It's almost Christmas!

I can't believe it has been almost a week since I posted!! It has been an eventful week. I started and finished a cardtable house for Jakes kids. I was so sick by the time I finished it I wrapped it without taking pics of it. I was so mad at myself, I was going to unwrap it, but Steve said just take pics after Ruby opens it. I was too sick to argue so said okay :-( I am singing in our choir on Sunday and this was Tuesday night. I was very concerned. We have 4 sopranos and for some reason with guest choir members and new branch members a ton of altos, and men. So my one soprano voice makes a difference. Plus I am singing in a trio. So I told Heavenly Father he was going to have to make me well. The next day I stayed in bed all day, drinking who knows how much water (thank goodness for my Weight Watcher mugs), sucking on coldeeze, taking cold medicine, and eating chicken noodle soup. By the next day I was feeling a ton better, but to be safe stayed in bed the next day also. Friday Megan and Amy were coming with their hubbies so I had to get busy. I actually felt pretty good, so up I got exercised, and started cleaning and washing clothes, and fixing up their rooms. By 3:30pm I had a clean house and a washed hair and body. Amy and Mike showed up about 4:30, and Megan and Greg came about 8:30. Steve and I were very excited. I can't imagine Christmas alone. I am so grateful to have kids nearby. I know the day will come when we will be flying out of here at Christmastime, but I am grateful we have this year and next year to still share our house with some grandkids.

Meg cut and colored my hair today. I don't know what I am going to do when she goes off to Europe!!! I will have okay hair. Oh well, I can't be selfish.

I unlike Meg wanted to be really wise with my food choices, but alas I am weak when it is in front of my face and hungry. So I have sampled over and over again, all the treats Amy has brought along with the candy canes that I definately wasn't going to eat. Oh well, thank goodness this is only for 3 more days.

Well, I love you all and hope you all have the Merriest of Christmases!

Christmas time!!

It has taken me forever to sit down and finish Aliese's present, but I am done with the finally. I can't wait until I can post them. They are so cute. It is late so I am not going to say much just post a bunch of pics. I collect Santas for those of you that don't know that. This is the first year Costco didn't sell a Santa. I bought the sleigh they sold, but I ended up taking it back because there wasn't room for it. Steve thinks I'm addicted to buying Christmas decor, and maybe he's right, but there are worse things.

The new additions to my house this year are 15 artificial trees and new garlands and a wreath. I love the front of my house this year. I have given up on isicle lights. The wind beats them up and I end up with half my lights going out after the first storm comes. The wind storms are many at this time of year, so this year I through all of them away, they were only half lit anyway. I put up old fashioned colored lights. So because of that I bought cute little artificial trees.

The hardest change for me this year is my artificial indoor tree. I love it, but I have to say there is a part of me that longs for the fresh tree. I don't regret getting the aritficial one though. So here goes!

It was hard to decide which pics to post. So there will be some peat and repeat. Sorry about that.

The first set are the ever changing mantle. I am still not satisfied. I am hoping to come up with a plan that will always work. It started out like last year then I came up this great idea, but the next morning some of the bulbs had fallen down and broke all over my fireplace and carpet. So I was back to square one.




This is by no means all my Santas, I just got tired of taking pictures. I have some in 2 bathrooms, and 2 of the guest rooms. If Costco carried a Santa I couldn't resist, I would probably by it much to Steves furstration with me, I have more room upstairs. :-) So here is the parade!
This was the guy that started it all. He is my smallest one.
Rebecca talked me into this one! She suckered me in by saying how much the grandkids would love it! It worked I went straight over and put it in my cart!

Steves favorite! We call him our casual Santa.
A Joanne's 70% off special!
One of the MANY decorations Danielle talked me into!
I love this one, it is from my mom and dad, mom's great shopping skills got me this one. She got it at the end of the season, saved it until the next year!
Another one my mom and dad got me. I think this is so sweet.

Now for the ones I painted


This was last years Santa, I think one of the ones my mom talked me into. I love him also. After this one came out, they came out with one that was soooooo cute, but I had already boughten my santa for the year so I didn't know what to do. So I left him there. Then one day I got an email from costco, the Santa I left there was less than half price and free shipping. I decided to order, and sneak it up into the attic without Steve seeing it and bring it down this year. One day Steve and I were in his office which has a window facing the driveway. Up came this UPS truck, we both walked over to the window wondering what he was bringing. I had forgotten about the Santa. Out he comes with my Santa box big as life. Steve smiled and said Sharon what did you do, so I told him. He said well you might as well open it up now. It turned out to be one of his favorites. He just thinks I'm nuts, he doesn't get mad at me. So here he is our last Santa.
You have to admit, he's pretty cute!!
Well here come the garlands!


I know how many can I post!!


This pic doesn't do this justice, this is the shiniest wreath I have ever had, it matches the garlands if you can't tell.
I bought 3 dishtowels and made me a valance! Daneille made my cute ho,ho, ho, blocks.
I don't know if you can tell Daneille, but I added more sparkly snow, zoom in on it it is really cute, plus I added some carolers.
Amy bought me this cute little snowman from Joannes I think, when she was in high school.
The entry way.

The porch in the daytime.

Boots

I like them better in real life, but here they are. I got lots of compliments at WW's today. I will send more pics tomorrow or Sat. I am going to the temple tomorrow.

Decorating!!

I can't believe how long it takes to decorate for Christmas. It took me almost 3 hours to put together and decorate my new artificial tree!!! I do like it a lot, and it was cool to be able to bend the branches to make the ornaments hang down straight. I started at 10pm and finished about 1am. Crazy I know. Then the next day ( that was Friday night) I had a RS brunch to go to and then came home and worked some more on my decorating. I am STILL NOT DONE!!!! Today I thought I would get a lot done, but Steve and I sat at the kitchen table for about 4 hours and talked about emergency preparedness. My children know this is totally possible. So anyway, now that I have read every ones blog, purchased a Christmas present, uh oh, I just bought it on Sunday, does that count if you forgot it was Sunday, I hope not! Anyway, I am now blogging, and need to do the dishes. Soooo I will probably not get much done tonight. I hope a little.

I forgot to mention, on Friday I bought some new boots. One pair was a fun furry kind I wanted really badly, they only had a size too big for me, but I bought them anyway, (back to the vanity thing!) I love them. I also bought me some dress boots for the first time!! (the good ole buy one get one half off price sale at payless). I like them a lot! I was a little scared, but I love them. They are really cute, and warm in our cool church house. I will post pics of them later, My batteries for my camera had died. After church one was charged but I forgot and changed clothes. Oh well. Maybe I will stand in front of the tree in one of them.

Well, I need to get busy!!! Love you all!!!!!

The calm after the storm!

Today was great day. The sun was out, and I ate my lunch after weight watchers on the steps off my deck. I did have a sweatshirt on, but it was calm and gorgeous. My salad was delicious. Weight watchers was good. The numbers are still a little low, Christmas time. I sent out 35 postcards today to tell them about some new info coming out next week, hopefully that will bring out a few more. I'm sure after Jan 1st, the line will be out in the parking lot! I personally lost 7.2 pounds this week. A definite first for me in my entire lifetime. And yes I did eat. I was out of control since our trip to New York. Made some new goals and commitments to my receptionists. I have to keep my promises, so I finally humbled myself, asked for help and made promises to my receptionists. In my younger days I could just make up my mind and it would happen. I am excited needless to say!

I promised myself that when I lost 5lbs. I would make myself a skirt, so guess who is going to cut herself out a skirt tomorrow!!!???? ME!!!!!

Well, I am going to plan my menus for this week and my grocery list. Love you all!

Vanity thy Name is Sharon

I have weight watchers today so this is going to be fast! My very wise mother hit the nail on the head, "do whatever is easiest to fix" I think that's what she said. I live on the coast, the wind blows!! When my hair is short I can fix it in about 5 min. The wind can't really mess it up and most of the time my new cute hats wouldn't mess it up. So the short hair wins. My mom said vanity thy name is woman, I know it is definitely mine!!
Love you all!!

Davis Cup, Big Storm/Power outage, busy week

US Tennis Players End 12-Year Davis Cup Drought
I was there! Something I thought would be boring and just an opportunity to see a good friend turned into be very entertaining. I really enjoyed myself, I was up cheering and dancing with all the rest of them. Terese didn't find me as interesting as the other tennis fans sitting around us. Go figure! She was having a ball talking to all the people and I mean all the people around us that knew as much about the players as she did. She felt bad, but I understood. It is always fascinating to me to watch people that are incredibly good at something. The guy in the hat is Andy Roddick # 1 in the US. James Blake is # 2 in the US. They don't get paid for playing in the Davis Cup so that says something about them. They played men from Russia. They both had different styles so it was educational as well as entertaining. I have to say watching Terese sometimes was as entertaining as watching the match!!

Saturday (the next day) I got up early, left Jared Engstroms home and went shopping down the I-5 corridor. I stopped first at Fred Meyer to get something to eat and to check out their fake trees. I then went to Home Depot where I found an artificial tree I liked. It was hard to decide. But I kept coming back to the same one. So I bought it! I also got some poinsettias!! I love those.
I continued on to TJ's, Costco, bed bath and beyond ( I got some cute little artificial trees to line the driveway with and two larger ones to put on the front porch), Deseret Book, got some fun surprises, you will all see later!!!, and the garment center. By the time I got to the last store it was about 2:00pm. I had heard from a young man at TJ's that there was a BIG STORM coming in for the coast, so I thought I should get home before dark.

Sunday I got up to go to church, Steve was sick so he stayed home. Just before I got up to say the closing prayer in Sunday School the lights went out. We had opening exercises in RS then went home. I have to say I was surprised we had church, the storm was brewing pretty good before I even left home. I was shocked even more when the Branch Pres didn't send us home after Sacrament. On my way home it was really scary, I had to drive pretty slow!

The power was out at our house too. I looked out the back window and saw this:

In the first pic is the legs of our picnic table! The top flew off into the neighbors yard. The bottom pic is just the chairs all over the yard, several broken :-(

I then went out got our camp stove and some fuel and made pancakes, eggs, hot chocolate with whip cream(out of a can), and bacon. I was prepared!!! I felt pretty good about myself. I have to say when Steve started going on about my skills, I said that's what comes from going to girls camp all those years. I had battery lanterns, flashlights. We didn't start a fire the first night, but the next day we finally decided to try a fire. We were worried about the wind coming down the chimney. It was nice, cozy and took the chill off. Thankfully we have those big windows so the light wasn't too big of an issue during the day. At night when it was time for bed the temp in the room wasn't much different than normal so we slept fine. During both days we just wore sweaters and sweatshirts. When we were sitting on the couch, which we did far too much, we used blankets also. All in all it wasn't that bad. But I have to say when the lights came on 30 hours later I was one happy camper! The light seemed bright at first, I know that sounds silly, but I was very grateful.

So what did we learn!!? Steve has already bought a generator which he bought at Costco in Albany the second day of the storm, thankfully he had no problems, needless to say it made me very prayerful. We got a generator big enough to power both our fridges, the freezer, out septic system, and a heater. We could also use the microwave, electric skillet, or even watch a movie. We decided that the freezer doesn't need to be plugged in all the time, so we could unplug it for the little things I mentioned that aren't really necessary. We also bought and are buying some more Duraflame logs, batteries for the lanterns, and I think that is all.

The only bad thing that happened was our Dish fell off the roof. But Heavenly Father answered my prayers in that situation. It was about midnight and we both woke up to something hitting the house. We decided it was the dish, looked out the windows and saw it banging around. The wind was blowing so hard we didn't know what to do. We knew Steve couldn't stand on a ladder out there at the same time we were worried it would fall off and fly into one of our windows. So Steve decided to go out and at least see what maybe he could do. I started praying really hard that it would just fall straight to the ground. Steve said that when he got about 7 feet from it it just fell to the ground. I almost started crying when he told me that. Heavenly Father loves us all sooooo much! So we don't have TV for now. Steve is going crazy without the news! But I have noticed he has slept through the night now since we don't have it. I don't know if he has noticed that!

Since then I have been trying to sew and get Christmas Decor up. I haven't been too successful at either. Oh well, I am going to plug away today and hopefully by the end of this week I will have a pic of my new artificial tree.

Oh, I fixed my hair different or I should say like I used to, it is getting longer again. I was going to have Meg cut it now I don't know!

Love you allll!!!