a perfect way to start the holiday season.

{...Love these men...}

Day 4: It was SO wonderful to watch the Christmas devotional and to hear the inspiring messages from the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I absolutely love Christmas music so it was great to listen to the songs performed by the Mormon Tabernacle choir and Orchestra at Temple Square. The messages and songs helped me remember the real reason for the season of Christmas. It allowed me to think about all the gifts and blessings I have been given from my Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ. More importantly, I was able to think about what I can do personally during Christmas time to repay the GIVERS of those gifts. 

oh Christmas tree :)

Day 3: I had never had the experience to actually go "hunting" for a Christmas tree in the woods. Well, I will never get to say that again because today that is exactly what we did. We {my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, Paul, and myself} drove up to the top of a mountain to find our Christmas tree. It was so much fun to walk around trying to find that one of a kind tree just for us. There were lots to choose from, and I mean LOTS! 

After looking around a bit, we finally picked out the perfect tree. This is when the boys got to show off their muscles and use a hand saw to cut down the tree. Since this was a first for me, they let me help with the cutting a little bit...until they realized that I wasn't making any progress and I gladly turned the job back over to them. After cutting it down, all we had to do was drag it to the truck, put it in the truck and drive home. It was such a neat experience and something I definitely recommend :)  

Now the only thing left to do is decorate the tree!!!

busy day.

Day 2:
Today was SUPER busy day. I had to work {clean someone's house} in the morning and I just got off my closing shift at Big 5...whew! I knew that today would be jammed packed full of stuff, so I planned for my daily DO-SOMETHING-CHRISTMAS to be cute, simple and fun. I wanted to get out some Christmas decorations and put them in our bedroom, but I quickly remembered that our Christmas stuff is in a box packed way away. So instead I found something else that would make do. I looked on pinterest and found some amazing Christmas printables and knew immediately that they would be a wonderful Christmas treat for all to see. I framed {...so lucky I found some extra frames laying around...} the printables, added a festive candle holder and strand of Christmas lights ANDDDDD there you have it folks...my cute, simple and fun Christmas decorations. 

{Printables found here and here.}

December FIRST

The first day of December is finally here! HIP HIP HOORAY! I am always so excited for the month of Christmas {...and my birthday...} and this year I have decided to do something that will bring even more Christmas happiness into this wonderful season. It is kind of like an advent calendar BUT in blogging form. I am trying to do one thing each day to help me get ready for the holidays and spread the joy of Christmas AND THEN I'll blog about it :)

DAY 1: I decided that since I work in retail I needed some Christmas bling/jewelry to wear to work. I wanted to make some cutesy earrings so I went looking for some ideas online. I found this button Christmas tree ornament and I fell in love with it. I was so excited to re-create it, but making it into an earring NOT an ornament. It was relatively easy to make the earrings and the list of supplies is not that long. All you need is LOTS of  green buttons, a few brown buttons, star buttons, craft wire, silver fish hook earrings, and a good pair of pliers {I raided my husband's tool box}. I found all of the supplies at Jo-Ann's, with the exception of my mother-in-law letting me take a few buttons from her so I would have more of a selection. Once you decide what order you want the buttons in, just thread the wire through the buttons, secure the wire to the earring hook and you're good to go. You now have an awesome pair of earrings to wear to all your Christmas parties :)

{I love my new Christmas tree earrings!!!}

I was only going to make one pair of earring BUT I basically ran right into this second project. When I went to Jo-Ann's to stock up on green buttons, the Christmas light bulbs literally jumped out at me. They were so cute I just couldn't pass them up. I quickly saw that there was already a loop to attach the light to an earring hook so I made my way to the jewelry section of the store, picked out some GOLD earring hooks and with a good pair of pliers and a few good tugs I had myself THREE sets of Christmas light bulb earrings. I'm in Christmas earring heaven right now :)

{As you can tell, I got a little carried away editing this picture on picnik}

CHECK HOW MANY DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS :)

One last thing, DON'T FORGET TO BRING YOUR JO-ANN'S COUPONS WHEN YOU GET YOUR SUPPLIES!!!

ps.

Here's a birthday 

shout-out to my beautiful and AMAZING

sister who turned 22 last Friday!!!

Happy 

Birthday 

Whitney

I LOVE YOU!!!

holiday spirit.

{My favorite place in the whole wide world!!!}

I SURVIVED ANOTHER BLACK FRIDAY WORKING IN RETAIL!!! I'm happy to report that I only had to deal with like THREE mean customers. It was a pretty crazy day to say the least, but it sure got me in the holiday spirit :) I love working at Big 5 during the holidays because I get paid to listen to Christmas music!!! Seriously, life could not get better.

Meanwhile, if I'm not working I can be found here...

{Santa's Workshop...the presents are already starting to pile up!!!}

Yes, I'm spending lots of time in Santa's workshop and I love it :) My goal this year is to have most of my Christmas gifts for everyone HANDMADE. I figured since I have a sewing machine I better put it to good use. And I have lots and lots of fun fabric that needs to be used as you can see in the picture above. I'm finding lots of the tutorials and patterns for my gifts on Pinterest. I don't know what I would do without Pinterest...probably have lots and lots of free time!!! Anyway, it's been a really good learning experience for me to use what little sewing knowledge I have and also to learn lots of new things about sewing. I have made some really silly mistakes...like attaching the interfacing to the WRONG side of the fabric {OOPS} and stitching a pocket CLOSED when it is supposed to be open {thank goodness for a seam-riper}. But from those mistakes I learn so so SO much. I'm really excited to sew and I'll put up pictures of the things I make AFTER Christmas. Just in case, certain people are blog stalking me :) Christmas is supposed to be about surprises, right???

I hope everyone is getting in the holiday spirit!