Family Gift!

Every year Chris and I try to come up with something special to make our family that both of us are involved with. This year we made these snowmen. I did the stitcheries and Chris made the frames.

Chris made the frames out of barn board from the floor in our attic. We took the boards out to put insulation in. Then we painted them and he distressed them.

We made 10 of these all together. Chris cut out 11 frames just in case one broke when he was putting them together.

To my surprise Chris did a stitchery for me too. He sat and did one of the snowmen for me, put it in the "extra" frame and wrapped it up to surprise me on Christmas morning. Boy was I surprised. He did a great job.

Snowy Sunday!

Believe it or not we are having a thaw here in western New York. The thaw is causing damage in a lot of areas around us due to flooding. It got up to 60 degrees here on Saturday. The pictures we are posting are from earlier this month.

These birds seem to be having fun playing in the snow.

They were flying back and forth from the road to the field. We think they were eating the salt and sand on the edge of the road.

They were probably trying to find anything else they could eat too. There was a lot of snow at the time.

Please feel free to use the button we have made for "Snowy Sunday" in your post or sidebar.

Remember if you don't have snow and still want to join in you can post your winter decorations.

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Merry Christmas!

The next few days are going to be very busy for us so we wanted to make sure that we wished all of our blog friends a very Merry Christmas!

Special Ornaments!

On the top of our tree you will see this very special Angel. Gram made each of her children and grandchildren one.

Here are a few of the ornaments that Gram made through out the years. For as long as I can remember Gram made a special ornament for the grown ups and a different one for the kids and gave them to us on Christmas Eve.

Some were made of plastic canvas and some were made of beads, but all were made with Love.

To see all of the work she put into each ornament is amazing to me.

We look forward to seeing the lights sparkle off of the beads every year as we decorate.

As you can see, Gram used many shapes and sizes of beads. She used dental floss, fishing line and wire to string the beads into shapes.

We couldn't post all of the ornaments, but we hope you enjoyed the pictures we did post.

Snowy Sunday!

This weeks pictures were taken the last time we had freezing rain. It is horrible if you have to drive on it, but everything looks so beautiful after it gets done.

I really like the sunshine coming through at the top of this one.

The next 2 looked really cool to us.

The ice almost looks like it is magnifying the buds on the tree.

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Window!

I worked on 6 stitcheries for ever and finally got them done and put into this window frame this past weekend. Chris sanded the frame and took all the old caulk off the windows. As he was doing this he broke one of the window panes so he had to order new glass. Since he was getting one he decided he should just replace all of them. They were so old and glass wasn't that much. He decided it would be easier than trying to scrape all of the paint and caulk off of the old ones.

We base coated the window antique white. Then put a coat of crackle medium on. When that dried we put the top coat on. It is burgundy. It turned out just the way we wanted it to.

Chris put all of the stitcheries on card board and attached them to the window. I'm glad I did snowmen so it can stay up all winter. To see a closer view of the stitcheries click HERE, HERE and HERE.

Worth The Price!!

Our Christmas tree is so pretty. We just love it. It is the perfect size for where we put it every year. We did our tree a little different this year. We didn't put a lot of the bought ornaments on it this year.

Most of our tree is homemade ornaments and very special ornaments. Chris and I buy an ornament every year when we are on vacation. They are on our tree every year.

Our tree topper and a lot of the ornaments were made by Laurie's Gram (Super Lou). She made a lot of ornaments with beads. We thought we did a post about them but couldn't find one so we will have to get some pictures taken to show you her work.

This is what we see from our couch. Isn't it pretty?

Snowy Sunday!

Welcome to Snowy Sunday!

Here are a few Pine Tree pictures we took. We thought they would be appropriate for this weeks post since we are only 11 days away from Christmas.

This one was taken a few weeks ago. A few days after we took the picture Chris went to go hunting and noticed that the bent over Pine Tree had snapped right off from the weight of the snow.

Don't these woods look inviting for a nice winter walk???

If you feel like joining in on "Snowy Sunday" but don't have any snow right now feel free to post old pictures or your winter decorations.

Please feel free to use the button we have made for "Snowy Sunday" in your post or sidebar.

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Finding A Christmas Tree!

We picked Mom up this afternoon and piled into Chris's truck to find our Christmas tree. We have never had such a hard time finding a tree. The place we usually get our tree didn't sell them this year because of the bad weather.

At our first stop none of us liked any of the trees we saw. They were very sparse. So we piled back into the truck. If you could see Mom trying to get into the truck you would understand what the big deal is about us getting back into the truck.

Our second stop only had trees for Paul Bunyan. The women who was trying to help us said "we don't understand but our 6 and 7 foot trees just flew out of here". So we got back into the truck.

Our third stop was at a nursery and believe it or not they didn't have any real trees just artificial. If you had $1500.00 you could have gotten a artificial tree that looked real. If you wanted a real wreath you could have gotten one or if you wanted your face painted you could have done that also. So back in the truck we went.

Stop number four.

Finally!!! We found a tree we really liked BUT!!! We weren't going to pay $70.00. I don't care how perfect it was. No way!! We kept looking and found this tree.

Yep. We paid $57.00 plus tax for our tree. We have never paid so much for a tree.

It is up in our dining room waiting to be decorated. I'm going to start looking for hearts to put on it for Valentines Day. It may still be in our dining room come February.

How much are real trees in your area?

Family!

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree:

the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.

~Burton Hillis

Photo Shoot!

Jerzie's Mommy and Daddy asked us if we would take pictures of Jerzie for their Christmas cards. So on Sunday Mommy brought Jerzie over in this pink winter dress.

She loved sitting in this big girl chair. That is what she called it when she sat down.

Then we had a wardrobe change and a little bribing with chocolate to get her in her new Christmas dress. Grandma bought it for her.

It worked. She did such a good job sitting on the stairs and smiling for us.

She thought it was pretty cool that she could sit on the stairs by herself.

After taking almost 50 pictures we snapped this one. Jerzie said "Are we done now?" We all decided it would be easier to be done than to have an upset little girl.

We got a couple shots of Jerzie and Mommy too.

Which one do you think they are using for their Christmas cards?