December in Review

Once again I've been a bad blogger.  December has come and gone and I've hardly posted!  Well December has been a very busy month like it has been for most of you so here are some pictures to review the month! (I apologize for there being so many pictures but just look as it as making up for all the pictures I would have posted if I had been keeping up with my blogging! :)

She got up there all by herself and was quite proud of the fact!

Notice her arms are crossed.  She's not mad but she recently started doing this.

Wearing Mommy's apron

My DH ground 75lbs of game meat and made it all into summer sausages! (This is only 1 of the 3 tubs full of meat!) It was quite the project but worth all the work.

Picking out our Christmas Tree

One of our hens hatched a chick but unfortunately it only lived about 1 1/2 weeks

Brr!  We had a couple cold days but at least they were dry!

The creek behind our house

Drinking milk out of a glass like a big girl

Making cookies

The goodies from a Christmas tea my Mother-in-law & I put on

Liesel's stocking in the making

The completed project

I set up my sewing station up stairs & love that I can leave it up all the time!

Christmas Day

My DH's Aunt made these yummy bear claws for Christmas day.

Liesel went to her 1st museum during our Christmas break.  She found the animals quite fascinating!

Big Kitty!

Watching the fish

Our 16 month old!

The Holidays!

We had a wonderful 1st Christmas as a married couple. We had a great time as we drove down and spent Christmas and several days with my family and then came home and celebrated a 2nd Christmas with my DH's family.


We had such a fun time with my family. I think all we did was eat and talk. We shared many laughs and made great memories! How embarrassing that we were opening Christmas morning from 8am-12pm. It's not that we had that many presents but a lot of talking between each gift opened. Our breakfast became our lunch but it was well worth it! One of the fun things that my family does is pick names and we have to make a homemade gift for that person. I had one of my sisters so I made her notecards from different pictures I had taken from around our new home. I had so much fun doing that!!


While we were down visiting my family we also had a chance to visit with friends and go down to the Midway Aircraft Carrier. We never made it to the lower deck. I guess we'll just have to visit it again!!!


We all enjoyed our time together and were sad to see it end. It was amazing how fast the time went and we are looking forward to getting together again!!

Once we got home, we celebrated our 2nd Christmas with my DH's family. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law made waffles for dinner and after that we sat around an opened presents. My poor youngest brother-in-law was just dying to open his presents. They have a tradition of drawing names and we only get gifts for the person that we drew. They opened stocking while my DH and I were gone but waited on the gifts till we were all back. Guess who had the youngest brother-in-law...me. In the end I don't think he minded waiting a few extra days!! I have to laugh because theme of the gifts was airsoft because all the guys ended up with airsoft guns. I foresee many battles, fortunately none of them take place inside! We had a fun evening!

So this years New Years was different from last years as my DH, one sister-in-law and brother-in-law, the boy my DH mentors and myself were out rabbit hunting. We spent New Year's Eve and day over the mountains from our house hunting rabbits. There weren't many rabbits. We saw about 10 rabbits the entire two days that we were there. All the rabbits were safe. We still had a lot of fun walking through the countryside and just spending time together!


Well, there's a quick peek into our busy holidays!!!

Christmas Decorations

As a newly married couple, celebrating Christmas together for the first time, I realized we didn't have that many decorations. We are pretty much starting from scratch, which I have to admit has been fun. My DH didn't have any decoration but then again there are very few bachelors that would decorate their home for Christmas. I did bring up some ornaments that were given to me throughout the years. As a couple we did receive a few Christmas things and the most meaningful one is the Christmas tree skirt that my Grandma made for my DH and I for our new home. If you look in the picture you can see it. It is beautiful and something I know we will treasure for many years to come.

Since we have few Christmas decorations it has been fun coming up with different things to decorate the house with. Here a some pictures of the different things that I have done to add holiday cheer to our home. The theme I went with is "all natural!"

This decoration sits on my kitchen windowsill. All it is a mason jar filled with Douglas fir, cranberries, water, and a floating candle. I then added some more greenery around the base.

These candles are on the windowsill that is next to our kitchen table. (I really love having windowsills!!)

I added this basket of greenery to the inside of our front door.

This pretty green swag is hanging next to our front door. I would have liked to put right on our front door but I wasn't to keen on putting a nail in the door.

The little Christmas tree was put together from a big Douglas fir branch and then I put some red berries that I found on my walk on the little branches. The tree is sitting on a table on our front porch.

I also made a garland for the front porch railing. I'll have to post a picture of that later because my camera battery died so I wasn't able to take a picture of it.

How I was surprised!

Sorry it has taken so long to post about how my DH surprised me. My DH had last week off so we were busy doing things around the house not to mention we went away for a night. More on that later. Back to the desk...


My DH has been wanting to get a desk for me as I didn't have one and honestly for me I felt a little disorganized with not having one place to have all my stuff. Well, Monday morning of last week my DH and I were working on cleaning and organizing the upstairs. The room served as another guestroom, my DH office, and storage area. Our goal on Monday was to get the upstairs organized so that when we did find a desk it would be all ready to go. That meant we had to move a little loveseat into the attic and place the bed on another wall etc. We got well into that project and then my DH mentioned that he needed to go into another neighboring town and do a little Christmas shopping as well as go to Home Depot and a few other stores along the way. So off he goes!


I on the other hand am at home continuing to work a little on the upstairs and doing some resting as I was working on a bit of a cold. I even had some company stop by who hadn't seen the house since we got marriage so I had to laugh at the disaster they saw upstairs. After they left I was talking to my mom on the phone when my DH called and told me he wouldn't get back to town in time to pick up his pay check. Could I go get it and deposit it at the the bank. (And by the way its 5:35pm and the bank closes at 6pm.) So I jump in the car and head into town and than across town to pick his pay check and then back into town to deposit it. I'm happy to say I made it just before 6pm. (I have to admit I was inwardly wishing he had called me sooner so that I didn't have to be in such a rush.)


So back home I go and just a few minutes after I get in the house my mother-in-love calls and tells me she has some soup for me if I want to come down and pick it up. Soup sounded wonderful but I really didn't want to head down there. I was kindof hoping that my DH would get home soon so I could ask him to get it. I kept chatting with my mom who had been on the phone with me the whole time and after about 20 minutes I figured I better head down to my in-laws. But before I did that I called my DH to see if he would be home soon. He said he didn't think he would be home for awhile so it would be best if I just went. So I quickly went down to my in-laws and left my car running because it was going to be a quick trip but surprise, surprise I ended up talking with them for 15 minutes before leaving. By the time I get home my DH was back, cleaning upstairs. He did that while I got dinner going. I really didn't think anything of it since the upstairs was still a mess. It wasn't until after dinner that he asked me to come upstairs because he wasn't sure where something was suppose to be filed. I was so focused on his desk area that I didn't even look around the room for a while. When I was looking at some new pictures on his wall I noticed out of the corner of my eye something in the previously empty corner with a blanket covering it. I figured I wasn't suppose to notice so I avoided that area until my DH walked over almost next to it and I couldn't not notice it at that point. He asked me if I saw it and I said yes but I wasn't sure if I was suppose to notice it or just wait.


When I pulled the blanket off it revealed my beautiful desk, which I just love!


So the rest of the story goes that my DH was trying to get me out of the house so that he could get the desk in the house without me knowing it. He wanted until the last minute to send me to get his pay check for him but I got home right before he did so he had to come up with a second plan. That's why his mom called me to come down to their house and unbeknownst to me I wasn't cooperating. Apparently my DH and brother-in-law were parked in the trees waiting for me to leave and I was happily chatting away with my mom hoping my DH would get home soon so he could get the soup!!! That is actually where they were when I called my DH. When I finally left they pulled into our driveway backed the pickup right to the roofline, set the desk on the roof, then handed the desk through the window into the upstairs room. (We have a spiral staircase so there is no way the desk could go up it.) They did all this in the 15 minutes I was down at his parents' house!!


All that to say it was a wonderful surprise and I'm very much enjoying using the early Christmas present!!!

A Surprise

Well, my DH surprised me and gave me an early Christmas present this evening! It's an old roll top desk. Isn't it beautiful! I can't wait to start using it!!! I'll have to share more about how he surprised me later but for now I wanted to show you my wonderful gift! I sure have a thoughtful, sweet husband!!!