The Holidays

Well, I have no excuses....other than work and prepping for our first Christmas in the cabin (actually, our first time hosting Christmas EVER).  The shopping/crafting/wrapping has been done for about a week or so.  But work has been busy and stressful.  The tree skirt looks great, the presents are sitting and waiting, and the Xmas Crackers are tempting me daily to pull and POP! one.  :)

Tomorrow I make an early run to (the dreaded) Wal-Mart for a few necessities and lots of food for the weekend.  We are having a Winter Solstice Party (aka End of the Mayan Calendar Party) Friday night.  Then Saturday is brunch then an 'early' Christmas Eve Party.  Lots of fun food, prizes and crafts/fun things to do.  The Xmas Fairy has been busy...

Lon has assembled a fantastic bunch of holiday movies to run with or without sound while we play and celebrate.  For example, on my two days off last week we watched the Christmas classic, Gremlins.  Yes...think hard, it WAS a Christmas movie.  Billy got Gizmo for his Christmas present and all hell breaks loose after the midnight snacks and late night swim at the Y.  We also have such favorites as Elf, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Year Without a Santa Claus, The Santa Clause, Fred Claus, Scrooged, and E.T....just to name a few.

Besides, we have Pandora for excellent mixes of Christmas music (I highly recommend creating a Jack Johnson Holiday station...most chill and excellent) and some fun mix CDs from years past.  Thank you, Kris, for one of my faves...The Girls Do Christmas.  Best take home party gift ever!  :)

After my Wal-Mart run, I come back home to prep some goodies (Vegetarian Sausage Balls) for our work Holiday Party, clean the house for weekend company, go to said party, prep weekend party fixins and find time to relax during my first off day this week...ha!

I am very much looking forward to hosting our first Christmas, but wish I hadn't had to work right up until the day before.  Such is life.  And it will all get done and I'll have so much fun once everyone is here.  It's really been so nice NOT to stress about the holidays and only have to stress about work.  Oh yeah, and the gray squirrels that have apparently taken up residence between our ceiling and roof (we have no attic...they had to have eaten a path out of the insulation.)  But have no fear, we have someone coming tomorrow afternoon to rid us of the rodents and hopefully patch up their entryway!  If we had an attic, I wouldn't be as surprised, but our ceiling is directly under the roof...crazy.  The life of a log cabin owner...we learn new things everyday.

Anyway, sorry for taking so long to post.  I do have pics to post, but the phone-to-laptop cable is downstairs and I am upstairs...maybe after the holidays I'll have time to post more frequently...and maybe I'll have a new phone-to-laptop cable.  :D

Hope you all have a Happy Christmas, Merry Hanukkah, Blessed Kwanzaa and a Freakin' Awesome New Year!!!

After Pics and Xmas Crafts

Work has been crazy...sorry for the delay in 'after' pics of the painting project.  I love my new champagne cork door knobs, too!

This looks SOOOO much better!

Mom's favorite (Martini & Rossi Asti Spumante) corks

Ahhh, so nice to get a project done.

Also been working on some very fun holiday crafts for decorating and gift-giving.  Here is my burlap and satin tree skirt...finally finished!

Pinterest Craft #1, Finished skirt...finally!

Finished skirt in its rightful place...yay for presents!

Pinterest Craft #2, cheap glass ornaments from Hobby Lobby with paint on the inside (paint on the outside of a couple, too).  Very fun to make!

Pinterest Craft #3, birdseed ornaments.  These are hanging in my trees all over the yard, sans cookies cutters, of course.

Pinterest Craft #4, my adorable little cork trees (before trunks).

After trunks (from the yard).  I only decorated the one...I like it, but I like the natural ones, too!

And I had one craft FAIL:

Toilet paper roll snowflakes

No biggie...I am making homemade Christmas Crackers this year and my trial cracker was fantastic!  At least I've got a fun use for the rest of the paper rolls I've saved!  :)  

Happy Holidays!

Burlap Bubble Wreath

Like I said, I found this on Pinterest and loved it!  You could use it year-round and add greenery, flowers, decor as the seasons change.  I kind of like it nice and natural.  It was so much fun to do.

Supplies:
14" straw wreath (they suggested 10" foam, but it was way more expensive!  And straw is renewable and recyclable.)
Burlap (about 2 yards cut into 4" squares)
Lots of 'big head' pins (I used the straight pins with the different colored balls on top from my sewing stuff.)

Basically you fold the square into a triangle by pulling two opposite corners together.  Then take your right corner and pull it around to the front and take your left corner and pull it around to the back.  Stick your pin straight through where all four corners are flat against each other and pin.  Repeat.   A lot.  And that's it!  :)

The tutorial I used is probably much easier to understand.  She took a lot of good pics and I was just having too much fun to stop and use the camera.  :)

From the beginning...

Straw wreath ($3.99 @ Hobby Lobby)

Lots of burlap 'bubbles' (Burlap $3.99/yd @ Hobby Lobby)

Almost finished...

I'm done!  I finished last night, but didn't take any good finished pics until this morning.  I don't like this orange-y light.

Hanging on the front door.

Behind screen door.

Yay!  Finished product!

Back side...since the back will show when our shades are open, I may cover this with a little more burlap.  Or maybe not.  See all my pins?  

Cutest Xmas Pic!

Okay...here's my fave Christmas pic taken this year...this is my brand new niece, Ava. And yes, Aunt Rachel did make her that awesome onesie! :) She wouldn't let go of my fingers....

And here's another sweet one...She's a cutie, isn't she?

'She's Crafty...'

(Cue Beastie Boys...)
Been out of school for a week now and on my off days I've been working on gifts and fun stuff. Made several hemp necklaces this week and yesterday was Tie Dye Day. I made 17 different items! A few didn't turn out like I wanted, but I was trying some new techniques...they still need work. Some of them came out great, too! I'll post pics of them later this week. Going into work tonight for a 1/2 shift so I'm trying to get some HH chores done before then. Here are some pics of the hemp pieces. I've got two with the funky little mushrooms, one with mood beads and one with glass beads. One has some cool bone beads...all of them were fun to make. Some are gifts, some are mine. Looking forward to some family time these next few weeks...hope you have a wonderful holiday!

What a slacker!

Yep, that's right. On Wednesday I hung out with Lon, made some hemp necklaces, did some holiday baking, watched a movie (Toy Story 3...another great addition to the franchise!), and just relaxed. But don't worry...I printed off all of my review guides for the final and I'll be working on those this weekend.
Today I'm working and will be decorating my little cubby on our departmental Christmas 'tree'. One of the ER RN's made it...basically a large wooden tree-shaped piece with little cubby sections all the way around. I meant to get around to doing some more tie dye this week (Wednesday would've been perfect...oh well) so I could have a super groovy cubby. But I can always change it up next week.
Not much else to report...Final is on Monday, clinical eval is Tuesday morning and then we're out until January 13th. It's here, it's here...it's finally almost here!

Christmas Favor

I have a little holiday request...everyone thinks of 'spring' cleaning, but what about 'winter' cleaning? If you go through your closets and find sweaters, clothes, jackets, blankets, shoes, etc. that you haven't used/worn in a while, maybe think of donating those to your local community kitchen. During our Psych rotation we visited the Chattanooga Community Kitchen. They are providing an amazing service to those in need. Not only do they supply nourishing meals during the day, but they have a foot care clinic, showers and lockers (for stashing your belongings so you can go on a job interview), resume, computer and skill classes, fun things for kids to do, etc. So maybe while you're fishing out all of those Christmas decorations, if you come across some things someone else might be able to use, toss them in a box/bag and deliver them to your local community kitchen/shelter.
Don't forget about leisure time, too...if you have books, magazines, games, cards, whatever collecting dust, they can use those too! Our local kitchen provides Christmas/Santa to the children who are without and also stockings to the adults (new socks, underwear, toiletries, t-shirts, etc.) Just an idea...feels good to clean out closets, too! Helps you, helps them. It's a win-win!