Christmas in July

While trimming our bushes today, I took down our last string of Christmas lights.

We only turned them on once.

Christmas Coma 2013

I have two pictures to represent Christmas at our house.

Christmas Morning:



Christmas Afternoon:

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Cards 2013

It's that time of year again! When you sit in your backyard on a blanket and force your kids to smile for the camera, promising them cookies and whatever else you can think of to get a decent family photo.



One of my more popular posts last year had to do with how to properly write and address your Christmas cards, so I thought I would revisit that this year complete with photographic aid. I am revisiting this because apparently my post did not change the entire world.  I went to HappiNames a few months ago to order a present for my friend Sarah who was getting married.  I wanted the bucket to say "The Borlands," and the girl working there asked if I wanted a comma in their name.  A comma!  That poor girl didn't know she was in for a thirty minute punctuation lesson.  So here we go, and once again I apologize for the soapbox I will be standing on and if I insult you and your Christmas card writing and addressing practices.

Let's just make this short and sweet: Nowhere on your Christmas cards should you have an apostrophe.  "But Rachel..." Nope.  "What if..." Nope. "I think you..." Don't do it.  The purpose of an apostrophe (when you're using it with a name) is to indicate that those people own something.



Notice here that I have addressed a letter to my parents.  Their last name is English, so to make it plural since there is more than one of them, I added an "es."  If I had written "The English's" not only would my father probably rip up the card and then disown me (do you see how I was raised?), but that would be completely incorrect.  "The English's" doesn't make sense in any way, shape, or form.  Even if I wanted it to write a letter to the dog owned by the Englishes, I would have to pluralize English first: "The Englishes' Dog." And I guarantee you that their dog does not want to read your Christmas cards.

To reiterate the point, in the return address section you can see that I wrote "The Hutsons" not "The Hutson's."  This idea applies to the inside of your card as well: "Merry Christmas! Love, The Hutsons." Beautiful.

Of course you can always take the easy way out and just say "The Hutson Family."  That is assuming you are sending the Hutsons a Christmas card at all, which I expect you aren't because you don't want to endure my ridiculous scrutiny.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Photo Shopping

I'm excited about our Christmas photos this year because even though you are not allowed to post pictures of your foster kids on the internet, you are allowed to include them in the Christmas pictures that you send out in the mail.

So with that in mind, I took Lila and Little Guy shopping for our Christmas photos.  The entire time we shopped Lila was either standing quietly inside the rack of jeans, collecting packets of socks, or trying to try on white fuzzy boots.

She was also very good at carrying escorting our purchases.

Where Are You Christmas?

Santa has gone back to the North Pole in the Hutson household.



My goal today was to put away all of my Christmas decorations.  I think I got everything, but it's kind of like when you find an Easter egg two weeks after the hunt...who knows what will still be up come March.



I'm dreading marching the tree to the door and the needly green trail that will be left behind.

Meh...I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow.  Johnny has National Guard so that really limits my abilities.  I want to deep clean my bathrooms, but Lila likes to lick all the shampoo bottles when she's in there, so an extended amount of bathroom time doesn't seem like a good idea.  I think my goal will be to find a new light for above our kitchen sink.  That Chili's light has GOT to go. 

Christmas Morning

Merry Christmas! Here are some scenes from Lila's very first Christmas morning.

Lila's stocking was full of new snacks.  Her favorites were the freeze dried yogurt and fruit puffs.

 Grampie got Lila a tutu and hair clips in Florida Gator colors, and Grammie got Lila an adorable tea set.  Lila is opening it here.

I made Johnny a six pack carrier for his homebrew.

Lila has gotten really good at smiling for the camera. 

 Lila also got two books that Grammie and Grampie recorded for her...

...and a beautiful ballerina dress.

We all know that her favorite present was really the wrapping paper, though.

Johnny and my big present to Lila was a wagon that we got for free from the Abrams family. 

She loved the straps.

Here's the carnage after all the presents were opened.

After a brief nap, we packed up the rest of the presents and headed over to my parents' house.  Everyone on our list got some of Johnny's homebrew Stout and a monogrammed beer mug...or if you are my brother and sister, pajama pants.

And if you didn't make it to Les Mis today, you HAVE to go see it.  I cried through the entire movie.  I realize that I love Les Mis more than the average gal, but you will definitely not be disappointed.  It wasn't quite as good as the home videos that we watched of me dancing around in a swimming suit and tutu with my underwear sticking out, but it's a close second.

Gingerbread House Party 2012

One thing that I absolutely love about the Christmas season is hosting a Gingerbread Graham Cracker House Decorating Party.  I love planning it, getting the food ready, and frantically texting Katie to bring Parmesan cheese thirty minutes before it starts.  I build all the houses ahead of time and just let people decorate throughout the night with whatever they can find on the candy table.



I had a record turn out this year.  Even Lila's best friend Hayes got to come!



For food, I served bacon wrapped shrimp, candied pecans, sparkling candied cranberries, spinach dip puffs, sea salt caramels, mulled wine, a cheese platter bien sur, and...

...three kinds of macarons! After my long battle with the macaron, I have finally, for the most part, figured them out and was able to make Candy Cane Macarons, Gingerbread Macarons, and Chocolate Chunk Macarons.

Everyone did a great job making their houses.  Some people, like my cousin Melody in the front, have been making these houses with me since first grade when my mom threw our first decorating party.

In the background you can see our almost finished dining room.  I promise to post before and after pictures once we have things like curtains.

I really enjoyed myself at the party this year and even got to decorate a house because everyone passed Lila around .

In my mind, it's officially Christmastime!  Merry Christmas!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

 Christmas has gotten off to a limping start in the Hutson household.  After a failed attempt at going to youth group on Wednesday night (we were halfway there, Lila was screaming because she was hungry, we forgot the diaper bag, church is 30 min away, you get the picture), Lila conked out and gave us an opportunity to get enough done in our dining room that we could move the dining room table out of the living room...making room for a Christmas tree!

But not until after hanging out with my family on Friday night, eating Twinkie cake, and listening to Donna the Deer Lady on youtube.

Finally, though, on Saturday night, we were able to go out and pick our Christmas tree!

Lila wasn't totally sure what was going on, but she was very excited and wanted to touch all of the trees.

 

Notice that Johnny is wearing short sleeves and Lila doesn't have a coat on.  It was crazy warm.  Last year, I remember not getting out of the car because it was so cold, and I was pregnant, that has to add at least ten degrees to your regular body temp.

Lila waited very patiently for Daddy to tie the tree on the car.  At this point, I realized that I didn't really clean all the carrots off her face.  Poor kid.

Anyway, we got the tree put up last night and started doing a little bit of decorating this morning.  You can see a sneak peak of the dining room color there in the corner.  I'm really pushing to get it finished this week so that our Christmas decorating can be finished, you know, maybe before Christmas.

 

Christmas Play Dresses

I decided to break in my early Christmas present (a new Bernina sewing machine!) and make Lila some simple pillowcase dresses for Christmas time.



I followed this tutorial from aestheticnest.com, but there are a LOT of tutorials for pillowcase dresses available.  Lila got one long one with Christmas trees...

...And one short one with people Christmas shopping.

My plan is to make an apron for myself out of this same fabric.  And if Johnny is lucky, there might just be enough for a bow tie. Matching family!  I can't wait to hear what teenage Lila will think of it.

Christmas Music Day

I know, I know, you hate this.  You hate walking through Target and seeing all the Christmas stuff out when we barely said good-bye to Halloween.  Unfortunately for you, I love it! Happy Christmas Music Day! (one day late...we were just too busy celebrating.  You understand.)



In honor of Christmas Music Day, I thought I would post photos of Lila's stocking that I just finished.  You might remember seeing Johnny and my stockings here from my post last year.  I made them for Johnny's Christmas present the Christmas before we got married.

Please tell my husband that is sad that I have to hang Lila's stocking on a hook in the kitchen instead of on a mantel, since I don't have a mantel