Tis the season!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this past Thanksgiving weekend! It has been full of fun with family and decorating!

First of all we hosted our first Thanksgiving meal, Jordan's brothers came over to our place. The past several years we have had Thanksgiving meal just the two of us because Jordan has had to work the Friday after. We had made it quite a fun tradition. I enjoy cooking so I always come up with the menu for the big day and then we would enjoy a Thanksgiving feast together. After the meal we would always put up the tree and watch Elf. This year we were honored to have Jordan's brothers over. I got a little stressed because sadly the turkey took a good hour longer than I had planned on; but in the end everything turned out fine. Here are some pictures of some of the fixin's (we are so bummed that we forgot to get a picture of all of us together).

Jordan picked up these beautiful flowers for me :)

Now for the decorating part. Yes we put up our tree!! Also my parents gave us a little gift money to buy something special for our new place (Thank you!!). So we got to use that for some new decorating items. Here are some pictures of our decorations!


Here is the our new country snowman with our stockings hung by the fireplace in the background :)

This is the cutest owl ever and our new ornament for the year!

I have saved the best for last...homemade crafts! So I love Martha Stewart Living magazine especially around the holidays. I recently picked up the December issue and it is full of yummy recipes and crafts. One of the projects in the issue were these beautiful star ornaments made out of ribbon. I instantly fell in love and had to give them a try. I tend to collect ribbons so I had a little stash and then I went out and bought a few more to have variety. Below is a picture of the finished product.


After I was done with this project I had some leftover ribbon scraps and decided to put our names on our blank stockings using the scraps. Here is how they turned out :)


Hooray for the Holidays!! I hope you are all having fun with your decorating too!

Sky Meadows...

Doesn't that just sound like the most beautiful place?....Well I have to tell you it is! :)

3 Sunday's ago we had just finished a long dreary week it seemed that it was cloudy or raining every day. I actually like rainy, overcast days but even I was ready for some Sunshine. So that Sunday afternoon we decided to go on a much needed hike. It was a gorgeous day in the low 70's with a breeze and very sunny. So Jordan went online to find a location (still being new to the area we don't know all the great hiking spots yet). He found Sky Meadows State Park a great hiking find by Jordan as always. So we made our 30 minute journey there. We were so happy to find a place so close to us. As we arrived we found that we were not the only ones with this idea...it was packed!! So we knew it must be a good spot. Upon arriving you see several Historic buildings that you can tour, we will have to go back to do that another time. Being super excited to be out enjoying the great outdoors we headed straight for the trails. There are several different options of directions to go and paths to take. The path we chose started out very steep and quickly you are looking back at the most beautiful view. You can see so far over the rolling hills filled with trees, cows, horses and farms it was breathtaking. The trail eventually connects to the Appalachian Trail too so you could keep going if you wanted too. Here are some photo memories we took to share.

I can't say that the pictures do it justice but we sure can't wait to go back!

Crafting at the Polka Dot Pot

About a month ago my friend Tosha and I went to paint some pottery at the Polka Dot Pot. I was very excited about this because back in high school this was a favorite past time of mine. I used to go to the "Dancing Brush" which was the local pottery place in Poulsbo, WA. I had many fun times painting gifts there. So needless to say it was fun to do again. I already knew what I wanted to paint before I even got there to pick out my piece. Awhile ago my friend Carrie painted a travel mug and that is what I chose. Tosha chose a cat treat jar as a gift for her Grandparents who happen to love the Redskins which is what inspired her color choices. My design choice was inspired by a plate that was on display in the shop, I just chose different colors that caught my fancy. So here are our finished products.

Then the following week Jordan and I went to paint too. I was very excited that he was interested in trying it. We had a lot of fun it was a rainy Friday and our outdoor plans to go to a hot air balloon festival with some friends had been canceled because of the weather. So it was nice to do something like this together in place of the festival. Jordan chose the mug and wanted to paint ornaments around the rim. He chose a really neat gray color for the base that was called Tin Man it turned out great!. Then I chose a ring tray and painted it a fun purple with little white polka dots all over...I love polka dots can you tell? :)

So this was my craft outlet for last month. I am getting back to my quilt project and will be showing a little progress soon!