A Special Sunday Surprise!

It's Monday! Time to wake up and get the day started! This was a weekend I wish never had to end. Two wonderful days. Not only did I have a great Saturday at two craft fairs with some special ladies but then my husband surprised the kids and I with a lovely day planned for Sunday.  Now understand that he loves doing things and going most places but usually I am the one who does the planning. Always! and that's fine cause I love to plan but what a super surprise when I found out he made a whole plan for our Sunday including reservations without ever mentioning it to me! It just made it even more special!

When I came home from the craft fairs on Saturday, he met me at the house from one of his appointments and we did a lil' Christmas shopping. At dinner he told Billy, Caitlin, and I to be ready in the morning to pick out our Christmas tree and then have brunch at The Three Village Inn with Santa!  This is a special event that is just amazing and  one of my favorite places to go but it's like a special occasion type place! The Inn is from 1751, so of course it's everything I love, and it was beautifully decorated.                                                                              

Carolers walked through the dining rooms singing Christmas songs and we had a beautiful table right next to the fireplace!

Oh my goodness the brunch was amazing! Everything from breakfast foods to a carving station and seafood! 

Santa came from table to table and chatted with all the families. 

Here are some photos of the Inn. It's such a beautiful place to visit and it's not far from from my home at all.

This is the foyer and they have antiques displayed and lots of Christmas greens made the room smell so heavenly!

My son enjoyed himself and even let me take a few pictures with him in them! Yippee!

Just a wonderful brunch!

After the brunch we took a walk through Stonybrook village which had more carolers, some Christmas characters and beautiful manger scenes.

 We stayed for a bit and then took a short walk by the water because it was VERY COLD! and windy too!

Before we went to the Three Village Inn, we did get our Christmas tree and when we got home we decorated the tree for the rest of the evening. 

It was such a magical day and I thank my husband, who is one of the hardest working men you'll ever meet, for planning this special day for us! As for my wonderful Saturday at the craft fairs, well I'll show you all my great goodies next post! Hope your day is filled with Christmas spirit!

Saturday is Here!

 Three Cheers! Saturday is here! Christmas is getting closer so it's going to be a busy weekend. I had hung the plaque below that I got from Lancaster and I wanted to show you how lovely it looks! It has a little sparkle to it in person so just imagine...sparkle, sparkle, sparkle.....

I realized I still had a couple of Christmas thrift store items to show you but I didn't get to photograph them yet. Maybe next post. I am looking forward to some craft fair shopping today. There are signs for them on every corner. I can't wait. Even if I don't buy everything, I love seeing new ideas. I love the creativity.

We may be getting the live tree this weekend too! We'll see, we'll see! That's what makes Saturdays fun...anything can happen!

I was at Walmart last week and was able to add to my mitten collection! I know lots of people make fun of Walmart but all I know is I find some good stuff there!  This below is my mitten tree. It's to dry your hats and mittens out when they are wet and I keep it by my front door next to the little stove heater. I also use it to hold mitten ornaments and I keep my eyes open for new ones.  I found a couple at Dollar Tree that I haven't hung yet. My son said they look like little boxing gloves!

Below is the Santa's workshop my Dad made for me. I show it every year on my blog cause I love it so. It'll be ten years since my Dad passed away and I treasure this little workshop. He made the furniture, the shelves, the structure and I added the details.

Dad made the fireplace and the map. It's Santa's workshop so he must plot his course of where he is headed. On the desk below are letters he still has to read. My Dad said Santa smoked a pipe so his pipe and tobacco are on the mantle.

The workshop area is filled with toys being made and wrapped. A tool bench with tools (Dad made all that too) A jar of candy canes on the table for a snack and kitty playing with some Christmas lights.

Bicycles, sleds, teddy bears, dolls, tops, checkers all for a good little boy or girl... Maybe I'll find some more goodies to add to it at the craft fairs.

Before I go and get ready to leave for my shopping, here's one more wonderful thing that happened this week:

See those three brown eggs? Those are three of the SIX that my Frankie laid this week! Six days out of seven she laid an egg! They are smaller than your regular egg cause she's a silkie chicken but phenomenal they are! Yes I said phenomenal! Frankie eggs! I'm so proud of her.

Caitlin and I are making 7-UP biscuits later. Ever hear of them? I read they are super good. I'll let you know! Have a great day!

Christmas Came Early For Me!

Oh what fun I had with my friend at the thrift shop the other day! I always seems to have good luck when I go with her. She's my lucky charm I guess! We both got some good stuff! She was able to find some items for her daughter's log cabin weekend house--perfect! And I found a bunch of Christmas items, some retro, some not, that I just loved. My favorite is the vignette in the Christmas ball above. I just love it so much and decided to display it on a crystal pedestal that I added some glitter snow to. Here's an up close pic. It's pretty large. My favorite find of the day! Reminded me of some of our blogger friends' projects!

There were so many good things and the prices were perfect! $2 each for these cookie jars:

A musical Teddy Bear! He spins to the music and works perfectly. $2

A smaller ceramic light up for $2. What a bargain.

More great stuff!

And the items below were all $1 or less! 

                                                   

And last but not least, this homemade reindeer who stared at me the whole time I shopped and was sending me silent messages saying "please buy me, please buy me." okay, sure! hop in! 

When I woke up this morning, I was still  excited about my goodies. Sometimes I wonder how people can part with homemade goods from relatives. So many of the things I buy that are homemade and older remind me of my relatives that loved doing crafts who are no longer with us. I miss them so much.When I see things with colorful beads or beaded ornaments I think of my Aunt Jean. When I see afghans I think of my Grandma and her sisters who made them. Everyone made granny square afghans! My Mom made them too but can no longer hold the crochet needle due to arthritis. These items are treasures! 

If you've gone to Dollar Tree lately, they have had some unique stuff. I found these "chalkboard tags". I'm probably not going to use them for Christmas gifts but I was thinking of tagging different mason jars with them throughout the whole year. Even if you filled a mason jar with Christmas greens and ornaments, you could add a chalkboard tag that says "Seasons Greetings" or something....They are shaped like a plaque--not a sled. In the picture it looks like a sled...that's just cardboard holding them in and it even came with chalk. 

Our elf on the shelf, Merry, has found some unique spots to hang out....Caitlin has been good this year (well, for the most part...) so she should get just about everything she has asked for.

I bought this decoration  below at KMart to hang in the hallway by my back door since that is the door our friendly raccoon, Miss Raccoonie, comes to at night for her dinner...for the last five years! Seriously. She's our polite raccoon friend who waits patiently on the rear porch for her dinner. Then she quietly eats and goes away till the next night. She sits in the same spot and looks at us through the full view glass door until her dinner is ready. She's very sweet. Like me, she's turning gray now :) she's raised three litters of babies over our five years together though her babies, once grown, didn't stay here to eat. Just her. We're friends!

Have a happy day wherever you are!

Loving Red & White Lights!

Yep, that would be me above ...wrapping a couple gifts. I'm trying to keep on top of things because I can get all caught up in the little details of Christmas and then have anxiety when I haven't done everything I needed to do. Not this year! Believe it or not, although I didn't do the black Friday thing I have a good amount of gifts already. I'm trying to wrap them as I go along. And even better, I am just about done with the Christmas decorating! I can't completely finish until we get our live tree and we decorate it! One for the family room and one for the front porch. But as for the other decorating in the house, I am just about finished! With Halloween and fall, I am decorating all month. It never ends.I love it so I am constantly adding, tweaking, changing...I'm decorating to the very last day but no more. Oh no! I'm gonna be done and enjoy it!

This year I added red and white lights to some indoor areas like over my kitchen sink and I am so crazy about it! I wish you could see the photo better but it's cheery and warm at the same time. I just want to put red and white lights everywhere!

The kids decorated our gingerbread tree in the foyer and I did a peppermint tree in the kitchen with all ornaments that are white and red. I have to photograph it all. Woo I was so tired from celebrating Thanksgiving and I haven't taken enough pictures yet. What a busy week. When I last left you I was baking cookies for Thanksgiving and some for the neighbors too. 

They came out yummy!

 On Monday night, my Girl Scout troop (well some of them) went to Camp Edey to decorate our donation tree. We did a theme of "baby" hoping that the items on the tree for babies would then be added to the donations for the needy.

Our tree was filled with booties, baby hats, little blankets, teethers, bibs, etc. Lots of good stuff! Trying to show the girls that community service or just the act of "service" is so important.Caitlin is in the blue jacket giggling....

Hope all is well for all of you! Sending hugs and blessings!

Pre Thanksgiving Fun Stuff

Tuesday morning bright and early! Almost turkey time! I'm going to be as productive as I can be today preparing for the big day. First on my list is cookies. I'm making three kinds--chocolate chip, chocolate, chocolate chip and peanut butter and I want to do them early, then it's on to my sweet potato casserole! 

In my last post I mentioned that Caitlin and her friend Ashley would be making Christmas ornaments and bowl fillers. Several of you mentioned or emailed me about the recipes I use so here you are:

Cinnamon Scented Salt Dough:  1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup cinnamon, 3/4 cup very warm water. Roll out and make shapes! You do not have to bake this; you can let it air dry overnight but if you want to be able to paint them or decorate them you can bake at 200 degrees for a little bit.
I use the cinnamon scented one as bowl fillers. I do barn stars and mini mittens. They make the house smell wonderful! I use mini cookie cutters for these.

Ashley and Caitlin did both ornaments and bowl fillers. I use a small straw to poke a hole for the string. they made quite a few cause I doubled the recipe but mostly had fun just playing with the dough! Here is the recipe for regular white salt dough:  2 cups flour,1 cup salt, 1 cup water. This little project can keep kids (and us adults!) busy for hours! I had other little things for them to do like paint some plaster ornaments and I had a Christmas movie with puppies...NOPE! They loved just making shapes and creating!

I've been going through some Christmas boxes as I plan to set upsome this weekend...except for my live tree of course. A little sad to see the leaves and pumpkins go in boxes but so much fun to the elves and snowflakes and other  Christmas decorations.
 My son and husband did the last of the leaves in our yard over the weekend...That's the rear of my house and my shed. 63 bags of leaves! And it was the second time they had tackled them. Now it's nice and clean and neat and ready for the snow! We are supposed to get some on Wednesday.

Carol the rooster was walking around supervising to make sure they did a good job. He's such a task master!

Here is my son taking a break. So hard to get a picture of him as he always says no! I got two :) I'm fast!

I let the bunnies out of the coop as well to run around. Even though the coop is large and they have loads of space it's still fun for them to run around outside around the outside of the coop. They like to dig holes and run in the grass. I took one out at a time but the funny thing was as each one had his turn, the others were upset that the other was out and would go crazy trying to see their brother! (They actually are all brothers)--Chestnut, Bandit and Lucky. Below is Bandit (the white one) and Chestnut.  They share the coop with Carol and Frankie and Carol was supervising them as well.

 Carol and Frankie were content just walking around pecking the dirt and watching Dad and Billy! But Carol would chase the bunnies like a shepherd if he thought they were getting a little too frisky!

We received this great box of candy as a gift yesterday for Thanksgiving. Did you ever see such a big box of Whitmans? Caitlin thought it was the greatest thing!

Before I go, just a reminder before the holiday season begins to enjoy it because it goes by so quickly!

But most of all don't lose sight of  the real reason to celebrate and be thankful....

Have a wonderful day!