Erin Akin Carroll

good tidings of great joy!

Dec172009

I’m so excited to reveal our Christmas card to you! Last year, the beautiful and talented Nina of According to Nina designed a precious card for us. We were expecting our first baby at the time and had announced the news by then, but were still reluctant to put it on the card. It was also fun to have our first card be just about the two of us!

This year, there are three of us (five including the dogs) and I’m just overwhelmed by the difference a year makes. The amount of love in our house has increased exponentially. Hopefully everyone that should have received a card in the mail has received it already and this post isn’t ruining the surprise for you.

I wrote the text and selected the photos, then sent the text to the fabulous Tracy Turpen. She designed and printed the card for us. And she never told me that she thought my cheesy text was, in fact, cheesy.

Style_2_Front-4

Style_2_Inside_Spread-3

Style_2_back-3

Did you send out Christmas cards this year? Don’t you think receiving Christmas cards is one of the greatest things about Christmas time? We’ve got a giant bowl on our table full of Christmas cards. I’m so excited to hear from so many friends this time of year!

Hudson's first Christmas part 2: our plans

Filed Under: Hudson, Uncategorized

Dec162009

As I mentioned on Tuesday, there are a lot of things I want to do to help Hudson celebrate his very first Christmas. I’ve already mentioned that we’ll spend Christmas in the mountains in Tennessee and that we decided as a family to go easy on the presents. We agreed to stocking stuffers only and Todd and I will exchange a few gifts. We’re all very excited about spending such a long amount of time together– without being in someone’s home and invading their space for a week.

Just because we’ve chosen not to get gifts for everyone in the whole family doesn’t mean we’ve chosen to leave gifts out of Hudson’s first Christmas celebration. I went back and forth on this and wasn’t sure what we should do. I know he won’t remember a lot of what we do, but we will. (My friend, Whitney from Glamorous Life of a Housewife, wrote a great post about why she’s giving her baby boy gifts for his first Christmas.)

We’ll remember the look on his face when he opened that special thing that we’ll always remember that we gave to him. Someday we’ll show him the pictures from the sweet event. Giving him a gift on Christmas Day doesn’t prove our love for him, but it does show my appreciation for some of the Christmas traditions and wanting to experience that with the newest, most precious, member of our family.

My parents are planning on starting a collection for him (that I’ll share with you later) and I hardly see this gift as silly to give a baby. It’s thoughtful and special and he’ll get one every year from them.

We got him a couple of fun gifts that I’ll share with you all later (but really I want to tell you NOW!), but I’ll go ahead and tell you one of them. On Christmas Eve I plan to give Hudson a pair of Night Before Christmas pajamas and a copy of The Night Before Christmas book. My dad read it to me nearly every night because I loved it so much and I knew the entire poem by heart. I want to read this story to Hudson on Christmas Eve.

I also want to read the Christmas story to him. I could also recite all of Luke Chapter 2 when I was in the 2nd grade and I want that tradition to be with our baby boy, too. (Yes, I was a memorizing machine when I was little.)

As far as his future Christmases go, I want to continue to do these things every year. I don’t know where we’ll celebrate Christmas every year. We could be in Dallas. We could be here. We could be in a wonderful vacation spot. I would love for our boy to wake up at his own house every Christmas morning, but I also know that Santa Claus visits you where ever you are. We spent every Christmas Eve at my grandparents’ house until I was in high school and being with so much family and having so many cousins around to see what Santa brought us was always the highlight of my day. I also know how much fun it is to be in your own house and be able to play with all of your toys and all of your friends on Christmas day. But I don’t have a crystal ball and I only know what our plans are for this year.

I’m just excited to share all of these amazing things with Hudson and give him something to look forward to every year. I can’t remember a time when I was more excited for Christmas to come!

these are a few of my favorite things

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Dec152009

Are you singing now?

… Brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a few of my favorite things.

3043474304_3bd3ce0abb

flickr image via here

Because I love blogging so much and I appreciate all of my readers so much, I wanted to do a giveaway featuring some of my favorite things that I’ve talked about this year. Most of the items are for the home and one of the items is for a kid in your life.

1. 2 Kate Spade Holly Heights mugs via One Kings Lane (the mugs only). One in green and one in red. Aren’t these so adorable? Don’t you just want to sip hot chocolate next to your Christmas tree out of these?

holly heights mug

2. An Archipelago Lindenwood reed diffuser. I have these in almost every room in my house and I’m in love with the fresh, natural scent.

lindenwood

3. A Low Country Luxe candle in my personal favorite scent, High Cotton. These are all over my house, too, and I just love them. They burn perfectly and evenly and the aroma subtly consumes your home in just a few minutes. I love it.

low country luxe

4. Last but certainly not least, our favorite Sophie the Giraffe. Or Sophie la Girafe. She’s French, you know? Sophie has been a lifesaver for Hudson this year and she comes in an adorable box. We saved Hudson’s Sophie box because she really is like a collector’s item. She’s a great gift to give to a child in your life if you don’t have one of your own.

sophie the giraffe

To enter my Favorite Things Giveaway…

1. Just leave a comment telling me what would be on your favorite things list.

2. For an extra entry, tweet about this post and link to the giveaway. Make sure you let me know that you mentioned it on Twitter and l’ll give you one extra entry!

3. The winner will be announced on December 22– just in time for me to get out of town for Christmas with my family!

Thank you for being so supportive of me this year and always being such an encouraging group of women. I’m happy to share our lives with you!

Hudson's first Christmas part 1: meeting Santa Claus

Filed Under: Baby, Hudson

Dec152009

Thank you all so much for sharing your Christmas traditions. I read every single comment (y’all left some long comments and I loved it) and really enjoyed reading about your favorite traditions and the way you plan to spend your Christmas this year.

There are so many things I want to remember to do for Hudson for his first Christmas. The hope is also that we will continue to do the really special things every year for him and for our future children.

I realized on Saturday that we had not yet taken him to visit Santa Claus. I’ve avoided those areas at the malls for many many years, so it was strange to think about getting in line to take a picture with Santa again. But I couldn’t let my baby boy miss out on that!

On Sunday after church, we ventured to a side of town (full of chain restaurants, our best mall, and shopping centers) that I rarely go to because I don’t deal well with gobs of people. This is why we never eat at Olive Garden, too. I don’t like crowds and I prefer local establishments. Okay. Enough with that rant.

So we’re at the mall, and we get in line to see Santa. I seriously thought we’d be in and out of the mall in 30 minutes tops. Nope. The line rivaled the line to get on the Texas Giant at Six Flags on the fourth of July. Insane. Line. To. See. Santa.

Then after about fifteen minutes we realized that the line had not moved at all and we started to wonder what was going on. Then we discovered that the camera had broken and no one was sitting on Santa’s lap. Poor Santa. Poor tons of people in line.

(My mom informed me that North Park Mall in Dallas gives you a number when you visit Santa Claus and they assign a time for you to come back. Genius Dallas folk.)

Hudson started to get restless and I just knew that we’d never last long enough to meet Santa on Sunday. So we left. We knew that we’d bring him back, but it made more sense for me to bring him back on a weekday morning when the crowd was smaller. But I didn’t want Todd to miss it.

So Hudson and I got dressed earlier than usual this morning and then we ventured out to the mall again. I never go to that side of town and there we were again!

We stood in a very short line this morning behind a very kind family. Hudson was very talkative and was charming all the people around us. I taught him how to say “ho ho ho” while we stood there and explained to him that he needed to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas. He was so excited to sit on Santa’s lap. The sweet elf behind the camera even let me take a picture with my own camera after I bought one of her pictures!

When we finished up with Santa Claus, Hudson and I just strolled around the mall (and I didn’t buy a thing). He fell asleep and I enjoyed just walking. I got a Caramel Brulee Latte from Starbucks and enjoyed having some time out of the house. He slept for about thirty minutes and then we went on home.

You think he was happy to be on Santa’s lap?

«Previous Page