Homemade Christmas gifts!

Well, I'm thoroughly disappointed in myself, as I managed to not take a single picture of my homemade Christmas gifts! Failure. Oh well...add it to the list. Instead, I will find other pictures of similar items to show you what I accomplished this year. I really enjoyed spending a little extra time (in order to save a little extra $$) and the extra bit of love that went into the gifts. The new sewing machine has more than paid for itself by this point. Here are some examples:

For my brother, I painted some drinking glasses that look like this:

For my mom and mother-in-law I made aprons. My mom's was the full version with polka dots and damask fabric. My MIL's was the half apron with red and black polka dots. I also made an oven mitt for mom and a UofA necklace for Sean's mom. (the necklaces are super cute and pretty easy...I used this tutorial) Here's what they looked like:I made my sister-in-law, Jessica, this pocket scarf. It's SO cute, and I really like how you can change the colors/fabric to look like a whole new scarf.

I made my sister one of these alphabet photography pictures. Hers says "laugh" and I found the pictures online. I did actually attempt to take the pictures myself, but it was much more difficult than I originally thought.

I did make some other things, too...a t-shirt for Sean (with a fun penguin picture on it), some baby onezies for a friend who just had a baby this week, some PJ pants for dad. I'll post some more pictures later.

My project this week: making a New Year's Eve dress. I'm pretty excited about it and will {hopefully} do a good enough job to actually wear it out. :)

I hope you all had a great Christmas! I very much enjoyed being home with my family for a week and was totally spoiled on Christmas. One of my favorite gifts was a super cute dress outfit from Banana...my mom has always picked great clothes for me! Today it's back to the normal schedule of work, though I still have three weeks off of school. I'm looking forward to cleaning/organizing our apartment over the coming weeks and to spending quality time with both Sean and a couple of books!

Branson, MO

The number of Christmas lights in this place is astounding! I arrived here in Branson last night and am really looking forward to the next week here with family. This morning I attended Sean's Aunt Teresa's ornament exchange party...it was good to catch up with cousins! Today I hit an awesome sale at Ann Taylor at the Landing (they're closing, so I got 50% off all items and an additional 40% off select items)! Here are some things I'm looking forward to this week (in no particular order):

1. Finishing the Wizard of Oz (watching it now)
2. Sleeping in
3. Completing Christmas crafts and gifts -- then wrapping them!
4. Spending time with family and Branson friends
5. Celebrating my Savior's birth (dear, sweet, infantile Jesus)
6. Watching movies
7. Not going to class

I am, however, missing my husband as he will not join me in Branson until Christmas Eve. :( I hope you all have a great Christmas!

More crafts and last week's events...

It was definitely a busy and fun week for Sean and I! Here are some of the things we did:

I made this super cute wreath for our front door. I found the tutorial for the project here. and am really happy with how it turned out!

Our Church set up a "Night in Bethlehem" family Christmas event where Sean and I ran the Metalworking shop. Not sure if you can really tell, but Sean grew a pretty sweet beard for the event. (thankfully he finally shaved today!)

Another fun thing that happened was that we got to see our friend from Branson, Josh, play in a concert here in Columbia. He plays the guitar and tours with the country musician, Justin Moore. It was so fun to watch him play and to hang with some friends from Branson after the concert. Here are some pics from the event:

We also had our friends Jon and Beth over for dinner on Friday -- we did a make-your-own-pizza dinner. Yesterday was fabulous because I was able to finish some other Christmas crafts and gifts. I'm excited to finally send off our Christmas cards tomorrow! I'm just 1.5 papers and one short test away from finishing the semester -- can't wait for some time off from class and to spend time in Branson with family soon! Happy Christmas shopping/preparing to everyone!

The bees knees

What is the origin of that phrase, btw??? But seriously, my small group is the bees knees-- awesome, challenging, funny and comforting! It's so wonderful to weekly get together with other twenty-something women to discuss the Bible and anything that is on our hearts or minds. We talk about everything from how to apply God's truths to our lives to budgeting to current events....and the list could go on. What a great need this small group fills for us! We're a diverse group of about 20 girls who are teachers, doctors, nurses, graduate students, and stay-at-home moms, just to name a few. Just imagine what wonderful perspectives we get from this groups of girls! Small group is a place where opinions can be shared without fear of judgement, advice is given in a practical way, love and concern is freely shown and laughs are inevitable. I know that God calls believers to be intentional in relationships with other believers, and for the first time I feel equipped to do so. I'm thankful for the opportunity to be involved in this group and plan to soak up every last minute of it before we move out of Columbia!

Blog facelift

I got bored of our last blog template, so I'm in the process of updating the look of this blog. It's still a work-in-progress, but I like where it's going. We had a great weekend here in Columbia spending time with friends, watching football and hanging at home for a change! Sean and I had a picture session with our friend, Bethany, a couple weeks ago...they turned out so great! The new blog header is one of the pics, but I'll post the others when I get them all on my computer.

I'm almost finished with school for the semester! Just a couple of papers and a test away, then I get about a month off of school (but will still have to work). I'm very much looking forward to spending some time in Branson for Christmas.

Not a whole lot to update here...gotta get dinner out of the oven now. :)

Update: I used the last dryer sheet in the only box we've purchased since our wedding today. Sad day.

Christmas Craftiness

When Sean and I were sophomores in college we purchased an inexpensive Christmas tree, but could only afford two boxes of ornaments and maybe three 'specialty' ornaments. Well, we've had fun adding to those 'specialty' ornaments every year since then and now have a pretty good looking tree {despite the bare bones tree underneath!} Here's some before and afters:

Have any of you ever notices how ridiculously expensive Christmas tree skirts are?? Well, I did today whilst shopping and decided that I could pretty easily make my own. With about $15 in supplies and 30 minutes, I made this: (and saw one similar to it for $60 at Hobby Lobby!)I can finally make Sean's Aunt Teresa's annual Christmas ornament exchange this year and have scoured the internet for homemade ornament ideas. I did a trial one today and I think it turned out really cute! I will make half of them in more whimsical colors/patterns like the one pictured here and will make the other half in more traditional tones. They are pretty easy to make and come out to just about $1/ornament in the end!
The homemade Christmas gifts are underway, though still very much under construction! I'm looking forward to pushing through these next two weeks of class with much perseverance then having some time to devote fully to those projects. Tomorrow we're headed to Kansas City to watch the MU/KU game at Arrowhead stadium {the weather is supposed to be an amazing 62 and sunny!}. I'll post pics of that later this weekend...

Turkey Day at the Huddlestons

Thanksgiving was a success! PTL! Sean and I hosted his brother and sister-in-law, mom and her boyfriend for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Since Sean had to be at work so early today, it was so nice to not have to travel. Here's some pics from our dinner:

Carving the turkey...

Green bean casserole and cheese potatoes...














Deviled eggs... (not pictured: mashed potatoes, rolls and stuffing)















Not 10 minutes after we ate, this was the scene:




























Then we played some games (Cranium {won by Sean and I} and Trivial Pursuit {won by Beth and Bob})
I loved cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time! I'm so thankful for such a great and loving family to call my own! My next post will be a couple of Christmas crafts I got done today!