The Beginning of a New Year

When January comes around and it's time to take down the Christmas decor, I'm never ready for the house to go back to normal yet. So a few years ago I started collecting wintery, non-Christmas snowman decor to put up for January. It's always the coldest, most winter-like month in Florida so I think it's fitting. I don't have nearly as much of it as I do Christmas and Fall decor, but I still enjoy putting it up.

Look closely and you'll notice that even the front magazine in the basket has a snowman on it. : )

A couple of weeks ago I was doing some cleaning and organizing and came across this blue blanket that was one of my baby blankets so Idecided to put it out with blue-winter stuff.

The snowflake is a cookie cutter I got on clearance after Christmas.

I like to switch out the quilts on my ladder with the seasons and for January I use this one that my grandparents made me.

And finally....the front door.

This was another red dress from Nana that she didn't get a chance to wear in December.

One night when I went in to check on her before I went to bed I found her sound asleep like this! I told Robert she probably needed some extra prayer time for some of her naughty behavior that day. : )

I forgot to include Charlie, our newest "animal" addition, to the Christmas pictures. Meemaw and Papaw Cantrell gave him to Halie.

Robert's mom and dad let us borrow their 4-wheeler for awhile and one Saturday morning I went out by myself while Robert stayed with Halie. I came up on the horses out in their pasture and nosy-nib Toothpick had to check everything out.

She always likes to put her nose in your business. : )

I love her eyes.

There's almost always a few deer hanging out in the same spot.

Q-tip and Rita came along too, they love to run alongside while I drive. Q-Tip also loves to aggravate and chase the horses. I don't know how he hasn't gotten himself killed because they're always kicking at him.

Beautiful, sweet, and bossy Toothpick.

My sweet Q.

Rita's getting so big! Most cow dogs are some mixture of Cur dog, but as she's gotten older we've realized she's a Lab/pit bull mix. Hopefully she'll still be a good cow dog. (If I don't spoil her too much in the mean time!) She's just so sweet, it's hard not to.

A Triple Christmas Weekend

Halie and I spent a good part of the day on Christmas Eve making cookies and other Christmas goodies. Here she is wearing her new Christmas apron that Nana D. made her and eating the marshmallows we were using for rice krispie treats.




Stirring the marshmallow mix and the rice krispies.

Making Santa's Favorite Cookies. I gave her a toddler knife and showed her how to spread the peanut butter on the crackers and put them together. She did so well with it and was very intent and serious. She stuck with it until they were all done.

Here we are getting them dipped in chocolate.

Halie was the official sprinkles-putter-on-er. She did great!

Here are the finished products of what we made.

We also did chocolate dipped marshmallows.

And chocolate dipped Rice Krispie treats with green and red candy/chocolate drizzled over them. We packaged them up and used them as stocking stuffers for my family.

FINALLY.....some presents under the tree.

The house lit up with Christmas lights.


Stockings all filled and ready for Christmas morning!

Continuing the tradition of opening stockings on Mommy and Daddy's bed. Do you think she was just a little bit excited to FINALLY be opening her stocking? : ) Her Christmas jammies were from Papaw and Meemaw Cantrell.

Halie with her stash of stocking stuffers.

We forgot to take pictures of Robert and I with our stockings, but here's our stash.

After reading the Christmas story from the Bible it was time to open gifts!

A new wooden block toy from Daddy.

A new blanket that I made her. We took her to JoAnn's Fabrics and she picked out what pattern she wanted a few weeks before and then I hid it away so she'd forget about it and made it during her naptime. You can't really tell in the picture but it has horses on it.

Her main gift from us was a little piano. She seems to have an interest in music and loves to "play" the piano at church when she gets the chance so we got her one to see what she'll do with it.

Our neighbor, Luis, gave us this nice knife set. I've never had a complete set in the 7 1/2 years we've been married, so I was excited! It was completely unexpected of him, but so very nice and thoughtful.

He also gave Halie this really nice toy cash register. She loves it!

Okay, so that was all Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Later in the afternoon we headed over to Hobe Sound to have Christmas with family that evening. We had a fingerfoods type dinner and then the girls opened their stockings and all their gifts. By the time they finished with that it was bedtime for them so we got them tucked in and then did the adults Christmas.

Mom decorated her tree all in red and pink this year. So cute.

Mom even bought the girls matching dresses to coordinate with the tree. : )

Karate Kid Robert, lol

There were also matching jammies that.....surprise.......coordinated with the tree! : ) We DeLamarter women like to stick to a theme.

Time for silly hats. : )

Now time for our goodies!

Mom with the Rice Krispie treats we made.

Okay, so here's the story behind this next succesion of pictures. Mom had two boxes for Dee Dee and I, but she said she couldn't decide who should get which one so she wanted us to draw numbers. Simple enough, right? Wrong! Sibling rivalry kicked in and Dee Dee grabbed BOTH papers before I ever got a chance!

When we finally each got our box, she was still posing and talking and I started ripping into mine so I could see what it was before she did!

Trying to peek to see if her's is better than mine.

Giving each other the"evil eye."

Dee Dee decided to be benevolent and give me the choice of which antique quilt I would like to keep since I'm the one who collects them. Apparantly this is my thinking face.

I decided to keep the one I got and Mom wanted our picture with them, but Dee Dee decided to block me out of the picture!

So I reciprocated. : )

Finally being civilized.

Saturday of that weekend we spent the whole day with Robert's family and did Christmas with them.

We were half way done opening presents before I remembered to take a picture of the tree.

Bubbles from Uncle Brian.
Sunday morning. This cute dress was also one from Great Grandma Staffa. She looked like a little Christmas princess.

Our family.

Sunday afternoon we went to my cousin Cyndi's house for an extended family Christmas and dinner. We carried on our tradition from last year and did another White Elephant gift exchange. I think they're lots of fun. Aunt Becky ended up with a Chinese calendar and some soy sauce. : )

Dee Dee got some LOVELY (not) fake flowers. Martin originally got some Duck Tape, but later Grayden stole it and then Martin got a set of candle holders. Mom got a casserole dish carrier.
Grayden will never be serious for a picture so this is what he gets, lol!

My sweet grandparents. Grandma ended up with a box of chocolates.

When it was my turn I just HAD to know what was in the biggest box!

It was a mini-trampoline for exercising!

Grandpa ended up with mine, it had 4 layers of wrapping paper. : ) It was a picture frame I bought at a thrift store, but then never used.

Cyndi ended up with Robert's gift, an Otter box he didn't want anymore with a watch that he doesn't wear anymore.

Dad wrapped up in some snowy garland he got as his gift. He looked funny with the star right behind his head.

Me and my sweet hubby! His gift was from Grayden and it was a ball throwing toy for dogs.

After the gift exchange we played games and when the kids got up from their naps they did their own white elephant exchange with a toy they didn't play with anymore. But.........Robert had already packed away the camera in the truck so I didn't get pictures of any of that.

All in all it was a great Christmas weekend and worked out so nice to be able to spread it out over a couple of days rather than trying to cram it all into one day.