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...

Have I Told You Lately That I Love You...

That's exactly what I've been telling my handy dandy ruffler attachment today.

This little contraption is the coolest thing ever!

I could just make ruffles all day, everyday, it's that fun.

I'm so thankful for my ruffler, it saved me lots of time today.

Here's a little peek at what I made.

I'll show ya the finished project in its entirety, a little later.

Oh! and it snowed tonight!!!

I stood out on our front steps close to 1 a.m. to take this picture to share. Brrr it's super cold out. Apparently we're in for some record low temps this next week.

I love the snow, and how peaceful it is outside when it's coming down.

And looky here, my poor roses are confused.

I can't believe how many buds just like this one, are on the rosebush.

So crazy!

Have a wonderful, blessed Sunday.

Glittery Sparkly Centerpiece

Here's a glimpse of the centerpiece on my table for the smorgasbord.

It was fun setting out my Royal Albert china - I don't use it nearly enough...

Here are a couple pictures of my mom's table too.
We added some fresh holly which I flocked, to give it a frosty look.

We're all looking forward to the yummy Scandinavian food. I can't wait to eat my favorites: potato sausage, rice pudding, and pickled herring - Mmmm what a combo!

Think Snow...

I've had these skates kicking around since February '08. They were one of my favorite finds from our church rummage sale. I couldn't wait to get 'em all dolled up.

First thing I did was spray paint them ballet pink and then that's as far as I got...

Spring came and I moved on to other projects and there they sat, under my ironing board until yesterday.
I finished them off by adding faux fur cuffs, lacing them up with vintage seam binding, adding silver glitter to the blades and glass glitter (to make 'em look frosty) to the boots. Oh, then I hung a sparkly star and added the "THINK SNOW" banner.

I love the addition of the skates hanging on the old door in our entry.

They have me thinking snow. We may even get some this weekend!

Smorgasbord Centerpiece

Our church is having a smorgasbord Saturday night and hubby and I are hosting a table. Each table hostess has the option of using her formal china and decorating the table how she wishes. My parents also signed up to host a table, but my mother didn't want anything to do with the decorating of hers.

I totally don't understand why not... so I told her I'd help her. While I was perusing back issues of my favorite holiday magazines, I came across a beautiful table scape using vintage tree toppers. Perfect I thought, so I began gathering up vintage toppers.

I added a little saran wrap around the bottom of each topper so they will fit snugly into crystal candlesticks holders of varying heights.
To finish the look, we'll place the candlesticks on a cloud of angel hair with little ornaments scattered throughout. The glow from a few lit candles with make everything sparkle!
Now I have to figure out what to do for my table....

What To Do When The Charlie Brown Christmas Special Is On...

Here's a quick little project I did this evening while everyone else in the house was preoccupied with the Charlie Brown Christmas special on TV.

First thing I did was to print out a few vintage postcard images on cardstock. I have a "Creative Cardmaking" cd that has a nice selection of vintage images - these three are my favorite...

I then went out into the garage and found some thin wood and cut out pieces the same size as the printed images.
Once I glued the images on the wood with spray mount, I drilled two holes to run some ribbon through for hanging.

Next I sanded all the edges and the top of the image too - aging it a bit.

I sprayed a clear coat of sealer to the entire image because I didn't want the ink to smear when I used wet glue to add glitter. Just a touch of glitter was used to accent a few places on each image.

I hung the little plaques in our entryway.

All completed in less than an hour.