Merry Christmas!!!

The AWESOMEST give away ever!!

Burda Style is having a huge give away! they're giving this away...

I mean, really, how awesome is that?! Unfortunately, it's only open to people in the United States or it's jurisdictions. That kinda stinks for everyone else out there. But if you do live in the US you have until midnight tonight (eastern time - that's less than an hour, sorry for the short notice!) Hurry!!

Babies

The babies are everywhere these days! I just thought to myself the other day that for a single, childless woman, I sure do buy a lot of baby clothes, toys, items, etc. I guess my friends and I are all in that age group where having children is the thing to do. I don't mean to make it sound like some passing trend, I just can't seem to think of better wording right now.

Here's one of the most recent arrivals...

Eye spy...some bling

This week's theme was a bit hard for me to get a handle on. I'm not a bling-y person. I rarely wear jewelry, I don't like rhinestones, and I don't generally decorate with shiney objects. Attracted and distracted by shiny objects? Of course. So, I decided to use this little ornament...

Do you see it? It's right here..

It's one of those ornaments that have made it through years of Christmases in our house. I can't remember a single Christmas with out this and several other ornaments. My mom, just a couple weeks ago, gave us a box of stuff she had packed away with s ton of her handmade ornaments, this one single glass ornament and a couple of other odds and ends. I was so tickled to see this shiny little bauble! Too bad this is the only one of the glass ones that survived.

Thanks to Hoppo Bumpo for the topic! Check out some more bling over at Bug and Pop.

As a side note, a while back I said that since this is the first fireplace I've ever had I will make a point of making a fire and drink hot chocolate in front of the fire. So that's what I did. We were all cozy and warm with our frst fire in our new house with a nice big mug of steaming hot chocolate...

Love Fridays

I don't technically play along with the Love Fridays meme but I just felt I needed to today. And really, I do love them. Fridays have recently become my day off (not by choice but that's alright) and I can't wait to put them to good use. So far they've been spent waiting for some type of repairman or installer of something to come to the house and then waiting for them to finish. I should be utilizing my waiting time knocking out the gifts that I still have to make (and haven't started) but my sister loaned out the sewing machine to a friend of ours and we haven't gotten it back yet.

Sooooo....instead, my time is spent torturing my poor pets with things like this...

Please forgive me, I couldn't resist! I don't know if you can see it in the picture but the hat has little pointed elf ears on the sides. And let me tell you, poor little bub did not like that thing on his head. But after much hemming and hawing or at least the doggy version of hemming and hawing he finally sat still enough for me to get 2 pics squeezed out, both of which are blurry but this one was the lesser of the two.


Maybe next friday I'll actually be productive, or maybe not.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

A while back one of our This is topics was favorite children's book and I listed my favorite story, Peter Pan. However, I don't really consider Peter Pan a "children's" book, unless you're talking about "children of all ages" because as an adult I enjoy it as much as I did when I was a kid. Then a couple weeks ago I was reminded of a book from my childhood that was, by far, my favorite. It's called Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett and illustrations by Ron Barrett.

The story is a grandfather telling his grand kids about a town called Chewandswallow where all the food the town eats comes from the weather.

It rains juice and snows mashed potatoes and peas and there are big hamburger storm clouds.


The weather comes three times a day

They have a roofless restaurant

And things were good

Until....

Things started to go uncontrollable

Way out of control

So the townspeople decide to leave Chewandswallow by making boats out of huge slices of bread

They go across the sea where they are welcomed but where they have to get used to things like grocery stores.

And they all lived happily ever after. Or something like that. It's a great story and the illustrations are alot of fun to look at. This copy is going to be a certain little girl's Christmas present because she loves books. A girl after my own heart.

O Tannenbaum!

Yesterday's Eye-spy post made me want to write up a post about our Christmas tree. It's funny, a few years back we bought a fake, pre-lit tree because we both had gotten tired of the clean up and maintenance of a real tree. In fact, last year we didn't even put up the fake one. We got as far as taking out the ornaments but never got out the tree so we ended up pinning the light, non-breakable ones to the ceiling (one of my sister's kookier ideas).







However, as soon as we saw this house we knew we were going to get a real tree. The big picture window made it nearly impossible to resist. So over the weekend we went and bought us a 7 footer (2 feet bigger than any tree we had while living in the condo).

We both have a strong aversion to the shiny metallic garland and tinsel so for many years we used this giant chenille ric rac...

Unfortunately, since this is a much bigger tree we didn't really have enough to use on the whole tree and of course, I have no idea where I got it. So, we stopped about 3 feet from the floor but turns out that was a good thing because of this little critter...

So far she's been very good. She has climbed up the trunk a couple of feet but hasn't knocked anything off yet. But I just know that if that ric rac were closer to the ground it would prove too much of a temptation and we'd come home to a horizontal tree. That's why we loaded it up with non-breakables and kept all the pretty glass or ceramic ornaments that we've collected over the years tucked safely away in the ornament boxes.


So, we have mostly cloth and metal and a couple of plastic ornaments most of which were gifts, and a lot of which are handmade...

I've always loved decorating the Christmas tree. This year even more so. I don't know why, maybe because of the new house or the new kitty or maybe all of the above.

Our audience while we decorated the tree.

Eye spy...a burst of color

This week's theme (by Flossy-P) was just plain hard for me to narrow down because of all the Christmas decorations that are floating around right now. I finally picked one of the ornaments on our tree. Made by mom. I love the colors of Christmas!

The preceding installment of eye-spy has been brought to you by BugandPop.

I spy...in my garden

Here's the new meme that all the cool kids are joining! I Spy over at Bug and Pop (thanks to Cindy for starting this!).

Today's (ok, really it was yesterday's, once again, I'm a day late) theme is brought to you by CurlyPops.

At the moment we don't really have a garden. We've been in the new house for a month now and haven't had time to focus on the outside of the house at all so here's what our yards (both front and back) look like right now...

Not much to choose from. I did try and get a picture of the neighborhood stray cat that I've been feeding (shh don't tell anyone) but she wasn't out there when I came out this morning. She's usually out there waiting for me every morning...I hope nothing happened to her.

If you'd like to play along, go on over to Cindy's blog and sign up!

Christmas Tea

A while back I mentioned that our church's annual Christmas Tea was coming up in this post. And that my inspiration was this table...

Today was the tea and here's how my version turned out...

The picture makes it look way more bland than it really was. Maybe this shot will be better...

Or how about this one...

Anyway, in person it was very sparkly. I scoured all the thrift stores in a 15 mile radius for just the right pieces. Almost all the candle holders were thrifted, except for one from Michael's and one from Pier 1. This dessert stand...

I made from plates and cups that I found at a thrift store. The things not from a thrift store were the two teapots

and a leaded crystal bowl that belongs to my sister. And the place settings

that we already had. As a substitute for place cards, which is what we've done in the past, we made these initial ornaments for everybody, they turned out ok, I think.

But the most popular thing on the table were these...

Bacon-and-cream cheese scones...yum!!!! I found the recipe here...a blog about bacon - makes me giggle. If you like to cook or even if you like to just eat, you should try it out. If you're a vegetarian, well I've never used the fake bacon so I don't know if it crumbles like real bacon but I would imagine just cutting it up into appropriate sized pieces would work. Anyway, I, and many of the woman at the tea HIGHLY recommend them.

So that's how I spent my Saturday afternoon, how about you?

Shhh...don't tell anyone

But edward and lilly is having a give away! Ok, I suppose you should probably tell everyone about it but I'm secretly hoping you don't because then my chances of winning won't go down. And I really wanna win. Check out the super cute ornaments she's been cooking up over there for the last few months...

Head on over and enter the give away!

Something arrived in the mail today...

I wonder what it is!


Ahhh a pretty little tin


from Tinnie Girl! I had my eye on the pretty flowered tin the moment I saw it in her shop.


So I broke down and bought it. I picked the "surprise" colorway and what a pleasant surprise it was! Full of my favorite color...Purple!!


I urge all you crafty folks to visit Tinnie Girl's shop. It's one of the most unique shops on etsy. And if you like grab bags, you'll want to buy a tin.

Happy Thanksgiving (a day late)!

We've been working like fiends around here to get everything ready (or as ready as possible) for Thanksgiving and our open house the day after. Basically, this consisted of moving boxes from the living room into any available space that isn't within public viewing. Which ended up being the small back porch and my bedroom - as long as I have enough room to lie down and go to sleep, that's all that matters. So here are some pics of the living room in its current state. We're working on getting some flooring but until then we've got throw rugs all over the place.

Yesterday I cooked and cooked then cooked some more for just the four of us (mom, dad, sister & me). It went off relatively smoothly. There was just one small tiff which is mild for a Perry get together these days. But overall, the food was good (if I do say so myself) and the conversation lively. The funny thing is I did all this cooking and forgot one of the most important components of the meal - the pumpkin pie. I had bought all the stuff to make it earlier in the week but when it was time to actually make it it completely slipped my mind. Mom to the rescue! She brought a pumpkin bundt cake with her so we just munched on that for dessert.

Anyway, if you're from America, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and if you're not from America, I hope you had a good Thursday.

As we were unpacking we had a little helper...can you spot her? Look closely...

There she is. Ok, Sasha wasn't so much helping as just getting underfoot and making a mess with all the packing materials. But she's so cute, how could I resist taking pictures?

Yellow

I have not been known to be a fan of yellow in the past (mostly because I look like I'm jaundiced when I wear it), but lately, I seem to be drawn to it. I love all these shades of yellow...

From the buttery to the lemony, I can't seem to get enough of this color!

Photo credits: 1. Jois Handmade on Etsy Cashemere sweater
2. Anthropologie's Sylvan Scene Cardigan
3. Leaves from outside my office
4. Lemons from my lemon tree.

One room at a time...

that's how we're getting this house done. Our first room (and we're very close to being finished) is the kitchen. It is the most important room isn't it? Here are some befores and afters to let you in on what's going on over here...

The color we painted the walls looks really salmony almost peachy in the pictures but it's actually a deeper terra cotta color. It really brings out the brown spots in the granite countertop.

I know it looks like we've finished by these pictures but really, we haven't gotten to the trim work yet, the paint stops about an inch and a half from the ceiling. There's one whole wall that we're painting a deep red, almost a brick color but that wall isn't in any of these pics cuz it's not done yet. Also, what's been cut out of the pictures is all the boxes on the counters - none of our stuff has been put away yet. Where are those darn elves that are supposed to be doing all this for us? No doubt helping put together Christmas toys...bah humbug! I guess that's what the weekends are for, right? So, the next room? I think it will have to be the garage. Cuz if I don't get the workstation set up soon I'm going to go crazy!