Erin Akin Carroll

Happy Friday, friends! Today is our last day of this fun week of link-ups and I am the hostess.

I wanted to share our home and Christmas decorations with all of you and I hope you’ll link up to do the same.

This year, I was in charge of the decorations for our Junior League Holiday Market. I have been in “decorations mode” since June! I love decorating for Christmas, but I wasn’t sure if I would have the energy to decorate my own house after decorating such a big space for Holiday Market.

I ended up just going for it because I knew that Hudson would love it. He’s little and he really appreciates a Christmas tree and the stockings. He loves seeing the lights and pointing them out. He loves looking at all the different ornaments on the tree. And I can tell him about each one.

Welcome to our home! I have used this front door wreath for a few years now. I love the colors and I love that it goes with the happy, bright, cheery colors on the interior decorations.

Right now, Hayes appears to be enjoying the Christmas decorations!

So, in our living room, we have our fireplace and mantle with our stockings and some mantle decorations. I am actually in the process of changing out the pictures on our stocking holders, so they don’t look quite right at the moment!

This is our Christmas tree this year. We have a combination of different glass ornaments. I have all different colored ball ornaments from simple multi-colored packs. I put all of those at the base of the tree (near the trunk) and then put the special ornaments near the front so they can be seen. I pick up an ornament for our family every year and have it personalized with our name and the date. We also pick up an ornament every time we travel– even if it’s just to Tuscaloosa, Alabama for a football game! But don’t worry, my Alabama ornament looks like the state of Alabama, not the University of Alabama.

These are some of my favorite ornaments this year.

1. Our 2011 family ornament 2. A fun Louisiana fleur de lis in Mardi Gras color 3. A little Boudreaux ornament

4. the one and only cookie monster 5. A Gamecock ornament 6. Todd’s Caddyshack ornament

One of my favorite decorations this year is also something that can be used by everyone. I got this giant plush nativity set this summer and was so excited to show it to Hudson this year. And he absolutely loves it!

He is always carrying them around and arranging them. He talked about Mary, Jofeph (not quite Joseph), the wise men (except his calls them Wise Man, Wise Man and Wise Man) and of course the baby Jesus. He says that the baby Jesus is sleeping and sings what he knows of Away In A Manger to the little stuffed baby Jesus.

I love this nativity because Hudson is interested in it and I think it’s a great way to teach him in his way.

We have a couple of French doors in our dining room, which is where the two wreaths that I made for Holiday Market hang. I have been wanting wreaths for those doors for years!

On our entry table, I used these adorable mesh trees again in a set of three. They are in three different sizes and I just love them. They’re so colorful and happy!

So that’s our house at Christmas time! I know that over the years the decorations will evolve some as tastes change. But I just love Christmas time. I love lying on the sofa next to the tree just so I can look at it.

I hope you’ll share all of your decorations today! I’m going to do a separate post with all of the Holiday Market decorations so you can see what we were up to there!

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This week has been so much fun! I’ve loved seeing everyone’s entertaining ideas, craft projects, recipes and now I can’t wait to see what traditions you share with your family and how you document them.

As our family has grown, it is becoming more important to me to establish a few little traditions that we can all look forward to every year.

I hope that you’ll look up with AP at I Love You More Than Carrots to share what traditions you and your family enjoy!

Gifts

These traditions started on Hudson’s first Christmas. The grandparents give him a collectible gift every year and now we’ll be doing the same with Hayes.

TC’s parents started a Lionel train set for Hudson and they give him a new train car every year. Hayes will also get a train set and a new car every year. I can’t wait to see how this train grows over the years! We’ll only take it out during the month of December for them and they can play with it and appreciate it. I’m so excited to see what cars they get this year.

My parents gave my brother and me a nutcracker every year until we were about 19 or 20. They are starting the same tradition for Hudson and Hayes. We have so many nutcrackers and I love bringing them out every year. We label the boxes with the year so we can remember which year we received the nutcracker. It’s such a fun tradition!

Visiting Santa Claus

Oh yes! It’s a rite of passage for kids, right? Even if they think they’re excited only to get on Santa’s lap and meltdown?

Hudson with Santa in 2009

Hudson with Santa in 2010 (such a brave face!)

Hudson and Hayes with Santa in 2011 (two seconds before that he was so excited to see Santa)

Christmas Cards

I love doing Christmas cards. I love sending them and I love receiving them. I have every single Christmas card from my family growing up saved in my baby book. I’ve been doing the same thing for Hudson and now Hayes.

We did our first little “newsletter” this year and I was excited about that.

We had our pictures taken a few weeks ago and I picked out our favorites. I shared with you all that I was ordering our cards from Minted. I absolutely love the designs from Minted and the customer service is impeccable.

I chose a card that said “Noel.” I loved how simple it was and it just reminded me of Christmas. This is our first year to do a more traditional-looking card and I love it. I love that Noel means Christmas and it just looks to pretty. At least it’s pretty to me!

The colors are so vibrant and the paper quality is wonderful!

For the back, I chose a few different photos to do a small collage.

I’m so pleased with them! Now that I have them in hand, I’m ready to start addressing them (by hand, of course) and mailing them out! Yes- we’re a little bit behind, but in our defense, we didn’t have our photos taken until Black Friday.

Christmas Eve

I’ve mentioned before that we go to church on Christmas Eve and then come home to enjoy some delicious gumbo, French bread and the dessert du jour. Then we’ll be opening up our brand new Christmas pajamas and cuddling up to read The Night Before Christmas and the story of Jesus’s birth in Luke. It’s a magical, very special time. It’s simple and it’s all about enjoying each other’s company.

And it’s bound to come with a couple of toddler meltdowns as most things these day do!

The Candy Cottage

One of my favorite things this year (that I should have given away as part of the Favorite Things giveaway) is The Candy Cottage.

It is a reusable gingerbread house. It is made out of plastic and it can be completely cleaned after each use and reused for the next holiday or occasion. It’s not limited to just Christmas. We can make Halloween, birthday, Easter, Valentine’s Day and beach houses. I’m so excited about it!

I sent one to Callie, Caroline and Molly last week and Callie did a great post about the day she and Caroline decorated the house. It is absolutely adorable!

Hudson and I are decorating the house today when he gets home from school. It’s so easy because it’s already assembled. I just had to buy the decorations– all store-bought stuff. We’ll cover the house in icing and Hudson can just place all the pieces of candy on top. I can’t wait!

What traditions to you celebrate? Link up with AP and share your traditions with us!

*Don’t forget to read all about how to join the Moms Clean Air Force here!

I’m a little behind today, but better late than never, right?

Today, the super talented, creative, Super Mom, Meredith of The Tichenor Family, is hosting “Oh What Fun It Is To Create” so we can all show what we’ve made this holiday season.

I think with Pinterest being so big, we’re all inspired to find our inner DIYer and start creating things.

After I made so many decorations for the Holiday Market this year, I kind of took some off. But I did make 16 wreaths with my mom, so that counts for something, right? I ended up purchasing two of my wreaths back from the Junior League after the market was over. I’ll show you where they hang in my house later, but just wanted to put them here in my “create” post since I made them! I just love the colors and think it’s so happy!

And after watching Nina and Kiks’s You Tube video on how to make a quick and easy hostess gift, I tried my hand at it and put together some easy teacher gifts for Hudson’s teachers. He has four teachers total and two school directors. I also got some fun acrylic tumblers that aren’t pictured.

I picked up these cute ceramic mugs from Hobby Lobby. They were $4.99 and they were 50% off! I grabbed some filler and some shrink wrap. I already had a bunch of Wraffia in my gift wrap closet. Then I ran to Starbucks and grabbed a handful of gift cards to put in all the mugs and tumblers for Hudson’s teachers. Who doesn’t love a Starbucks gift card?

So I just wrapped the shrink wrap around the stuffed mug and tied a simple bow with the Wraffia. Viola. Teacher gifts!

What have you made this holiday season? I can’t wait to see how creative everyone is!

Hey, friends! Nina and I are so excited to announce the winners of the giveaway.

To compile the two lists of comments, we used my comments to start with #1 and then added Nina’s comments to mine to make up the back half of the list of numbers. When you look at the winners below, if a number looks like this, (#0000/0000- with a slash in between) that means it came from Nina’s blog.

We used Random Integer Generator to come up with our 32 numbers and here is what it gave us.

All numbers above 2140 came from Nina’s comments.

Hopefully this all makes sense to y’all!

Congratulations to all of the winners! We have your email addresses and we will be contacting you about redeeming your prize!

#11: Decorative Card Holder from Willow House by Callie Parker–  (#893) Debby

#12: Two (2 winners) $10 Starbucks Gift Cards- (#334) Meg

#12: Two (2 winners) $10 Starbucks Gift Cards- (#117) Grace

#13 One Holiday Movie Pack: Christmas Vacation, The Holiday, Home Alone and The Grinch- (#521) Katy Shaw

#14: One Photos with Santa Photo Album from WayCool Designs– (#2722/582) Marla

#15: One Christmas Pickle Ornament- (#823) Stacey

#16: One Personalized Picture Frame and Ornament Set from The Dahl House– (#2848/708) Kathryn C.

#17: One Elf on the Shelf-  (#815) Lacey

#18: One Starbucks Fa la la la Ceramic Cup with Lid- (#898) Karen

#19: One Summer Infant Baby Touch Digital Color Video Monitor from Just Kids Store–  (#3192/1052) Jodie

#20: One Sophie the Giraffe- (#255) Meghan

#21: Three (3 winners) Nancy Thillman Books – On the Night You Were Born, It’s Time to Sleep My Love & The Spirit of Christmas- (#371) Amanda Y

#21: Three (3 winners) Nancy Thillman Books- One the Night You Were Born, It’s Time to Sleep My Love & The Spirit of Christmas- (#1334) Emily

#21: Three (3 winners) Nancy Thillman Books- One the Night You Were Born, It’s Time to Sleep My Love & The Spirit of Christmas- (#1919) Kendra

#22: One Huge Ivory and Blue Giraffe by JellyCat- (#566) Katie

#23: One Yellow Little Giraffe Chenille Blanket- (#2748/608) Marcie Cheshire

#24: One $50 Gift Card to Lulu McGee– (#2362/222) Turner

#25: One $25 Erin Condren Gift Card-  (#1494) Heather