Christmas Stockings

This last week I spent a couple days sewing Christmas Stockings. I took scraps from last years Christmas Tree Skirt and used them to make these stockings. And now everything matches...cool huh?!

Front view
Back view
More stockings....
And this is what the back of all of them look like.

And this is the Christmas Tree Skirt that I made last year.

Carpet Cleaning

My father-in-law recently reacquired a franchise of the carpet cleaning business that he owned and ran for 13-14 years (if I remember correctly) while they lived in southern Utah. He is starting to clean carpets again. This is the best way to clean carpet that I have seen! It cleans beautifully, dries quickly, doesn't leave residue (really!), and is affordable. (He sprays a mineral cleaner on the floor, brushes it into the carpet, lets it dry a bit and then wipes it up...no soap that draws dirt back to your carpet). He cleaned the family room the on Friday. Check out the difference.

Here are the stairs before cleaning....
The difference is huge...but the lighting only shows it a little.
This stripe was between the couch and a rug and a place where we sit to watch an episode of Stargate frequently. As you can see it's pretty dirty.

Ta-Da...beautiful, clean carpet. If you want more details about getting your carpets cleaned, let me know and I'll get you in touch with my FIL.

Christmas Tree is UP

The tree went up on Monday night for Family Home Evening. I was very happy to leave the "building of the tree" to the guys. All of the lights were checked before placing them on the tree. But once we turned the whole tree on...only have the lights came on. I would have wished to take all the lights off and start again...except SM put the lights on and he was NOT going to take them off again. It still looks alright.
Here it is in the daylight...a terrible picture I know but my battery died right afterwards and so this is as good as it gets today.

In this picture is a friend of SM's from high school. He had an interview in town and so spent the night.

Christmas Tag

1. Do you like Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog? I enjoy both but I think I like Egg Nog more...too bad I have a milk allergy...but Lactaid makes a very yummy egg nog that is not too bad on my tummy.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just put them under the tree? Well, since I have never believed in Santa...I do the wrapping...though I just realized for the second time that my husband LOVES wrapping gifts and I should take advantage of that desire of his.
3. Colored or white lights on tree/house? I prefer colored lights but love lights in general (tree).
4. Do you hang mistletoe? No - who needs mistletoe?
5. When do you put up your decorations? Whenever I get them up...hopefully before Christmas
6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Mashed potatoes and gravy with turkey on the side.
7. What is your favorite holiday memory from your childhood? When Mom told me we weren't having Christmas one year and yet when I woke up Christmas morning I saw more gifts under that tree than ever before in my young life. (The ward provided Christmas for us and totally surprised my parents).
8. Do you open a gift on Christmas eve? No? Well, for the last four years we've never been home on Christmas...so, I may have opened a gift...but in my ideal life I think all gifts should be opened on Christmas day.
9. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? This year we decorated my in-laws tree...Cream and Maroon
10. Snow! Love it or dread it? LOVE it! But I like Virginia's idea of closing everything so that I don't have to drive in the snow. I HATE driving in the snow.
11. Do you remember your favorite gift? No, I am not a big gift person so I don't recall any gift that was my favorite.
12. What is the most important thing about the holidays for you? Being with my family.
13. What is your favorite holiday dessert? When I was younger it was candy canes and now...I don't think I have a favorite.
14. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Listening to Christmas music, Having family parties, Looking at Christmas lights whether driving or visiting Temple Square, AND singing Christmas carols.
15. What tops your tree? Nothing
16. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? ummm...neither
17. What is your favorite Christmas song? Almost all of them!!
18. Candy canes? YES
19. Do you feel Christmas is too commercialized? Not in my life, but as a general observation, sure, why not?
20. Favorite Christmas movie? I like most of them except It's A Wonderful Life...I think a favorite has to be A White Christmas.
21. Can you ice skate? Yep...though it takes a while to warm up...since I do it once every few years.

Festival of the Trees

SM and I met my mom and sister at the Festival of the Trees on Saturday morning. Above is an entry that I absolutely love...Candyland. As a speech therapist, I used the game Candyland as a method of practicing good articulation. Before any of the students had a turn at the game, they'd have to say a number of words with correct articulation. I really enjoyed playing the game with them.

This was another entry in the gingerbread house decorating. It's not a house, it's a castle. I can't remember the name of the castle but I believe it was modeled after a real castle.

Here's a picture of my sister. When she was younger, she belonged to groups that would perform at the Festival of the Trees...and that's how it started that we'd attend the event. It was fun to see youth groups singing and dancing there on Saturday. It brought back some great memories.

This was one of my sisters' favorite tree grouping. It had a dancing theme and since she's the dancer in the family and she loves the colors hot pink and blake...she liked this one.

This saying was on a tree with the theme of Lacrosse...but it really made us all laugh.

I loved looking at this blown glass tree. There were lights positioned below the glass and lit up different parts of the tree as music played in the background. It was fascinating. SM had a totally different opinion of the tree. He didn't like it at all.
Mom and I found Santa. I think he got carried away with the bronzer...what do you think?

This was a tree that SM did like. He was contimplating buying the tree because it was one of the lower priced trees but then realized that this wasn't true Aggie Blue and decided not to get it. (side note: I don't think he really would have bought a tree but everyone can dream, right?)

This tree was also a favorite of mine. The tree is not in the shape of a triangle...it's actually sort of spiraled up to the top. The theme is "The Grinch that Stole Christmas" and has Whoville members...it was so cute.

This was one of SM's favorite trees. He has a thing for penguins this year.

This tree has a Hawaiian theme...and since my sister spent a couple years attending BYU-H...she loved this tree theme.
Here's a photo of my mom, me and my sister.

And this is a close up on my favorite themed tree...called Wicked. I loved the spiders all over the tree. Now, this is not a tree that I could actually put up at Christmas time...it would just be too weird, but I really loved the creativity that went into this tree.

And here's the full tree. I know it's strange but I think that's what I like about it.

Cute Faces

Yep, this is us. We are a cute couple.

Here are some pictures of my nieces and nephews. Look at that smile.

On Thanksgiving day we didn't see a lot of the kids since they found the Wii and played games on it for hours.

Look at thoses faces...cute, cute, cute.

Look at those blue eyes!

And I got to hold the baby again and again and again.

And the girls got to hang out and play together. Great times were had by all.

Aren't they cute? I love being part of this family. I truly have been blessed.

Deep Fry Friday

On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, everyone gathered together again and we had a Deep Fry. We deep fried bananas.

And we deep fried scones...made with whole wheat...we tried to keep some things a little bit healthy. Hee, hee.

We deep fried some sweet potato fries and regular potato fries.And below you will see some deep friend peanut butter and jam sandwiches (upper left) and some Oreos (lower left) and scones.
Below are the scones cooking in the oil.

Egg Nog Tasting Competition

Thursday after a large Thanksgiving meal, we held an egg nog tasting contest. Too many times one person has said that "this brand" is better than "this brand" and so we decided it was time for a taste testing contest.We had twelve different kinds of egg nog, including one homemade egg nog. Because several of us are lactose intolerant, we also included a couple non-dairy egg nogs.

We took a paper and wrote down our favorites and our not-so favorites. And we had some nice surprises. It seemed that most of the family liked the Costco brand of eggnog. Not too surprising the worst egg nog was Silk Nog...that contains no milk and no eggs. A surprise to most of us was that the Lactaid brand (milk with the lactose enzyme) was in the top five in everyone's list. It was very good egg nog and for those of us that can't drink milk without the stomach ache, this is a good alternative.

After taking a small drink of all twelve kinds of egg nog...we started feeling really full.
I got to help set up the egg nog tasting contest. We used cookie sheets to pass out twelve different cups of egg nog to all the participants. As you can probably guess...we had a lot of egg nog left over and found it at the table for every meal following Thanksgiving, including breakfast.

Thanksgiving

Here's the turkey that we deep fried for Thanksgiving. It was quiet the event. I have to thank SM for being in charge of it. All I had to do was buy the turkey and have it thawed for the event. SM did everything else, including the carving of the bird. Too bad I didn't get a picture of the bird after it was cooked and before it was carved.

Here's the crowd to see how the turkey cooks. The young kids were encouraged to stay farther away.
Thanksgiving brings the smiles out in everyone.

How many "Kidds" can fit on a couch? ...more than are pictured in this photo!