This post will be mostly pictures with some explanation.

Last Friday we had the annual Christmas Progressive Party! It was a huge, long night of all the treats, all the family, and so much fun! The kids were especially excited to meet one special someone!

A few days ago, Fay decided to be Santa with a beard. I had nothing to do with the idea, but I was very pleased to be part of executing it.

 

Carter also had some tooth drama. He had to get a crown on one of his molars because it didn’t fully develop. He had to get a semi-sedative because it was such a big procedure for such a little guy. But now he’s got a silver tooth and it’s a pretty good conversation piece for him; so he’s good!

Yesterday was our ward Christmas party. They had an ugly sweater contest again. (You may recall that Josh was the winner last year.) Well, it was all too perfect because our neighbor who had almost the same sweater as Josh last year showed up in almost the same suit as Josh this year! There was no collaboration either time. It was all just so delightful!

Tonight we had our traditional drive to look at Christmas lights. Last year all the kids fell asleep about two minutes in, so we just went home and put them to bed. But tonight was awesome! We found a bunch of neighborhoods where people really went all out! It was a ton of fun!

Also, here are some cuties.

 

Introduction
Once Upon a Time… it was two days before Halloween this year and Josh was hard at work on his fabulous haunt experience. At some point during the day of setting up for our little family party the idea struck me that we needed a cozy faux fur rug for our Christmas decor. I can’t tell you why I had that thought. But I did and then I hit pinterest, first for rug stuff, then for all Christmas stuff. In my perusing I found out about “Christmas Home Tour”s. Established interior design bloggers get together and post their gorgeously decorated homes.  I looked through a good handful of them and it was really quite exhilarating! I wanted to have my own Christmas Home Tour!!!! And Josh was delightfully supportive, so here it is!

Disclaimer
Some things you ought to know about this little tour include: I am NOT a real interior designer. So if you happen to be familiar with these design blogs and/or are a designer yourself, don’t get your hopes too high.

Also, I am not a professional photographer (in case you haven’t noticed yet), nor am I very well acquainted with our photo editing software. Also, by the time I could take pictures it was already dark, so we only have our artificial lighting. Due to all these things, the pictures are not as spectacular as the ones from the real design blogs.

Another thing you should know, especially if you are a mother of young children, is that my house looked like this for approximately 20 minutes and those minutes came at the cost of an entire day of cleaning most of which my children spent watching movies or playing by themselves. So yeah.

Anyway, on with the tour!

Our front room is where the magic all starts! I decided the easiest way to go about decoration color schemes was to keep with the existing color scheme of each room I decorated. The front room is purple and gray, so the colors I chose were metallics and purple. I also wanted this room to be the more Christ centered one.

The highlight, as ever, of this room is the beautiful mantel (Josh made it for me, by the way 🙂 ). I made the star out of dowels which I spray-painted gold. Josh made the nativity for me! It turned out perfectly! And I made the Glory to the Newborn King sign. It is extremely reflective paint, though, so I might have to redo the letters one day.

I originally had the same stockings I made last year (tan instead of purple), but Josh said that the stockings kind of blended in with the white of the mantel. Plus there wasn’t any of the purple on the mantel and it sort of interrupted the flow of the room. I agreed and I am very pleased to have the purple ones. Fortunately, stockings don’t take too long to make. 🙂

The next room is the kitchen/dining room. I wanted the tablescape to be an extension of the metallic theme from the tree, though sans purple. I feel like the middle could have used a little something more fleshing out, but I had already exhausted my resources, and I was still quite content with it as it was.

Here is a close-up of the table setting itself.

The counter in the kitchen may be my favorite thing in there because it looks SO good and Josh did it all basically by himself! He was especially proud of his impractical and trendy use of twine around the peppermint tea! Also, we borrowed the gorgeous olive-wood nativity from my mom for a Relief Society activity and have yet to return it, so it is making a special appearance.

Then we move to the family room which, apparently, has the worst lighting in the house because I had to turn my iso up to 3200 for all the pictures, so they’re super grainy. Plus, no matter how I messed with the white-balance before the pictures were taken and no matter how I tinkered with it on the computer, everything looks super yellow. Oh well.

My goal with this room was stick with the existing blue and white and make it sort of winter-wonderland-esque. 

I feel like this might be a nice time to show what this room looked like a year ago. I wanted to do a great big before and after post about it, but I feel like I’ll never be all the way done with it. ha ha!

Here are some more details from the family room. The star of the show here has to be this sign. Josh made this happen for me! (He’s the best, if you hadn’t heard!) I told him what I wanted and found a font I liked, then he free-handed ALL OF IT! I guess he did use a bowl to get the circles perfect for the bells. But everything else was Josh’s magnificent artist hand.

We just got this sign little sign from the amazing Lacey at a party last weekend and it fit so perfectly with everything!

I made this pillow cover. I have painted so many pillows in the past year that I tried to take a shortcut. The pen I got is the reason for the nasty W. It just goes to show that you can’t always find good shortcuts.

This gorgeous nativity was a gift from my brother and sister-in-law from their trip to Curacao.

Then on the other side of the room we find:

The tree was a little more nicely decorated at multiple points during the past few weeks. But the kids have been such champs at leaving the big tree alone that I can’t be too upset at them for having fun with one tree.

And, just for fun, this is what this chair looked like when we bought it a year ago at DI for $20.

Feel free to be impressed with the fact that we reupholstered an armchair!

And so ends my own personal Christmas Home Tour! I do not exaggerate when I say I could NOT have done any of this without Josh’s love, support, and manpower. He really is the very best!

 

As 2017 comes to a close, I wanted to share some things about my theme for this past year: delight.

First off, I’m basically totally converted to the idea of choosing a verb to focus on throughout the year as opposed to individual goals. It was so much easier to just think delight than think about all the ways I wanted to be better. And simply having that theme in the back of my mind really helped me to make some of those changes that easily could have been written out goals. So, just plan on themes from here on out.

Also, I wanted to share the story of delight with you.  This time last year I was weighed down with more things than I care to mention, one of the largest of them being postpartum anxiety/OCD/depression/overall mental distress and emotional turmoil. For months of 2016 it never even occurred to me that my thinking was irrational and caused by my poor, hormonal, sleep-deprived brain, and so I believed all the terrible things I was thinking.  Then my blessed sister came to visit me one day and could see very clearly that my thinking was anything but rational. She called on other siblings to help me–siblings who have experienced similar things–and they all helped me to see that I didn’t have to feel hopeless and miserable all the time. They also shared with me amazing tools and resources without which I don’t know if I ever would have made much progress.  That was all in August or so, and my journey towards healing began there.

But healing is frequently a long road filled with some great days, some terrible days, and some days in between. So at Christmas last year I was still trying to figure out how to have more of the great days and fewer of the terrible ones. It was such an enormous blessing for me to partake of the Sacrament on Christmas day. I remember praying for help during the Sacrament to be able to feel the peace that I was fortunate enough to be feeling on that day more often. The Spirit confirmed to me, undeniably, that Heavenly Father sent His Son to this world so that I CAN have that peace each day. That is the whole reason Christmas is such a magical day and time of year! It is because Jesus really is the Hope of this world!  It was an experience that changed me!

The next week was New Year’s and again I got to take the Sacrament! This time I was praying about how to be better in the new year–what goals I ought to make. I discussed my hopes and desires with the Lord as I sat there in church (probably ignoring my kids and making Josh do all the work–thank you a million, Honey!!!) and I felt the Spirit again. This time the message was that it was time for me to embrace the Atonement of Jesus Christ and find real healing. This year!  I was so encouraged and excited! Thus Delight was born!

Throughout the year, as I focused on enjoying the life the Lord has given me, relishing the small things, and especially rejoicing in the power of the Savior, there were a few things that became cherished blessings for me. One HUGE one was the power of daily, thoughtful scripture study.  When I was having those terrible days filled with worry (also when I still DO have some of those days) the scriptures always brought/bring peace. It isn’t always immediate, but sometimes it is!  But more than peace even it was hope. I remember one occasion where I was reading the scriptures with worries and frustrations raging in my mind. As I read, though, it really hit me that this trial will NOT be mine forever. Even if I wrestle with mental illness for the rest of my entire life, because of the Savior Jesus Christ, I CAN have good days! I WILL ultimately be resurrected with a perfect body AND mind! I CAN still have a life filled with joy even though this is stinkin’ hard!

Another thing that I have cherished more is real, fervent prayer. I feel real power, real hope, when I am humble enough to realize how desperately I need the Savior and ask for that help in prayer.

And so delight led me to hope this year. And those two things have really changed the way I feel each day. But, of course, what has really changed me is Jesus Christ. And that is why I wanted to share this with… you know… whoever reads this, including my future self. This year I have come to know Christ in a way that I never have before. And even though this is totally cliche to say, the frustration of the anxiety and OCD have genuinely been worth it! I wouldn’t wish them on anyone and I would never ask for them, but I’m really okay with even the days recently that I have dealt with them because they remind me that Christ is on my team. He is there with me with hope to spare no matter what is going on in my life and/or brain.

Other things that have come from delight this year are that, not only do I try to cherish the little special moments with my family more, but I also have the desire to create such moments more frequently. Delight reminds me that I am in charge of the life I have as well as a lot of the experience my children have right now and I can choose to make it more delightful by putting more into it. So that often does mean more effort, but the little extra effort more than pays for itself in delight! Also, I find I use the words “delight,” “delightful,” and “delighted” a lot more in daily conversation, which I think is downright classy!

I have been so grateful for this past year! It truly has been delightful! And I’m getting really excited about a new theme for next year. My hope is that it will be something that can maintain the idea of delight while taking it to the next level. We’ll see if I can find the perfect word. 🙂