The day after

I would totally love to share my Thanksgiving photos.

All the ones I took with my blog in mind, what I would say about them and how they'd all fit together.

The pretty ones of the table all set prettily and full of yummy food. The ones of my Nana cooking most of that food, even though I said "Nana, you're 90 years old, let me help!!". The ones of the place settings that I made by hand. The ones of each of the guests, which should have also gone in our "thankful for" book that we passed around. The really cute ones of the girls that I was excited about.

I would love to share them except I deleted them all from my camera during an upload catastrophe. When I realized what had happened, I cried a little and my stomach still feels a little sick when I think about all the pictures that are lost. But what can you do.

The day after Thanksgiving was the same as it's been for about 6 years or so now. The Louch family and our family spend the day putting up all our Christmas things and decorating. David (our neighbor) puts up his outside lights and decor, Jesse goes up to the roof to put up the star and do our outside lights, I purge all our Autumn decor inside the house and replace it with Christmas stuff, and the girls play with the Louch boys and later help me decorate the tree. Our family plays Christmas music at top volume, David plays....something else, something definitley not Christmasy.

Anyways.

Christmas stuff: out of the garage and one step closer to being in the house:

Mariah, Mallory, Chris & Alex:

What about Arissa?

She was up on the roof w/ Jesse, putting up the star:

The girls helped me decorate the mini tree:

Mariah & Chris had fun playing together:

These are some of my favorite Christmas things around the house:

my advent calendar which I bought on a whim at my church's bookstore several years ago. I love this thing, and the girls love moving the accompanying snowflake into the different pockets each day:

This one is new for this year, and I especially like it because it's interchangeable. There's two other sayings that go over the "the heart of Christmas if love" so it can stay up the whole year long:

Ma belle-mere (mother in law) gave me this several years ago, and I love love love it. I love it cause it's personalized, and I love it cause it has three angels...just like my 3 angels. :o)

This wreath is old as heck, it was my mom's. I really need to get a new one, because this one is totally past it's prime. Last year I added new poinsettia flowers, because the original ones were flattened and faded. I also added the ribbon because it filled in the bald spots and gave it some sparkle:

New also this year, after a trip to Jo-Ann:

Old school:

My mom made a bunch of these one year as Christmas gifts. She would always pick a new Christmas craft and then mass-produce it to give to all her friends as gifts. The cool thing was, a lot of her friends would do the same thing. Going through my Christmas stuff and tree ornaments, I found lots of things that were made my her friends and given as gifts.

Atop our entertainment center:

My mom painted the little ceramic pieces (I used to have more...I think she was trying to do enough to make a whole Christmas village thing). My Grandma made the table runner that everything is sitting on.

I have sunflower garlands that I keep up during the rest of the year (they seem to be appropriate for Spring, Summer, and Fall too), but at Christmas I put up the poinsettia ones:

This year I added lights to it as well, so it looks like this at night:

A beautiful Christmas quilt that my mother-in-law made us as a gift one year. It's a pretty decoration during the holidays, and it's wonderful and festive to cuddle up with as well:

I think this snowman came from David...we get most of his discards and leftovers. I think he's cute (the snowman, not David) and the girls like to rearrange him....making his bottom his stomach and laugh when he looks out of proportion:

And that was all I had time to take pictures of. I ended up with two more bins full of Christmas stuff....we are up to our ears with Christmas! I need a bigger house, if just to have more room to display all this stuff. :o)