A good Christmas and some good bargains

Oh hi there. I hope you all had a wonderfully merry Christmas with family and friends. We sure did! This year was really fun for me since I knew C was getting excited and we knew she was going to enjoy getting some new things.

I’ll just highlight a thing or two that made me smile:

On Christmas eve morning I told her that she would have one more sleep and then she could open her presents. Well, she decided to actually nap that day so when she woke up she ran out and asked if she could open her presents. I felt bad and explained that I meant one more sleep at night and she would have to wait till tomorrow. So, Christmas morning she came into our room about 6:30am and crawled in with us. I don’t think she went back to sleep because I could feel her fidgeting but around 7:15 ish she rolled over, sighed loudly and said, “Can I open my presents NOW?”

The night before, I had set an orange on the mantle with the intentions of putting it in her stocking but I forgot. When she came out Christmas morning the orange was the first thing she noticed and she was SO EXCITED that Santa left her an orange on the mantle. All those presents and she noticed the orange. I guess we could have just got her fruit this year 🙂

Anyway, Christmas lasted about three days with all the visiting and cooking and family and presents. C got spoiled by the grandparents and family but it was really fun and she likes everything she got. Now where to put it all??

So today Mike headed back to work and I vowed to get back to normal habits around here. Cleaning, eating real meals, no snacking on chocolate etc 😉 I asked mom if she could come over so I could use her car to zip to town for a moment. The parking lot of Price Chopper and Bargain Harley’s was packed.

Turns out Bargain Harley’s was having a 44% off everything sale! In a way I’m glad I didn’t have a lot of time because I think I would have bought alot of junk. Something that did catch my eye was this little Christmas tree. Please note the cuteness of the tree and then please note the price tag in the picture below. The photo actually doesn’t do this tree any justice. It’s nicer than it looks here.

cute little tree

price tag

Yeah. I know!

Also out front in Harley’s famous boxes of junk there were all these bags marked $1.88 and picking up only one I realized that there were some deals to be had. I bought two. One looked like this: assortment of sweet deals and the other was similar but different 🙂

Here is a selection of my favorite little things out of the bags:

favorite things

Oh and I’ll be using all that ribbon and bows and stuff next year. I actually can’t wait. Silly isn’t it?

I’m not usually one for boxing week deals but they were looking me right in the eye on my way to the grocery store. Think of all the things I might have found if I had gone elsewhere but the checkout? Oh well.

It was $4.86 well spent.

See? I’m not the only one

Someone found my blog through the search words “Christmas Kleenex”. I knew I couldn’t be the only one who gets excited when seasonal boxes of tissue hit the shelf.

I will tell you that I have never done an internet search for it though. But I might now.

That is all.

(See post below for my original reference to Christmas Kleenex)

Come on in, have a look around

 

 BooMama‘s having a very swell bloggy christmas home tour. I want to participate but I’ll just warn you ahead of time that you will actually have to click on the links to see the pics because, well, I haven’t taken the time to figure out exactly how to post pictures on wordpress. So there. Please take a look around anyway if you can spare some clicking energy 🙂 After you view each picture, click the back arrow instead of closing the window because then you’ll just have to find me again and if you’re anything like me…you won’t.

 Let’s start at the front door…these pics were taken yesterday afternoon just as the Nor’easter was blowing in. I’m glad I took them then because this morning my greens are all willy nilly because of the high winds.

front door 

wreath 

cute snowman thing

Ok, come on inside now where it’s warm. Here’s my tree and my mantle. I especially love the mantle because we built this house and moved in back in June and I’ve been waititng for my mantle since then. My husband built it a few weeks ago. He did good 🙂

tree and mantle

Here’s a couple random shots of my kitchen and dining area. I’m a sucker for Christmas kleenex…aren’t you? Besides, they compliment those tiny trees so well! Those tress were my grandmothers. I love them. The picture does not do their sparkly-ness any justice at all.

christmas kleenex 

patio doors

Here are my two favorite pieces of Christmas decor. My mother in law painted the Christmastime wall hanging. I think it pictures the warmest, coziest Christmas. And the skate, well that’s just cute, come on now.

wall hanging 

skate

And because I’m certain you have gotten tired of clicking, and have probably left, I’m going to keep going 🙂 Here’s a pretty little tree in my back yard with perfect Christmas snow on it.

snow tree

Here’s our warm pellet stove fire. I just like it.

warm fire

Ok and as one last treat, I’m going to show you my kid hammin’ it up in front of the tree as I’m trying to get the Christmas card shot. There were alot of takes.

tiny model

well, thanks for dropping by! Don’t forget to sign the guestbook before you go (in other words, leave a little comment if ya don’t mind). Merry Christmas!

Exactly how I feel

Yesterday I mentioned that I was frustrated over the fact that I had nothing to say and no reason as to why my relationship with the Lord wasn’t going so well.

But today I read something that explains EXACTLY how I feel. So much so that I was kinda shocked and had to read it a few times over.

A friend loaned me a book called Things Unseen by Mark Buchanan. I don’t read much lately since it’s all I can do to find time to try and read my Bible. But I picked it up last night anyway and started in.

I’m not going to give much explanation I’m just going to type out a little of what Mr. Buchanan wrote:

“The world is booby-trapped. It’s rigged for disappointment. On Earth everything falls short of some hoped-for ideal. Everything good down here has a tragic brevity and a funny aftertaste to it. It all falls short and shortly falls apart. None of it possess ultimacy.

In response, we can become so cynical that we poison oursleves, so self-indulgent that we devour oursleves, so despairing that we collapse into ourselves. In fact, self-pity and self-indulgence, boredom and despair, envy and greed – such are only yearning gone sour. They are just the greasy residue that remains after yearning has gone unfulfulled too many times. A sadness like ash settles on our doings and our desires. We find trinkets to fiddle with, trivia to distract us. A once burning zeal dwindles to a dry itch, and everything becomes a frantic attempt to get passion back, or a plodding resignation to its death.”

Yep, that’s how I feel. Can’t explain it any better than that.

Looking forward to the rest of this book 🙂

I really should be cutting out toy soldiers

Hello? Is anyone still coming here? If you are then I have to apologize for the lack of new content. I think of things quite often through the day that I think may make interesting reading but I just don’t get the time to sit down and concentrate enough to type them. And then when I do I can’t remember a single blessed interesting thing.

See? Not interesting at all.

C has decided that she does not need a nap. Oh bother. And the things is, she seems fine. She’s not cranky at supper, she’s not cranky before bed she is just fine which leads me to believe that she may not revive the nap. I miss the nap. I need the nap. The nap is good for mommy.

And I just realized that it sounds like I need a nap…I don’t, I just like the quiet time.

Oh yeah, the toy soldiers are for play group tomorrow morning in case you were wondering. I only have to cut out six but I’m not a fan of cutting out.

Speaking of being a fan, I found a new-to-me Christian radio station to listen to online and it’s playing Christmas music ALL. THE. TIME. and I enjoy it. It’s from Houston so, you know, the traffic and weather updates are not too relevant but I like the tunes. In case you’re interested it’s: 89.3 KSBJ

Christmas is two weeks away. Horray! But also <minor pouty face> because that was fast. How come time is so fast lately? Seriously, like, where does time go?

I realize some of you may wonder what’s a happening with me and my not-so-close walk with the Lord lately. I haven’t said anything because there really isn’t anything to report. Which frustrates me but I don’t even know what to say about it so I won’t. Anyone know a good christian therapist? 🙂

I’m reading Exodus along with Book Review Friday. It’s pretty good.

Anyway, I feel that is all my brain wants to pour out tonight.

B-bye now.

Nothing like a rehearsed compliment

I got my hair cut last night. We’ll talk about how that went later.

After the cut I had to get groceries so I called home to see how things were going. C gets on the phone and immediately says,”Mommy, you’re new haircut is BEAUTIFUL!”

I can hear Mike in the background laughing and when he gets on the phone he tells me that he had been reahearsing with her that in the morning she should say that my new haircut looked beautiful.

Through the night C climbed in with us as usual and about 8am, she started stirring and waking up. She sits up and first thing I know she is holding my head in her hands, pushing my head from side to side and then all of a sudden exclaims, “Mommy, you’re new haircut it beautiful!”

It was a pretty funny way to wake up 🙂

Anyway, the haircut.

I don’t know, I had high hopes this time. See, I haven’t had a hairstyle since 1997. It’s just always been one length. That’s it. So I wanted a hairstyle for once.

You need to know if you don’t already that I have curly-ish, frizzy-ish hair that even with a good blow dry and a straight iron can still cause me lots of despair.

Anyway, I let someone I’ve never even met cut my hair. A good friend recommended her and so, I left the destiny of my hair in a strangers hands.

I now have bangs. They’re long swishy kind of bangs.

And I haven’t decided if I like them yet or not.

Of course last night when she styled it, it was sassy new hair that I loved. Today – not so much.

I don’t hate it though which is a good thing.

Thank you for listening 🙂