Merry Christmas

Hope you have a wonderful Christmas.

Giveaway!

Hi Everyone- hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season.  What could be better than a giveway this time of year?  Head over to Ashley's blog Everyday A & M for a chance to win a large and small notepad and a keychain all from my J Design shop.

Go quick....it ends Monday, December 18!!

Christmas Tour of Homes

Hi Yall, Come on in and have a visit. I am so glad you stopped by for BooMama's Christmas Tour of Homes.

This year we will be in New Hampshire visiting with all of my family. I participated in the Tour last year and you can see how my house was decorated. If we were going to be here it would look the same. :-) So I thought I would share where we are going to be this year. My Aunt Polly & Uncle Butch live in a beautiful farm house that they have slowly over the years remodeled.

It has been snowing there and the views are just breathtaking. I asked my Aunt to take some pictures so I could show the kids where we were going to be. We are also going to visit NYC for a day and my cousin Rebecca told me last week that she got us all tickets to see the Lion King! We have not told the kids yet so shhhh if you read my blog and live in my town.

Thanks so much for stopping by! If you were here in Missouri I would make you a cup of peppermint hot chocolate!!

This is the view of their back yard.

Aloha Friday & Christmas Cards

It's that time of year again...Taking the annual Christmas Card Photo. I usually take them the end of the summer at my parents place at the beach. This year was no different. I have always loved picking out the photo and designing the card and usually take a lot of time stressing over the best layout etc. This year with our last minute trip to Alabama I was behind on my Picture Process.

So Monday night I picked the photos, ordered them from Walmart.com and they were delivered to my local store on Wed. I could not believe how fast it was.

So my question for this Friday for anyone who reads this blog is....

How many Christmas cards do you send

and when do you mail them?

I had 150 printed and I am planning on mailing them tomorrow so people will start getting them early next week. I don't mail all 150, I like to have extra for just in case. You never know when you need an extra Christmas card. Have a great Friday. If you want to post your own question then go here.

Christmas shop

I have been working hard on orders. I just wanted to show you some of the things in my J Design Christmas shop. If you want anything just email me!Koozies for your Diet Dr. Pepper or whatever your drink of choice is!

Christmas Shopping Carnival

Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet? I know some of you have but I am not one of those people!!

Melanie over at Don't Try this at Home has put a a great Christmas Shopping Carnival.

Everyone has posted great gift ideas for the person that has everything to gifts for your picky kids. Head over there to see the great ideas!

Here is a few suggestions that I have on my list.

For boys

* Automoblox

* Transformers ( Not sure what boy this year does not have these on their list)

For girls

* Bath and Body works ( my girls age 10 & 12 LOVE this store and everything in it) Use coupon code VELVET10 for $10 off $30 or more.

*Walmart music gift card. The music is only .88 for each song! This is great for the stocking!

Hostess Gifts, Teacher Gifts, Stocking stuffers etc.

* Kristi wrapped up these for gifts and I thought it was a great idea. You can get cute gift tags here and here. (don't forget the code above if you want to use this idea)

* A little self promotion**

My Etsy Shop

Toile anyone??

*toile notecards

*toile notepad

*toile paperback book cover This would be great with a paperback swap giftcard...for the book lover in your family!

*Personalized keychain

*Personalized clipboard

For the unique gifts and the homemade gifts why not try Etsy? These are things made by stay at home moms and just all around crafty people. Please check this out if you are looking for something for that unique and special person.

Remember...there is only 42 days..14 hours..26 minutes until Christmas...so hurry!!

Gingerwood houses and Aloha Friday

Think of all the years I actually made real Gingerbread from scratch and cut out the walls, roof and door. Then carefully put it together without the roof falling in.

I then resorted to buying the Wilton kit with the pieces already made and all I had to do was put it together.

Last year I bought four kits from our Sams club and all four children put their own houses together.

But check this out. I am not sure it can get any easier than this...Unless of course Martha Stewart makes one and delivers it to my front door!!

You can sign up to win one over at Everything is Pink.

Aloha!! So my Aloha Friday question is this...

So do you and your family decorate a Gingerbread house? If so do you make just one or do you make several?

A Few of my Favorite Things

I got a lot of great things for Christmas but a few things that I really love are these.

1) A Forty Blinks Mask
2) a Kapoosh
3) A Moms Planning Calendar
4) A chocolate Brown cardigan twin set
5) Landsend Chocolate boots
6) Old Navy gift card

The Kapoosh was purchased after Christmas at Bed Bath and Beyond. It is great for all those knives that you have that you don't want to put in a drawer. We have had several Wood Blocks that has a space for your knives. The only problem is if you have more knives than slots available. The Kapoosh allows you to have all kinds of different knives and has places for all of them.

The Forty Blinks Mask is great if you need a sleep mask but you hate how it rubs against your eyes. This one has raised eye openings so there is nothing touching your eyes while you sleep. It is pretty cool if your like me and can't stand lights on when you are trying to sleep. Remember this post?

The Moms Planning Calendar is one I have used for the last three years. I love it because it has stickers to use for all those important dates and it has a pocket to put all those birthday invitations and Doctors notices in.

Just thought I would share with you!!

Christmas Tour of Homes

Come on in and have a look around. These are some of our decorations. The tree is filled with ornaments. We give all the kids a new one every year so when they are older they will have some ornaments for their own tree. The nativity was given to my by my Mom and Dad 15 years ago. Baby Jesus is safely tucked away, waiting for Christmas morning when all the kids sing Happy Birthday. Go visit Boo Mama and you can see all the pretty decorations!!

2006 Christmas Card

Since I have already mailed out my Christmas cards I thought I would share our 2006 edition of the Wilson Christmas card!!! I told you how crazy it was when I took the beach picture...in case you forgot you can read about it here. You can also see some that did not make the card and some we have used the last few years here.


I hope all of you have a great Christmas and Happy New Year. My parents are flying up from Alabama on Friday so I will be getting ready for them to arrive and probably will not post that much.

Is my Christmas Tree worthy of your vote??

Hi everyone!! I just love contests. I am sure you are all aware of that since I have had three contests on my own blog. I just recently came in third in the Organizational challenge on Sunday. I have entered my huge fat tree in this contest by An Island Life. Voting begins today. If you think my tree is worthy please leave a comment with your choices here. If you want to see my tree again in case you don't remember... go check it out here. Thanks again!! Go Vote!!!! You can vote once a day and voting ends Dec 16.

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

What a great day we had getting our Christmas tree on Saturday. We drove to Kansas to Bowens Christmas Tree Farm. The drive was beautiful. The snow covered fields and the ice on all of the trees. The trees looked like they had white Christmas lights all over them. I think we were the first family there since the huge ice/snow storm. The fields were still covered with 10 inches of snow and there was not a single footprint in the snow. The kids all ran around in all of the snow trying to be the first one to pick "The Tree". We did this last year and it was so hard to visualize this tree in your house. We were looking for an 8 ft tree that was somewhat skinny. Did you know how hard it is to find a skinny tree? We finally found the one and we all trekked back to the little gift shop that had cider and hot chocolate. We let the high school kids that worked there go out and cut it down and haul it back to the parking lot. I kept telling my children that this was a "memory being created" I love creating memories...I mean how often can you head out in the snow on a beautiful sunshiny day and get your Christmas tree and drink hot chocolate??? Well if you lived your whole life in Alabama like we did, that just does not happen.

The fun began when we got the tree home. We let it air out over night to get all the ice melted etc. before we brought it inside. We put the tree in the center of the room and then I started cutting the bailing string that held it all together. I started cutting and it was kind of making pinging sounds. Like the stress of the tree trying to push its way out. I was reminded of the movie Christmas Vacation when Griswold undid his tree and the tree limbs went through windows and knocked over furniture. When my tree was finally out and I stood back to look at it I was dumbfounded. How in the heck had we gotten such a HUGE tree. I mean it did not look that big out in the field with all of the other gigantic trees.

I then put three of my kitchen chairs around the tree so I could stand on them as I put the 900 lights on. Yes 900 Lights!!! The kids were beside themselves with anticipation of putting the ornaments on. Every year the kids all get a new ornament from us. It is so much fun to look back and see all of their ornaments from years past. So this year they sat down around the tree and I handed out, one at a time their new ornament.

Now after all of this talk, I know you want to see the tree...right? Am I right?? Here are some pics of the drive to Kansas, the tree farm and then the finished tree. Enjoy!!

*****I have entered my tree in this contest!**************

Its beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!!

I can't believe its been over a week since I posted. After the Alabama/ Auburn game I was bummed that Alabama Lost. Then Thanksgiving was right around the corner and my house was a mess, laundry piling up...Ok I wont go on and on so needless to say I was kind of busy.

We stayed here in Missouri since it would have taken almost a 14 hours to drive my parents in Gulf Shores, AL. Some friends of ours that just moved here were staying here so they invited us over to their house. It was so nice to be with friends on Thanksgiving. It was also nice not to have to wake up at the crack of dawn and cook an entire meal for just six people.


We have been slowly decorating our house. We will be going to Kansas next Saturday to cut down our tree. We did this last year and it was so much fun. This is our second Christmas in Missouri and we did not hang up Christmas lights last year. So last night I decided to unbox all of our lights that had not been openend in two years!!! I think thats the best time to put up your lights...at night. That way you can see what they are going to look like. I also attempted to hang the icicle lights around our garage. With DH (To those of you who don't know who DH is you can plug in the following.. Dear Husband, Darling Husband or Dang Husband :-) ) holding the ladder I climbed up and got most of them up. The one problem that we encountered was the very tall peak of our garage. The ladder was up as high as it would go and I was standing on the last rung that I was allowed to climb on. I still could not reach the top. So we contined down the other side leaving enough hanging until we find a taller ladder. So right now we look kind of goofy but hopefully that will get fixed!! I will post pictures of the outside when completely finished.

On another note.... I got my first order from a Blogger!! I was so excited to hear from her. Since I started blogging I have been busy with orders from previous customers and friends and neighbors but this was my first order from someone I did not know. She had seen my J Design Blog and needed a gift. So thank you very much!!!

I wanted to post pictures of our decorations in the house but Blogger is not working at the moment!! Arghhhh

Christmas Pictures

Here are some of the pictures that we have sent out in years past. The first picture is the goofy one from this year. I had to let them act silly after our hurry rush rush photo shoot.

Christmas Pictures

Have you started thinking about your Christmas picture yet?? This process is usually done Thanksgiving weekend at our house. When we still lived in Alabama we would go to Gulf Shores, AL to visit my parents for Thanksgiving and I would attempt to take "The Christmas Picture". By Christmas picture I mean the beautiful shot of my four wonderful children, all looking at the camera with their angelic little faces. I picture in my mind the shot I want to take and then try to get my children to cooperate. I usually had my mom and my husband there corralling the kids with the following....

"Please look at your mother while she is taking the picture"
"Don't bother Abigale she is the baby and when she finally is looking at the camera we want you looking at the camera"
"Quit bugging your sister...Quit bugging your brother"
"Don't worry about the Seagulls they wont hurt you"
"Keep your eyes open...I don't care if the sun is in your eyes..Under no circumstance do you close your eyes!!!!"

Since we moved to Missouri last year I had to give up on the beach picture and go with something else. This year I had a plan. When I took the kids to the beach in August I was going to attempt a beach picture. I waited (procrastinated) until the last evening we were there. I wanted to wait until the sun was going down so the sun would not be in anyone's eyes. I was trying to leave as little to complain about for the kids. So it ended up with just me doing all the yelling and screaming.. I mean nicely asking them to please look at the camera. I loaded all the kids in the car and drove to the public beach. I know I could have just gone down the elevator and stepped out on the beach at my parents, but with all the hurricanes last year they had no dunes or seagrass. So I get to the public beach 10 minutes before it closes and the nice security guard tells me they are locking the gates in 10 minutes So as I am driving to the edge of the parking lot I give my kids the pep talk. It went something like this..."Ok, kids we have 9 minutes now and I want you to leap out of the car toss your flip flops in the sand and run...I mean run to the nearest dune with seagrass and where I can still see ocean behind you...DO you understand. Ok lets GO GO GO. I couldn't believe my eyes. I had kids flying out of the car and even helping with the baby. There were shoes flying and sand flying from under their feet as they ran to the dunes. You would have thought it was Amazing Race. I took about 15 pictures in 5 minutes and I felt like I was successful. What a wild experience. I think I will try it again next year!!!

Let me know what you do for your picture and maybe post some of your past pictures for all to see. I am posting some of mine from the last few years and the last shot I took at this years photo session. I told the kids to act goofy ( Not the one I am using ha ha) I will post that one in December. Good Luck.

What do you do at your house for Christmas?

Christmas is just around the corner and Kim over at Reformed Grits has asked for some suggestions on what to put in your children's stockings. Hop on over and give her some suggestions.

This year I am trying something different. It has really gotten out of hand with all the stuff that "Santa" brings to our house. Last year I heard that several families in our area had always done just three Santa gifts for each child. I was like...Three gifts that's it??? My children have always had tons of stuff set out on the couch unwrapped from "Santa". It has always stressed me out and I always feel after the mad dash of unwrapping that they really got to much stuff. I always vow to make a change. Well this year "Some things are gonna change!!"

We are going to the Three gifts per child from Santa. The three gifts represent the three gifts that the Wise Men brought baby Jesus when he was born. I was moved when I heard about people doing this. I want my children to understand what the season of Christmas is all about. Its not about all the stuff they get but about Jesus being born. My children have already started making their list and are now calling it their Wise men gifts. I plan to explain more about the wise men, their names and what each brought when it gets closer to Christmas. I would love to hear from all of you and find out what you do Christmas morning. Thanks!!