decking the halls

i'm linking up again today with heather for life made lovely monday. we love christmastime here at our house. this year i have tried to do a couple of diy projects to change up the normal decorating that we do. i found this over at rachel denbow's smile and wave blog and thought it would be fun to do with the girls. they particularly liked putting the glitter in as snow. they like to pretend they are the deer. so this is emma and abby baby deer. i also got a buck (daddy), doe (mommy), and another fawn (samuel) to do another if we want to, but the other fawn mysteriously disappeared when i didn't know abby took all the fawn in her backpack to school. 

i have started reading jami's blog and really like all of her christmas crafternoon ideas. i just finished making this two nights ago. i have always loved to read, so all of her book paper ideas are right up my alley. it turned out pretty good i think except that i didn't get each page quite as cone shaped as i would have liked. note the willow tree nativity below. only one wise man is removed and put next to the glue gun to have his head stuck back on. already repaired a sheep leg and shepherds hand. not too bad with emma and abby around i'd say.

did something new with the mantle this year adding a little paper source wrapping paper in a frame behind the wreath. 

the first year russ and i were married we got a real tree. i love the smell and the whole tree-getting experience is always fun. we got ours and put it in our apartment, and knowing that we were leaving town for a few days, we put a bunch of water down in the holder at the bottom. when we came back there was the most terrible smell. there was a crack in the pan and we didn't know it, thus a soaked, stinky carpet. after that we were given an old extra fake tree of my mother-in-laws, which was pre lit but every year some of the strands would be out and would have to be replaced (poorly) by me spending a couple of hours at it. in the great debate last year, we decided to get another fake one, which i think looks fairly real, and even has some pine cones on it.

and a post is not a post without some pictures of the kids...