.my 2010 in pictures.

I put together some images - one from each month of the past year. It's a great way to reminisce on all the highlights from this past year! My, how things change in a year!

January marked the closing on our first house! We were eager to break open the paint buckets and get started on transforming our new house into a home!

Our moving in was delayed by two weekends of snow and ice. We finally got moved in in February. Simon was a lot nervous in his new cluttered surroundings...and I probably was just a little bit too.

March was the month I tackled the trails of Dogwood Canyon with my friend Loren. We celebrated the end of our fun trip with a huge ice cream cone at a semi local gas station.

April marked my first time to ever go see the Roller Derby! What made this event even more memorable was the fact I was on a Girls' Night with all the ladies I work with!

May was a BIG month for me! I traveled all the way up to New York to see the big city for the first time in my life, flew on an airplane for the first time ever, rode a subway for the first time ever...etc.

June marked the debut of "Shabby Threads" in a local shop called True Treasures! A very exciting month filled with LOTS of sewing!

July held our annual Summer trip to Kansas City to watch the Royals play. It was hot as ever but so much fun!

In August, hubs and I celebrated 4 years of being married!

Hubs and I were super excited for the start of Razorback football season in September. Here we are at our first game of the year!

October is my favorite month of the year! I had an awesome day on my friend's farm, feeding her cows and riding a 4-wheeler. We also went to the pumpkin patch and corn maze that day.

November is always such a great month filled with lots of family time. Thanksgiving was great this year, and I love this picture of the ladies on my side of the family and how we all coincidentally coordinated perfectly that day!

I love December! The Christmas lights in Fayetteville were beautiful this year despite being scaled down from previous years.

Looking back, I am reminded how full of blessings this past year has been. I can only hope and pray that 2011 will be half the year this one was!

Here's what's to come in 2011:

• Hubs and I will celebrate one year of living in our house
• Hubs will turn 29, and I'll hit the big 2-8
• I will get to meet my new niece/nephew!!!
• Hubs and I will celebrate 5 years of marriage

.vacation ramblings.

My two week vaca is almost over, and today was the first day I had absolutely nothing on my agenda! I decided to stay home, wear baggy clothes, cover up on the couch, eat popcorn and catch up on my DVR'd shows. I have to admit, I record the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and 16 and Pregnant. It's mind-numbing tv and I only indulge on lazy days such as today!

I also had some girl time tonight with one of my best friends slash lil sis. We watched Letters to Juliet, ate mexican food, and had some good girl talk. Laughing with girlfriends is the funnest thing ever!

Tomorrow I plan on staying home again because I'm trying to resist the urge to spend all my free time doing what I love best: shopping. It's time to buckle down and save, save, save. I need to spend some quality time with my house, getting it all sparkly and clean. I also need to watch a few more chick flicks. All I need is about two good days to do whatever I please, then I'll be ready to return to the daily grind of that thing called work.

.christmas wishes.

From our home to yours on this very special holiday: Merry Christmas and may the year ahead bring an abundance of blessings!

Love,

Leslie, Martha & Simon

.christmas decor.

I can't begin to express how much I love this time of year! I've already spent so much quality time with my family, and I've been doing my best to soak it all in. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which is usually spent celebrating with my side of the family, but we got together a couple of days early this year since my brother and his wife are spending Christmas in Kansas. Supposedly, we have some snow in our forecast tomorrow, and that excites me greatly!

I'm on my 2-week vacation right now, and hubs only works until 1 tomorrow. When he gets home, we'll celebrate Christmas Eve by eating with his parents at Arbys. (It's a random tradition they started when hubs was a kid.) We've missed it the past couple of years but will actually get to go this year! Once we get home, we have plans to cuddle up and watch It's a Wonderful Life. The next day (Christmas day!!) we'll spend with hubs' side of the family.

Anyway, so that's what's been going on. I wanted to share a few pictures of some of the decor around my house. I hope to get better and better at decorating for the holidays each year.

.holiday pictures.

'Tis the season, and I'm loving all the family time, cooler temps, and the fact that I can actually use my oven and not burn up!

I also love that my husband is in our bedroom right now wrapping gifts for me, so I can't go in there.

I already posted about Thanksgiving this year but forgot to post about my side of the family's early Thanksgiving. My sister and her husband came up the weekend before, and we had the traditional turkey meal and got to spend time going to yard sales and flea markets, watching movies (Dumb & Dumber), and looking through old photos.

Here are some pictures from that day of me, my sis, sis-in-law, and mom. We all coordinated perfectly in our blues and grays - which was totally coincidental but awesome!

I was ready to decorate our tree the night of Thanksgiving but patiently waited until the weekend after, when the husband felt more up to it. This is our first year to have a "big" tree as opposed to our old 4 ft apartment tree that we swore we would only use one year but ended up using for four!

Today was frigidly cold, but we braved the temps to take some Christmas card pics. I had big plans this year to have our pictures made out by an old white church, but by the time everyone got themselves together, it was an hour until darkness was supposed to hit, so we settled for using my brother's backyard as our backdrop. These are the two pictures I picked out for our Christmas cards:

I ordered our cards through Walgreens this year because they currently have a coupon code for $10 off any order of $20 or more. I was able to order 60 cards for only $31. I thought it was a good deal, and I can't wait to get them all picked up and mailed out!

Here's wishing everyone a Bright & Merry holiday season thus far!

.thanksgiving.

Today is Thanksgiving, and the holiday spirit has been in the air all day! Woke up this morning to the sound of sleet outside, which made it so very hard to get up and out of bed. We got to see my husband's brother perform with his high school band on tv for the McDonald's Thanksgiving Day parade, which took place in Chicago. We finally hopped in the truck (me with my rainboots on) and drove throught the sleet for the 30-minute drive to my in-laws'. This is what it looked like outside:

We had a full house this year, and the food was amazing as usual. I made it a point to take a few pictures of people mingling and getting food. It happens the same way every year: We all hold hands and someone says the blessing, then we form a line and help ourselves buffet-style. This year, we had adults eating in the living room and eat-in kitchen, as well as the den. The little kids also had their own table in the den.

This is me with my mother-in-law and her mom. We got a kick out of the fact that we all 3 wore cable knit sweaters. They are the sweetest ladies ever, and I'm very blessed to be able to say my in-laws are good, Christian people who show me love and have made me feel like a welcome addition to the family since Day One.

So after we stuffed ourselves and sat around chit-chatting for a few hours, hubs and I headed home to do a little Black Friday research. Hubs discovered a few online deals and went ahead and ordered himself a few goodies. My brother and his wife came over to discuss Black Friday game plans, and I made some brownies. I was (and still am) in the mood to pull an all-nighter and watch Christmas movies, but unfortunately hubs and the sis-in-law both have to work in the morning.

Here's hubs and the bro working on their shopping game plan. I love that they got really into it this year and spent an hour or two looking through ads to find the best deals on tools. They're meeting up at Home Depot in the morning. So cute. :-)

I am so excited to hit up Target in the morning...at 4 am....Fingers are crossed I'll be able to find everything on my list without too much hassle.

Good luck to everyone out there fighting the crowds to get some deals! I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving Day!

.possibilities.

I'm up late...

Real late.

It's almost 1 am! I never stay up this late, ever, but it's my week off work and I'm milking it for all it's worth!

I've been spending a lot of time daydreaming and crafting, trying to make my house more of a home. My taste of decor is strongly vintage modern with a sudden intolerance for anything "country." I'm attempting to rid every room of all traces of "country," including my barn house star, berry wreaths and wooden birdhouses.

Combine my wealth of unwanted decor with my obsession with sewing, and a new venture in life squats at the starting line, waiting for the gun to sound the "start" signal.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is: It looks like a flea market booth might be in my near future. Eek!!! This is something I've thought about doing for a long time, and with a couple of friends and family members willing to share booth space rental with me, the dream looks to be a soon reality!

I'll definitely post more about that when the time comes, but for now I'm up late thinking of bedding, artwork, curtains and crafting. I have a lot of ideas spinning around my head and not a lot of $$$$$ to back it all up! I've decided I'd love to change out the bedding on our master bed. Right now, it is a madras plaid print. I've been looking at IKEA duvet sets but the hubs isn't too fond of most of what I like. Since he has to sleep on the bed too, I'm taking his opinion into consideration. My newest idea is to have a white duvet cover and a few white shams and use a brightly-colored printed sheet set to contrast. I still need to run that idea by the hubs...Fingers are crossed he'll be open to it!

I'm happy to say ever since I started advertising my reversible aprons to my facebook friends, I've received a total of seven orders so far. I've been very busy sewing, and I couldn't be happier about it! I couldn't have asked for a better time to have a week off of work. {I'm already looking forward to Christmas break when I'll have TWO weeks off! Now, that's a lot of sewing time!}

Well, the hubs has been tucked into bed for a few hours now, and the pug is snoring on the floor next to my feet. I guess I should take a hint and take myself to bed. I'm afraid it's going to be hard to turn off this crazy brain of mine and actually get some sleep, but I guess if I don't try I'll never know.

Here's to another day tomorrow filled with thrifting, sewing, crafting and dreaming of more possibilities.

With Thanksgiving only 3 days away, I must say I have so many blessings to count and I'm so thankful for family time and time to dabble in things that I love.