My favorite Christmas cards

My favorite Christmas cards to send and receive are photo cards! I always send out photo cards and I've been using Shutterfly for as long as I can remember. They offer a great variety of designs, a vast choice of layouts, and have good heavy paper quality, flat or folded cards. Shutterfly is my choice because the site is so user friendly. I can add my photos to the actual card, adjust, crop and see the finished product before ordering. It's so easy!
Here is our last year's card from 2009:The family had all recently been to my niece's Halloween wedding and I loved using a formal and fun photo together on the same card. After all, family times are the best times, right?!

I've already been on the Shutterfly website to preview shop for my 2010 card. I'm just waiting for my perfect family photo! Below are a few of my favorite cards. You can find the entire selection by clicking here!
You can also order the return address labels they offer to match your cards. This year I'm thinking I'll order their personalized gift tags too!
My family has a tradition of printing a calendar for the upcoming year with our important dates and photos on it. Yes... we order it too on Shutterfly!
And... they always have great customer service. They offer specials on photo prints and photo products every month. Right now, for Bloggers, if you write a post on your blog like I've done, you can get 50 free holiday cards of your choice!

I'm heading over to the site now to start on my 2010 card... hope to see you there!
Happy Holidays!

This one or that one? help me!

So we decided we do need a larger rug for the Keeping Room. Although I love the colors of the rug from Home Goods, and of course the price! and the way it matched my chair, I rolled it up to return it. Sigh. I shopped a bit yesterday but came up empty handed. So when I got home I turned to the internet to shop some more. The variety and choice online is so vast! The trouble is you can't really tell the color, you know, the old "color looks different on different monitors" thing. I came up with a way to possibly better tell how the rugs would coordinate with the chair, I made a collage of them together.

Here's the 5x7 too small rug. I can't find it anywhere in 8x10. The brighter blue and greens are so pretty together. I want a patterned rug because I want to re-do my sofa in a solid linen fabric, and want the contrast with my travertine floor. So here are the rugs I found online:

I like this one. navy, bright blues and muted browns.

I also like this one. It has the navy and bright blues, but also a bit of ivory, tan, brown and a sage green. I'm thinking this one may look great with the granite in the kitchen.

I see the sage green and browns in the granite and the tile, and in the rug border.

Hmmm, so which one?

It's all coming together... we're making decisions on our new kitchen

Here's the main prep area of my current kitchen:

Cute yes, but the white cabinetry is showing wear and needs a re-painting. Because the cabinets are 20 years old and not as functional as I'd like, we decided to replace them with new. The same layout, but stained cabinetry to add the warmth of wood, with granite counter tops.

We've chosen the middle stain: Spiced Cider w/ black glaze.

The cabinet tops will be trimmed out with cove molding like this:
This photo is similar to the door style, the color scheme of the wood stain and the granite color with my tiled floor:
And... we're doing a wine bar area similar to this, but with the fridge in the middle and no ice maker or sink. It will be in a coordinating glazed cabinetry. We've chosen the sample "Linen" below.
Here's the granite I fell in love with:
Here it is with the back-splash tile I like:
I'm thinking we'll do this tile by itself for the wine bar, and then add a coordinating marble subway tile above it in the kitchen prep area.

It's all coming together and I love everything we're choosing! My designer has been very patient with me as I add things and take things away. Tweaking, tweaking! We'll get it finalized and ordered next week, and then wait for January for the demolition and install.

It's been a great distraction and has helped keep my mind off my impending VATS surgery that's too quickly approaching on December 2nd.
This is turning out to be a very busy November/December... HHI for Thanksgiving, GradGirl moving back home, surgery and a new kitchen... oh and of course the usual holiday hub-bub of decorating and shopping for Christmas! Yikes, thank goodness for the internet and mail order!

blessings to share with you...

I have some exciting news to share with you... I'm going to be a Grandma again!

We are all so happy! Especially Carter... just look at how excited he is to be a "big cousin"

That's my daughter who's expecting in May. Due date May 20th to be exact, her birthday! Wouldn't that be something! Carter was born on his Mom's birthday remember?!

Here's my new grandbaby

a boy or a girl...we'll have to wait and see

and we are very happy!

here's that rug I promised to show you...

that I bought to go with my newly reupholstered chair.

A great buy from where else? Home Goods of course!

It's so different from anything I've ever had. A bit "mod" even. I wish they had it one size bigger, but I hate to part with it.

What do you think?

I love all the colors, the variations of greens and blues all together.

one project done, check!

This faded red striped chair is back from the Upholstery shop...

and looking all fresh in it's new blue fabric.

The shop I use does great work and I'm very pleased!

But of course, when you start something and change one thing, it leads to more changes. I'm looking at a linen fabric to have them do the red sofa (in the above photo) too. And, I bought a new rug to coordinate with the brighter blue fabric.
Remind me to take a photo of that to show you.
One thing checked off the list with many more to come...

so... remember back in May...

We moved GradGirl to Savannah,

well, good thing I still wear this hat:

because she got a new job and is moving back to Atlanta! Hooray!

I'm searching for condo's for her to rent.

Gotta find a great pup friendly place for her and Greyson. I'll be a bit busy previewing for the next few days. Wish me luck!