Christmas Home Tour

The Nester is having us show our homes all decorated for Christmas, so I decided to join her tour of homes. I have had so much fun decorating our new home this year. Hope you enjoy the tour and don't forget to check out the other tours. It's so much fun. I am getting lots of ideas for next year.

 

Welcome to our home...I used the outside decorations from my other home and they worked out nicely here. I did add these beautiful cones to my urns this year. I found these babies at Wall's!

Come on in...this is my chest in the entry hall that holds my favorite Christmas decoration. It is our nativity. I have greenery, white lights and a gold ball garland added to it.

I decorated our mantle in a "kidsy" theme with the stockings, colored lights and red ball garland. Matt and McKenzie love it. I have always used this santa outside on the bench but decided he would be cute near the fireplace.

Our tree...notice Henry sitting at the top. He is making sure everybody is behaving!

McKenzie and Matt's trees...

More pictures from our family room...

Since I spend a good bit of time in the kitchen, I like to decorate the countertops with greenery and pomegranate garlands. I also used my chef Santa and Vicky Carrol snacks for Santa plate and mug.

Our back door... There is a gift shop in Winona that I love called the Crow's Nest and the ladies there created this cute initial door hanger for me and the wreath was a find from Tuesday Morning in Starkville.

Thanks for stopping by our home! Come back soon!

Children's Choir Program

Sunday night was the Children's Choir Christmas Program at our church.  It was the first time Matt has sung in church and we were wondering how he would react to being on stage in front of a lot of people.  He did great.  He did all of the motions he was supposed to do and sang most of the time.  McKenzie is an old pro at musicals and she did a great job.  She loves doing that kind of thing as was so excited all day about it.  Here are some pictures from the program.

Birthday and Engagement

Saturday we enjoyed a fun full day.  We started the day by celebrating Jack's first birthday in Winona and then went to Memphis to take engagement pictures for Elizabeth and Justin.  We had fun watching Jack open his presents and eat his cake.  Matt said on the way over that he wanted to pretend like it was his birthday!  I'm sure Amanda will have some pictures on her blog, but here are some that I took.  You can see more here.

After the party we were off to Memphis.  We met Elizabeth and Justin downtown and McKenzie and I went with them up Main Street to take pictures while Betty and Matt hung out in the lobby of the Peabody.  We had a lot of fun with Bis and Justin even though we almost froze!  We took some pics on the roof of the Madison hotel and then some on Main with the trolleys in the background.  The ones in front of and inside the restaurant were at Felicia Suzanne's, where Elizabeth and Justin ate the night they got engaged.  Here are a few of the pics we took.  You can see the rest on my web site.

We capped off our fun day by going to see the movie, Old Dogs, at The Paradiso in Memphis.  The movie was better than I expected and had some laugh-out-loud moments. 

 

The kids enjoyed seeing the ducks at The Peabody.

This is at The Paradiso.  We'll have to go see The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel when it comes out.

O Christmas Trees!

If you have been keeping up with Kelly's Korner, she is doing another series Show Us Your Life...your Christmas trees. So I decided to show my three trees.

McKenzie has her own little 3 ft. white tree decorated with pink and green ornaments to match her room.

Matt also has a 3ft. tree in his room, too. I decorated it with sports balls and trains. I found the cute little tree skirts at Target.

Our family tree is nothing fancy but it is special to us. I call it my sentimental tree because it has all of our vacation ornaments, all our "firsts" ornaments and ornaments the kids have made. We also have a collection of ornaments that my aunt aka BettyWard gives the kids each year. She picks an activity the children have been involved in and buys an ornament to represent it. Last year she gave McKenzie a beautiful cross ornament to represent her baptism last Nov. and she gave Matt a Polar Express one because he was so into that movie last Christmas. We also have another special collection that my former neighbor, Betty Byrd paints for the kids each year. I look forward to seeing her hand painted wooden ornaments each year.

I am so proud of my tree skirt this year. I bought it half price last year after Christmas from Pottery Barn Kids. It is made of felt and has appliqued santas, reindeer and penguins on it. It has pom pom balls sewed along the edges. The attention to detail on it is amazing. I was so excited to use it because I have had it for a year!

Matt's room is completed! Here are a few pictures of his big boy room.

We bought him a new bed and a cute patchwork quilt that I think will go great with trains or ball. It will grow with him. I decided to keep the cousins' canvas art from Matt's nursery for now because they are just too cute. I do plan on putting some sort of train picture of Matt at the depot above the headboard. I will probably either do a gallery wrap or do a white mat/black frame.

Of course the Boston Red Sox stuff stays because we all know he will be a huge fan just like his daddy!

I found this cute train depot light fixture for his room. I thought it was appropriate seeing that the boy loves trains.

I kept his armoire and shelf his Grand made for him in the room. I am happy the way it turned out and Matt really loves it!

This Is The Polar Express!

The day after Thanksgiving we headed out for Calera, Alabama, to ride The Polar Express.  If you don't know, The Polar Express, is a great Christmas movie that McKenzie and especially Matt absolutely love.  When we found out that Calera had a train ride based on The Polar Express we knew we had to go.

We stopped in Tuscaloosa at Target (the first of three Target trips during the weekend) and made it to the hotel in Calera Friday afternoon.  Our hotel had cookies and hot chocolate every afternoon and evening and we enjoyed that quite a bit!  Here's a picture of McKenzie and Betty enjoying some hot chocolate and Matt mesmerized by the movie, Elf, in the lobby.

Here's Matt playing with a little train under the Christmas tree in the lobby.

After a day of shopping and watching the last quarter of the Bulldogs' whipping of Ole Miss, the kids and Betty put on their pajamas and we headed to The Polar Express.

Here are the kids on the engine before the train left.

This is the car that we rode in - the Silver Maple.  Matt thought that he was going to get to run and jump on the train as it was going like the boy does in the movie.  He also thought he was going to get to ski on the top of the cars like in the movie.  He wasn't too disappointed, though.

They gave us each a ticket and the conductor punched them just like in the movie.

Betty had to get an ornament to commemorate the trip.

Matt was on cloud nine.  I love this picture of him looking at his ticket against the window like he couldn't believe he was actually on The Polar Express.

On the way to the North Pole, some of Santa's elves got on the train and gave all the kids a bell from Santa's sleigh like the one the boy in the movie got.  Matt is hiding behind McKenzie in this picture.

I was the only one of us who didn't wear pajamas.  We looked for some for me Saturday at the mall but couldn't find anything.

Santa and Mrs. Claus!  When we got to the North Pole and saw Santa outside, Matt's eyes got very wide and he whispered to me, "Daddy!  Tell Santa I want a wot of trains!".  He was too scared to tell Santa himself.  You can see in the picture that Matt was a little overwhelmed.

Next came the cooks with the cookies and chocolate milk.

Finally, the kids waved goodbye to Santa and Mrs. Claus and we headed back to the station.  We had a wonderful time on the train and the whole weekend.  We had fun eating and shopping and going to Target and going to Target and going to Target.  OK, maybe that last Target trip wasn't so much fun, but the rest of the weekend was great!