1.  Yesterday was a wonderful day for me personally and professionally.  Hearing so many comments, getting wonderful emails, but most of all, reading Michele’s wonderful words that brought me to tears.  Very cool.  Can I just tell y’all one more time how very much I love what I do?

2.  We’re a bunch of sickies.  Everyone but Ty.  Well, and Taryn is at about 80%….just in time for both Jase and I to be sick and Teagan to be teething and sick.  Sigh.  I will be honest though.  I prayed and prayed and prayed my husband wouldn’t get sick.  I begged God that if someone had to get sick, please, please, please let it be me and not him.  Yeah, I know, you think I’m a great wife don’t ya?  Well, it’s actually 100% selfish because my husband is by far the biggest baby ever when he’s sick.  Just sticks to my theory, “the bigger the man, the bigger the baby”.  Now you might think I’m a horrible wife.  You do, don’t ya?  If y’all only knew…..the oh wo is me is kickin at our house.  The walking around with a box of kleenex, the moaning and groaning, the drama.  Boo hoo dude!  At least he can take the good medicine….I can’t, I’m nursing, but you don’t see me aiming for an ocsar do ya?  And while I’m being honest here, I totally razz him about it.  When he’s sick.  Poor guy.  That’s alright….I know there are other wives out there grinning right now….your husbands are big babies too.  You’re giggling along even though you’re hiding behind that monitor and we can’t see you.  LOL….that’s ok, I know you’re there!

3.  The great thing about us hosting Christmas is that once a year (literally) it makes us get stuff done around the house.  Usually means hanging things up on our new house uber bare walls. This canvas was my birthday gift (yeah, my birthday is in July)…I figured we better get it up before Christmas….((excuse the bad photos….I stink at taking pics of pics)….

After I took the photo of Teagan and Jase, I swore to him I wanted to wallpaper our walls with it….kidding….but when the canvas arrived on our doorstep Jase said “uhm, you weren’t kidding”.  LOL  The canvas is a custom size (33×19) gallery wrap with a white border.  I bought the frames for the display first and then ordered the canvas to size.  I love it.  It’s *almost* lifesize.  This is where Teagan and I sit and nurse and for the first few days we had it up, he’d unlatch, look up and start talking all about “dada” with a great big smile.  I still want to swap out a few of the smaller pics on bottom, but I just used what I had laying around on my desk to just get it up and presentable.

4.  We redid Taryn’s room last spring and I finally got her prints above her bed a few weeks ago….

Simple, foam core mounted 18×12 and 8×12 prints with small holes drilled in the top corners.  I then ran ribbon through them and tied a knot in the back.  Trim any extra ribbon and hang….so easy and low cost since no frames are involved.  I love that because I can switch them out without a lot of guilt.  I also got these up above her little chair in her room….her favorite spot to sit and read.  These are also mounted 18×12 prints that are just velcroed to the wall.  Super easy.

I should have taken a photo of the cute fabric garland on the top of her bookcase, one of my wonderful clients sent it to Taryn as a gift and it is so stinkin cute (thanks again Lauren!!)

5.  Taryn’s room isn’t the only one with new and improved walls…..my former office turned playroom.  I’m thinking of reclaiming it as an office here pretty soon though.  I’d love some wall storage for toys under the photos.  We’ll see…..notice I didn’t even bother kicking the mess out of the way.  I have 3 kids, you guys know my house is a mess right?  This is a 16×20 stand out…ready to hang, no frame, with 2 8×16 frames I’ve had for years and never used.  Each one holds three 4×6 prints.

6.  See that thing hanging over the window in the photo above?  My mom and Ty made that for me years ago, and when I opened the box, my mom said “I’m not sure what you’re going to do with it”…but I love it.  I have struggled with what to do with it, it’s long, but this year I decided to fold it into shorter strands and hang it in the playroom.  Each year that goes by, Ty gets older, the photos on the tags fade a little more.  I lost so many photographs of him to hurricane katrina, I love these.  Love them.  I can’t not walk by it 10 times a day and smile.  And remember.  And marvel.  Doesn’t Teagan resembles Ty as a baby….

7.  And while I’m sharing house stuff….I stole this idea from Mary.  I tacked a piece of ribbon to the wall and stapled all the cards we received this year as they came in the mail.  The kids love looking at them, even if they are all crooked and not very centered on the wall.  Mary’s looked better!

8.  When Taryn and Jase were in Louisiana, Ty and I decided to try and get a shot like this of Teagan…..Little T as the snowman…..

The problem…..Teagan is deathly afraid of the snowman suit.  As in terrified.  I finally gave up trying to get a good shot of just him but even when Ty stepped in, Teagan still wanted nothing to do with it.

Actually, even after we took it off of him, we had to take it totally out of the room for him to stop screaming.  It was actually kind of funny because he’s normally soooooo chill.  It reminded me of when Taryn was his age and had an irrational fear of tinkerbell and elephants.  Funny kids.  I’m kinda sad Teagan hated it….he’d a been a cute snowman.

9.  It’s the day before Christmas Eve and I have not wrapped a single gift.  Sad, but true.

10. Love this.

and this.

but especially this.

I think I have officially cleaned out my “things to blog about” folder.  Merry Christmas!