The One With 9 Christmas Trees

Before we start taking down all our Christmas lights and other festive decorations, I figured I better take some photos of the inside, so that I can remember what I did this year. (Just in case I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to come up with new ideas next year).

A funny fact about our Christmas décor – we have 9 (faux and real) Christmas trees in and around our house. The first two you saw here on our front porch, but that leaves seven more inside the house. And amazingly enough, 5 of them are on the first floor. So, let’s take a tour of the house to learn how we managed to accommodate so many trees in one small space. (Here’s hoping you won’t think our house looks like a tree lot)

When you first walk into the house, you’re greeted by our cork board/holiday card display and the first tree of seven.

{the entertainment center}

The next trees you’ll see (which are also visible from the front door) are taking up space on our dining table.

Into the wine-bar room you’ll find an appropriately decorated tree with corks, grapes and other sentimental charms that Brad’s mom created for us this year.

Across from the wine tree is our real, main-attraction tree that's dressed up with ornaments that have been collected over the years. (Brad would be happy if I noted that this is a ‘Nordmann’ tree, which we visited 4 stores to find)

Five trees down, two more to find – so up the stairs we go.

Next, a tiny tree with faux berries adds some holiday spirit to the guest bathroom.

Last stop - the guest bedroom where we have a lighted, faux tree which can also be seen from the front of the house.

And this concludes the 2010 holiday tour of the Carter house. So, do we need to scale back our tree obsession? Or maybe set a new record next year? Happy New Year’s Eve Everyone!

The One With The Rejects

With no "family" photos taken during the 2010 calendar year, we resorted to a last minute, self-timer photo of the three of us in front of our Christmas tree for this year's holiday card. So original - I know. We tried to mix things up with funny poses, but with an unhappy model (Copper) and no tripod, we were left with limited options. So our 2010 Christmas card looked like this - simple, nice and to the point.

{this is a scanned image of the card - actual card came out a little better}

But for the heck of it - I thought I'd share the reject shots from our impromptu photo shoot.

{unflattering angle + no hold on dog = end of this position}
{not Copper's best side}

{so over the family photos}

{not happy to be sitting on a bench}
{trying to escape}
{Copper's the only one that didn't think this was funny}

Hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and best wishes for the new year!

The One With 72 Gifts

As mentioned during our ‘Where Did November Go?’ post, Brad and I spent a lot of our time in November working on a "secret Santa" project. Usually I’m not one to start thinking about Christmas before Thanksgiving (and certainly not one to decorate before the "giving thanks" holiday is over), but Brad and I decided to make advent calendars as gifts for some of our family members this year, so we obviously had to finish these before the first of December. I originally thought it would be great to get a couple of gifts/people crossed off our list so early in the season, but after wrapping 72 gifts before Thanksgiving Day, I’m not too eager to pick up another piece of ribbon for awhile.

See our 3 advent calendars? They’re old soda bottle crates with 24 dividers. 3 x 24 = 72 = lots of wrapping.

To be honest, I’m really excited how they turned out. I love the old wooden crates and it was fun to come up with little gift ideas for each person for 24 days. I even got a little too carried away with my gift ideas that I didn’t take into consideration how small those bottle slots would be. So Brad came up with the brilliant idea of making cones to stick out of the crate and hold whichever oversized gifts I purchased. (Love that guy!)

Bonus: Found a Rochester, NY crate just for my mom!

Now I'm kind of wishing I made one for myself. ;)

The One With A 22ft* Ladder

Last year's Christmas revolved around the big debate of what kind of lights to put on the house - clear or colored, big or small, icicles, double icicles and so on. We came to a decision and unfortunately couldn't execute because we lacked a giant ladder.

So, this year we splurged for a 22ft* ladder. The * means its technically an 18ft ladder, but claims that with an average height person, there would be a 22ft reach. We didn't discover this fact until we were in the check out line and this was after the Home Depot workers brought around a fork lift to retrieve the ladder from the top shelf in the first place. So, we took it home to give it try.

Now I'm not sure what was going through our neighbors' minds as they watch Brad climb this huge ladder ("poor fool, idiot"), but we did have 2 different neighbors come over and offer us their 24ft+ ladders. (Hmmm...wish we had known this before purchasing our ladder. Oh well, it'll still come in handy when we have a spider in an un-reachable position again.) Either way, Brad was the hero of the weekend for not only being brave enough to climb 20 feet in the air, but for actually releasing one hand from the ladder to reach up and place lights on the roof of our house. Needless to say, no pictures were taken of this activity since I was holding the base of the ladder/contemplating the logistics of how I would catch Brad if he fell.

So with our "double icicles" on the roof, it was time to add some more lights and color to the yard. The funny thing is - Brad and I have differing ideas of what makes a "good" holiday house. For Brad, its not only lots of lights (white and colored), but lots of lawn "ornaments" as well. You know - the lighted moving reindeer, candy canes lining the walkway, large blow up figurines everywhere and so on.

Me? Not a fan of lawn ornaments and figurines - at all. Although, I have to say, I'm definitely becoming more open to the idea of multi-colored lights and lighted reindeer, but I swear you'll never see an inflatable frosty on our property. I'll bribe our future kids with games, candies and puppies before I buy one of those.

In an effort to compromise, Brad got some mini light up snowmen for the outside ledge and we also bought a few more over-sized ornaments, 2 lighted trees and some poinsettia plants. We both agree the yard would look nice with more colored lights, but we're happy with the finished product for this year. So, here are the Carter's 2010 Holiday Lights...

The One With Lows and Highs

I originally thought the low part of my day was not having time to eat breakfast at home this morning. Unfortunately, I learned the low part would be when I ate crap walking to a cafe to buy a bagel.

Thinking the high part of my day must be the fact that I didn't rip my pants or have a dress on, I was pleasantly surprised when an older man in my office building stopped by and gave me a Cold Stone milkshake. I'm still in shock over the timeliness of this random act kindness.

Although now I'm wondering if he was one of the many people who saw me on my butt this morning.

The One With 'Where Did November Go?'

Seriously- where did the 11th month of this calendar year go? I actually had to check my appointment calendar at work to figure out what we did this last month. And now that I’m thinking about it, October came and went pretty quickly too.

October for the most part was spent at home with Brad studying every waking hour for his Professional Engineers License Test. Halloween was also a complete bust for us this year with Brad’s test falling on that holiday weekend and me having a work project of my own that kept me in the office the entire weekend. So we were the lame neighbors that left an unattended bowl of candy outside for all the teenage hoodlums to take advantage of.

November continued to be busy for the both of us work-wise, but we managed to have some fun as well. One weekend was spent traveling back and forth to San Clemente for dinners on both Saturday and Sunday night. One dinner with our friends Alex & Steve and a second with Chris & Cara, who will be heading to New Zealand this week. (We're extremely jealous of them, but were more than excited to share our tips and stories about the country down under with them)

As Thanksgiving approached, I was thankful for the fact that we were not hosting dinner this year and was more than happy to be in charge of a single appetizer dish instead. So, in keeping with last year's tradition of a Thanksgiving trial run, we did another trial and error approach with our appetizer this year. It was more of a taste test with 3 slightly varying artichoke dip recipes, but I still worried that Brad and I wouldn’t be interested in having any on Thanksgiving Day if I made too much – so I kept the tasting portions small. Although, there was a clear favorite, we happily ate all 3 dishes.

The entire Thanksgiving weekend was productive and fun- starting with brunch on Thursday with Brad’s mom and dinner at my parents that same night.

{Thanksgiving Dinner Table}

On Friday we finally saw Harry Potter with Megan & Joe. Saturday Brad and I bought a death trap extension ladder to put up Christmas lights (more to come on that) and Sunday Meg and I took a decorating class at Pottery Barn. Like I said, productive, but fun weekend.

Brad and I also kept busy this past month working on a secret (Santa) project- so pictures to come on that. (Yes, I actually took pictures of it.)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday!

The One With Mystery In A Mug

Almost every night after dinner both Brad and I get a craving for chocolate. For the most part, we try to be good and not have any candy in the house, but occassionally we give in and buy Skinny Cow ice creams. (Our current addiction is the Chocolate Truffle Bars)

The other week I came across a recipe for "Mug Cake" that had a few ingredients that you whip together in a coffee mug and then "bake" in the microwave for 3 minutes. There were so many blogs and websites reposting this recipe - and so many rave reviews - that I thought for sure this would be a great treat. And although this has the potential to become very dangerous for us (seriously, a serving of chocolate cake in just 3 minutes?), I still wanted to give it a try and surprise Brad with what I hoped would be a quick and tasty dessert.

Unfortunately I think 3 minutes in our microwave was way too long since the first cup-of-cake came out kind of rubbery. Okay, it wasn't "kind of" rubbery - it was basically rubber that Brad suggested we give to Copper as a chew toy.

So, for our second try, we only did 2 minutes in the microwave. Still rubbery- although not a total dog toy this time. And now I'm out of flour, so this experiment will have to continue another day after a trip to the grocery store and some more research.

Good thing I bought candy corn as back up for dessert that night. ;)

The One With Our Dining Room

I’d like to think that we’ve put a lot of time and effort into transforming our dining room from what it was when we first moved in, but really, nothing that significant has been done. Aside from purchasing the necessary furniture- uh, table and chairs, anyone? – there hasn’t been much else that we absolutely needed to do.

Sure, we’d like to add details such as a chair rail or crown molding, but my concern with those two features is that they won’t “match” the design of the house. For example, the edges of the dining room are rounded and go straight into the next room- ie: living room or kitchen. So, how would you ‘end’ a chair rail?

Crown molding would be easier since there’s a beam separating the dining room ceiling from all the other ceilings, but you would still be able to see the molding from the living room and kitchen- so does that mean we have to put crown molding everywhere? And our living room has partially vaulted ceilings- so how the heck do you install crown molding on that? Do you see where I make Brad crazy with all these questions/concerns when he points out that a chair rail in the dining room might look nice?

Although, he’s just as guilty as I am when it comes to making each other crazy with deciding house additions/modifications. For example, the color of the walls in our house is nice, but not our first choice. However, if we paint one room, we’d have to paint them all since its kind of an open concept layout. And with Brad checking the internet everyday for our next home, I’m hesitant to spend the time or money on a house that we may be moving out of in a year or two. We’ve agreed to spend money on things that upgrade the house itself- new landscaping, working garage doors, etc – but there’s really no reason to spend money personalizing the house to our taste since it’s not our forever home.

So, back to simple modifications and the mini-transformation of our dining room.

Here’s the area when we first moved in. No dining table yet, but plenty of moving boxes and wedding gifts. (This was a month before our wedding- so the room stayed like this for about 3 months)

Then Brad found an awesome, never-been-used, still-in-the-box dining table and chair set on Craigslist.

The room was like this for about year until we finally put the black chalkboard up and then found the most perfect jute rug. (I actually wanted this rug for the living room, but had to admit I was wrong when it looked horrible, so luckily it fits great in the dining room)

Then a few weeks back, we had Brad’s poker party on the horizon, so we decided to get new curtains, which also meant new curtain rods. And about an hour before people arrived, we finished hanging the second curtain rod (the first is in the wine bar room) and did some spot painting where the old curtain rods used to be. (Nothing like leaving painting to the last minute) No worries though - all was finished (and dry) in time and now I feel like we’re even closer to a finished room. (Still need something for the blank wall on the right and maybe a buffet table somewhere in there- but for now, it'll do)