Thursday, December 29, 2011

What a Wonderful Christmas!

Our new single server Keurig coffee maker!

We had a wonderful Christmas in Ohio celebrating with our brothers and their families.  

But, alas, no snow.  

Bummer!

However, even without snow it was a fantastic five days.

We are so fortunate to have a very loving family.  

And, boy, do they treat us special!

The most delicious meals...from prime rib to turkey...breakfasts, lunches and dinners...we ate well enjoying everyone's company.

Our only complaint...the time went by too quickly.

Gosh, I love our new single coffee server!  Hubby doesn't drink coffee or tea but he made sure we had some hot chocolate K-cups so we both could enjoy drinking hot chocolate on those cold, winter nights.  We bought a small sampling of different kinds of K-cups (coffee and tea) to try before buying more.  So far, I like the light roast coffees the best.  

Our new iPhones 4S

We've been "playing" with our new iPhones.  These tech gadgets are fantastic.  We got unlimited texting and my poor Hubby has been getting nonstop texts from me.  I've been loading the cutest apps too.

Our adorable grand niece, Hailey
We finally got to see our cute new grand niece, Hailey!  


I just finished giving Lucas, our grand nephew, his bottle.

Lucas is the happiest baby!  

He was smiling all day but I think he's getting sleepy now.


I love this stuff..."Christmas Crap"...a great snack!
My sister-in-law, Jane, made "Christmas Crap" for all of us.  

Yummy!

Update:  Here's the recipe from Jane!


CHRISTMAS CRAP


2 cups Rice Chex cereal
2 cups Wheat Chex cereal
2 cups Corn Chex cereal
2 cups Cheerios cereal
1 cup salted peanuts
1 cup mini pretzels
1/2 lb. M&Ms
about 1 and 1/4 lb. white chocolate

Mix everything together except white chocolate.  Melt white chocolate and pour over mix.  Mix to coat.  Pour onto wax paper and let set.  Make a thin layer so it's easy to break up.

(Note:  My Sister-in-law advises that she reduces this recipe by half because it makes an humongous amount!)


The individual pretzels shown with the hershey kisses and M&Ms is another recipe.  You can find that recipe here.  



Teacup Lane's Christmas Living Room.
After returning from Ohio we celebrated our Christmas at Teacup Lane. 

 Thanks sweetie for treating me like a queen.  I love you!  

This has been the best Christmas (and they all have been great)!

  Now I can really relax and enjoy the Christmas decorations.  I know there are many bloggers out there already putting their Christmas decorations away.  But not here at Teacup Lane.  We leave it all up into the middle of January or even later.  One year, while still working, it was February before we took it all down.


Vintage Snowman
Hubby fixed our vintage Snowman...the light wasn't working...but he got it going again.  

What a great guy!  
He's my "tech guy".  

Always fixing my computer for me and now we've added our iPhones to his list. 

I hope all of you had a most wonderful Christmas with your families.

Love, hugs and magical wishes for happiness to all of my blogging friends!

Here's to a fantastic 2012 for all of us. 

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Merry Christmas!



The very best Merry Christmas wishes to all of my blogging friends!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Christmas Stamps






I found these great vintage Santa Christmas stamps on Pinterest. 

Have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

We are...

having lots of fun here celebrating 

with 

my brother

and 

his 

family!




Friday, December 16, 2011

Christmas Trees at Teacup Lane

Family Room

Our Christmas trees are all decorated here at Teacup Lane.  

All our gifts are wrapped except for the ones being shipped (love shopping on-line).

If you remember in the past two years we gave our large Christmas tree to one of our nieces and bought some cheap slim trees at Target.  The large tree was getting too heavy for us to drag up out of our basement.  

Our old large tree had red berry lights with white lights which we just loved.  This year we found red and white berry LED lights at Target so we bought two strands each for our Christmas tree in the family room.

Mantel in Family Room

The mantel is still a work in progress here in this photo but it shows the two new stuffed snowmen I bought at our local Christmas craft fair this year. 

Family Room

I've been experimenting with our Canon cameras ~ trying to learn the features to take better decent photos in low light.  


Living Room

We put colored lights on our Christmas tree in our living room.  

I love colored lights because it brings back memories of my childhood Christmas trees.  

Family Room

Our fire is all aglow in our fireplace and nicely shows off our mantel all finished with red and white candy cane lights and white garland trim.  

Next to the windows is a snowman tree topper that I placed in some fake greenery.  

All the way to the right is a vintage lighted Santa figure.

This weekend I will be busy baking our Christmas cookies.

Thanks so much for visiting and I hope you enjoyed viewing our Christmas trees.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

A Very Green Christmas




One of my readers commented that Christmas comes in all colors and I couldn't agree more!

How about a Very Green Christmas!


Wow!

I love this combination of a green polka dots tablecloth and green wreaths with green bows....




I love farm sinks ~ especially this one decorated in green and silver!  




A lovely cottage look in green....




A very pretty green mantel ~ decorated so simply with fresh green apples....




I've always wanted to decorate our vehicles at Christmas.

This vintage vehicle is pretty in green.


Bold green ornaments....




A pretty fresh green swag for the front door...




And more fresh greens on this beautifully decorated front door!

Hope you enjoyed these very GREEN Christmas photos I found on Pinterest.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Blue, Blue Christmas



A pretty blue bow...




Blue ornaments on a white Christmas tree...



A bright, beautiful BLUE Christmas tree...



A lovely flowered blue & white bedspread...




A stunning blue light display...



A cute, adorable blue-eyed kitty....


A blue and white Christmas font sign...


Merry Christmas in blue to all of you....




And to end the blue Christmas presentation...please enjoy the King singing "Blue Christmas".

(Please go to the bottom of my blog and turn off my music so you can enjoy Elvis)

Monday, December 5, 2011

Busy with Christmas Decorations


Remember when counted cross stitch was the rage years ago?

This is a little sampler I made way back when...

I've been busy setting up my Christmas decorations in the house.  Two trees are finally up except for their toppers.  Boxes are everywhere in the house.  But it's too much of a mess to take photos yet for posting.  

I realized as I'm putting out my Christmas stuff that I really do favor RED and Santas...and snowmen...

I haven't even started my gift shopping yet...keep calm...

This is my newest motto....
  


I must confess...this past weekend I went to a local Christmas Craft Fair.  

And, of course, I found some Christmas decorations that I wanted needed for the house.

More Santas and snowmen!

And lots of RED!

~~~~~~~~~

Look at the delicious Christmas decor in RED I found on Pinterest...




I've never had a red wreath...what is wrong with me!

These are stunning!



Red print couches and chair...not just for Christmas...oh, no!  

I have to seriously consider the color red in my family room decor when we replace our furniture.

~~~~~~~~~~

Crochet Chained Christmas Wreaths



I posted about my latest little crochet project on my Christmas blog - so head on over there all you crocheters and take a peek!  

Some of these darlings are in RED!  

LOL!

Friday, December 2, 2011

Cheap & Cute - Mr. Rainbow Snowman



Introducing Mr. Rainbow Snowman!

My new Christmas front door decoration.

I was inspired by all of the beautiful Snowman Door Wreaths shown on Pinterest such as these two...



First I thought I would do the Snowman out of green wreaths which I thought would look smashing on the my red paper wrapped front door.



But then I decided that white wreaths would POP even more with the red paper background.  

So off to Michaels I went to hunt for the wreaths.  Well, there were no white wreaths at all and there weren't green wreaths in the three sizes I needed.  

Instead Hubby and I found some white styrofoam circles in the three sizes that would fit on our front door.   I didn't want to spend a lot of money and I wanted something that would store easily out of season so home we came with the styrofoam circles. 




Now to dress my Snowman.  
The red and white hat is mine as are the cute Christmas gloves.  And my crocheting bloggers may recognize my Rainbow Ruffle Scarf that I recently made. 

Sorry I wasn't able to take photos as I worked on Mr. Snowman.  First I tried to glue large magnets on the back of the styrofoam circles with styrofoam glue but that didn't work.  So I got my Hubby's duct tape and duct taped the magnets to the back of the styrofoam circles.  I also stuck some sewing pins in the duct tape and styrofoam to help hold the duct tape more firmly.  

I cut out circles in black felt for the buttons, eyes and mouth and added an orange felt nose...glued down with styrofoam glue.  

For the arms I used some small 4th of July flags sticking the ends into the styrofoam and rolling up the flag and putting the flag ends into the gloves.

I used several large magnets to hold the hat, gloves and scarf in place.  

In the end the only supplies I had to buy was the styrofoam circles and glue... everything else I used were items we had on hand already.

In case you are wondering the red paper background is attached to the front door by magnets too.   I hang it in our basement to the ductwork with the magnets when stored out of season.  

Mr. Rainbow Snowman says "Merry Christmas"!

Our home sits back from the street so I like to have something larger on the front door otherwise you can't see it from the road.

Hubby put a spotlight on the front door so it shows up at night nicely too.  

What do you think?  

Is Mr. Rainbow Snowman cute or not?  



Please join me for:
                                    Cindy at My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday