Merry Christmas!

Our home all set for Christmas

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christmas Q & A

Here’s a little Christmas Q & A - I saw this questionnaire at Primitive and Proper and thought it looked like fun!

1. egg nog or hot chocolate? BOTH!! Hot chocolate with peppermint or egg nog with a little rum…. YUM!
2. does santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Santa is busy, busy, busy and wraps EVERY present!
3. colored lights on tree/house or white? I definitely love the crisp look of white lights.
4. do you hang mistletoe? I haven’t yet, but I would if I had some!
5. when do you put your decorations up? Depends. I used to decorate the day after Thanksgiving. This year I started the weekend before Thanksgiving!
6. what is your favorite holiday dish? Ooh… This is TOUGH! I am definitely a fan of appetizers and desserts – I could skip the regular holiday meal! I think I would have to say the pineapple cheese ball we have always had on Christmas Eve. My Mom used to make it every year and now I make sure that we always have it. Another favorite that we always have for the holidays – lefse! I will be making some this weekend!
7. favorite holiday memory as a child? We always used to go to my Grandparents on Christmas Eve and my parents always made an excuse to run home to play Santa. It was fun to come home and open up Santa gifts late on Christmas Eve.
8. when and how did you learn the truth about santa? I honestly don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with my parents excuses to run home on Christmas Eve.
9. do you open a gift on christmas eve? The last couple of years we have opened our family gifts on Christmas Eve and then just had Santa gifts for Christmas morning. This works for us!
10. how do you decorate your christmas tree? Which one?!? Our downstairs tree is all Santa ornaments by Inge-Glas this year and our upstairs tree is a random mix of ornaments, mostly by Inge-Glas. Our son has a little tree in his room and it’s full of his ornaments, mostly given to him by his birthfamily.
11. snow! love it or dread it? Both! I love looking at the snow, but I am not a fan of the cold anymore. The older I get, the bigger the wimp I have become… I do enjoy watching the snow fall from indoors with a fire going!
12. can you ice skate? It’s been years, but I think I could do it!
13. do you remember your favorite gift? I’m pretty sure my favorite gift is under the tree this year! :)
14. what's the most important thing about the holidays for you? Finding time to spend with friends and family – given that our family and closest friends do not live near us, this is really tricky.
15. what is your favorite holiday dessert? Ooh, there are so many it’s hard to pick! Probably Grandma’s Refrigerator Dessert – this is another task I have taken over making – it wouldn’t be the holidays without it!
16. what is your favorite holiday tradition? Getting hot chocolate and driving around town to look at Christmas lights.
17. what tops your tree? At the moment, 2 trees have nothing (gasp!) and the small tree has a lime green glittered star.
18. which do you prefer: giving or receiving? My favorite is to give, especially when I have ideas that I know the recipient will love!
19. candy canes: yuck or yum? A little of both. I’m not a fan of how sticky candy canes are, but I do like the peppermint flavor.
20. favorite christmas show? Definitely Charlie Brown!
21. saddest christmas song? Ummm….. I don’t know?
22. what is your favorite christmas song? Probably Jingle Bells.

A White Elephant

Last night I went to a Holiday Party with some of the ladies from work. Everyone brought a White Elephant gift (random items from their home, or things they have received as gifts and wanted to re-gift) and we played the Dirty Gift Game to exchange them – it was fun! If you are not familiar with the Dirty Gift Game, everyone draws a number and whoever has #1 picks and opens a gift. Number 2 can choose to steal the gift from #1, or open a new gift. Each person can choose to steal a gift or open a new one until the gifts are gone. Once the last gift is opened, #1 gets to choose to steal from anyone in the room. There are definitely perks to drawing #1 in the Dirty Gift Game!
Lucky me – I drew #1! To start us out, I selected the most beautifully wrapped gift – glittery gold paper with a shiny metallic red bow – it had to be good, right?!? WRONG!! I opened my beautiful gift to find a hot pink ceramic pig piggy bank with a red Santa hat. WOW… The funniest thing is that the person who brought it had actually BOUGHT it to bring for her White Elephant gift! Since I had #1, I was able to sit back and watch the fun of everyone opening and stealing crazy items from each other and then choose the best gift to bring home.
One of the gifts had this funky light-up water fountain thingy and then a small little treasure – a glass Christmas ornament. When the gift was opened, I tried to check out the ornament, because I had a feeling it was something special. The card with the gift noted that the ornament was from the lady’s mother in law’s estate. Lots of jokes were cracked by others about her MIL – what kind of MIL did she have if she was willing to give away her Christmas ornament collection??
This was the gift I selected, especially once I saw the star crown cap on top of the ornament. I knew this was an ornament from the Inge-Glas of Germany collection and would perfectly join all of the Inge-Glas ornaments already on my Christmas tree at home. My husband’s aunt has run the Inge-Glas of Germany company in the US for years and we have been given (and purchased!) many Inge-Glas ornaments over the years.
If you are not familiar with Inge-Glas, the ornaments are all mouth-blown glass and hand-painted in Germany. They use many antique molds for their ornaments and they have a traditional look. We sure like them at our house!
I’m not so sure the lady I stole this gift from was too thrilled to have a hot pink piggy bank to take home to her twin boys though…

Inge-Glas of Germany ornament – the best White Elephant gift I could have hoped for!
Sorry for the iPhone photo…

This is definitely not the cutest Inge-Glas ornament (which may be why she chose this one for White Elephant gift), but I still feel like I came home with a treasure!

A Change in Plans…

We are supposed to be spending the evening celebrating at a Christmas party with friends and thanks to the weather, we ended up staying home. While bummed that we are not with our friends that we celebrate with each December, we are definitely making the most of the day. Instead of traveling nearly two hours to see them we decided to head downtown to see Santa in the snow!

Waiting in the wet snow for Santa!

After waiting for what felt like forever, Anthony had his moment with Santa!

Heading out to check out the winter market (there were some neat copper ornaments there, I think I should have brought one home with me!)

On the way home we had to drive by this house...

We drive by this house many times each December just for giggles. We call this “The house where Santa threw up”. We are all about having Christmas lights, but this house always has such a mix of every type of lights that it’s definitely over the top for us. The man that lives there dresses up as Santa and hands out candy to strangers like us who drive by. The sign on the driveway says when Santa will be available, but we couldn’t read the sign because of the snow. (He was off-duty tonight). Even Anthony recognized this as “the house where the fake Santa lives”!

So, tonight instead of spending time with our friends, we were able to see Santa arrive on the roof of the old City Hall, sit on Santa’s lap, go out for pizza and then home for treats in front of the fireplace while watching the Big Ten Championship Game (Let’s go BADGERS!!!).

Sorry friends, we are enjoying the eggnog and rum, dried beef dip and chocolate cake that we had planned to share with all of you. Miss you guys!

If you sell at least 25 items….

At the start of the school year, Anthony brought home a fundraising packet and was convinced that he was going to sell enough items (25) to get a limo ride. We definitely were not so sure – 25 items is a lot! He made a list of who he wanted to try to sell his items to, and started out with one of the grandparents, who bought 3 items. A few days later he stopped over to the neighbor’s house to make a sale. She “borrowed” the fundraising books for a couple hours and came back with an order for 22 items! Anthony sold a few more items after that, but his fundraising push definitely slowed once he knew he had “earned” the limo ride.
Last Monday all of the kids who sold 25+ items had the chance to jump in the limo and take a spin to the new McDonald’s for an ice cream cone. They were THRILLED!

A Hummer limo!

This was the first group, all ready to go!

SO excited for the chance to cruise around town in a limo!

After a ride like this, I can’t help but wonder what the expectations will be when this fundraiser comes around again next year!

A New Sign….

Last weekend my hubby and son decided to put up our Christmas lights. Since we live in Minnesota, it is definitely necessary to put them up before the snow and ice that will be arriving soon. Especially since they have to go up on our roof. But, let’s not talk about the snow - it's too depressing! I belong in a MUCH warmer climate!!
They did all of our decorating outside, including bringing up the little trees that we set by the front door. Once the Christmas decorations were out, they decided my pumpkin welcome sign had to come off the post and my son quickly set to work making a new sign. I apologize for the poor quality iPhone photos, but here is the sign he quickly made to welcome friends and family to our home:

I love the “Welcome” sign with the little Christmas tree – it’s perfect!

Photo Wall Update

A couple months ago I changed up the wall of photos in our bedroom. I posted about that here. I promised to post an update when the pictures were all finally changed and the wall was officially done. It took much longer than anticipated (lost motivation anyone?!?) but it’s finally “done” – at least for now! Most of the photos were taken by us, however there are a handful of pictures that were recently taken by Krissy McCabe. We have known her for years, my hubby actually went to school with her – pretty sure they met in 1st grade, maybe even kindergarten. If you are in need of a photographer, check her out!

Here is the updated photo wall:



Please don’t look too closely at the curtains. They still need ironed. Remember that lost motivation? Guess there are still things to complete in this room…



Like the pic of the super cute 5-year-old with his face in his hands? We do too! That’s the work of Krissy McCabe Photography. So are the pictures both above and below. We love them!



Here’s a bonus shot of the display on the other side of the room:



The painting was painted by my Grandma years ago. It’s a painting of a cat we had when I was in high school. We are lucky enough to have at least 9 oil paintings that my Grandma painted.

The photo wall is complete! Once I finally get those curtains ironed, I will share the bedroom before/after pictures.

Linking to: KristenDukePhotography