Cookie and Ornament Exchange for the Holidays

At the church where I attend, the ladies like to get together frequently for fellowship. We enjoy the Christmas holiday because we have our cookie and ornament exchange. We always have it at the home of a lady in our church. She decorates her home beautifully!! Her and her husband like to do various crafts and Christmastime is the best time to see the crafts that they have made. Here are a few pictures from our cookie/ornament exchange and a few pictures of the decorations.

Their tree is beautiful and has a lot of homemade ornaments.

On their front porch . . .

She made this toy soldier out of flower pots!!! Incredible! I asked her if I could add this to Pinterest. Let me know if you ever make one. :o)

I love the Holidays! (and Facebook!)

I am so excited! First off, Christmas is just around the corner and that means we finally get to spend some time together as a family. Hopefully Jeremy won't have to take his work on vacation with him. Secondly, I had NO idea how many giveaways stores and companies did during the Christmas holiday! Almost every company out there has a Facebook page now. I guess that I just never really noticed previous years that they did giveaways on Facebook. This year, I decided to enter in a few (or more). So far I have won a sippy cup from Nuby and a couple of computer wall papers from Burt's Bees (wahoo).

Every day this month, I have been entering the Graco's 12 Day's of Christmas Giveaway on Facebook. On December 1st, they gave away one car seat; December 2nd they gave away 2 infant car seats; December 3rd they gave away 3 digital video monitors; etc. Each day they add an extra winner. Yesterday was the 6 days of Christmas giveaway. They gave away 6 of their Sweet Slumber Sound Machines and I WON! :o) I am so excited! I never win anything! I am really thrilled!

It's space-saving design makes it ideal for traveling.

I am excited about this because it offers 12 high-quality soothing sounds just for baby (including lullabies, nature sounds and white noise).

You can even plug in your MP3 player so that you can play your baby's favorite songs!

It also has a soft glow nightlight!

I really can't wait for it to get here! I love Graco!!!

DIY No-Sew Scarf

I have mentioned my Pinterest kick that I've been on lately. Well, to be honest, with the holidays coming, I haven't really had a whole lot of time to be on the look out for anymore cool things on there. When I first got on it, I found out that you can make your own scarves out of old (or new) t-shirts. Now you can too!

Here's what you need:

Men's Large or Xlarge T-shirt (old or new--if it's new, make sure to wash first!)

Paper or Styrofoam Plate

Sharpie or other pen

Scissors

Fabric Glue

First, take your t-shirt and lay it out flat . . .

Second, cut the shirt along the side seems and lay out flat (You can skip this step if you want and just cut two at a time but I think the circles are harder to cut that way.) . . .

Then take your plate and trace as many circles as you can (I was able to get 6 on each side of an XL shirt) . . .

Next, cut out your circles just inside of the sharpie mark . . .

Then you cut a spiral in the circle shape . . .

Stretch your spiral cuts out until they look like this . . .

Next, take your glue and glue 2 strips together (I didn't have any glue so I tied a knot) . . .

Then you lay the glued strips together. Since I knotted the strips, I took an extra piece of the fabric and sewed it around the knots to keep it all together. That will go at the nape of the neck. If you are gluing the strips, you can get a nice embellishment such as a broach and glue onto it.

Your finished scarf should look similar to this . . .

These will make great Christmas gifts! To check out more ways to make your own no-sew t-shirt scarf (or to see a video of how to make this scarf) click here. Have fun creating!

Our Christmas Card for this year!

Photo Card

View the entire collection of cards.

$550 KitchenAid NEW 7-Quart Bowl-Lift Residential Stand Mixer

Oh, my! So I follow a blog called MomSpotted. (If you don't, you NEED to!) She does these awesome giveaways all the time. Well, now she is giving away a Kitchen Aid Mixer! I have been wanting one of those for a very looooooong time. So, I thought, why not?? I mean, look at it!

It really is beautiful, isn't it? *Sigh*

If you want to know more about the giveaway, you can check it out here. Also, Kitchen Aid has a lot of wonderful products out there. You can check more of them out here. And you really should. Even if you can't buy every single item :o), they are pretty fun to look at. Plus, it's a great company.