new year News!!!

I guess I'm allowed to tell you now, since all the phone calls have been made and emails sent out... my Big new years News! If you read this post "blessings to share with you" then you know my oldest daughter is pregnant and due in May. Well, today we found out from the sonogram that the baby is a Boy! Oh boy, oh joy, another boy! Carter is the most excited of us all! He is so happy he'll have a little boy cousin to play with. As the proud grandma, I'm already calling them "the boys".
What fun lies ahead for us all!

Since finding out just this afternoon, we've already started looking at fabrics for the nursery. I love a good design project and what's more fun than a nursery! She wants the colors to be fairly neutral, with maybe a bit of gray or navy or yellow.

But now that we know boy, I was playing with a bit of baby blue too. There's a great user friendly site I found Carousel Designs that lets you custom design the bedding from the fabrics they offer. So much fun to play with and a great way to visualize the finished product!

I can't wait to get started helping to prepare the perfect nest for this new little one.

I hope your new year is looking as promising as mine. Wishing you all blessings of health, happiness and prosperity in 2011!

enough already!

I started with a post nasal drip on the 26th that has blown into a full head-splitting sinus infection. I had a fever of 100.3 this morning so I went to the Doctor for some help! How can one head produce so much fluid?! Everything hurts. They gave me Levaquin which is some pretty scary stuff if you read the side effects. I hope and pray it works quickly and I get some relief.
It's been a very long month for me... I spent the first few weeks of December in bed recovering from thoracic surgery and now I'm back in bed, again! If I sound whiny, I am. I just want to feel good again. Wah, wah,wah.
Okay there, I vented. sigh

Please Lord, let 2011 be a healthy year for all of us!

my favorite Christmas Eve and Christmas Day photos 2010

All was merry and bright for our 2010 Atlanta white Christmas!

Merry Happy!

xoxox

Oh... my HGTV Christmas tree

I love HGTV! It's always my go-to channel for any TV viewing. I watched the celebrity Christmas home-make-over special the other night and was inspired by Trisha Yearwood's southern floral decorations. The designer took real blooms, magnolias, roses and hydrangeas, and beautifully decorated her music room tree and mantle. After seeing that elaborate room, I couldn't help but feel my "skinny" tree needed a little tweaking... so I headed over to Hobby Lobby for some silk Hydrangea blooms to fill in the empty spaces and give it that "Southern Celebrity" touch.

I bought some white blooms, some lavender to deeper purple blooms,

and some green blooms. Basically, I bought them out of the colors they had in stock that Hydrangeas naturally grow, and left behind the fake untrue to real life colors.

Okay, I know the deep purple is a stretch, but it does give the tree some depth.

Our finished HGTV inspired tree!

I kinda love it!

Christmas memories... starting over again

In 1992, when my daughters were 5, 8 and 11, we spent a week with their northern cousins in Hilton Head for Thanksgiving. We celebrated an early Christmas together. We had brought a small artificial tree over from Atlanta and decked it out with handmade craft paper ornaments, shells and photographs of the family. The 11 year old's dressed up like Santa and his Elf and handed out our family secret Santa pic presents. It was spontaneous and fun.

We started a tradition way back then, an activity to keep the 8 kids under 11 busy for an afternoon. We made graham cracker gingerbread houses and some buttercream icing and let the kids go to town with bowls of candy, marshmallows and pretzels.

A few weeks later, for Christmas in Atlanta, I told the girls they could each invite 2 friends and we'd host a gingerbread house party, all the age groups together. I constructed 9 graham cracker gingerbread houses with Royal icing ahead of time, so they'd have time to dry and be stable. We put the leaf in the kitchen table and set up for the party. We set out dishes of every colorful small candy we could think of, along with tootsie rolls, pretzels, fruit loops, coconut, strawberry licorice, candy canes, spearmint leaves... and gum drops. The kids each decorated their own house and ate their fill of candy. All I served was punch to drink.

It was always an all girl party, until later in high school when Kelly started inviting her boyfriend (now husband) and his friends. These kids continued this party even through college! One of the friends even commented about it last week on FB! I know it's a fond Christmas memory for them as it is for me.

So... for Carter's first Christmas, this weekend I am making him a graham cracker gingerbread house. Maybe he can invite a friend over, ha! I'm sure he'll enjoy chewing on graham crackers while his Mom, his Auntie Alex and I decorate and eat candy. It will be the first annual for Carter! Next year Baby M will come. I hope the same happy Christmas memories can continue through the years for all my grandbabies...

Traditions are the best, keep them alive!
GolfGal

every boy needs a train set

"Hey Hattie, whatya got there?"

The $2.00 train set I bought at a garage sale last summer.
All of the pieces are intact. Quite the steal!

"Choo choo"

"hmmm, what do I do with this?"

Of course... first in the mouth,

and then the train too!

Carter just happened to be wearing the right outfit that day,

or maybe his outfit made me think of it and go find it, ha!

We didn't get very far in setting up the track or the train.
No wonder... it does say 3+ years. So, we put it away to try again next year.

Don't worry C,
Santa has some age appropriate gifts for you on his sleigh. Just you wait!

HoHoHo!