Christmas Tree 2009 - Part Deux

So after it's crazy ride home, our Christmas tree made it into the house.




















It actually sat bailed up for a couple of days because I wasn't quite ready for the monster to be unleashed. Once the furniture was moved around and space was made, I gave the go ahead to un-bail it. Chico had Jaxon and Mateo start unwinding the string.




























Whoa, look out boys, it's falling!




















Good catch Chico!

Well here she is. It's like the Griswald's tree in Christmas Vacation, lol.




















Step one, getting those lights on, is my least favorite part. Finally got the star on and the garland, with much wobbling around on the 10 ft. rickety ladder. I'm not totally afraid of heights, but when I have nothing steady to hang onto I get a little fearful.




















So here's the final product...




















And a few more photos of the house.













And a couple of my favorite ornaments.

Mateo's first Christmas - 2000.



Jaxon's first Christmas - 2003.



Whew, so glad it's finally done!

Christmas Tree 2009 - Part 1

OK, it's getting ridiculous how many photos I have all saved up for blog posts, but still no posts. Aaahhh, so much to do, so little time nowadays. I don't know how everyone else manages, but me, I'm not so good at it.

Anyway, I guess at least this post is pretty timely. I will still be posting a bunch of old stuff at some point, but I'll worry about that later. This post is about this year's hunt for our perfect Christmas Tree. Last Sunday we went out to Northwest Family Tree Farm to find "the" tree. This is our 4th year of going out there. It's about a 20 minute drive from our house, so not too bad. We do have tree farms that are less than 5 minutes from our house, but we like the horse drawn wagon ride and hot cocoa at this location.

We always get a pretty large tree because our living room ceiling is pretty high, so it can handle one that's pretty tall. In years past the large trees have been very heavy when they get so big and Chico didn't want to deal with lifting that heavy tree off of the top of the Excursion, so on Saturday he went outside and got a little crafty. He created an attachment that fit onto the hitch and would hold the tree upright. Here he is with his creation.




















He's so proud of his invention. :)

It was a beautiful day to go looking for our tree, but it was so cold. The car thermostat read 36, but it was windy, so it felt a lot colder outside.



Here we are all bundled up. We walked straight over to what I considered the perfect tree, so we tagged it with our name and went to check out the rest just to be sure. The boys weren't too happy with how cold it was.











Well, we didn't see anything else that looked as good as the first tree, so we decided to take a quick spin around the farm on the horse drawn wagon and then cut the tree down.











I thought we might be able to get a family shot out in the trees to use for our Christmas card this year, but there were hardly any people there and no one was near us at any point, so we got the normal Chico and the boys and me and the boys separately. This is our tree in the background before it's life was taken, lol.





Jaxon wanted to help Chico cut the tree, so here he is cutting away.





Look at the size of that tree. We had it shaken and baled to make the trip home easier.













We had a little hot chocolate to warm up. Did I mention it felt like it was freezing outside?! I asked one of the ladies working there if she'd take our photo. It's not the greatest, but it's the four of us together at least.



So, here it is, Chico's invention in action. Look at that ridiculous tree! It looked like the "leaning tower of treeza", lol. The test was to see if it would make it home in tact. The people working at the farm were watching us, wondering the same thing I'm sure.




















We got lots of stares on our way home. I don't blame them, if I'd seen a big suv with a tree standing several feet above it in an upright position I'd be staring too. I tried taking a picture as we were driving of the car's shadow. Can you see it?



Once we got home I told Chico he should measure it and see how tall it really was, so he did. The top of the tree was about 14 feet in the air. Crazy! Here are a few more shots of Chico's creation.


























More photos to come of the tree once it made it inside the house. Thanks for hanging in there with this long post.

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas

No, not really, but I just can't get this song out of my head, so I added it to my blog playlist so you can all sing it in your heads with me. You're welcome!

Bella Birthday Bash Blog Hop

Welcome to the Bella Birthday Bash Blog Hop sponsored by Stamping Bella! If you didn't start from the beginning, please go to Emily's blog. If you came from Lori's blog, then you're right on track. If there is a link missing and you get lost, here is a list of all the blogs.

I'm so excited to join in on Stamping Bella's 3rd Birthday celebration! I've never participated in a blog hop before, so this will be fun. There are 86 of us participating today and I'm #72, so I thank you for making it this far!

For my entry I decided to use Tinkerbella and the sentiment "have a fairy happy birthday". (You can click on the photo to make it larger.)




















I have a hard time showing "shimmery" in photos, so here's a little closer up.













Isn't she just darling?? I love her pretty little outfit! Since I'm a mom of two boys I never get to do girly stuff, so I thought this would be a great way to get the pink and glitter out of my system. I colored Bella with Copic Sketch and Spica Glitter markers and for the paper and accessories I used all Close To My Heart supplies ("Daydream" paper pack, ribbon and Pretty Pins). I hope you enjoyed Tinkerbella as much as I do, now on to the exciting news...

Three gift certificates for $100 in Bella Bucks will be hidden along the hop, but we’re not telling you where so be sure to leave some love as you hop!!! Make sure you leave comments on every post so you have a chance to win!! The winners will be announced on Monday, December 7 at the Stamping Bella Blog. MWAH!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Now it's time to hop on over to {Karen's blog}.

Ahhhh...

Well, the Crafty Ladies sale is over and it was another success for everyone involved. I enjoy doing the sale each time, but have to say it is a relief when it's over. This is a quick post this morning because I need to get the boys off to the bus stop and myself off to work, but I wanted to post a couple photos of these cute baby gift sets I made for the sale. These are little car seat or stroller size blankets made out of fabulously soft minky fabric and a little stuffed elephant to match.





Aren't they cute? I wish you could see them in person, they're even cuter and oh so soft to touch. I sold two sets of the brown and blue polka-dot ones, but I still have the pink one left. I'm going to do another little 3 hour vendor show in the next couple weeks, so I'll try to sell some more there. I have lots more fabric to choose from too.

Oh, and here's a photo of the four Crafty Ladies. We've never had a photo of all of us together at one of the shows.



Alright, off to start the day. Everyone have a great one!

A quick sneak peek

The Crafty Ladies and I were busy staging the show on Tuesday and Wednesday this week and tonight was the night to drive around town and put up all the signs. It was so nice out tonight with no wind or rain. I'm not sure how long that will last, but it was definately a blessing for us tonight.

Just before we left the fabulous Macrum House Wednesday night I took a few more sneak peek photos for the Crafty Ladies Blog. Since they're so cute I thought I'd post them here too.

Here's one of the displays inside the Macrum House. Most of the antiques we display our items on are for sale. Lots of beautiful pieces.


Crafty Linda made these super cute embroidered towels and coffee cup sleeves. Love that fabric!!




Crafty Alicia made these super cute hand embroidered snowman pillows. I didn't take a photo of the back of them, but they have cute button closures on the back. Maybe I need these for my sofa? lol


This is just a sampling of some beautiful jewelry made by a new vendor named Shandra. There's lots more available. Love it!


Aren't these knitted and crocheted hats cute? They were made by a friend of Crafty Beverly's.


These baby blanket and onesie gift sets were made by me. They have fun fabric on one side and super soft minky fabric on the other. Crafty Linda suggested I include a onesie with my blankets, so I followed her advice and appliqued them to match the blankets. So cute!




Alright, I've spent too much time blogging tonight when I need to be crafting. Come by the Crafty Ladies sale if you're in the Forest Grove area. We'll be there from 10am - 6pm both Friday and Saturday.

Crafty Ladies Holiday Sale is just days away!!

Well, last you heard there were "exciting things going on in my craft room". I wish I could say there were LOTS of exciting things, but so far only a couple. And I know I've been so bad about posting lately. I've honestly tried getting a few different posts done, but just couldn't quite finish each one for one reason or another. So if I could just get a couple hours to sit and do nothing but blog posts, I could change them from drafts to published posts. I just don't think it will happen until the Crafty Ladies sale is over.

Being my normal procrastinating self, I've been working on all of my crafts at the last minute. I've only known this sale was coming for months now (lol). I had big plans to do tons of sewing over this last weekend, but my back decided otherwise. Thursday night it decided that it was going to try to go out on me - very annoying. So, 2 chiropractor visits later, it's doing better, but I'm still under orders to not lift anything and not to bend at the waist. It's hard to cut fabric on my table and not bend at my waist, so needless to say my weekend was not so productive.

I'm still going to try to get a few more things done this week, but most of the evenings this week will be taken up with staging the show, so as usual it will mean very little sleep for me until Saturday night. For those that haven't gotten an email from me about the Crafty Ladies show or seen my facebook posts, the Crafty Ladies Holiday Sale is an annual tradition for 4 years (with the exception of last fall). This year I've created a blog that gives all the details and shows photos of our past events. Click HERE to take a look if you haven't had a chance. We've had a lot of fun over the last few years.

Here's a post from the Crafty Ladies blog:

"It's that time of year again, Crafty Ladies sale time! November 2009 marks the Fourth Annual Crafty Ladies Holiday Sale. Once again the Warren family of Forest Grove has offered up their home (the Historic Macrum Mansion) to us for our sale. This was the location of our 2007 Holiday Sale. We can't thank the Warrens enough for this fabulous venue for our event! It's so fun to display our goods in this setting and the customers just love to get a peek into this beautiful home.

Below is the official invitation to our sale. Please join us on November 20th and 21st for an event where you'll be sure to find great gifts for friends and loved ones or a treat for yourself.





















Here's a map to help you find us... Click the map to make it larger.


We hope to see you this year!"