Chrismas Lights

       Well I want you to all know that I went out to take pictures for you guys of all the lights around town....and well frankly we didn't find anything that great to show you. So I took to the web to find some really phenomenal pictures of people with true Christmas Spirit!!!

     As a child going out the week around Christmas to drive around and look at Christmas lights was one of my all time favorite activities! If you were to spend even 5 mins with my grandfather around this time a year you would be bound to hear the story about me when I was like 4-6 some where around there when we went driving around town. I guess I was so excited about Christmas and all the pretty lights I was singing "Happy Day to me" to the happy birthday song the whole time we drove around. Well needless to say I still LOVE to go look at the lights.

    Although we have found out here and in Hawaii this isn't really something people do. As we had quite some challenge trying to find any houses that are very decorated. I love to see the neighborhoods in Colorado and Nebraska that go all out. Even have block contests for best decorations, that is always the coolest thing to see. If only everyone had this kind of Christmas Spirit.

   My favorite Christmas lights are the simple ones with beautiful colors, and the people who put them in the tree's in their yards also. And of course the icicle ones they are awesome.

 
But don't get me wrong lights CAN be over done like the below pictures!

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?

The Guiding Light

      I was surprised to hear no one associate stars with Christmas. I suppose you stick that together with the Nativity Scene though. But when I think of the birth of Jesus I always think of the star that led the Shepard and the kings to the manger that night. And how it was the guiding light to show them their way to Christ the Savior! I love the idea of using stars to decorate during Christmas time to represent this.

      There are so many ways to use stars all over the house, but I found 2 different ones on Pinterest that seemed pretty easy to do. So I gathered the supplies and had Dustin help me make them to hang in a big empty space in the living room. The first was a simple paper cutting and folding type thing. I don't have the directions as the picture was in Japanese. But here is the picture. And our results!

The other one was more Oragami style. I love how these turned out and may do them for Kyra's Birthday party or the New Years Party as decoration.

Here are the directions for them. I feel bad posting this link as I feel like it should be linked back to someone's page but the link I found for them on Pinterest had a bad link so. This tutorial is NOT my doing. Here is the Directions and our results!!

And here are them all 4 hanging up in a big empty space!! I think they feel up the area that needed SOMETHING very well!!  I can't wait to take pictures on Christmas day of all the cool decorations our house has. I love that it is so Christmasy in here. Specially since our neighbors are coming up to have dinner up here that night!! Hope it will help put them in the Xmas mood!

My Tree even has a star!!! I got that at the Markets!!

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!

Adding cheer around the house.

      So as you can tell from the blog I LOVE Christmas. But the main reason I decided to do the 25 days of Christmas was to try and establish some fun Christmas Traditions for our little family. My hubby is not a huge fan of Christmas it's just another holiday to him. So I am hoping that shoving tons of Christmas down his throat will make him start to enjoy it. And I couldn't think of any better way than to by the end of the 25 days have SO much Christmas stuff around the house he can't think of anything else.

     Today's blog isn't really anything that fun, but showing some fun ways to use extra ornaments to add the cheer in different places around the house.

Paper chains always look nice!!

I have our pretty little Nativity  scene and candy canes and ornaments here :)

Ornaments by the front door!

     If you love you some Christmas stayed tuned, cuz tomorrow is going to be another give away day!!! I will leave it up for anyone to use from 12am-12am MST. So see you all tomorrow!

What do you do to get in the Christmas spirit?