Getting ready for Christmas Dinner

     To me one of the most exciting parts of Christmas is to gather around a table, eating some awesome food and just really enjoy each others company. I love to sit and talk about the great gifts we were given and the reactions of our loved ones to the gifts we got them. And of course after dinner sitting around playing board games drinking Cocoa or Egg Nog laughing and making memories to look back fondly upon for years to come. Living over seas and away from family for over 3 years now, it has been sad to not be able to do this with my family. But the great thing about Army living that I have mentioned before is that your friends become like family. So this year we are going to a have a couple people over to enjoy some delicious food and fun. 

      This will be my first time hosting a Christmas dinner at my house. I want to make it special for everyone. At least I don't have to worry about decorating the house as I think there is adequate amounts of decoration to get everyone in the spirit! The only thing that I though could use some spirit was the table. I have been admiring many table decorations on Pinterest, but some seem so formal although they are beautiful. Others are just amazing and if we had the money I would totally go all out and do them. But for what I was thinking I had the perfect idea!

        But here are some of the fancier and beautiful ideas for your table if you have the time and money to accomplish them: these pictures are not mine.

The White looks so classy and  simple!!

I love the Rustic table with the modern chairs!

Beautiful Red flowers!

Cute little gifts for everyone, and fresh pine garland!

The Reds are just amazing on this one!!

      So my simple decorations are made a lot cheaper and match all my decorations around the house with the blue and silver! I used silver tinsel as what holds it all together. Than I flipped over a couple Margarita glasses and filled them up with blue and silver ornaments, and placed the candles I made earlier on the tops!! In the center is a cute little garden gnome that Dustin bought me earlier this month because I had been looking for one everywhere!!

It may not be the fanciest but it looks nicer than just an empty table! What do you do for Christmas Dinner? Are there any games you play specifically or fun customs that your family loves to enjoy after all the gifts are open?

Sparkles like Diamonds

       I don't know what it is about Christmas time, but something about it makes me wanna decorate everything in glitter. Maybe it's how the snow glistens in the sun and I wanna bring that in to my home. Who's to say for sure. But today's craft was all about glitter. I even got a friend of mine to do one of her awesome nail designs with some glitter for you guys!!

      As I mentioned yesterday today is a give away day. You will have you choice of either a glitter and glue ornament, or a candle.

    The first craft I did was the ornaments. They were so simple, all you had to do was pour the glue on to contact paper in what ever design you wanted and shake glitter down over it. Than let it dry over night. I did both snow men and snow flakes.

      And the other craft I did was the glittery candles. This one I had a bit of a challenge with as I didn't realize you have to do a very very thin layer of glue in order for this to look right, and that you should stick to a simple design also as going crazy with it will only lead to it looking sloppy. Here are the 4 candles I did, you can easily tell which was done first and which set was done after a little practice.

 And here are the adorable nail designs that Candice did for my blog today. She does really great work, I haven't seen a design I didn't like. If you wanna check out all the cool stuff she does just follow this link http://getnailedbycandice.blogspot.de/ to her blog I highly recommend it. And if you live here in Wiesbaden I'm sure if you got a hold of her she would love to come up with a design for you :)

      And as an added bonus I took a couple pictures of Christmas things around my house that had glitter on them too :P

      So in order to win today's give away you must answer on either this blog entry or the link from Facebook the following question. And the winner will be drawn the same way the last give away was done.

     What Holiday image reminds you most of Christmas (ie snowflakes, nativity scenes, etc...)?   Mine is obviously snowmen. They just remind me of the cheer of the holidays. We always loved to build snowmen with our parents when we were younger!