Our Rustic Vintage Christmas: Mantle

Our Christmas Mantle...

It's a lil' bit country (CB) and a lil' bit vintage (Me) - the best of both worlds!

I made the wreath & rustic wood chalkboard. Both easy DYI projects.

Our stockings were a $5 Hobby Lobby find. I wasn't super excited about them, but decided they would do the job this year and maybe next year we'd find better ones. Well....after a lil' make over, there won't be a need to find new ones!



Details, details, details!
I love the fabric rosettes and they are so easy to make! The hardest part was picking out the perfect fabric. And the buttons....I'm so glad I decided to replace the snowflake with sewn on buttons!

Even our doggies got their own "personalized" stockings...well, I just added a cute dog print button to theirs.



There will definitely be a lot of family time spent around the fireplace this season.

  

Happy Christmas decorating everyone!

Christmas Time Preparation!

We still haven't finished putting up all our Christmas decorations. I'm hoping to finish this weekend and post pictures shortly after. I took on a few DIY projects to personalize our decorations and hope to continue it each year. This may sound cheesy, but I have this picture in my head of our (future) kids putting up our ornaments and asking what the story is behind each unique one. Who knows, they may not even be interested in them, but at least I will be able to look at them and remember why they are special.

We are also trying to pick out the perfect Christmas card to send out, but have been slackers. Hopefully, those will also be ordered very soon. 

After searching the internet for the perfect Christmas photo card I came across Shutterfly's massive selection! I've been pretty picky about what kind of photo card I want to send out since after all....this will be our first married Christmas together! They have such a unique selection of cards to choose from….they’ve made it so very hard for us to pick just one! After a few too many hours of staring at my computer screen, we were able to narrow it down, and like I said, hopefully they will be ordered SOON.

Check out the massive Christmas photo card selection for yourself:

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

I even found myself browsing through all the other wonderful products they offer.

I really, really want to create a Photo Book with all our wedding pictures and pre-wedding events. It’s such a great way to display special photos and showcase on our coffee table for friends and family to enjoy.   

http://www.shutterfly.com/photo-books

  They even have a great selection of invitations and thank you cards for every occasion. 

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/thank-you-cards

Shutterfly is offering 50 FREE Christmas cards if you blog about them. FREE is always good in my book!

Shutterfly: Blog & Receive 50 Free Christmas Cards


Decisions, decisions.....

Thanksgiving

CB and I have a lot to be thankful for this year! We are truly blessed with the most amazing family and friends and a wonderful marriage. Not to brag or anything, but since we've been married there have been quiet a few "life is good" moments....you know, the moments where you just sit back and really, really love life. I love those moments!

We spent Thanksgiving day with my family. I know I use the word "love" a lot - I'm a loving person - but I LOVE Thanksgiving food!!! I look forward to it all year long. My mother has been given strict instructions to keep all Thanksgiving food the same. My brothers and I remind her that it is not the time of year for trying out new recipes. I guess you can say my family is traditional and it works for us. As usual, the food was delicious (Thank you, Mom!) and I ate waaaayyyyy too much! 

Friday, CB and I headed to Granny's house to spend time with his side of the family and go to a Family Reunion. I love spending family time in the country. Everything is so beautiful and different from city living. We had a great time, it was sad to see the weekend come to an end. 

We hope everyone had wonderful Thanksgiving! 

We started decorating for Christmas! Stay tuned for pictures.

Birthday Boy!

Today is a very special day...

HAPPY (28th) BIRTHDAY to my amazing Husband!!!!!!

I love you and hope you have a great day!

"I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you." - Roy Croft

Productive Weekend

Clayton and I had a very productive weekend. We started shopping for Christmas decorations early since we are starting from scratch....yay for our first married Christmas! 

I LOVE Christmas and especially love decorating! I don't think Clayton really understood my love for Christmas until we went shopping. Luckily, I had him to hold me back from buy everything in sight. If it wasn't for him,  it'd look like Christmas threw up in our house. I thought we did pretty darn good all thanks to Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree - I don't know what I'd do without these stores. 

We also reupholstered our dinning room chairs. 

Clayton and I were fortunate enough to inherit my great-grandmother's beautiful dinning room furniture from my parents. It needs a little love, but the bones are great! The cushions were the biggest eye sore (sorry Mom), so I decided to reupholster them last night. It was a lot easier than I thought it'd be. It was a nice surprise to see the previous material choices used by my grandparents and great-grandparents! I chose to leave the 3 oldest layers because I couldn't bare to throw away family history, and it didn't hurt that they added cushion.  

My mom's attempt at reupholstering the cushions...

I was going for a fresh, vintage look. I really like the way they turned out! 

I can't wait to start putting up the Christmas decorations!!!

Another Epiphanie Camera Bag Post.....

I LOVE this camera bag so much!!!!!  There's another giveaway for it....

Color Inc Epiphanie Camera Bag Giveaway

Happy Veterans Day!!!!!

Thank you to all those who have served or are currently serving our great Country! It takes a special person to fight for our freedom and I hope they know how much we appreciate all that they do.

I'd especially like to Thank my Grandpa, Dad, sister (Katrina), and Carolyn for their service!

I love you guys!!!!

I don't have a picture of my dad in his uniform :(

 

I Hate Laundry!

Actually, I don't mind the washing part, it's the folding and ironing part I loath! I'd love to have someone do ALL my laundry for me or never wear an item of clothing more then once. Since my husband has already informed me that laundry will always be in my future, I've tried to make the process easier. I used to buy the Downy Wrinkle Release spray, but found out that it's only fabric softener diluted in water (thanks to http://www.stylelushblog.com/). To save money I decided to make my own wrinkle release spray....and it works!!!

DIY Wrinkle Release Spray:

• Add 1 to 2 ounces of fabric softener (of your choice) to a spray bottle
• Fill the rest of the bottle with water
• Shake 
• Spray it on your clothes, shake them out, let them dry, and no more wrinkles!

Now, I just have to work on the folding part.....

Love this camera bag....

Clayton just bought me a fancy new camera for my birthday, so naturally I've been looking for a pretty camera bag. What girl wouldn't!?! I found this pretty Epiphanie camera bag!!!!

They are having a giveaway for it and I would love to win this fancy bag!!!

http://www.pamelatopping.com/2010/11/epiphanie/

My Best Friends...

I LOVE being married, but there are days I miss the wedding planning. I know...I'm crazy! I loved planning my wedding - the stress and all! I enjoyed it so much I decided to take on throwing a Baby Shower for one of my friends. I've had so much fun making decorations and searching for recipes. I can't wait to see how everything turns out this weekend!

Well, today is one of those days. I miss my bridesmaids! I think it's time to plan a trip to Dallas to see the best MOH ever! Love you Natalie!!!

Halloween Festivities!

I've never been big on Halloween, but with all the pumpkin carving pictures popping up on Facebook, I thought it'd be fun to invite some of our family over for a pumpkin carving contest - my family is very competitive. None of us had ever carved a pumpkin before, so it was kind of fair game as to who would win. Apparently, my brother, Chris, and Clayton's sister, Dana, inherited the skill because the rest of our pumpkins were pretty sad looking. Luckily, Dana let us keep her pumpkin for decoration on our front porch.

Clayton and I also had our first Halloween in our new house. We had no idea how much candy to get, but I thought we had plenty to last us through the night....WRONG! We had to turn off our porch light and blow out the pumpkins at 7:45pm! We officially passed out candy for about an hour. How sad is that! Next year we will definitely be prepared. 








From left to right: Jamie, Melissa, Chris, Clayton, Dana, Me

 

The Proposal...

I can't believe it's been a year since Clayton asked me to marry him! It seems like it took forever to get to that moment, yet everything after that day has flown by way too fast for my liking.

I love you, Clayton! Thank you for making me the happiest girl!!! I can't wait to see what the future has in store for us.

Quarter of a century celebration!

Time really does fly by when you're having fun! It's been such an eventful year. We got married in August, enjoyed our honeymoon in St. Lucia, moved into our first home, started remodeling/decorating, and I turned 25 a couple days ago. I'm not going to lie, I am sad about being a quarter of a century old. That means I'm only 5 years away from 30...eek!

I had a fabulous birthday that consisted of a yummy dinner (grilled shrimp, potatoes, and green beans - I got to pick), good conversation, and plenty of wine with loved ones. I couldn't of asked for a better way to celebrate. It also didn't hurt that Clayton got me the camera I had casually (ha!) been dropping hints about. I'm so lucky he's such a great listener!

A special thanks to my parents, mother-in-law, Chris, Jamie, Melissa, Dana, and my amazing husband for helping make my 25th Birthday extra special! And thank you to everyone who called, texted, or sent a message wishing me a Happy Birthday!

Chris, thanks for being the photographer.
(Note to self: I need to buy a tripod so no one is left out of pictures.)

 

Couldn't Resist

I've been a blog follower for some time now. I finally decided to jump on the bandwagon and start my own to keep family and friends updated on the latest and greatest Baca related news. This should be interesting (for me at least).

Stay tuned.....