TiS ThE SeAsON!

One of my favorite decorations...One of my favorite Christmas Songs...It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

Had a wonderful Thanksgiving....hope that you did too. JB and I took in some black Friday shopping, after 2:30 pm and got home around 11:30 pm. Considering we had bought NOTHING for Christmas, we did pretty well. Early Saturday morning, my good, sweet friend Paula over at Broken Y and I took off around 7:30 am and headed to Harper KS for a little shopping at a little place that fellow bloggers(Jenn and Michelle) opened. It was so fun to take a little road trip, visit, and get to meet these fellow bloggers and Shop! Got home from there, headed home to begin the task of decorating for Christmas. It's always a job to drag out my tubs of stuff from the crawl space, CB was a good boy and helped me get everything out and discovered a dead mouse in the process(boo~hiss). I proceed to crawl down there and get a few other things and discover a very wet floor, carpet, etc. Oh great, we have some sort of a leak and it's been leaking awhile...can you say Mold? Gross. Any whoo....JB crawls down, starts cutting out the wet carpet, etc and scraping the mold off...in the drying process now so we can go back with bleach. Still haven't figured out what exactly is leaking or has leaked. My question is....Why must darn near everything turn into a home improvement project?

Here's a little play by play on my assembling & decorating of the tree

First, all boxes must be drug out of crawl space and trash the living room :) Then assembly begins, all my branches are coded by Alphas...

As each layer of branches go on, so do a string of lights, almost always white, once in awhile, colored. I use about 600 lights.

This year, I decided to try a little raffia in the tree for something a little different. I like my new different...will add this new routine in for every year!

Finally, the finished product...lots and lots of ornaments! I love looking at all of them as I put them on, the boys made some, some are gifts, some were wedding presents, the boys always get ornaments from Grandpa every year(since they were born). Some are fun, some are silly and some are very sweet and special. One of my very favorite things to do this time of year is have a seat in the living room, all lights off but the tree and sit and meditate, savor and enjoy the peaceful feeling that it brings. Better yet, early morning is good too....sipping my coffee and enjoying my tree!

And now, I'm going to share a few of my favorite ornaments

The beautiful, purple KState glass ball.

This belongs to one of the boys...they each have one, Grandpa got this for them! GO CATS!

This was a gift from last year to the family...It's pretty special.

These are just a FEW of my favorites. What are your favorite ornaments?

Have a blessed week as we head into the CHRISTmas season.

I aM tHaNKfuL fOr...

running water in my warm home~food in my pantry~my family and friends~my job~coffee~my dishwasher~my stove~my washing machine~my Bible~the clothes in my closet~good belly laughs~2 onrey boys, ok 3 if you include my husband~I have a family that knows GOD~the clean air that I breathe~sense of humor~beautiful sunrise/sunsets~the freedom to worship GOD~

Beautiful gold leaves

These are just a few things I am thankful for...I wish everyone who reads my blog a very Happy Thanksgiving, I pray that your day will be filled with love, laughter, wonderful food and fellowship! I know that mine will be.

This picture reminds me there is always

HOPE

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good, and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100:1-5

Arise!

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Isaiah 60:1-3

On My Way...

Tomorrow around 12:30 pm I'm going to be on my merry way to Crop Camp! Oh so excited. A weekend of fun, scrappin, laughing, and did I mention fun? I have some friends that started this camp about 7 years ago...a weekend of scrappin at a beautiful campground...that is local...at least for me. Only about 15ish miles away---we stay at the camp, you only leave if you want to or need to...I only leave on Sunday...on my way home. I load up the van with all my goods, snacks, sleeping bag, pillows and comfy clothes and have a ball. I need to get busy...have much to do before I can go tomorrow...laundry running out my, well, my laundry room and a dirty house aaannnnddd my family thinks they want supper!

My building last year and actually the only

building I've scrapped in...there are 3 but this

is the Oxford Gals...

Scrappin buddy Paige...oh how she makes me

laugh!

Other scrappin buddy/table buddy and camping

buddy and just a good friend, Traci...we have

a lot of fun together...she makes me laugh as well!

Have a Blessed Weekend....

View from my bunkhouse last year

It's so beautiful out there...

WoRdleSs WedNeSdAy