The Bradshaw Crew

We spent Christmas Eve at Kati & Dan’s house with the family. Again, we had food, fellowship and presents. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves since I’m falling asleep on my computer now.

Since we didn’t have bible study Wednesday night and Bo’s mom comes to that with us, we decided to get together anyways for dinner/Christmas. We had breakfast for dinner (eggs & toast – not separate – it’s an actual dish they make), put on “Mickeys Magical Christmas” in the background on tv and opened presents together. Of course Bows had to be the center of attention….

We had fun opening presents trying to guess what was inside. Lots of flat ponies, dead ponies, squished ponies, square ponies (it’s only funny if you’ve ever opened presents with me before… think along the lines of KiT-Ten).

“Home Sweet Home” has always been my favorite Yankee candle fragrance but I got “Sparkling Cinnamon” this year which outsmells that by far! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Yummy and warm! And yes, I’m STILL wearing my scrubs from work.. off work at 430, home at 5, had company over already, made food for our christmas eve dinner, company left at 645, started wednesday night dinner, bo’s mom arrived at 7, she left at 930 and I had a chance to change from my work clothes straight into my jammees!

Bo actually enjoyed his gifts quite a bit, you just can’t tell :/

Yup…. STILL there

Then she got tired and flipped insideout. It’s a newer thing for her to hang out insideout but I catch her doing it all the time now. She’s a fluffy nut.

We got our Christmas tree Thanksgiving weekend. We just now (last weekend) got around to putting lights and decorations on it. Come to find out, our christmas tree topper is gone so I had to go buy a new one this year. So here’s our tree…. it makes me smile.

Bo and I have both been collecting ornaments since we were little and have a TON of ornaments, we put less than half on the tree and it’s full already.

I also got around to baking a little. I make pizzelles every year and have been craving Chex mix for months now and wanted to do that as well and Bo has his favorite cookies that his mom makes every year and I said I’d try to make this year for the first time. It’s not going very well so far….

This is the first of my chex mix… 4 pans in the oven going on their 2nd hour of baking now (supposed to be 1) and I ran out of Worshestershire sauce which apparently is what gives it the bold taste so I’m bummed about the flavor of how this might turn out…. if it ever finishes cooking (i doubled the butter so it wouldn’t get dry but now it won’t cook out!)

My mother in law makes these perfect little mini muffin shaped frosted cookies every year. They are Bo’s favorite. Hers are generally perfectly shaped with cute red and green frosting and sprinkles on top. I wanted to do purple but ended up with a plumy-gray color and bo won’t let me sprinkle them so i guess that’s it. They also didn’t turn out in the perfect little mini muffin shape as they stuck in the pans and ripped apart when i dumped them out. They also sunk in the middle. Oh well…

The pizzelles are the flat waffle looking cookies in the back tupperware in the picture above. These are PERFECT! I have been making them for many years and adjust the recipe a LOT every year and finally got it figured out this year and written down. They are JUST how my great grandma used to make them (or at least how I remember them tasting). They were a hit at our bible study party last night as many who have had them before said they tasted authentic or like they had tried before.

I’m done. Ha. Bo and I hung empty picture frames on the wall tonight as well in anticipation of receiving family pictures from all our family members this year for Christmas so we can have a “family wall” in the house with all our families hung on the wall for us to see. This is probably what I am most excited about. I HATE HATE HATE hanging picture frames on the wall for some reason but I NEED pictures to be happy so we got a bunch done tonight and have a bunch more to do tomorrow then we’ll have about 10-12 empty picture frames hung and just waiting for pictures! YAY!

Here’s more of our tree so you can see some of the ornaments…

I told Bo that I wanted to have a “date night” with him because I feel like we haven’t spent much time together lately. We decided on dinner and a movie. We were heading to the movie theater after dinner when I asked if he wanted an early Christmas present… he said “of course!” and looked to see what it was. I spread my arms apart and told him to get it (mind you it’s 20 degrees outside and I’m wearing about 3 layers of clothes topped with my HUGE puffy jet puffed marshmallow looking jacket). He reaches into my jacket pockets and they were empty. He unzips the jacket and a wrapped box fell out. I said “WOW! Santa pooped in my jacket!!!” He unwrapped the box and found Toby Mac concert tickets I had purchased about a month ago.

We both love Toby Mac and had a blast at the show tonight! And it’s so fun to surprise Bo with stuff like this, it’s so easy! He had NO IDEA at all until I gave him the box. In fact, he spent the entire drive to the restaurant on the phone with FREE-411 and the movie theater checking on movies and times. I didn’t have the heart to tell him to stop wasting his time with that because I wanted it to be a surprise. Then at dinner, he barely touched his food because he knew he was going to the theater afterwords to have Nachos and a huge soda. He did end up getting nachos and a soda but with a much better show!

We had a blast, Toby Mac put on yet again, an amazing concert. I’d go see him every time he’s in town! And his opener B. Reith was pretty good too, I’ll have to check out some of his music!

Lake Sawyer Christian Church has an annual Christmas dinner for the ladies of the church and their guests. It’s a beautiful event and now sells out usually by the end of the first service on the first day tickets are on sale. I think there are about 240 women or so at the event. I’ve been going to this since I started attending the church about 6 years ago and absolutely love it. 1 woman will host a table bringing out her finest china and decorations and be in charge of decorating the table. Below is the table I sat at. (The 2 trees light up and change colors)

And here is another beautiful favorite as well. These tables are elaborately and beautifully decorated (hence the reason I don’t host a table… not sure my pure white corelle everyday dishes and a plastic table cloth would cut it in this venue).

One of the really neat things about the evening is that the men volunteer and sign up to serve us. These are spouses, family members, friends, etc who volunteer their time, get all dressed up in their white shirts and Christmas ties and wait tables serving the women all night, it’s really cool to see them all gathered together in prayer before the dinner starts and all lined up ready to go when the evening is getting under way. Sadly I don’t have pictures of them here.

I do however, have pictures of the group singing a capella which was beautiful. They did a wonderful job and were great entertainment.

We also had the pleasure of hearing Sarah Taylor from Spirit 105.3 speak about “The gift worth giving” and some of her own personal stories which were a great encouragement.

The ladies who led our worship (Christmas style) were wonderful as well.

And here’s mom & I at our table (thanks Chuck!)

And mom looking perfect in front of the Christmas Tree in the lobby.

Me and Anna (it was her table I sat at)

And mom and I.

We had a great time at this event as usual. I’d love to just buy out a whole table so I can invite friends and family to come with me next year….. we’ll see!

It’s official, I’m a couponing queen. This is my 3rd tote (Thanks Deb!) that I’m trying. The first one was too big (a shoebox), 2nd one was too small (same size as this but didn’t extend) and now I have this one! It’s a 4×6 accordion file that extends out, I’m just hoping I don’t snap the little rubber band that holds it all together at the bottom because it’s stretched to the MAX!

This one is still small enough to fit in my purse though so I can be sure to have it handy with me whenever I’m in the store. Now if I just knew all the rules for the stores I shop at (Safeway, Fred Meyer & Walgreens) so I knew where I could double and triple and see what’s on sale, etc I’d be set. I guess that’s just more learning and reading blogs though. It’s becoming quite the hobby, with all the money I’m saving, I should be buying scrapbook stuff!!!!!

She’s just chillin….

upside down and inside out

I’m so excited for what I found today! Michaels was having a HUGE sale and I have been collecting coupons and went today and got some good stuff! The pictures don’t show it very well but I was too excited to get decorating and took the pictures of everything I got AFTER I used it to decorate. I got a 6′ long swag, a 2′ long swag, a wreath, 4 small swag like things that matched, 4 – 8×10 picture frames and 3 – 5×7 frames and a sheet of sticker present labels. We asked our family members for unframed 8×10 pictures of themselves for Christmas so we can start our “family wall” in our house and have framed pictures of our families to see so that’s why we bought the frames. Here are the pictures of what we got… see how much I saved below!

The 6′ swag above the kitchen cabinets with christmas lights in it (we used our own strand)

2 of the 4 small matching swag pieces added into what we already have on the coffee table.

The 2′ swag on the TV.

We took the clock off the wall and replaced it with the matching wreath.

We also got our christmas tree today! We cut off the bottom and had to take a few of the branches off the bottom as well that were too low and I didn’t want to just throw them out because they look nice and smell good. So I took the twigs that we normally have in this vass out and put a large plastic cup in the bottom with water and christmas tree juice and put some of the branches in there, I think it looks nice and it smells great! Then I added the last 2 swags that I had left to this to tie it all in together!

Here are the frames we got. We got 4 – 8×10’s and 3 – 5×7’s because they were on such great sale and we’re planning on hanging a ton of pictures in the near future. I LOVE them, we actually wanted more but they were sold out so we got a rain check for more after they get more in.

Here is a bit more of the detail of the wood work. Dark brownish/black sort of rustic looking, the picture of course doesn’t do it any justice but they are really pretty frames.

Total retail for all of this was $273.42. I paid $100 even! Savings of about 65%! WOO HOO!!!