Santa in the Foyer

The foyer has one of our four trees. It's our Santa tree because it has all Santa ornaments. It has my favorite light color combo with red and white lights. All of my Santa decorations are in the foyer also. On the stairs are our second set of stockings and there are four Santas, one for each of our kiddos. Ho Ho Ho

Christmas in the Living Room

The living room has our main tree. It is the pencil tree that I bought when I first got married 13 years ago. I have always loved it and still do. The nativity is set on top of the computer cabinet next to the mantel. I bought it for $5 at an auction. I did spray paint it gold and I love it. My kids looove playing with it. Especially the little girls. They're so funny so I let them play until the decorating is done and then he's off limits until next year. This is the first year that I decorated the bay window and I really like how it turned out. The pinecones are ones that my kids glittered up for FHE one night. Merry Christmas ya'll!

Christmas Mantel 2011

Just some pics of my Christmas mantel this year. I love this sweet quote about our Savior's birth. I try to do something different with my mantle and I accomplished that this year. I love the basket on the hearth that has things that remind me of my childhood home. The deer antler's are my daddy's and it has a turtle shell from the river behind my parent's house and the loblolly pinecones. Memories of home make me happy:))

Chritmas Dinner

One of my favorite blogs is Between Naps on the Porch. She does a.m.a.z.i.n.g tablescapes. When I grow up I want to be able to do that. Until then I'll do a much smaller scale. This is my fine wedding china. It's Parchment by Mikasa on red chargers from Target. On each plate is a tiny pine cone that I spray painted gold. The red mercury glass votives came from Target. They are a steal at only one dollar. The wooden swan in the middle is such a beauty. My mom got it at auction. It is sold wood and painted white. It sits in a silver bowl from Pottery Barn with the inscription, "Together with Friends and Family is Always the Happiest Place to Be." I love it. The table cloth is a brown toile pattern that I got from consignment for $20. It's so pretty to me. Happy Eating:))

Christmas Front Entrance

I went to Lowe's with the intent of buying greenery for my front door and when I got there it all looked almost dead already. So....I decided to go home and see what I could come up with for free. I decided to let the kids spray paint as many of the large pinecones as they wanted. They used silver, gold, and white. Then I attached them to some ribbon with hot glue and started to poke and wire greenery from our yard. To say I love it would be an understatement. I can't believe how good it looks and the fact that I didn't have to spend any more money. I already had the ribbon and the rest came from my yard. Even my little, ugly artifical trees that I say I'm going to throw away every year look good. I was able to cover up the bases of them with magnolia and pine limbs and then stuffed more pinecones into the greenery. They may even make it another year or two.

Chritmas in the Dinning Room

We decided to put a little Chritmas in our dinning room this year. I was able to put the girls' Christmas tree in there. It was perfect with all it's girly colors and colored lights. I also put the kids' collection of snowglobes. Please don't look too closely to the stenciled walled. It was a whole lot harder to do than I anticipated, but I still love it. It's far from perfect thought.

Shoe Madness

Do you have this problem?

With four kids and three of them girls we have A LOT of shoes to sort through at our house.  My kids are pretty good about taking their shoes off in the garage and putting them in the shoe bin before going inside, but when it comes to finding them it's a different story.

 

The boy has the least amount of shoes and the hardest time keeping up with his.  Of course that may or may not have something to do with the fact that he takes them off in the car, in the yard, on the roof.  Who knows what he does with them all I know is that we can never find them. I tend to be an procrastinator so when I'm running late I need things to be where they are suppose to be.

Here's my solution.  Cheap and easy, I loves cheap and easy.

Take four boxes, any box will do.  I have a lot of these lying around.  Emmy and Ally get larger boxes than the boy and Parker.  They have more shoes.

Cut the flaps off the boxes.

Then take some duck tape.  We have a lot of that at our house.  My husband is not a handy man and so this is how I do a lot of my repairs.

I love all the new colors of duck tape now.  So much better than grey.  Start wrapping the boxes to give them support.  This is a little time consuming, especially when you're doing four, but it's simple enough.

 I just wrapped the sides and bottom. I didn't bother with the inside of the boxes, but you could if you wanted.  In hind sight I probably should have since my dryer is vented into the garage and it tends to get humid in there when I'm drying clothes. 

I did all four boxes in a different color and then added numbers to help the kids keep their boxes straight.

This one is Parker's because she is the fourth little one.

 And wahhlahh.  It has made the biggest difference. We've been using this system for about two months and I can't believe it took me Emmy so long to come up with this idea.