Christmas Home Tour

I can't believe we are just days away from Christmas. I am enjoying my first day of Christmas vacation. I have been pretty productive this morning, and have already made a grocery trip, renewed my car registration, and I have started holiday baking. I may need a nap, but I still have lots to finish up.  We had a snow day last Monday, so I took the opportunity to take a few pictures of some of my Christmas decorations. I love this time of year, and I love decorating. I really get sad when it is time to take it all down. I don't have fancy decorations but almost all of them have a story behind them or a memory of a sweet friend. I love that my Christmas tree is a collection ornaments that each have a story or special memory. My grandma always buys me a special ornament each year. This year I also added a small tree to my bedroom, which now houses all the ornaments with Logan and Madison's pictures since I do one for each of them every year. So relax for a bit, sip a hot drink and enjoy a tour of some of my favorite decorations.

The snow was beautiful and the perfect backdrop for Christmas

My grandma bought this flag for my this summer while she was on vacation. You can't really see it in the picture, but the R is decked out in bling. LOVE IT!

 

I did more with my shelf this year and added the JOY burlap banner.

This is my dining room table.

I love these adorable trees in my bathroom. I found them in a small shop in town last year.

This frame was a purchase a few years ago. I love looking back on old Christmas pictures.

These guys are sitting on the top of my shelf.

This tree is still my favorite and holds so many memory ornaments.

 

I do have more decorations but I can't seem to find the pictures right now. You got the main highlights.

 

The Beginning Of The Christmas Fun!

It is Monday and that means the start of another work week. This week is a ball of crazy emotions for teachers. I love the magic of sharing the season with children, but it is rough keeping them corralled when they know that Christmas break is only 5 days away. At least we had some help this morning, thanks to a snow delay  closing (this changed as I was typing this post), a few less hours of madness! I was thinking this morning, that I have shoveled more snow this year than I did all last winter-CRAZY.

So onto the beginning of the Christmas fun. I knew I wanted to do something fun over my Thanksgiving break. So we decided to load up the car with my parents and both kids and head down to Cincinnati. Our first stop was the Krohn Conservatory. They have a beautiful poinsettia and train display. My goal for the day was to try to get a Christmas card picture( which I will share later after my cards go out).  We got some great pictures and had fun exploring the displays. After leaving there, we grabbed some dinner and then headed to a drive thru light display. I decided after freezing the week before, I wanted to do something that would be a little warmer. We had fun driving thru the display. It also nice because it is usually a really busy display later in the season but the lines were not bad at all.

*There might be a slight picture overload.

It's driving the teacher in me crazy, how she is holding her scissors but I love her concentration.

Tree Lighting

Someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that it is not January. I spend the weekend snowed in, which was nice but I was disappointed that some Christmas fun was cancelled this past weekend-boo! So I had Friday off school and a delay today, glorious. I hate that we are using the days so early but the extra time was well spent wrapping presents and getting things ready for Christmas.

So for the past few years, it has become a tradition to go to the outdoor mall for their tree lighting. It is always the weekend before Thanksgiving so it is the unofficial kick-off to Christmas fun. The first year we went it was cold but the past two years it has been warm. This year it was frigid, as in I was still cold about 3 days later and I am not usually a cold person. We might have been okay if it hadn't been for the bitter wind. We survived and I would have been disappointed if we didn't go. It was really neat because just as they were getting ready to light the tree, it started to snow so that made it really feel like Christmas. We cut our evening short, because that snow was also making the roads really slippery, so we grabbed some food and headed home.

He looks so small in front of this giant tree

We had to chat with the reindeer

Cold but having fun

Trying to drink our hot chocolate before it got cold

Waiting for the parade to start

Santa Claus is coming to town

Beautiful-notice the snow coming down

Another fun year of this great tradition

Logan's Birthday Party

 I can't believe it is already December 3rd. November flew by and I know that this month will go just as fast. Back in November, we celebrated  Logan's birthday. We did a family dinner at a local pizza place and it as a fun celebration.  I still can't believe he is 6 even though he is constantly reminding us of all the things he can do now that he is 6!

We are now preparing to run head on into the Christmas rush. The weekends are booked up, the evenings are busy and somewhere in between, I have shopping and wrapping to finish. Let the madness begin. I hoping for some quiet downtime just to sit and enjoy the season.