Christmas Time is Here!

FINALLY I'm getting around to giving you our Christmas house tour!  You may wonder how I can take SO MANY pictures of my Christmas tree during this post....but it's just a fact of life. :)  I love Christmas and I love my Christmas tree!  Haha!  So here we go...

We spent a decent amount of hours (really) at Lowe's picking out all of our Christmas lights for the house (inside and out) and for our tree....and even had to make a second trip...and third to Meijer. :)  We're hardcore.  Anyways, here is Brandon putting the lights on our "pre-lit" tree that no longer is "pre-lit".  We both have two jobs when it comes to our tree and it works well.  He puts it together.  I fluff it out.  He puts the lights up.  I put all of the decorations and ornaments on it.  Team work :)

Sorry this pic is blurry!

Here it is all done:

We've yet to find the perfect tree topper, but I've had my eye on a few on Target.com so I will be checking their sale after Christmas!

 While I decorated the tree and house, Brandon was outside putting up ALL of our outdoor lights.  Now this was quite the debate between me and the Lowe's worker.  I HATE LED Christmas lights.  I find them cold, not warm the way I think Christmas lights should be.  (No offense to all you LED lovers).  But, I also wanted the big old fashioned bulbs and many people have told me, including said Lowe's guy, that they will start your house on fire!  So...LED won, but we tried them all out in the store until we found ones that met my approval.  In the end, the warm white LED and and our colorful LED's met my approval. :)  I think that guy avoided me on our second trip into Lowe's!!!

Here is Brandon working hard :)

My DREAM is to light up the GIGANTIC tree in front of our house....so if anyone has ANY idea how we could get lights up to the top of this tree that is surrounded by power lines, share it please!  And then maybe if you want to donate funds to the purchase of 100 strands of lights...haha!

Although.....if I were really Clark Griswold I would just uproot it and put it in my living room...hmmmm that's a thought. ;)

And now around to the garage....

And here it is in the dark!  

 We had plans for the lights to go up around the dormers and up the peak, but we didn't have a tall enough ladder and the roof was too steep...but a ladder is on our Christmas list, so we'll see!

And here is the garage and back gate. (And our candy cane bush!)  This is my favorite!  It looks like Charlie Brown to me!

And my Christmas tree saying hi of course...

So moving inside, I will now share with you some of my growing collection of Christmas stuff!  You may have figured out that I love wreaths so here are my two Christmas wreaths.  The first is new.  I bought it at Pier 1 Imports this year and I love it!  The second one was my grandma's and it will always be my favorite.

Pier 1 wreath

Grandma's wreath

 This table centerpiece is also from Pier 1 this year. 

Funny how the flame reflects like it's floating :)

 We bought this garland in Holland to go around our chandelier in the dining room but it ended up being too big so now it's on the piano, but I really like it there.

 A little more up close:

And something Brandon actually picked out:

The kitchen needed some Christmas spirit too:

Brandon's mom gave us the cute little plant :)

And my favorite, our "romantic" bedroom ;)

And our mistletoe!  Can you see it!?

Now, another thing I love about the Christmas season besides all of the decorating is wrapping gifts!  I LOVE wrapping gifts!!!  And yes, I will wrap yours.....if you can find a way to light up my tree in the front yard and supply some lights!

In order to have fun wrapping, I believe you must have a healthy stock of wrapping stuff.  By that I mean fun paper, lots of ribbon, bows, different tags, bags, ornaments and tissue paper!  Here is my haul before it took over my living room!

And here are the final products:

 And finally we're all done!

Merry Christmas everybody!  I hope you all have a safe and wonderful holiday!!!

Sorry it's been so long...

Well, you probably all thought I quit my blog!  I didn't, I promise....I've just been really, REALLY busy!   But, 'tis the season to be busy, right?  Even though we're both busy, we have not been slacking when it comes to Christmas and our first house!  Our house is already decked out as Griswald-y as our budget would allow!  Christmas is my favorite holiday (followed closely by Black Friday) and decorating is my thing, so would you really expect any less from me?  Haha!  

Anyways, not to disappoint, but this post is not about my house (don't worry that's coming) but my brother's.  I've been meaning to post this for a while, but it's never too late.  :) 

As many of you know, Tyler bought his own house and moved out of my parent's house a month or two ago.  I nicely documented moving day for him to cherish forever...haha!

Here he is so excited to be moving on this crappy, rainy day :)

Luckily he did not have too much to move and we had quite a few guys to help...but at this point it was just Tyler, my dad, and our friend Travis!

My job was to pack the food while they packed furniture :)

Now for Tyler's house tour:

This room is the back entry (new addition) and dining room:

Tyler got to take our family's SUPER OLD dining room table....seriously, we found hay in the chairs when we re-upholstered them!!!  It looks really nice in his dining area.

This is the other half of the back entry room:

I love the built-in storage wall.

This is the back bedroom (also new addition), probably meant to be the master but Tyler plans to use it as an entertainment room for video games and such.

There is no basement, so his washer and dryer are in the furnace room.

This is his kitchen.  It is nicely redone, but he doesn't like that it is such a tight, high traffic area.

Here is the front living room.  It is decently sized and as far as I know only has a couch in it now that he is settled in...lol.  He hopes to take out the built in cupboards (that used to be a closet before the house was flipped) and drywall so he can mount a TV in there.

This is the front bedroom.  I LOVE the dark blue walls!  He is using this as an "office".

And this bedroom is the one he will actually sleep in.  It's much smalled than the "master" but works just fine for him.  And it's by the bathroom, so that's a plus.

His bathroom is super nice!  It's just as tiny as ours, but I LOVE that shower!

And then there is the upstairs that most people wouldn't even guess to look for!

Extra room

4th bedroom

Here we are seeing how many men it takes to put together a floor lamp.....haha!

Jordan kept hiding from my camera...

My adorable cousins, Caleb and Maddie :)

Some of the ladies at church threw him a "Guy Shower".  Haha, totally awesome!

Relaxing in the living room once we were unpacked...not sure what is going on though!

His very beige bedroom finished :)

So, that concludes the tour of Tyler's house :)  Hope you all enjoyed it immensely! :)

Surprise!!!!

Last week, I came home from night school and Brandon covered up my eyes when I walked in.  I had no idea what was going on...  He walked me into our bedroom and this is what I saw:

Huh?

But then I turned and saw THIS:

Yayyyy!

It is the dresser from Pier 1 that we both liked.  We needed a dresser, we had been using a bookshelf...lol :)  So anyways, just wanted to show you all how much my husband loves me :)  He even had to recruit our neighbor and her son to help move it in!

OH!  And I finally finished my Halloween Wreath :)  Here it is:

I love it!

Enjoy the nice weather  :D

Fall and Halloween Decor!

Happy October!

The HALLOWEEN month! Yay!

Now don't get too excited here people, I'm still young so I don't have much when it comes to my second favorite holiday, but I get excited about what I have. :)

My stuff has been up for a while, but now that it's October I feel I can safely post about it. :)  Haha!  Before I show you some pictures, just an update about what we've been up to.  Brandon has been practically living outdoors when he's not at work.  He has been working on our lumpy lawn.  We rented a power raker to dig up all of the dead stuff, raked it into piles and bagged it. (I did help with a little bit of that)  Then, we bought a bunch of topsoil and he has been diligently spreading that around our yard trying to fill in holes.  He is also planting grass seed since a lot of it is gone :(  I for one would HATE being outdoors this much and doing all of this work, but I think Brandon really enjoys it. 

I have been INSIDE (where I like to think I belong) getting pretty much the last few boxes unpacked, cleaning (it's never-ending) and enjoying my brand new PIANO!!!!!!!  OK, not new, but new to me....and I LOVE it!  Wanna see a picture?  Ok, here you go:

Ahhh, so nice

 Anyways, gorgeous hug?  :)  I'm pretty in love.  Well, enough ogling of the piano.  Here are some pictures of what Brandon has been up to:

Here is my creepy stalker picture of Brandon spraying the house with bug killer stuff :)

His new look is "shirtless"

Here is the handy dandy power raker we rented.

If you can tell, it dug up a lot of dead stuff....but it's kinda hard to see here.

This is what my yard currently looks like.  The left is done, the right is not.

 Another project popped up outside for Brandon this week.  The pole holding up our gate door rotted or something (I can't remember exactly what Brandon said) so Brandon had to fix that too.

Drilling in the new beam

See the new beam on the left there....such a handy man :)

The old pole.

 I'm so grateful that my husband is willing to tackle all of these projects.  He's such a great guy. :)

NOW, onto Fall and Halloween as promised.  I do have a Halloween wreath that I am in the process of making that I will have to show you later, but here is what I have up now:

Most importantly, my toilet decor...lol  This is a "fake" candle that my mother-in-law gave us last year.  Totally fun!  Note the bride and groom skeletons :)

This is one of my favorite items.  My wreath.  I actually bought this wreath in the spring to be my "summer" wreath (I like wreaths if you can't tell).  My husband took me on a special shopping trip to Holland to pick out a "summer" wreath (yes I'm spoiled), but all summer long I kept staring at it and thinking "This is a fall wreath".  So, here it is.  Up on our back door looking awesome-ly fallish! :)

Now, my pumpkins are pretty awesome too :)  Gotta give them some love as well!

And, the beloved Pottery Barn spider.  My husband's choice, but he is pretty awesome.

Here is my "fall' bouquet that Brandon and I made together last year :)

And finally my husband had a potluck at work, so even though it was still late September, I had to go with the Halloween theme and make "Halloween Parfaits"

Halfway done....

He had to help a little too.  Note the time of night.

Taadaa!  Totally fun!

Happy FALL :)