Christmas Tour

 We have the tradition in our home that the weekend after Thanksgiving we decorate for Christmas.  We get our tree up and the house gets transformed.  This year Trigg was really excited as we got out the Christmas decor and he was a big helper!  Here is a tour around our house with our decorations...enjoy!
Our mantel is ready, with the "Merry Christmas" chalkboard sign.

All 4 stockings hung!

 Our 9 foot tree fits perfectly (with 3 inches to spare), Heather has been fine tuning our tree with a few changes every year, I really like how our tree turned out this year!

 I took a few close up pictures of Heather's work...she made most of the ornaments this year.
The berry picks and twigs crown the top of the tree!

Heather found these chalkboard tags and we added some Christmas cheer

 Her poinsettia's from last year got a splash of red glitter this year.

 She and the boys gathered these pine cones one day at the park this fall and she turned them into great ornaments!

 She wrapped old ornaments with these tea towels and added some Christmas words with stamps.

She tied these fun bows onto the burlap garland

We added a splash of color with the red ornament clusters

She filled these glass ornaments with burlap

Coming in the front door...

We put up garland and burlap bows on the railings...

It goes all the way to the top

Joy to the World the Lord has Come...we found this sign last year at an after Christmas sale and really liked it, the sign found a spot at the bottom of the steps!

We also have a small "kid" tree that holds all of our ornaments from when we were kids as well as new ornaments for our kiddos!

Trigg picked out his ornament...a train!

and Garrett got "Baby's First Christmas"!

We also have our nativity set up...

...and Trigg has his nativity, which gets rearranged almost daily.

Our small chalkboard sign and amaryllis blooms

Close up of the chalkboard sign

Lastly, "Noel" on our floating shelf above the couch.

And there you have it, a tour of our home.  We have light outside but when I took these pictures is was only 9 degrees outside, so I didn't venture outdoors to snap any of those yet.
We are ready to celebrate the most wonderful time of the year!
Merry Christmas!

Fall recap

Now that Christmas and winter are almost here, I thought I would do a quick recap of fall.  

This is one of my favorite fall pictures and captures our boys personalities pretty well...Garrett, mister serious and Trigg giggling in the background.

 We did make it to the Pumpkin Ranch again this year.

 Trigg got to jump on the trampolines...

 and ride a pony!

 Our little pumpkin in a wheelbarrow

 This was the best smile we could get out of both of the boys!

 The other pictures looked something like this one...

 Halloween with Dusty Crophopper's Pilot!

 Our "Thankful" chalkboard sign

 Our mantel with a "Give Thanks" theme.

Happy Fall...here comes Christmas!

Halloween - Dusty Crophopper

Trigg really wanted to be Dusty Crophopper for Halloween, well, at least Dusty's pilot.  I love a challenge, so I got to work.  For those not familiar with Disney's movie Planes, here is a picture of Dusty Crophopper.

 I started with a box, I taped in shut and cut holes for Trigg to fit through.  Then I modified the back to look like a planes tail and rudder.

 Next I added some wings...

 and then had Trigg give it a test run to see if we were headed down the right path.

 Next I added orange, white and blue tape.  Made a propeller for the front...

 With such a wing span, Trigg couldn't "fly" inside very well so we had another test flight out in the driveway.

 Lastly, I added the "7" to the wings and to the tail.  Heather found this great pilots hat, with goggles to complete the outfit!

And we flew around our neighborhood gathering way too much candy!

Hello Fall

Fall is in full swing and we are loving it!  It is my favorite season, the colors, the cooler temperatures, the crunchy leaves, I love it all!  Heather has our house decorated for fall, so let's take a little tour.  

The tree in our front yard is looking awesome right now, green to bright red!

 We made these pumpkins out of 4x4 posts and then some white and orange paint and added some sticks for stems.

 Our chalkboard sign got an orange pumpkin...and that went up on the mantel

 Ta da...our fall inspired mantel.

 I also built a frame out of pallet wood and painted a leaf on some burlap

 Close up of those wood pumpkins

 "Welcome Fall"

 Heather saw a wreath like this on Pinterest and made her own for our front door...it turned out great!

 Our mums are starting to pop and we got two pumpkins ready for carving jack-o-lanterns!

And that's the tour!  Next thing you know, we will be getting out the Christmas decorations!