Christmas Pics: A Little Late

I realize this is late but I figure better late than never.We managed to decorate our house a bit for Christmas so I thought I’d show you some of the pictures and a few of the activities we did.

Here’s our Christmas mantle. I decided to go with a red, silver, and blue theme. I thought those colors might be a nice change from the typical red and green. The JOY letters were stuck on the wall until they came crashing down one night at 3 am. They have been sitting on the mantle ever since. I bought them at JoAnn’s, painted them red, and modge podged them with glitter.christmas mantleI took a frame and hung snowflakes in it. I placed it next to my Pier 1 glitter trees. Boy oh boy I wish my sister still worked there. The only thing I bought bedsides the JOY letters were the blue ornaments.

left side of the mantleThese are a couple of branches I took and spray painted white. I hung various blue ornaments from the branches. I placed some white and silver Mardi Gras beads inside the jar to keep the branches stable. treeHere’s our cheap and easy Christmas card display. I wanted to create this elaborate yarn and metal display that I have floating around in my head but it never happened so I’ll keep that in mind for next year.

christmas card holderI took a 3M Command Strip (which failed to keep my JOY letters up) and placed them on the wall. I took strips of ribbon, punched a hole at the top, and hung the strips. We then hung the cards with clothespins.close up holderGetting ready to visit Santa. Alex was feeling very sick that day so only Caroline and Andrew went. Turns out they were only willing to look at him and neither one would go close to Santa.before going to see santaMaking gingerbread houses – yes, it’s a pre-made kit, they loved itmaking gingerbread house

Watching A Charlie Brown Christmas as a family.Who knew I had six chins?

The Action Nativity SetnativityA wise man watching from the trees, ready to attackaction nativityEvery day Andrew would move the figures around and have a whisper dialogue with them. I desperately tried to hear some specifics but never could get close enough. All I know is that one day the wise men were on their sides, the animals were on top of the stable, and baby Jesus was behind the trees.nativityFamily photo I took of everyone before we went into the ICE exhibit in Grapevine.ervyoneHope your holidays were wonderful!

Happy New Year!

Long time, no write.

I took some time off of posting since we got kind of crazy around here and had lots of family come in for a visit.

Hope everyone has had an amazing start to 2011!

We have rung in the new year by staying in our pajamas for two whole days – love it!

Derek and I decided to make some financial goals for our family this year.

Along with those large goals, I’ve made some smaller financial goals for me to focus on. Hopefully, these smaller goals will help us reach the larger goals.

I’m probably going about it in an odd fashion but I think it’s a method that will suit me.

I’m going to make new goals each month in order to save some money. Hopefully after the month is over I will have made some long term changes. You will have to check back every month to find out what our goal is.

January’s financial goal is: to spend $125 less on groceries/eating out a month.

After looking at 2010”s financial statistics I think we spent entirely too much in this catergory. My hope is to carry this into other months but for now the focus is saving on groceries/eating out in January.

I’ll let you know our progress at the end of the month – plus give you our new method for February – it’s definitely an out of the box one.

Have you made any financial goals for 2011?