Wall Decal Giveaway - By The Design Girl

The Design Girl is having a great giveaway for a wall decal of a chicken! How cute for a Kitchen, Mud porch, kids room I mean the possibilities are endless. So go on over there leave some love and enter into the giveaway. You only have until December 7th.

Thanksgiving...Christmas Tree...Ornament Wreath...Weekend Recap

The visit with family was way too short! I miss being able to see our family as often as we did when we lived in the same state! Oh, how I hope we get orders back to Virginia. Anyways, we went to dinner at Lambert's in Alabama on Wednesday night. Here's all of us!
 

 Always a lot of fun when we are together. And now it's even better that there are 3 ladies!

E's mom and I are no longer out numbered!

And because it's mandatory to have a picture of your thanksgiving table here's mine :)

Yea, that's right I never got a table cloth...I'll hit up the sales after the season to be better prepared for next year. E cooked all the food with a little assistance from the rest of us. The only thing that kind of went bad for a minute was the mashed potatoes had too much milk...but because I love to cook from the box...had instant mashed potatoes so we just added a little and then it was perfect!

Mandatory family shot! except I don't have a tripod or anything like that so my camera is on the dog crate! We make do.

We didn't go shopping on Black Friday much to my displeasure. No one wanted go and it's just not the same if you go alone. We did venture out later on Friday because we needed to get a car top carrier for the trip home this Christmas. But I don't count that as real shopping. Everyone left on Saturday morning and it was quiet again. So we headed out to the store to pick up some Christmas lights and a few other decorations and started decorating. Here's our little tree. Because we are going home again we are putting off getting a real tree again till next year. Perhaps one day I'll be able to decorate a full sized tree!

I saw this on a couple of different blogs. The first one was Eddie Ross and he made it look so easy and simple so I wanted to try it. I've seen a couple of other blogs who had done it and no one seemed to say anything about the difficulty of retwisting the wire. Until I just read this one at Thrifty Decor Chick. I wish I would have seen her's first. But let me back track for a moment. The wreath is made out of ornaments and a wire coat hanger. So you untwist the coat hanger to get the ornaments on and then at the end you are supposed to twist it back again. This was pretty much impossible, I must have had the thickest dry cleaning hanger ever. I ended up using hot glue and a little prayer that it doesn't come crashing down. So far so good.

I got the ribbon and silver door hanger from the dollar tree and spent $8 on the ornamnets.

I'd love to make more I just need to find a different kind of wire. :)

In The Company Of Dogs

It's nothing new that I Love my animals. My MIL brought a magazine with her that she thought I would appreciate. It's called, In The Company of Dogs. It has some great things I would buy them and it has some crazy things I would never purchase but I sure some dog lovers with lots of money do. One item I really want to get them but am patiently waiting for them to get over the whole chewing everything because i'm teething stage is a new bed....like this one

I think this is pretty great but I'm not sure how long it would last being inflatable and all.

Now, on to the slightly impractical items...don't get me wrong if you own any of these things for your pets i'm not judging. Because if I had billions of dollars there would be nothing stopping me from buying any and everything for these little rascals.

These food dishes start at $39.95 and increase to $89.95!

Now, this is totally something useful in Florida because we have prickers/sticker (don't know the real name for them) PAINFUL little balls of thorns. When I walk the dogs I have to make sure they don't spend too much time in the grass otherwise I spend a good amount of time picking these painful things out of there paws. Yup, I think other dogs may laugh at mine as we walk by and the other dog owners may scoff at me and my pups with their boots...but the last laugh is on them cause we're not hurt by prickers!

Needless to say, the pups aren't getting that lucky this Christmas but it's a great website/catalog and it's a lot of fun to look at.

Vinegar Cleans Anything!

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. It all started when we got our sofa's from lay-z-boy and got the five year warrenty with it. I have a cat that likes to have hairballs every once and a while in the most incovenient places...ie the sofa. This is a great idea if you are buying any furniture anytime soon. If pretty much anything happens to the sofa they will come out and clean/fix it for free. Minus the $65 at the time of purchase but we have used the service way more than that price! Yesterday, was the first time it was cleaned here in Florida. The nice older man told me that I did a good thing by purchasing microfiber. (I thought that it was a terrible choice because I can't figure out how to clean it on my own.) He told me that a little vinager mixed with water will get almost any stain out. WHAT?! It's that simple. The only thing not covered on the warrenty is general dirt. Lame. But if you just spilled a little OJ on it and claimed that then they'd have to clean it - therefore getting rid of the dirt. Not that I did that...however, I did think that after they informed me they wouldn't clean the dirt off from the puppies. Because the in-laws are coming on Wednesday morning I got to work on the first sofa. Let me tell you it looks like a brand new sofa! I am so excited! Because I was so excited about getting started I didn't take before pictures. So only I know the big difference. I am super excited over this because the in-laws are the ones who purchased them for us when we got married and I would be harrassed to no end if they didn't look perfect. .....no it's just a matter of getting the bite marks off the wood foot! Anyone know a remedy for that? Brown marker perhaps.....

Holiday Mail for Heros

This time of years is when the marjority of people find a way to somehow give back to others. So here's another easy chance for everyone to thank a hero. The Red Cross and Pitney Bowes have created a program to send Holiday Mail for Heros! Click the link and you can find out more information.
For those of you who are crafty make a few cards and those of you who aren't a store bought card is just as great. It's really the thought that counts here....not how much money you spend! Here are a few guide lines I have taken stright off the website.

Do...
Sign all cards

Entitle cards “Dear Service Member, Family or Veteran”

Limit cards to 15 per person or 50 for school class or business group

Bundle groups of cards in single, large envelopes (there is no need to include individual envelopes and postage for cards)



Don’t...
Send letters

Include personal information such as home or email addresses

Use glitter – excessive amounts can aggravate health issues of wounded recipients

Include inserts of any kind as they must be removed in the screening process'
 
 
 
Here is the address you can send the cards to until Monday, December 7th!
 
Holiday Mail for Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

You still have two weeks to participate...so why not make someone smile today!

Ornament Giveaway

Leslie at A Blonde Ambition is having a super cute holiday ornament giveaway. You have until December 3rd to enter. So go follow this great girl and of course enter in the giveaway. If you do please leave a comment so I know you're going! Thanks!!!

Like a Kid in a Candy Shop

In preparing for the in-laws to come visit for thanksgiving. I became overly excited about the idea of using the good china we got for our wedding. I am in love with my everyday dishes (from Target) but nothing compares to the way I feel about this china! So in order to really see what I have. Because I only opened the boxes once we moved here and then immediately put it all into the protective holder things. I've never really examined it outside of the showroom. So here is the set up! That really isn't a table cloth...it's a bed sheet. LOL but for the photo it works and I really do want a table cloth that color! Please take note that is my finished chair in the picture. :)

Here is the design...oh it's so pretty.

I don't like that it looks gold in the picture because it's really platinum around the edges. must be the awful lighting we have in this house and of course the camera/camera operator.

So in love!