Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies!

Alexa's 1st Firework Experience...she was enthralled!

Music Monday: One More Sleep

"One More Sleep 'Till Christmas," Muppet Christmas Carol

This may stand as my favorite Christmas movie of all time. The movie follows Dickens' novel so well and only adds meaning and feeling to it through its wonderful music! 

Have the merriest of Christmases tomorrow and try to get some sleep tonight, although I know the mounting excitement is hard to constrain!

Decorating the Christmas Tree 2012

One of our family traditions is that we set up Rachel's camera and take pictures while we decorate our Christmas tree.  Then we put the pictures together in a little video. Without further ado, here's the Nelson Christmas Tree Decorating Party 2012:

We were hoping to include Alexa in this year's tree decorating, but someone got a little cranky right before we were about to start and needed to be put to bed.

Christmas Stockings Unveiled

I know you all have been anxiously anticipating the unveiling of our family's homemade Christmas stockings, I know I have!

I do fear that I may have built them up maybe more than they should be...but here goes nothing!

The pictures are definitely a bit wanting in their...greatness...but let me tell you a bit more about these stockings. The blue one on the left is Nick's, the one with the red is mine, the one with the bow is Alexa's, and the last one that looks terribly out of place is Jesus'. The one for The Sneetch is still floating around in my head, hopefully soon to be an actual physical stocking, although I'm debating making a girly one and a boyish one or just a neutral one. My brain has definitely been stretched a bit on this project.

Each of the stockings (aside from Jesus') have three things in common: their shape, that patterned fabric which also matches our homemade tree skirt that I put together last year (pictures to come), and the guiding hand of my friend Lorayne. She's the angel who painstakingly responded to panicked calls/texts/emails when things seemed impossibly desperate and I needed a wise and experienced hand to hold my metaphorical one as I learned how to sew and do this project at the same time. I love her so much -- she is a saint!

Here are some details: Nick's stocking is a fake, but still very elegant, satin fabric. I want our stockings to reflect something that the person would pick out for themselves (as best as I can make them anyway), so I wanted Nick's to be (a) blue, (b) simple/not too cutesy, and (c) classy. His cuff is just appliqued to the front of the stocking, and his was probably the easiest to make.

My stocking is, I admit, my favorite, and was the first one I did with Lorayne watching my every move. I knew what I wanted from the moment I got the fabric, so this was the easiest to plan out and execute. The red details are just appliqued to the front using the same method as Nick's stocking, aside from the rosette and the button which are very delicately hot glued to the stocking. Awesome, I know!

Alexa's stocking is an off-white fleece with a beautiful clearance sheer overlay fabric on the front. Hers is the one I'm least satisfied with because I feel like the bow looks out of place and I don't really know what to do about it. I'd add tails if I knew how to make them look like they were attached to the bow and didn't think they would cover the sheer fabric's pattern too much. Oh well, I've got time to think about it still.

Jesus' stocking was actually originally Alexa's stocking, but when it was mostly done I couldn't figure out a way to incorporate the patterned fabric into it. So I was at a friend's house and her family had a stocking for Jesus that they could put in behaviors to change or actual gifts to give to others each year as a gift to Jesus. I loved that idea and almost immediately realized that was the solution! This stocking will probably not hang over the fireplace with care with the rest of the stockings, but instead in some special place where we can remember the true meaning of Christmas easier.

So there they are! To maintain their niceness I'm unfortunately going to have to be a little Nazi-ish with our kids and their grubby little fingers as these can't go through the wash. Nick told me that his mom would line the interior of their stockings with bread bags and then the kids could pull out their bags and return their stockings safely/cleanly to their hanging spot. We'll definitely be doing that!

When I make The Sneetch's stocking I think I'll take pictures along the way to show you how I made them and make a little tutorial post. It's probably nothing groundbreaking, but maybe helpful if this is something you'd like to do! Merry Christmas!

Music Monday

O Little Town of Bethleham, Sarah McLachlan

It's after Thanksgiving, which means Christmas season at our house! We'll be getting our Christmas Tree on Saturday and decorate our house...two stockings are already up!

Other Christmas traditions include cookie/treat making and caroling to friends, we watch The Muppets Christmas Carol the day after Thanksgiving, and Nick always gets a chocolate orange in his stocking and I always get a pen in mine.

This was the first Christmas song I listened to this year, and it's just beautiful! I love Christmas!

#49: Grow a Plant

Late Spring we decided to plant a small garden in our raised garden beds we built on our back patio.

As a quick side note, do you remember what our patio looked like when we moved in? I'm really just proud of how much we've done whether or not anything grew. But I digress...

Our feeling on our garden was that we'll plant it, water it, and let the sun and the dirt do their thing. If something grew, great! If not, we'll try something different next year.

On our first attempt at gardening we have had 8 strawberry plants, 1 bell pepper plant, and 1 watermelon plant that have thrived in our little garden. There was, unfortunately, one casualty: our beloved cantelope didn't make it. Fare thee well our little withered friend.

Our strawberry plants when they produced fruit for the first time!

Nick and Alexa water the garden together practically every morning. It's so cute!

 That HUGE plant Nick is watering is our watermelon plant. It definitely has a Manifest Destiny approach to the garden.

 Alexa and I just after we finished enjoying some delicious strawberries. Yeah, my bangs need trimmed - back off!

We actually were able to grow things! Who knew my science teachers instructing me on photosynthesis were actually right! We will definitely be doing this whole thing again year after year! Go Sun, Dirt, and Us!!

Music Monday: It Feels Like Christmas

We don't have many traditions yet in our home, but one is that Christmas music doesn't start until the day after Thanksgiving (it's not Thanksgiving's fault there's no music for the holiday), and another is we kick off the Christmas season by watching Muppet's Christmas Carol. It is such a great movie/adaptation! Highly recommended if you haven't seen it, or even if you have!

New Splash On Old Tradition

A couple Sundays ago our little area of town lost power for a couple hours, so we decided to ditch the downed electric system and go on a walk. Sunday walks are a family tradition that Nick and I started many years ago, but have been given a bit more variety since Alexa started coming with us. One of our new favorite walk locales is Coal Creek. We used to walk by it all the time, but who knew playing in the water could be so much fun?!

Aly knew. That's who.