Deck The Halls, part 2

I've gotten sick the last two years at Christmas. Once a stomach virus hit late at night on Christmas Eve, and last year it was the day after Christmas. So, this year, when I start sniffling and my throat felt scratchy literally minutes after everyone left the party, my first thought was that at least I wasn't getting sick on Christmas, and at least it was after this weekend, because I had way too many things going on to be sick any early. Today, after my 2-hour nap in the middle of the day, it finally occurred to me that maybe I was sick because I had so many things going on this weekend.

I don't have a lot planned between now and Friday, when I leave to go home for the weekend, so I'm taking it easy - drinking hot cocoa to soothe my throat, chilling out in front of the TV. At some point, I'll put in White Christmas (my favorite Christmas movie) and have a marathon wrapping session, and I'll store up on alone time hanging out with my dogs until I go to the chaos that is my parents' house.

As promised, here are more pictures of my decorated house.


The window, decorated simply, though I think next year I'd like to add a big wreath in place of the star ornament, and maybe a garland across the top of the window. I love my curtains and the way they set the color scheme for the room. The dining room is, as a rule, my most complete room.


This is a shot of the table, all decked out for the party. The mini trees have lights on them, but they run on batteries and only last a few hours. I made the tablecloth out of curtains from Ikea - there are two matching ones that allow me to completely cover the table when its extended into a square (though, because the curtains are thin and the table is sensitive, I would still use placemats.


I normally store more glassware on these shelves (because I love collecting them), though most of the items were already on the table for the party. I normally have turquoise plates there with quotes, but bought the Christmas plates over Thanksgiving weekend this year. I loved them last year, so when I saw them on sale at Kohls, I went ahead and purchased them.



These are the other shelves, above the sideboard. I bought the wire basket on clearance at Ross a few weeks ago, and I love the way it looks filled with ornaments. For November, I filled it with plastic pumpkins and gourds that I had painted blue.

That's it for now!

Deck the Halls

The party was a great success, and I'm even (mostly) cleaned up. I think this is the first time I've been ready enough for a party that I could easily show off both my office/guest room and my bedroom. Next time, I need to remember to not just double my baked spinach dip recipe, but triple or quadruple it. But for now, I'm just curled up on the couch with the afghan my mom made me. Harvey is beside me (and under the afghan, just like she likes has to be under the covers of the bed at night, because she is a weird dog), and I'm munching on a bit of leftover party food and watching some no-name TV-movie-of-the-week.

Since I was planning to post pictures of my decorated house anyway, I thought I would participate in a little Christmas decorating blog tour.

Once the house was clean and decorated, I took some pictures to post over the next few days. Here are the first:


The front entry is pretty simple, though even this is more than I've done in the past. There are also candle lights, that you can't see, in each window across the front. Between those and the lights of the tree through the living room window, I really like the view when I pull into my driveway at night.


I love, love, love the way the living room is decorated. My tree is a collection of every ornament I have, and I love it that way. I don't need a pretty tree - I'd rather have it be full of memories. I've held back so far this year, and only have three new ornaments - an adorable reindeer one from the dollar store, Santa holding two dogs (to commemorate Harvey's first year with me), and one I made at our ladies' Christmas party.


I've used a lot more garlands this year - they just seem to finish things off, and are really easy to use. I still need to add photos to the stocking holders, and I bought them last year! I've got photos of the dogs picked out, I just need to print them.


Last year, I hung these stars on a red bead garland, but I love them on the pine garland even more.


This is one of my projects for this year - I printed each letter and cut them out on Christmas scrapbook paper I already had, using a rubber mat and Exacto knife. I used black and frameless frames that I already had, so the only real cost for the project was a few additional pieces of cardstock. My mom gave me all the pieces to the Nativity several years ago, but I think next year I need some kind of backdrop so it doesn't just blend in with shelves so much.


Another project - I found these white plates at a thrift store and glued the black buttons on. The scarf and Santa hat each came from the dollar store.

I'll post more pictures tomorrow, especially of my dining room (I really, really love how it turned out), but for now, here's my hot spinach dip recipe. Its from Pampered Chef, though I take shortcuts to make the whole process simpler. And I usually double this.

Hot Spinach Dip (or Hot Artichoke & Spinach Dip)

1 jar (6 oz) marinated artichoke hearts, drained and coarsely chopped, optional
1 pkg (9-11 oz) frozen creamed spinach, thawed
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1 small garlic glove, pressed or garlic powder
1/2 cup (2 oz) grated fresh Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 375°F. Coarsely chop artichokes, if desired, and add to baking dish. Add spinach, mayonnaise, and sour cream. Add garlic and Parmesan cheese, and mix all ingredients together well. Bake 20-25 minutes or until heated through.

For Iris

There'll be parties for hosting...

Its Sunday right after church, and I just got home from our birthday party for Jesus. Ministry with kids is so interesting because, really, so much of what you do is just so corny. But, kids love corny, so that works. We had planned out the day really well, and still, I can't believe how smoothly everything went. Part of it was that we just had an amazing team of people helping - they were just so hands on and involved with the kids, which kept even the little ones involved.

Now, I'm switching mental gears to get ready for my Christmas party. I did a lot of cleaning yesterday, so things are pretty much in order. I'll just spend the next few hours cleaning the living room (the only one I saved to do today), baking, and then getting myself ready. I'm going to try (!) to leave the dogs inside (its cold and rainy outside), which means I need to be just that much more on top of things, so they're leashed and ready when everyone gets here.

So, I'm off to finish last minute preparations!

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style

Whenever I go into downtown Portsmouth, I think that maybe my next house should be there. I could buy a place that had a view of the water from a nice little rooftop garden (though I had better be independently wealthy or make very good friends who likes to garden for fun - and for free, because you know I just don't do that). And how fun it would be to call up a friend and say, let's meet for dinner, or a movie, or whatever, and then just walk there?

But my friend Heather says that all of the basements in Old Towne flood every time it rains, and that flood insurance is just really expensive, even if you can afford it. So, that makes me think buying a place there wouldn't be a really great idea, after all.

My neighborhood isn't very walkable - my walk score is only 42 out of 100. And this is actually very deceptive, because even the places you could walk to, you wouldn't want to, trust me. But some day I'd love to live in a walkable neighborhood.

Welcome to our world

I can't believe its been over a week since I last posted anything.

Yesterday, during worship at church, I read (aloud) an excerpt from Max Lucado's God Came Near. Such powerful stuff. Emmanuel, God With Us - this is something that I've been thinking about quite a lot over the past week. It's amazing, isn't it? God - the almighty, perfect, universe-big God - came to us - broken, selfish, imperfect, self-centered people. I can't wrap my head around it, no matter how many times I hear it, think about it, read about it. I'm probably not supposed to be able to, because I think if we could make sense of it, we would find a way to reason around it.

So wrap our injured flesh around you
Breathe our air and walk our sod
Rob our sin and make us holy
Perfect son of God, perfect son of God
Welcome to our world
- Chris Rice

I think I've finally finished decorating my house. I really do plan to take pictures, but I need to straighten up and do a bit of basic cleaning first. My open house is this coming Sunday, so I'll definitely be done by then. In the meantime, I've got a busy week, with something going on almost every evening. At least for right now, though, I'm liking it this way.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

Except really, I'm not. Its definitely turned colder here, and Delaware last weekend seemed very cold. I don't mind the temperature here - I like that it changes a little during the year. But I don't miss the biting cold, the sleek roads, and scraping snow off the windshield before driving. I might miss the snow days, not that I could realistically claim them when I don't exactly have to leave the house to go to work.

My trip this past weekend was fun, but full, and just a touch insane - spending Thursday night in a hotel in Herndon, meetings all day Friday, my car nearly breaking down in the middle of DC (an area I don't know, at all) at 3:45pm on a Friday, Mom's birthday dinner with the entire family (including potential step-grandchildren to be), spending Saturday night in Frederick while I waited for a part to arrive to fix my car, driving to Delaware on Saturday to spend time with my friend Kate, and back home Sunday night. Like I said, a little insane.

And if I thought our family was crazy and loud before, its nothing compared to what it is when you add two more kids - it really just borders on chaos. Especially when you go out to eat. Jacob had a styrofoam cup at dinner, and while playing with the tiny sword from Katie's drink, stabbed his full cup of lemonade. Since this already created an almost-fountain effect, Vince started to set up something more elaborate - he overturned and stacked glasses, cups and bowls, sometimes dumping their contents on other plates. Should I clarify that Vince isn't one of the kids, at least not technically? No, this is Katie's boyfriend. Who is older than me. Needless to say, I don't think we'll be going back to that restaurant any time soon.

I'm still decorating my house - some of my projects are taking a bit of time. But, I hope to be completely done this weekend, and then I'll take photos and write up a little tour.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I wonder if I could start every blog post from here through Christmas with a lyric or title from a holiday song. Think I could do it?

Thanksgiving was good - I spent a pretty long time with my family, and except for a few tense moments at the beginning, I had a lot of fun. I spent lots of time with my family, and had a really good time hanging out with Jacob. I just love that kid.

Now that I'm back home, I've started decorating for Christmas, which means that my house looks like a complete mess! I'm leaving Thursday for a work meeting in DC, then a visit with a friend in Delaware for the weekend, and I had grand hopes of finishing decorating before I left. I'm trying to remind myself that I don't have to do it all, right this minute.

Luckily, I've been in a really productive mood lately. I'm getting ideas and making plans, then actually following through with them. I've done more to decorate my house in the last few weeks than the last few months, I think. And given how many things I need and want to get done before Christmas, I'm glad I'm nearly finished buying gifts.

Once I finish the decorating, I'll take you on a tour. I have a lot of stuff - I go a little crazy at this time of year. But for now, I'm really enjoying having the tree up and decorated and visible through the window when I pull into my driveway.

Christmas Cards

I decided to create a postcard newsletter to go inside my Christmas cards this year. This is the front - what do you think?

Doing the happy dance

Remember last year, when I said that this is my very favorite Christmas CD?

Andrew Peterson's Behold The Lamb Of God

Well, I thought I lost it. And this isn't even the first time I've lost this CD! I couldn't find it anywhere, until today, when I dug out some of my Christmas CDs and realized, opened one CD case, and found it in there!

This is just amazing - I'm singing every word while I'm cooking. I love it!

And Nick, if you're reading this, I think we should do some of these songs in December. :-)

I also got very excited when I realized that the VA would be doing pick-up donations next week, so I don't have to lug everything out to my car and Goodwill. I'm not sure what it says about me that these are the highlights of my day.