Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

From our house to yours, 

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and Blessings for the New Year!

More Christmas at the Parsonage...

As promised, here's the rest of the Christmas tour! The baking is all done, the crafts are all made, the gifts are all wrapped, and I'm enjoying a nice clean Christmas house :)

 I always enjoy the little kitchen tree.

I got real industrious about a month ago, and made white vinyl slipcovers for the dining room chairs. SO much easier to keep clean with 3 little boys, all I have to do is wipe them with a wet wash cloth. Wonderful. It was pretty tricky to sew that thick stuff, so they're definitely not perfect, but as long as you don't look real close, they're alright  ;)

 My sweetie brought in a pile of fresh greens from the trees in the backyard - they look pretty in my box, and they make the whole room smell wonderful.

Happy Christmas Eve to all of You!

Remember the Reason for the Season! =)

Christmas Cuties

We had fun with a few photo shoots this year.

 I think this one's a keeper!

Unfortunately, the weather was absolutely rotten, so we had to get creative with indoor shots. 

 These guys were good sports, but they weren't quite as enthusiastic as their little cousin, Miss Lexy! She LOVED having her picture taken. I could get used to that! 

 She was full of smiles for Aunt Brittany, and Aunt Brittany just ate it up!

 We tried to sneak Weston into a few shots, but he was quite the wild man, and wasn't having it, so this is all we got... But these 2 are the best of buddies! 

And yep, I stooped to bribery. I told the guys they could build a gingerbread train if they were good for pictures. Boy, did it work like a charm. They posed and smiled and cooperated like sweet little guys. So they got to build their train,  Mommy got her pictures, and everybody was happy, happy, happy :) 

Mom and Dad had to turn their heads as they ate most of the candy and licked the frosting straight out of the bag! ;)

Christmas at the Parsonage

Merry Christmas from the Painted Parsonage!

 Some of you will be quite bored with my photo heavy post, as a lot of our decor is the same as it was last year, and the year before that... but I just can't leave everything the same, I have to change up some things, so maybe you'll see a few new things, too :)

The living room is pretty simple and natural. 

I used an old wash tub instead of a tree skirt this year, and I am HOOKED. Most of the tree mess falls right down into the bucket, and I don't have to wrestle with a skirt getting all wrinkled up. Besides, it's just plain cute!

The centerpiece on the coffee table keeps getting rearranged by a certain 2 year old... I've been finding birds and nests in strange places around the house.

I got inspired to add a romantic touch to our bedroom this year, and put some little trees with lights on our mantle. I've enjoyed the pretty lights in the evenings! Yeah, it's the little things...

Once again, the boys stockings are hung on the staircase, along with some fun and whimsical garland. 

I filled some old mason jars in the hallway with faux snow and some vintage snowmen. I love them!

The front door is all happy and festive, too.

I'm really enjoying the season, and having all my pretties out. I'm not going to be ready to take it all down when Christmas is over :(  

I'll have to share pics of the dining room and kitchen a little later, as the Christmas crafting operation has completely overtaken my dining room table, and Christmas baking and candy making has overtaken my kitchen. Tis the Season!

 I love it!

Christmas Crafting!

I got in the Christmas spirit a lot earlier this year. I've had Christmas music playing for weeks, baked cookies, and I just want to MAKE things! But I'm trying to hold off on getting the tree put up until the day after Thanksgiving. We'll see if I can wait that long. 

I made Weston some appliqued tee shirts. Because it is close to impossible to find cute things for boys without spending an arm and a leg...

These were my first try at putting an applique on a shirt, but it was super easy, and so fun! I got the plain tee shirts at Walmart (3.88) and used fabrics I had in my stash. 

 I also made him a nonseasonal shirt with his initial on it.

 (Doesn't he make the most darling little model??)

 Here's an updated pic of my 3 little men for y'all! It's funny how it doesn't really hit me that they're growing up till I see them in photos - they look so BIG! Weston's just 2 but he truly believes he's just as big as his brothers. 

I have some others Christmas projects in the works - and I'm hoping to get the Etsy shop stocked up in time for Christmas shoppers also. Busy times, but fun times! 

A Very "Pinteresting" Valentine's Day!

Well, I didn't do much as far as Valentine's decor this year. Ok, make that I didn't do squat as far as Valentine's Day decor this year. But we made up for it with goodies!

There were so many different yummy ideas on pinterest I couldn't decide which ones to try. I went with the strawberry cake mix cookies from this pin, and let me just tell you - that recipe is a KEEPER! I had to hurry up and bag up the ones for the school kiddos because they were going fast. We made them last night and there's not so much as a crumb left for today, Valentine's Day. *sigh *...

(*disclaimer* This post is full of  pathetic Iphone pics, I know they're terrible...)

We made some of them just for the boys' teachers...

I found that idea on pinterest too, but couldn't seem to find a ready made printable for the tag in a Valentine's Day version...so I just put one together myself real quick in photoshop. It's not fantastic, but it works. The guys wrote little notes to their teachers on the back.

The boys have been "selling" candy bars for the school fundraiser, and I'm pretty sure their daddy and I are their best customers. Something HAD to be done. (They really are that good.) So I found a candy bar wrapper printable on pinterest here,  fancied them all up, and handed them out at church as Valentine's gifts. Whew! Got rid of those wicked things. Now I owe the fundraiser envelope quite a few pennies...

 The boys were thrilled with their lego star wars Valentine's cards, complete with glow stick light sabers. 

Here is the link to that pin.

Which begs the question...

What in this world did we do before Pinterest???

 And I still have a whole board full of ideas to try next year :)

Happy Valentine's Day, y'all! I hope it's SWEET!

Happy New Year!

Can you believe it's already 2013? Me neither. But I'm looking forward to a great year. I love a fresh start, new goals. Thanks to my Mother-in-law, I've already met one of my goals - she helped me take down and pack away ALL the Christmas stuff! It would have taken me weeks...

I have to share my latest thrifty find with ya. I wanted some new parsons chairs for our dining room for Christmas. I found a set of 4 tan fabric covered chairs on craigslist for....

wait for it....

20 bucks. 

Yep, as in 5 bucks per chair. Unbelievable! I was so stoked. The covers are even removable and washable. Awesome. So my sweetie got me 2 new ones to go with them, giving me a total of 6. Yay! 

He also promised me some new flooring for our kitchen/dining areas. So I'm really excited about that!!

All the garlands and stockings have been safely packed away for another year...

 I decided to leave the cards up for a bit longer. I just love seeing all of your faces! Thanks to everybody who sent us cards - it's one of the highlights of Christmas for us :) 

And just in case you didn't get a card from us, I'll post  it here...

Happy New Year from our house to yours!