Christmas Decorations

We finally finished decorating for Christmas yesterday.  I've been doing a little each day for the last week.

We bought a real tree at Lowe's yesterday.  It was a 7-8' tree and is probably the fattest tree we've ever had.  The boys helped me a little with lights (mainly by almost stepping on them constantly) and then I decorated it last night (with a little help from Brian).

I put garland on the banister this year since we have a convenient plug for lights:

Stockings and the mantle decor:

I found this metal mistletoe last year and hung it at the end of the entry hall:

Family room decor:

The island in the kitchen:

I bought this countdown calendar at the end of last year.  Carter and I put it together and hung it on the fridge.

Some other random decor in the kitchen:

The dining room table decor:

My miniature Hallmark tree in the office (I haven't bought ornaments for years - the majority are from the early 90s):

The kids' tree in the bonus room (this is where all the craft ornaments that they make are supposed to go):

Rylan's tree:

Carter's tree (he's pillaged some of the ornaments he's made off the kids' tree in the bonus room):

Outside decorations:

 

I'll post a picture later of the outside lit up at night.  I think it looks pretty good!

Driveway - Part 2

Our driveway was poured Friday morning and finished that afternoon.  The guys pressure washed it in the dark (they didn't finish until around 6 pm).

It looks good and we are happy with it.

We need some more dirt around the edges though (hopefully we can get the builder to do that for us).

The color doesn't match but when we seal it, I think it'll be close.

Gingerbread Houses

I was moving some old photos over from one computer to another and came across a set that I had never posted.  They are from Christmas LAST YEAR, but to my defense, we moved into our house on December 23rd and had all our family visiting over the next week.

Landscaping

Our main landscaping project this fall was to create a bed around the gate on the right side of our house.

The first thing we did was to put in the black plastic edging around the bed portion that is outside of the fence.  The edging continues from the front of the house, along the side, and to this bed.

Next we put in pavers along the back side of the bed (inside of the fence).  We plan on using these in some of the beds along the back of the fence.  We also laid flagstone stepping stones through the gate that match the ones in the rock bed along the screen porch (they aren't "permanently" placed or leveled in this picture, but this is where we placed each one).

And then finally we put in plants and mulch.

(Sorry for the poor picture quality - the sun was super harsh when I was taking these.)

We also put in some screening trees in the backyard where we plan on making beds in the spring.  All the plants in the corner bed were bought at Lowe's for 50% off when they were clearing out their plants to make room for Christmas trees.  We plan on putting a cluster of small deciduous trees (like redbuds or crape myrtles) in the corner, a small magnolia trees, and some large rocks in this bed.

We planted these 5 screening trees directly back from our patio.

This bed will also have a large rock or two and some other smaller plants.

Because we are bringing in the rocks and taking up a portion of the yard with these large beds, we decided to wait until next fall to kill our backyard and reseed.  We didn't want to tear up new grass or pay for more than we needed.  I can't wait to have real grass instead of weeds and Bermuda (the one yard we border has mostly Bermuda so that's going to be a never-ending fight).

Downtown Storytime

Two weeks ago, Rylan and I met Missy and her boys (on Wednesday when Carter had school) at the downtown library for storytime.  At the end the kids can come up to the stage while the librarians sing part of "What a Wonderful World".  Carter has gone up there once or twice and Rylan may have joined him once (I can't remember anymore), but Rylan needed no encouragement and went right up to the stage and sat!  He ALWAYS refuses!

Will and Luke went up too!!!

I had a cute video of the kids up there but can't find it now.  Oh well.

Outer Banks - Day 2 (The Rest)

After climbing the lighthouse, we walked about Historic Corolla Village for a bit.  We went to the Corolla Wild House Museum (which was more of store) and then over to the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education.

There is a small aquarium as well as a handful of other exhibits about the Outer Banks.  It was free and worth a few minutes to explore.

Also in the area were a couple of letterboxes.  We didn't find the first one we looked for but the second one was easy (Brian actually spotted from the car).

Our next adventure was to drive on the beach.  We were pretty nervous about this (Brian was nervous before we started after reading lots of stories of people having to get towed and then I was really nervous once we were on the beach that we were going to get stuck).  It was crazy how deep the ruts were - the bottom of our car dragged through the sand often.  We were in search of the wild horses but after a few miles decided to turn around because with the weather, they probably weren't going to be easy to find, just hanging out on the beach.

Luckily we made it back to the pavement without any issues.  After re-inflating our tires we headed to the hotel.

Throughout our trip, Carter begged and begged to play in the sand.  After seeing all the sand while driving on the beach, he wouldn't let up.  We tried to go on the beach at our hotel but it was insanely cold and windy and I couldn't do it.  We lasted less than 5 minutes.  And I really wanted to take the kids on the pier too, but we only made it up the steps to the part over the beach.

We went to a local restaurant for dinner (Barefoot Bernies - one of the few still open in the off-season) and then went swimming at the hotel again.  Here are our crazy boys in the elevator on the way to the pool!

We had lots of fun swimming and then cleaned up and went to bed.

Sunset

It's getting dark now by 5 pm but at least we've been having pretty sunsets lately!  This was taken looking out our back windows.