As you can tell, I love blog parties...they are just genius! I would never have stumbled onto some of the best ideas and met the nicest ladies if not for Blog Parties. They are just too fun! So today, over at 5 Minutes for Mom, it is Tackle it Tuesday. Basically you pick something that you have been procrastinating on or something that is just sort of nagging at the back of your mind all the time and you tackle it. So today my project is my cute Parting Favors for my Cookie Exchange coming up on Sunday. I know! I know! They should be finished, but that's why I have to tackle them today. Here's a sneak peek at what I have before me...I don't think it will give too much away to the ladies who are coming to the exchange and reading my blog.
So tonight after work, I'll be printing, cutting, mixing etc to get these puppies finished. I can't reveal what I am going to do with them today, but I will post next Tuesday about what I did with them...and just a hint...I'll be participating in more than one party...I'll get to post on all the Tasty Tuesday parties...yeah! Okay off to work, TaTa for now!
It is definitely a girlie tree...lucky for me PC indulges me at this time of year and let's me be as girlie as I want. BTW - I call this tree...Marilyn. Tata for now!
The base of this tree is sitting in a wine glass surrounded by corks. The tree was $1.00 with lights and the glass was a gift. The corks come with the bottles.
The ornaments were made by Momma. They are actually wine charms that get used about 3 times throughout the season. It is such fun tree!
The topper is a wine bottle ornament that Momma gave me - isn't it the cutest!?
This is the Thanksgiving Table- yep you read that right - Thanksgiving. We have about 16-20 people every year. I start decorating on the Veteran's Day weekend so that our family can enjoy the holiday spirit at Thanksgiving. It is the only time that we all get together at our house during the season, as we go to the In-laws for Christmas morning. It's sort of a joke now - it's called Christmas-giving. I really enjoy it because there is no expectation of presents - it's just the family together in a joyfully decorated home! It gets everyone in the spirit!
PC has been in-charge of deep frying the turkey for the past three years. It works out really well because before deep frying I use to slow cook the bird for about 20 hours. So now my oven is free and the bird is just as juicy.
This is Momma's prize Manger scene - she collects them. It is so beautiful gilded and bejeweled and has the most precious baby Jesus.
The library becomes the Angel room at this time f year. I have been collecting angels since I was a child of about 9 years old. Most of these were gifts including the ornaments on the tree. The photos of the collections are from 2 different years, I change things up a little each year.
You have seen this before - but I just love it. I also love how the columns look all wrapped up like a pretty package.
We weren't really expecting the snow storm that we received this year, so I sprayed the french doors to the scrap room to ensure that we had a white Christmas.
This tree sat was part of my grammas decorations - I was so thrilled the day Momma gave it to me for my home!
This year we had a white Christmas. There were 5 teenagers snowed in with us for 4 days. Thank goodness we had gone grocery shopping the day before. If you look at the entertainment center -I have the Mervyn's (sniff, sniff) village displayed. I have been adding 1 piece a year for about 10 years. NOW I have to start a new village.
You can see most of the snowmen collection - I really like snowmen! See the teenagers? They are exhausted from playing in the snow. The blankets draped on the couch were made for each of the kiddos by PC's momma for their first christmas.
My laundry room holds my childhood raggedy Ann & Andy. And can you see Santa's clothesline?
What you see here is Momma preparing for the bake-a-thon that is about to happen in our home. We have hosted a cookie exchange for the last two years. The first year about 12 women showed up and we had a blast. This year people were asking me for invitations be cause they missed last year and wanted to make sure they were still invited. I use THE expert advice of Robin over at 
While I was away for a conference (the weekend of!) Baby Girl and Momma baked a lot of cookies. This was Baby Girl's first baking project - she did great! She had to roll and slice 8 dozen cookies and then she made another batch of a different kind! But Momma had to tell her a few times to stop texting. 
I mixed the dough for these little guys and got a few rolled out but poor momma got stuck with the rest. But she did wait for me to come home to decorate them. They tasted as good as they looked! It was a chewy gingerbread recipe (I'll post it tomorrow for foodie Friday).
This was the table for the first year we did the exchange this was our table. I was thrilled! You can see my Santa Collection in the china hutch.
We give a prize to he most festively dressed and it is stiff competition for those serious about getting the prize!
The second year was unbelievable! SOOOO many cookies. It really is a fun thing to do, we serve appetizers and desert, wine, eggnog and Hot apple cider. 
I strongly suggest this tradition!
I will give away 2 prizes to randomly selected individual (my first give away!). I will announce the winners on Sunday Morning. The guidelines are listed below - let's have some 
Then they just appeared from behind the trees and multiplied into 15 balloons! It was so fun to watch these giants grow from the ground in a matter of an hour. Watching all the hard work by so many people who knew that they weren't taking flight was humbling. To take pleasure in simply lighting a fire....
And then they got their "Glow" on. There was a marching band playing music most of the day and now they were orchestrating the movement of lights from balloon to balloon. Spectacular! 
On our way of walking out of the park, the carousel was glowing too, isn't it darling?
Then on to the fireworks - one of my favorite things!
You could "feel" these fireworks, as Momma said "from your toes to your nose." It was such a fun day. I am so happy that we went, because it rained all day on the 4th, so we only watched the neighborhood fireworks from my aunt's (use to be gramma's) front porch. That was just as nice too, as I sat and remembered my childhood and twirled a flag with my cousin. I was so thankful for being free to enjoy the day and my family, my only wish was for more time. 
