Fifties fascination

It all started when I was at Half Price Books and found the Retro Housewife book. I fell in love with the "retro" books and now I can't get enough of them. I wish I WAS a 50's housewife! I wish I had the figure of a 50's housewife!!! Or atleast the image they use! hee hee But I do think things were alot better in alot of ways back then. Maybe that's why I am so fascinated with it. I do not limit my love of past housewives to the 1950's though. I am seriously interested in the 1940's housewives and how they dealt with the war on the homefront, rationing etc... and the 1930's housewives and how they dealt with the Depression era, which spawned my favorite expression "Use it up, Wear it out, Make do, or Do with out!" I keep hoping they will come out with more books of the other era housewives like they have these. If you know of any, let ME know! Until then, I will keep browsing through my retro books to get inspired to clean and cook and live life a little more simply.

Preparing for Christmas part 3

Decorating......

These are our stockings. All the top ones my husband's grandmother, who was in her 90's at the time, hand made! we love and cherrish those. the ones underneath are for our dog and chris' two cats.

My father in law painted the below ceramics.....

In fact, my father in law painted most of the ceramics we have! He was very talented.

Last year I decided to start collecting a new Christmas waterglobe each year. We have plenty of ornaments, and I LOVE snowglobes, so therefor, I am happy to have an excuse to start collecting them.

My friend Jenifer gave me my countdown calendar! It has become a favorite tradition each year. The kids LOVE counting down to Christmas by moving each piece "onto" the picture as each day goes by.

So excited about my village this year. Some of it was handed down to me from my mom, two pieces were bought on clearance last year and a large bulk of it was bought for a steal at a garge sale this past summer!

The below picture, the kids made for us one year and I absolutely love it! In case you can't see it, it is from "the painter elves"! I hang it back up each year. Love Love Love, my snowman under my clock as well! ;-)

On into my kitchen, this is the first year i put garland ontop of my kitchen pantry, i really like it!

It's very hard to see in the picture but there are lights in the greenery above the cabnets and it is sooo pretty at night!

Yahoo!

Preparing for Christmas part 2

We finally got the Christmas card picture taken. Last year, I just had them jump in front of the tree and got it taken in 5 minutes. I knew it was going to be in black and white so I wasn’t worried. It was wonderful!! So my hopes were high this year to have the same experience vs the no one cooperates and I get mad and they get upset and Gracie has red eyes from crying etc….

Well it only took approximately 5 minutes again, but it was not the best 5 minutes! So this is the best we got. It was actually more of Hunter not cooperating, but the kids insisted he be in it, so I was trying to get him to cooperate but the kids couldn’t leave him alone…..long story short, next year there will be a picture of the kids with a separate one of the dog on the card, not together! lol

As if things weren’t crazy enough, as I sat on the floor putting groceries away the other night and talking to Chris in the kitchen, out of the corner of my eye I see something moving by the back door, then I watch the stupid mouse run behind my stove! blehehehehech!! EVERY YEAR! well then I noticed mouse “presents” on the boxes of jello in the half bath pantry. (we have a small pantry in the kitchen and then we turned the half bath in to a pantry as well). Well I decided I needed to take everything off the shelves in there and scrub it all down before I would put any new groceries in there. Chris was so nice and helped me get it all done. I would have been up all night and totally stressed out if he had not helped. I so appreciated it. We ended up putting the jello and stuff in plastic bins and moved all the box foods and plastic bagged foods into the kitchen pantry where the mice could not get it and moved a bunch of canned foods and glass jar foods into the other pantry. we did discover though, that mice like chocolate as much as human. The stupid things had chewed on the end of a brand new, unopened bag of chocolate chips, when that wasn’t working for them, they went right for the middle of the bag and found the pay load! Now the bathroom pantry looks like this…..

and the kitchen pantry looks like this……

Also while shopping at Michaels craft store, I found these adorable Christmas bags for those weird shaped presents! I LOVE them!! They were only $2.99!!

Finally, this year I decided instead of baking plates of cookies for friends, I decided to bake some breads. It was much easier!! HOWEVER for some reason, a lot of them kept caving in, in the middle. I have yet to figure out why! It was so frustrating!!! So I may go back to cookies next year unless I can figure out why it does this!! !

Yahoo!

preparing for christmas part 1

I love MOST of the things we do leading up to Christmas. We have started to make certain craft projects "traditions" while others are fun to do one year and try something new the next. One of my most favorite things we did when the kids were little, was to make a "handmade" tree and ornaments. I cut a tree out of green poster board, and pulled out the craft box and we all went crazy glueing, glittering, drawing etc.... i saved that tree and hang it up every year.....

Last year we made gingerbread houses for the first time. The kids really enjoyed it and I discovered it wasn't too bad of a mess. So that has become a tradition now. Only this year Frankie wanted to try the gingerbread men instead. I think the fact they were edible made the decision for him! lol

I don't know why we always forget the house has to "sit and dry" for awhile before you can start to decorate it. It must be the same as how you forget how bad childbirth is, after having the baby since your so happy, well we love how the house turns out so i think we always forget about the drying! lol

But Frankie, he got to get right to work on his, with a little "advice" (aka, bossy) from his sister....

a little while into it and Gracie got some relief help from her daddy.....

Frankie certainly doesn't let us down on his.....well, his....ummm.....INTERESTING artistic abilities!

Gracie always comes up with some very creative ideas. This is definetly her element. She made a "melted" snowman, and even made "tracks" in the snow, where people would have walked! LOVED IT!!!

Even though we have our holiday fun, we still have school to do. However i decided they can have the week after Christmas off, but they don't get the usual 2 weeks off others do. Now before you feel too bad for them, you should know, they get a day here a day there off during the rest of the year that other kids don't.

Our next project we did last year, we decided to also make a tradition. Last year we painted ceramic ornaments. This year, I couldn't find the ornaments, all the stores were sold out before the first weekend in December. So I got some other ceramic "things" for us to paint. I have to say, their skills have improved from last year. I am looking forward to seeing their control over the paintbrushes grow each year....

It was a perfect day for this craft, it was blowing snow outside and we had Christmas music on, it was such a perfect atmosphere! Hunter Beans, he thought the couch and a blanket was a much better atmosphere!

As with the gingerbread decorating, Gracie has found her area of talents and Frankie, I love how happy he is with however his turns out! He laughs and tells me how wonderful he thinks it looks!! LOVE IT!!! AND LOVE THEM!!!

Yahoo!