Half-Pint House

December Photo Project Drop Out

Well, I pretty much tanked on the December Photo Project, didn't I? I just plugged in my camera and realized I had about 64 photos on there. I guess I continued to take some, just forgot all about posting them. Sorry, Rebecca! I'll try to do better next year. That is, if you don't kick me out next year because of how I behaved this year...

I'm not going to post 10 photos to cover the last 10 days, but I will post a couple to give a recap of what's been going down with the Dunhams.

On the 18th, Craig and I went to the WCA Christmas banquet. Here's Craig in this smashing bow tie that I learned to tie exactly 10 minutes before we had to leave by watching a youtube video seven times. Seriously. I'm pretty proud of this tie. The man is pretty snazzy too.

The banquet kicked off Craig's two weeks worth of Christmas break. It also kicked off our "I KNOW. Let's paint the dining room right now!" project. We painted it yellow. There is no more, and I repeat, NO MORE peach on our walls. Not one drop of it. Nor is there any country blue floral border to be found anywhere. (There are country borders in two bedrooms upstairs, but those will be taken care of some other "break").

The yellow goes with the orange, like so:

And our carpet is still teal green, but there's not a lot we can do about that. If you knew us in Colorado you would know that we had orange walls in our kitchen, wrapping around into our living room. We had sage green walls in the living room and down the hall. We had a yellow ceiling over the whole thing.

And without even thinking about it or realizing it, we just recreated that house in reverse. Seems like we're just your plain old orange/yellow/green kinda folks. We're okay with that. I did decide to keep the ceilings the same color as the walls in that room, so in this I am showing signs of maturity. There is hope.

By the way, I LOVE painted ceilings. White ceilings totally miss out on the whole party.

And, because we now have totally bare windows, it is time to finally do something about it. I've started the next two hobbled Roman shades for the dining room.

And here we have the obligatory Christmas jammies/stocking shot (and no, we don't give our kids beer for Christmas, though in this photo it looks like we did just exactly that):

This one really likes her new lap quilt:

And now I'm baking a cake and getting ready for M10 to turn into M11 tomorrow.

And that's been our last 10 days in a nutshell.

Silent Night

Totally didn't mean to take this big of a blog break and not tell anyone, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Our stockings are now flung by the Christmas tree with care. We all know St. Nickolas will not be there.

My kids are sleeping. I should be too. I will be in just a minute. But as I don't anticipate checking in here tomorrow, I thought I'd just quickly say, "Merry Christmas" to you all.

And to all, a good night.

Catch you sometime later. Peace to you today.

December Photo Project - Day 17

I was wrapping a few presents the other day when it occurred to me that I'd taken care of our primary gift for M10 and C9, but not for K7 or E6. K7 was easy to fix. E6? Not so much. She likes movies. That's about it. I found the movie Up for about $10 last week and it is now on its way to our house. Doesn't seem like that great of a primary gift, so today I looked at my growing stash of cool fabric and decided to make her a movie watching quilt. Here it is in its pre-washed glory. I LOVE it. Love it more than the picture shows even. It's going to be smashing after it gets washed and looks more quilt-ish. I plan to wrap it with the movie in the same box.

More from the December Photo Project can be found here.

Mawiage

Did I mention we celebrated 13 years of marriage this past Monday? No? We did and I'm talking about it over at WORLDMag.com today.

December Photo Project - Day 16

This is what my husband likes to keep the thermostat set on. This is why I freeze all the time. This is why my kids voluntarily pulled out their electric blankets and set them up themselves last night. This is why I'm considering getting the five women of the house a Snuggie for Christmas.

Brrr. I'm going to bed now. More from the December Photo Project can be found here.

Works for Me Wednesday: The Gift Table

I have a little set up this year that is totally working for me. When we put up our Christmas tree, I had to move a table away from that window. It was too big to take down to the basement, so I just put it to the side in the dining room. It quickly became the gift table.

By "gift table" I mean this: Each time I've received something pre-Christmas from someone I've put it on the table. Having my collection all in this spot reminds me that I still need to write thank you notes for those things. Also on this table is a little basket where I keep brown craft bags, a Christmas stamp, green stamp pad, and red Sharpie marker. I keep a stash of homemade Christmas votive as well as tea wallets. Whenever I've needed a last minute gift for someone (oh yes, the choir instructors need teacher gifts too!), it is so easy to quickly stamp a bag (or have one of my kids do it), slide the gift in and presto! Fast gift.

And yes, the purist in me would put the stamped design on the other side of the bag, but the "let the kids help, for crying out loud" in me says, "Hey, it's done and it works."

Speaking of gifts I've received, I've been the very happy recipient of several goodies from Penzeys this year. I loves me some Penzeys. I also loves that I live less than a mile from one. I also love that I have friends who know I love Penzeys. *grin*

And that about does it for the Half-Pint House edition to this Works for Me Wednesday. For more, go here!

This is the part where you help me out with this.

Too many polka dots? I had a solid red background for a few minutes - had trouble getting the reds to match. Thought the polka dot might be fun, but now wondering if my eyes might cross if I see it too much.

How about you? Are your eyes going cross? Prefer a solid background? I'm still teaching myself all this nonsense and it isn't pretty.

I'm having blog button issues too, but I'm not sure anyone really cares about that anyway.

Help me Obi-Wan. You're my only hope.

December Photo Project - Day 14

You see all those books on that shelf to the right? They were all upstairs this time last week. And all of our homeschool books were in the dining room. Now they are upstairs. And Craig's old office is a lovely shade of Lucky Shamrock Green. Photos of that will come later.

More from the December Photo Project can be found here.

In Case Anyone Wonders...

I've been goofing around with the inner workings of Typepad tonight and am obviously having some trouble. Too dumb for html. Too poor for fancy designers. Too tired of the canned templates provided by Typepad.

Suggestions?

December Photo Project Day 13

A little last minute angel wing action was the project of the day on Sunday afternoon. Two hours, 3 poster boards, two sets of $1 store garland, and a whole lot of staples and presto: three sets of angel wings just in time for the 4pm call time at the church. Whew!

More from the December Photo Project can be found here.