Year In Review

Cindy at My Romantic Home is having a Year in review party.

I've always wanted to make a photo mosaic and thanks to Cindy, for the how to, I did, and it worked! This was so fun!

I created my review in pictures, to include some of my favorite projects and collections from 2008.

If you want to see more "2008 A Year In Review", head on over to My Romantic Home and check out all the links - lots of pretty photos to see - a fun way to end the year!

Here's to a wonderful 2009!

Happy New Year, my friends!!!!

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from our family to yours.

Praying your Christmas is blessed with what matters most...

...God's amazing love for you and His indescribable gift of Jesus.

Shopping, Creating, Snowing, Celebrating

Thought I'd share a little bit of what we've been doing for the last couple of weeks.

Sydney, my mom and I made our annual trip to our favorite market in Ballard - we needed to pick up a few things for our Christmas dinner.

The girls created their first gingerbread house with help from their cousin Shannon.

They were so proud of it, but couldn't wait to eat it either!

I made a couple of vintage chenille stockings for teacher gifts and
filled them with yummy toffee butter crunch.
For the last week or so, we've had a bunch of snow fall.
It really is such a treat since we don't get much that sticks around here for long.

Sydney and Daphne have enjoyed playing in it too, well... until the snow gets into their boots or up their sleeves - then they are done with it and want to go inside - now!

Monday, we awoke to more than 10 inches!

It's looking like we'll have a white Christmas too - more snow is in the forecast. Yippee!

We will be celebrating Christmas Eve with my hubby's side of the family and Christmas day will be spent with my family here at our house.

Here is a picture of the tree in our basement rec room. This is where we'll spend Christmas day, it's a nice sized open room that we can all hang out and be together in.

Bottle Brush Wreath

A few years ago, I won this vintage bottle brush flocked wreath on eBay. To say I was excited to win, well, that would be an understatement. It's definitely one of my most favorite Christmas decorations ever!

The other day, I ran outside to capture snow coming down at our front door - it was so pretty! Bottle brush wreaths bring back wonderful memories of my childhood. My mom had two wreaths very similar to mine, only hers were white with red balls and bows. Those two Frederick & Nelson wreaths hung on our front doors every Christmas for as long as I can remember. Well, about 15 Christmases ago, I told her that I thought her front doors needed a change so.... she gave 'em to the Goodwill! Uh-oh, she should never have listened to me!!

My Favorite Gift From Grandma

I have always loved to bake, especially cookies!

I learned how to bake from watching my mom who is a wonderful cookie maker.

My mom had a wonderful teacher too - my Grandma.

For my 18th birthday, Grandma asked me if I was interested in anything of hers -

this is what I chose.

To me, the best part of this book is her handwriting on the inside front cover.

Oh, and the butter stains on the pages of our favorite tried and true recipes.

Every year at Christmas time my mom would bake many different kinds of cookies.
When I got married in 1990, I took over the Christmas cookie baking for our family. It's a tradition that's important to me and one I hope my girls will carry on too.
We're Norwegian, so we always have the traditional Scandinavian cookies at Christmas that my parents had growing up. Our must haves are: lefse, krumkake, fattigmand, spritz, Swedish cream wafers, and sometimes kransekake.
My hubby says it wouldn't be Christmas if he didn't have fattigmand,
so that's what I made today.
Fattigmand is a different kind of cookie - it's fried not baked.
It's rolled out thin like a pie crust and then you cut it in diamond shapes

using this handy cutter. I sometimes just use a pastry wheel to cut the dough instead.
When the dough is cut, you then pull one tip through the center slit to form its shape.

To cook, fry 'em in hot oil turning to brown evenly on both sides.

Fattigmand stores nicely in cooky tins.

Right before serving, sprinkle with powered sugar.

These are a must for our Christmas cookie tray.

Now that hubby got his request, I need to get busy with the others: Daddy, David, Nathan, Kyle, I'm working on yours...

A Pretty Little Christmas Party

Merry Christmas and welcome to my home!

It's here, today is the day Heather Pretty Petals is hosting "A Pretty Little Christmas" party.

Be sure to click on the link and visit all the other participants too, there are over 100!

Today, I'd like give you "a pretty little" tour of my living/dining room, and kitchen.

First stop, the living room...

I love my simple trees with only white lights, making the mantel just sparkle.

I think my Santa is pretty - he's wearing a pink suit after all!

My collection of vintage ornaments are displayed in apothecary jars and under cloches throughout our home. Here is a close-up of what's on the coffee table.

I've been trying to de-clutter lately, so instead of leaving out my usual displays, I packed most of them away and tried to display only my Christmas stuff. This Child's Book of Christmas Carols was given to my mom from her cousin Christmas 1944. The illustrations are so beautiful.
Here's another view of my tree. I totally struggled to get a decent picture. Don't you think Christmas trees are one of the most difficult things to photograph? I sure do!

Oh, and here's another pink Santa. Good ol' Fitz and Floyd.

My favorite pretties in the dining room are the twinkling lights behind the window sheers

and my vintage silver tinsel tree decked out with old ornaments - I love the old ornaments with deep indents.

And now, on to my petite kitchen which I've never shown here before.
Keeping it simple, I didn't add too much in here except a couple red poinsettia's, a vintage Christmas tablecloth, my new cute vintage Santa mugs,

and the seasonal candy I added to apothecary jars.

Well, that concludes the tour...

Thanks so much for taking the time to visit.

Thank's also to Heather for hosting this super fun holiday open house!

Have a wonderful day!

A Visit With The Man In Red

Today, right after church, we took the girls to see Santa. We didn't have to wait much - which was so nice! The roads are pretty icy around here, so maybe some people decided not to venture out.

They are both wearing what I made yesterday. I added the ruffle and a tree embellished with bugle beads to a plain long sleeve t-shirt. Super simple and it made a cute one-of-a-kind picture.

Santa asked the girls what they wanted for Christmas - they both told him they wanted to be surprised. I guess we better get busy trying to figure out what to surprise them with Christmas morning...