holidays

O Come O Come Emmanuel

December 25, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 4 Comments

Our family wishes you true joy and peace as we celebrate the blessed Christ child come into the flesh. May this Christmas find you comforted in His words of light and life. Love to you all!

from our Christmas Eve service:

Father, we humbly bow before You on this night filled with awe at Your great love for us. We know we are unworthy of such love because of our sins in thought,word, and deed. Yet in the midst of our failings and desperate need, You have given us the gift of Your only Son as our infant Savior. We give You thanks for sending the Christ child into our world demonstrating Your perfect love in action, as Jesus lived and died for us. Forgive our sin this night and fill us with the everlasting peace only You can give as we continue to live in the reality of being both saint and sinner dependant upon this Jesus who was laid to rest in the manger and shed His blood on the cross to be the atonement for our sins. You make this most holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light. Amen.

Little love gifts……

December 22, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 11 Comments

I’ve been assembling a few ‘love’ gifts for some special people in our lives and thought I’d show them to you.

Back in May, the kids and I picked strawberries and made homeade jam. And as of late I’ve been a sour dough bread ‘machine’……so naturally homeade bread and jam makes the perfect ‘love’ gift.
I like to print personalized tags from the computer and back them with scrapbook paper.
Another favorite is the Lutheran prayer book. It’s inexpensive and chock full of goodies. You don’t have to be Lutheran to love it……so I bought lots of them this year.
and wrapped them up beautifully.
And for those of you who don’t live close and won’t receive an actual love gift, I’ve got a couple ‘gems’ for you too. You may want to grab your coffee and sit a while with these.

You’re welcome.

P.S. The fact that this post follows directly after the one titled “The Hidden God” should either win me some prize at THE Most Severe Form of ADD contest or should put me next in line for This Year’s Most Charming Schizophrenic.

P.S.S. JamieKnoxville will study these pictures like a C.S.I. agent. I couldn’t have given her any better gift.

Christmas Tour of Homes………

December 10, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 80 Comments

Grab a cookie cookie and come on in!

I am so excited to be linking to all these festive Christmas tours.

Ya’ll are gonna love this cookie recipe. We’re just making iced sugar cookies (recipe here) and putting the final touches on our decorations. The ‘little’ girls wanted to show you their tree first and then we’ll move on to the rest of the house.
They love this white tree and the colors we used coordinate well with their girly room. And we sorta have a love affair going on with ribbon. It’s a southern thing.

Welcome to this Christmas tour sponsored by the BooMama and Hooked on Houses and Kimba……and welcome to my home. I was so happy to participate in this linky party and in fact am using alot of the same pictures I used for Nester’s garland party…….so hope you don’t mind. These fun linky parties gave me the added ‘kick in the tail’ I needed to finish my decorating. I am so happy with how it all turned out and can only say that this garland probably weighs a good 30 or 40 pounds. I pray for the stability and stickiness of 3M tabs…..

And because I have more Christmas decorations than any sane person should, I ‘borrowed’ stuff from the house to make this years’ Christmas cheer fun but cheap. So I snatched the ‘W’ from the kitchen……
and the star I ‘borrowed’ from the breakfast room……
I started with a skinny little anemic garland and added lots of fresh magnolia, cypress and pine and then added my signature Christmas decoration……lots of ribbon!

I had the little evergreen trees from Thanksgiving and put them on candlesticks…..

and voila!! My best garland ever. Thank you Nester for the inspiration.
I took my skills from the garland on the bannister…..which is sadly not finished, so I can only show you this far up.
and I thought you’d enjoy this little jewel…..it’s a cute ‘family tree’ decorated with pictures of all of our brood……..
and this is my favorite tree this Christmas……simple and kinda old-school…..
then there’s the table top tree in the breakfast room…..
and my dining room with a bare but beautiful bird tree…
and a peak into my bedroom where I recently nailed pillow shams right to the wall for window mistreatments (a Nester trick from way back) and added some fun lights for Christmas.
That’s one sure fire thing about being Southern……we know how to do everything ‘big’ and ‘bordering on gaudy’. We tend to be of the ‘more is more’ persuasion. And if you’d like to know more about Southern women, I’ve given a short tutorial here. I would like to add that I’m a brand new reader to BooMama and L.O.V.E her blog. Apparently along with everyone else in the free world. Hope you are inspired to make your Christmas colorful and beautiful!

The day after……

November 28, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

In the afterglow of a wonderful day of food, family, football, and fun……I am ready to relax. I have my books (A Christmas Carol, Uncharted, and Organizing Solutions for ADDers), and my knitting and I’m snuggled on the sofa by the fire…..with the sweetest little snuggle bunny you’ve ever seen. There’s a small…..very tiny….part of me that wishes I was shopping with my sister. Or at least drinking coffee and people watching. As people nearly kill each other to get whatever it is the HOT items are this year. But mostly, I’m just so thankful…..to be here today with my family, eating leftovers…….and admiring my new ‘picture wall’ I made for my office. With 8×10 pictures that I printed on regular paper.
This project started itself really. I was printing 4×6 pictures to put on my ‘family tree’ tree and accidentally printed one of them as an 8×10. So as not to waste a beautiful picture of someone I love, I secured it onto my cork board in my office. Then the madness began…..and I love how it turned out.
And since I didn’t manage to get hardly any pictures of the Thanksgiving feast(I guess I was a little busy), I thought you’d enjoy this project.

So whether you’re shopping or relaxing like me……have a wonderful day! And remember that Sunday is the first day of Advent. We’re putting our advent wreath out today along with our calender. You should try it….it’s a great way to teach your kids about the coming of our Lord.

Now, should I have creme brulee or apple pie for breakfast?

A little Christmas Cheer…….

November 19, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 17 Comments

I’m on of those people……that my brother-in-law hates…..that decorates for Christmas before Thanksgiving. Always. Every year. Since I can remember. And it’s not that I don’t love Thanksgiving. I do. It’s my favorite holiday. But I have a lot of Christmas decorations. And if I waited until after Thanksgiving, I’d be stressed trying to get it all up. So in the name of having energy and sanity left for thankfulness, I do it early. Furthermore, we are Lutheran so we follow the church calendar….and certainly want to have our decorations up when we start our advent calendar. Which is quickly approaching. It makes me cheerful and gives everybody in the house a little spring in their step to see all the decorations going up so soon. So I make no apologies: I decorate and bake with thankfulness in my heart!

I also ‘host’ my extended family for Thanksgiving, so I love decorating the dining room table and coming up with fun ideas for the kid’s table…..and cooking. Lots and lots of cooking. So I take my cues from my mother in law who is the queen of cooking lots of wonderful holiday food. And her secret: start early and freeze what you can. So tomorrow, I bake pecan and pumpkin pies.

I’m also working on my placecards and making sure all my linens are laundered and ready to go. I also put up 4 Christmas trees today. Don’t throw things at me through your computer. I leave several of my trees decorated all year and store them ‘ready to go’ in the basement. So let me rephrase that: I carried up 4 trees today. There, is that better? So here’s the tour so far.

The tree in my breakfast room….
oh look , a beautiful cardinal flew in and nestled into the ribbons…..
I love birds by the way…..and have them tweeting around everywhere…..
This sweet little table top tree is in my living room. It’s mint green and I love it with all my heart. This is it’s 3rd Christmas with me…..and it’s third different spot.
Meet my banister garland….not yet finished but getting there……
see how much more fun after I add a pair of peacocks…….(my version of two turtle doves)
and probably my signature Christmas decorating ‘move’ is ribbon……lots of ribbon…..everywhere. And this year I added blue to the mix. Don’t ya love it?
I love to layer with ribbon….different colors, patterns, sizes…..with extra long ‘tails’…….

I always look for whimsical patterns….polka dots or something similiar, and mix that with more majestic colors or textures.

and this my friends is a little gift I gave myself today. New makeup and lip gloss bags from TJMaxx. I love the pattern. And since as you know all my personal belongings got stolen, I needed a little ‘pick-me-up’…..not bad for 9.99. Now all I need is lip gloss.

and for all you purists out there, I’m decorating my dining room table with traditional Thanksgiving Day fare….complete with a menu…….printed out and featured on the plate. I’m completely obsessed with silhouettes too and am working on a tree decorated with mostly silhouettes…….and lots of ribbon.

Be creative. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Last year, I was in a Christmas home tour and decorated a tree in my son’s room using playing cards, poker chips , large bulb lights and a piece of burlap for a bedskirt. I did something similiar in the little girls’ room with flashcards and ribbon. Think outside the box…..and make it your own.

Hope you’re inspired to put on some Christmas music and tie some ribbons.

Tales from the dark side……..

November 1, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

We live in the best neighborhood. Ever. So, yesterday I called around to see if a few neighbors wanted to join us for pizza and snacks before we went trick-or-treating.
The kids looked so cute…….we had a surgeon……
matching 1970’s disco chicks (be still my heart)……..and matching Lucy’s from Prince Caspian….
a soccer player, a character from Star Wars with the best light saber ever.
munchkin and the scarecrow from Wizard of Oz…..
my poor neighbor Cihat who I conned into wearing this black mullet. (As a side note, I have a small obsession with mullets. This is not the first time I’ve bought one and tried to make Stevie, or anybody, wear it. I don’t know where this comes from…….I love bubba teeth too. I put them in everyone’s stocking one year for Christmas and told them they had to wear them through all the morning pictures. Maybe I’ll try that with mullets this year!)
and then there was princess Jasmine…..
and a grim reaper and Dorothy and Toto and Ariel and a hip hop dancer (no,not just me…a real one)
And my neighbors the Jett’s came walking up the street looking like this. This my friends you should not take for granted. A whole Wizard of Oz family Halloween. This is the stuff I dream about. Stevie in a munchkin suit……it’d send me right over the edge. Paul and Jeannie and Jackie and all their children pull this off well. Back in an earlier post, I talked about how Dorothy (really Polly, but she’s all in character and gets mad if you call her Polly today) switches her f’s for h’s and we didn’t want Jeannie to fix it (Jeannie’s a speech pathologist) and Jeannie agreed that for now it was ‘hunny’ and she’d leave it alone. Well, Polly is about to turn four……which in Polly-speak sounds like “hore” so Jeannie, the party pooper she is, is gonna fix it. Hello, I’m Polly and I’m ‘hore’. It would be ‘hunny’ Jeannie.
this is the kinda neighborhood you only dream about…..where good witches roam around and Dorothy clicks her heel together and says, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”……
the disco chicks are so chic in their white go-go boots. What I wouldn’t have given when I was their age for a pair of boots like that.
and Gracie–or should I say Lucy led the trick-or-treaters in their search for candy heaven.
Notice my feeble attempt at festive with the dark nail polish. Lame, I know. But in my mind, I was all dressed up. If Stevie would humor me, I could come up with many-o-costume. I wanted to dress up like Cher and sway and toss my hair and sing ‘I Got you Babe’.
Then Leigh Ann and I had the discussion about appropriate shoewear for trick-or-treating. One of us had on these shoes……
and the other one had on these. I’ll let you decide who chose heels for all this walking extravaganza. Cute boots though, huh?
and BTW, Leigh Ann, you’re already thinking like a blogger, you might as well start one. Come on!
Then the girls and I made our annual trip to Kimmie’s house. Kimmie was our nanny for three years and as you’ll see from these photos, she’s the ring leader of quite a fun troop. We miss her dearly. Their family wins first place for most festive family in the world. They all dressed up and her house was dark and spooky with lots of candles and fog and even dry-ice in the punch…..
Cara and Drew were adorable too. You gotta love a guy who’ll wear this wig all night and enjoy it!
and Lacey and her boyfriend were quite scary and goth looking. I need to see if she’ll do my makeup the night of the Twilight premier!
I couldn’t stop looking at or taking photos of this. Sheer entertainment.
then there was her son Ryan, who was a hillbilly sheriff and kept saying to everyone, “I’m the laaaww. It iis wut it iis”. You think I’m kidding but I’m not. All this….at one house.

and here they are in all the glory. Another unbelievably funny Halloween at the Miklosovic’s.

Hope you had a fun, safe night too! Did I mention that between them all, they have seven dogs….which were also all dressed up! It was like Halloween on steroids!!!!