, but that is ok. I love to just stand and look UP at it. It is SO fun!

Although I would love to have a themed tree my hubby loves the sentimental ornaments, the ones from his childhood and the ones we have collected over the years. So, that is the theme of our tree each year, a collection of this and that. However, you will always find green and red ball ornaments and many of the vintage feel I love so much. I don't really have a favorite ornament...I do love Nutcrackers (I danced my whole life and was in the Nutcracker a few times), so I have a Nutcracker ornament I really enjoy and have started a collection (those photos will be posted at a later date).

Merry almost Christmas!





All this week I'm participating in a Holly Bloggy Christmas Bash...join the fun!

A Handmade Christmas...Christmas Bloggy Party

I love to make gifts! This year I am probably making more than usual, given the economy we are on a tight budget this Christmas. Fortunately I have a surplus of crafting supplies so I'm able to make things without spending very much. This is what I worked on this week.

Each year I make our girls' Christmas dresses. Although it is one of their gifts, they do get them early so they can wear them to all the events, school Christmas program, visiting Santa, seeing The Nutcracker and Christmas Eve service. We moved this summer and in our new office were very long, burgundy curtains. When I took them down I realized that the material was a beautiful raw silk from Pottery Barn. Although the curtains were pretty, they weren't my style SO they became the girls' Christmas dresses! :-)



Two lucky ladies, can't say who (they might read this post!) are getting these this Christmas.

An apple spice hanging for the kitchen. I strung together dried sliced apple, cinnamon sticks and eucalyptus leaves. I thinly sliced an apple and baked it in the oven on 225 for a few hours to dry them out, I bought cinnamon sticks at the store for .99 cents (a package of four) and the eucalyptus leaves came from our backyard. I used embroidery thread to string them together.



A sachet filled with apple spiced potpourri. The potpourri is store bought but I sewed the sachet out of wide lace and strung it closed with ribbon.



I'm participating in a Christmas Bloggy Party all week...