Christmas Decorating 2015

Anyone else feel like they just put last years Christmas decorations away?

Yea?

Me too!

But, here we are again with another edition of Christmas decorations in the Turner house.  The reason I started taking pictures of my decorations was so I could look back on them when decorating for the new year and remember what I liked/didn't like from the previous year.  I've yet to actually do that so each year is a new adventure of trying to find the perfect place for decorations.

Some things never change, like my trees for instance.  I always have the big tree in the family room; that's the only room it will fit, and I always have a tree in the living room.  The kids get trees in their bedrooms and I started last year putting a tree in our master bedroom.

This is the big tree that goes in the family room each year.  I've been adding ornaments to it every year and I love how it is starting to fill up.  I remember when we first bought this tree, we didn't hardly have any ornaments and it looked so bare.

This tree is one that I got from goodwill last year.  I bought it because my son and his wife wanted a different tree but it was too tall for their ceilings.  So, it just had to come home with me.  For the past several years I had my husbands family tree that his parents gave to me in this room but it has gotten so old and every year would lose more and more needles that it was time for it to retire.

This tree holds all the ornaments that belong to my husband and myself.  I buy ornaments from any vacations we go on and those also go on this tree.

This is my daughter's tree.  She had a 7' tree for her room originally but felt it had taken up too much room so I got her this little 4' one a couple years ago.

It holds all the ornaments from her childhood that were given to her or that she made.

{My youngest son had not put up his tree as of this post so I'll have to add that one later.}

The tree that I put in the master bedroom was our family tree when my oldest son was little.  It's only 5' tall so as he grew bigger, the tree got smaller and smaller.  I think it's a perfect size for our master.

This tree has become the owl tree in the house.  Which reminds me, I need to hit up the stores for some new owl ornaments for this tree. :)

Other than a few little trees, that's all the trees that we have put up this year.

And now on to the rest of the decorating.

The mantle and fireplace, as always, has gotten a little Christmas cheer.

I have done a little to the breakfast area.  We always put up the window clings and have since the kids were little.  I have the little fiber optic tree in here and the lights around the window are blue.  It is so peaceful in the kitchen during the wee morning hours before the sun comes up. I love the serenity of it while I'm having my morning coffee.  Do you think I could get away with leaving the blue lights up all year?

I am using the entryway table to display my nutcracker collection this year.  Last year I had them on the floor in front of the table and one of the cats would knock them over.  I was afraid they would get broken so they had to come up off the floor.

This is a close up of my collection so far.

I made this advent calendar for this year.  I love how it turned out.  I cut it out with my Cricut and got the svg files from svgcuts.com.

In the living room I have put my Christmas village.  I actually just got most of these pieces.  I happened to find them at Goodwill for like $2 a piece.  I was super excited.

The dining room gets a little touch of Christmas cheer.

And Santa always has a place.

 

Another little table with our nativity scene on it.

I always love this view over the edge from the upstairs hallway.  Forgive the dogs, I tried to get them to move but they weren't listening to me.

Oh well!

That about sums up my decorating for the year.  I hope you enjoyed it!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Kitchen Renovation Part 1

I have been wanting a new kitchen for years and years.

When we bought this house, this is what the kitchen looked like

It was very basic and white.  My other house also had an all white kitchen and at first I loved it.  But after 20 years of having white cabinets, white counter tops, white floor and white appliances; I'm ready for a little color in my life.

Once we got settled, we did get some paint on the walls and the kitchen looked like this.

A few years later, we got new floors and I started putting in black appliances just to get away from everything being white.

 

We changed out the lights and I was happy to live with it like this for awhile. 

However, like all cheaply new built homes, the cabinets are not real wood.  They are particle board with laminate doors.  As you know, cheap things tend to fall apart after many years.  My cabinets were starting to come apart from the wall and the laminate on the doors was starting to peel off.

One day my daughter and I decided to pull it all off the doors and we were going to paint the cabinets.

It then looked like this.

 

Beautiful huh!  Oh, and hubby had already taken off a couple doors so he could start painting them.  I think it was the next day that he mentioned the idea of going ahead and getting the new cabinets and counter tops since painting them would be such a huge job.

So we started shopping around and coming up with ideas.

We finally settled on what we want and they will be delivered Monday!

I am extremely excited.  

I have spent this week clearing out all my kitchen stuff so that we could start tearing everything out this weekend.

Here is where we are now:

  

My kitchen seems so empty.

 

 

We are working on taking the appliances out tonight then tomorrow the cabinets will be coming down.

 

We have set up a "command center" if you will that has paper plates, cups, plastic utensils.  I'll also be able to put my crock pot there because we will be eating lots of crock pot meals over the next few weeks.

 

All of my kitchen stuff has been boxed up and moved to the living room.  I also have a table set up in here that has some things out that we may need.

 

     

I am really excited and can't wait for it to be finished.  I just hope it doesn't take forever!

Wish me luck!

 

 

How to change piping on softball pants

My girlfriend called me the other night, frantic. 

Her daughter, who has been on the JV softball team was asked to play on varsity for the rest of the season. 

Although she was excited for the opportunity, she wasn't excited about the pants her daughter was given. 

She normally wears an adult small but all that was left was an adult LARGE.  The poor child was swimming in them.

So this is what I started with.  Two pairs of old pants with piping that needed to be removed and 2 pairs of brand new pants that the piping needed to be taken off and sewn onto the old pants.

Oh, and she needed them the next day.  Nothing like a rush job, huh!

 

 

As soon as my kids got off to school, I started by removing the piping from the old pants.  Once you get started ripping the stitches out, it moves fairly quickly.

 

Luckily, the stitches weren't really tiny so they came off fairly easy.

 

 

Once the piping was removed for all pants, I lined up the new piping on the old pants and pinned it down.  

 

 

Sewing was a bit tricky because I don't have a commercial machine.  I used my old, heavy duty machine and removed the storage compartment from the front leaving the sewing surface smaller.  

I needed to have as little a surface to get the leg of the pants over as possible.

 

 

I then just did a straight stitch down the length of the piping.  In this case, I used cold thread with white bobbin thread over the gold part and burgandy thread over that part.  

 

 

See how it bunches when you get to the bottom of the leg?  That's why I removed the storage compartment on the machine.  

 

 

And finished.  They turned out fine.  Thankfully it's only a couple more weeks she will have to wear them and as long as they are the right color, she will fit in.

 

 

Now her mom just needs to get all those stains out :)

 

 

I didn't think this project would have taken me most of the day but somehow it did.  Taking out stitches is very time consuming.

But it's done and I'm glad to be able to use my skills to help out friends.  Maybe one day I can teach her how to sew.  

Fudge Brownies

 

My husband (and my daughter) love brownies. I usually buy the box mix and Tastefully Simple sells a great one. 

But, sometimes, when I don't have one on hand; I needed to find a quick and easy recipe to make brownies.

The hubs and daughter have been pressure washing the deck all day.  I thought a batch of brownies would be nice for them when they came in. I found this recipe, which got great reviews, so I had to give it a try.

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:
Combine sugar, flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder.

Stir in eggs, oil, and vanilla until combined.

Spread batter into greased 9x9 baking pan.

Bake at 350* for 25 to 30 minutes.

Enjoy!!

Recipe adapted from food.com

Fall Decorating

Where has summer gone? I mean, seriously; it seems like the kids just got out of school and here we are 1 1/2 months into another school year. Monday is the first day of fall.

Monday!

While fall isn't my favorite season, it kicks off a season of decorating that I absolutely love. 

I worked last week to get the house ready for fall and wanted to share what I did.

I have progressively gotten more fall time decorations over the past few years.

I have had these fun guys for several years, I love having them hang out in the dining room each year.

The coffee table has gotten more decorating this year than ever before. 

That's pretty much the extent of my fall decorating. It'll stay like this until Thanksgiving where it will be packed away to make room for the boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations that I own. I keep saying I'm going to downsize one year but that never seems to happen. 

Baseball Weekend

It's been a couple years since we have spent most of our weekends at the ball field.  The youngest played rec league this Spring and after it was over he tried out for a travel team to play with during the Summer.  He was really wanting to get on a team that offered a little more competition and a little more training.

So, this has been our 3rd weekend playing, I think we only have 1 more tournament to go then it will be over until the Fall, when we get back into it.

Years ago Zachary was a catcher and then he played mostly 2nd base, short stop or pitcher.  He hasn't been the catcher on a team for a number of years.  Until this season.  He got to get his old catcher gear out and give it a shot.  Apparently it's just like riding a bicycle because he seemed to pick up right where he left off.

Let's step back in time a little bit to his very first time catching.

 

I mean, the gear practically covers his entire body.  He was certainly protected.

It's been nice to see him geared up behind the plate again.

See all that mud around home plate?  Thankfully he managed to actually stay pretty mud-free.  I don't know how, but he did.

We played 3 games this weekend.  They were all early in the day so we had the afternoon free, which is always nice.  We didn't win any of the games but we got lots of playing time, had fun and I got a nice suntan.  

And, those things are the most important part. Right?