We went to ICE at Opry Mills where the whole Charlie Brown Christmas is told in Ice Sculptures and has the soundtrack playing in each scene too! Last year was The Grinch! It was way colder than I remembered it being in there but totally neat!




Ice slides below! We skipped them bc I was freezing and the lines were long

Santa brought me this lovely agenda and RAVED about the customer service over at Preppy Princess. I read about that site a while back on someone else's blog. They even have those monogrammed plates I love.

We started out with Anna & Richard's gifts. They were pretty excited to see what they got. We gave Anna some Uggs which she has wanted for a while and she was thrilled! Richard got a video game and some $.

Erik got a Wii from me and some other man things from Santa

Erik gets the royal treatment
I plan to learn to cook over the next 9 months since pretty much everything else is off limits. I got lots of great cooking things which I plan to try. Marty I finally got a grilling cookbook like yours! Hooray!
Bubs gave me a Kindle which I LOVE ! I just read "The Lovely Bones" this past weekend on it and It was a great book.
Erik's Loot
Little Wilbur had a great Christmas!Ironically, He and my bro got matching shirts from different people so we got them to put them on!
His fav toys were his cars and his arm chair.
You can see that being a man just comes real naturally to him. He knew exactly what to do with that chair and also insisted on keeping a snack and drink in the chair next to him!

Hope you are all having a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This is my nephew Will with Santa, and he is making that face because Santa just told him that he is about to lose his status as the ONLY grandchild. ha Poor Wilburs!

What is Google Chrome?

Now that I am restricted from most of my projects due to fumes etc, I have hardly done any new projects! BUT while cruising the Salvation Army this week I found this beautiful chair for $15. Try not to be distracted by the hideous 80's color block velvet seat cover! I will be recovering that of coarse!
Stay tuned for the final product!

The fireplace/mantle is pretty much complete. Below is the progression in pictures.

Starting out: This randome arch on the inside along with peeking tile drove me bonkers. Plus it was too tall to put the TV above.
And since the tile was too old and thick to take off, we had them cover it with wood pieces and build it up to the ceiling. They did manage to smash the tile out of the floor, which was good b.c it was cracked and you could feel cold air from basement coming out of those cracks.
Woodwork complete:
and finally re-tiled with 4" slate tiles and the TV from our bedroom mounted atop. I had the electrician pull cable wires and make an outlet all through the woodwork so as to make a clean install, but as you can see below we still have some wire issues to resolve, as well as the "where to put the cable box etc". I am trying out this table I found at TJMAXX clearance below but am really having a hard time finding just the right thing. I would love any suggestions or links from you. I also would love ideas about what to put on the mantle once Christmas Decor comes down. Should something be hung above the TV?

But this one looks non caucasian... ha Must be Keisha and Eriks baby.





What do you think about my little new baby eva?
MakeMeBabies.com - What will your baby look like?



There is also an iphone app for this called "ihatch" which I will review later!

We had our Graham Christmas celebration last night! Shauna is due any day now with baby Chloe and Erik and I will be in the ville on Christmas so we did an early celebration that was quite entertaining! Below is our entire family outfitted in Snuggies that Juliel gave us. Ralphie loves his snuggie and is still wearing it now, Bossie shed hers in about 5 mins after this picture was taken.
Excuse my scromply hair. Yesterday started with an early morning Titans tailgate then the flea market then family Christmas so I was worn out!
The aftermath:
Bro & Shauna gave us a custom painted portrait of our 2 dog children and I am just wild about it! We have only seen this picture of it so far but I can't wait to get the real deal! The artist is out of Franklin, does the portraits in ONE day and he captured their looks and facial expressions perfectly! Click on the link for his website! His name is Mike Battenberg!

We had a fabulous dinner party here Saturday night for Justin's birthday! Everyone brought a dish or more and the food was so good. It all felt very grown up! I stayed up till 1am which has not happened in WEEKS!

I can assure you that none of you will be as shocked as I was ( note the facial expression below). I have tried to keep this secret for a couple of weeks now but I just can't not talk about it, since my life and brain have been completely altered. I know it is "early to tell people" but regardless of what happens I would discuss that here, so why torture myself any longer. AND my silent, almost fictional brother who never talks about anything blasted me out on Facebook... so

Our buddy Jay was telling us about how he learned to make his own butter from LifeHacker and I was so intrigued I thought I should try it. I had clearly lost my mind. My mother even said that was for the birds, just buy it! But did I listen? Do I ever listen? ha oh no.....


I don't know if my process was made longer by my ingredients but I used all organic with Cream from a local dairy.
This is the point where I was remembering one of my dad's friends wanting to buy us that Kitchen Aid Mixer for a wedding gift and I told him " oh no, that is too expensive" , well I was kicking myself for that last night. But you see it getting creamier
Then kind of Chunky
Then after I separated it and cleaned it. I was expecting ALOT more butter after all that, so if I ever do this again I will quadruple that recipe so as to really make it worth while! ha

Sorry to say I have not tasted it yet so I cant attest to the wonderfulness of homemade butter just yet! If you want to try your hand at it, you can read step by step by clicking HERE

Perhaps you all saw these ornaments in the Pottery Barn catalog this year. I loved them but they were $6 each....craziness! I know it is a little late in the season for ornament making but we are hosting a Christmas dinner/birthday party here Saturday for Justin and I made these as party favors for everyone!

You can read a fantastic tutorial over at "Crap I've Made" and also print out a template that she has on there. I followed her instructions almost exactly but instead of glittering each ornament I bought pre-glittered foam papers. Genius I tell you! So for $4.79 (half off if you use your coupon)
you can just trace and cut out the peace signs with an exacto knife! I made about 20 for that $5.
and here they are hanging up:
Thanks to Momma for all the research and help on that template!

The Christmas Cards ate just pouring in and we Love it! We are up to about 30 so far. (mother! where is yours? Nonie? CC?)
I have this retro tree that holds Christmas cards (below) my mom found me but I think I will use it as a center piece ext year since the cards hide its beauty!
But Southern Living At Home offers this over the door Card display that I must have! Cousin Jennifer Graham is ordering me one from her buddy.


Um I still have about 20 cards that I have not mailed yet due to lack of stamps or addresses! Im working on it though!