Christmas Day

image by Susan Branch

Grammy and Carter after Christmas Day church.

Christmas Day dinner with cousins from both sides & a game that Scott found called Pallina.

My parents making a phone call to Japan to say Merry Christmas to my brother Gary and his family. Joy through the world!

ChRistmas TrAins

We have some wonderful friends that invite the whole neighborhood to see their Christmas village and Christmas trains. Their porch and house are cutely decorated and going there is a party! We look forward to it every year.

tree topper

We've decorated in stages this year as we've found time to work on the tree. Finally, last night after midnight, Mike put the star on the top.

Of course, we were rocking to the sounds of the Home Alone 2 soundtrack (it has to be Home Alone 2, which, by the way isn't available on iTunes anymore for some weird reason) - it's our tradition to listen to that CD while decorating the tree. Seriously, if you're in a grumpy mood, find your old copy of Home Alone 2 or do whatever it is the young people do to get it somewhere besides iTunes :)

sock party success!

The family Christmas party / sock hop was a success!

The kids (and some adults) either wore Christmas socks when they came or put on the dollar-store extras we had in a basket by the door.

Aunt Patti's feet were elf-like!

The cousins from down south decorated their socks with ornaments and tinsel. They won the prize for best socks.

We played musical chairs (but called it a sock hop) with fun Christmas music from Becky's Ipod. The winners got to pick a prize (usually socks) from a big prize basket.

And we played "Name that Tune" but the participants had to play their tunes on their choice of instruments - violin, banjo, keyboard, trumpet, or ukelele.

Cousin Debbie had us all stumped with her tune.

The last game was called "Footsie." We sat in circle with no shoes on. The person in the center was blindfolded and had to find an assigned person (like their sister). Had to feel everyone’s feet to figure out where their sister was. It got funny as the kids ‘got it’ and started putting bare feet or watery feet in the guesser’s hands. I put a pair of big felt socks on one little cousen as her mom was searching for her feet, and the kids thought it was funny how we fooled her.

{ sock party }

That thing that loomed in front of me for such a long time is here.
It's tomorrow.
The Raymond Family Christmas Party.
It's our year to be in charge.
That means I'm in charge, even though it's Scott's family.
He tries to help. Barely.
When he thinks of it.

I'm a big-time "theme-y" person. If I can think of a theme for something, I can then get the ideas flowing. This year I decided to have a "Christmas Stocking" theme for the party. When I sent the invitations, I asked everyone to wear Christmas socks to our Christmas Sock Hop.

I recruited Becky to help me figure out some games. We're playing a name-that-tune game and a game similar to a cake walk - only we're calling it the sock hop. I hope everyone will be in a festive mood and dance around in their stocking feet to some fun Christmas music. Scott and Mike will be thrilled. I picked up some cute sock-related prizes, and everyone will be a winner.

In November, I stumbled onto a whole display of cute little sock monkey toys at Kohls. I bought them to use as prizes for the kids. And little Christmas stockings with lotion in them for the women, and for the men, socks with McDonald's Happy Meals gift cards. The sock monkeys are the best.

I asked everyone to bring a pair of socks to donate to sub-for-Santa. It's a simple donation, but such a bright thing to help someone have a new pair of stockings.

I sent the invitations digitally - e-vites from punchbowl.com which is a good website with free invitations that are animated and have cute art. There are ads you have to put up with, but since it's all free, it's OK. I was proud of the family - most of them 'got' the whole online reply game and played it well - pretty soon I had a list of yes, no, and not respond. It made figuring out the numbers for the party much easier. Not to mention the time and money saved by not making paper invites. (I hope that last statement doesn't get me fired lol.)

The images for this post are from Martha Stewart.com and Southern Living.com. Just cuz I'm in the mood for socks!

done, done, and done

I lifted this post right off the ADORNit blog. (I thought it was OK, since I'm the one who created the post and sighed a huge sigh of relief.)

I wrote most of the words for this project book and also made four pincushions and sewed a quilt. We've been so seasonally mixed up lately at work...we were sewing the heart projects through the Halloween season, writing the words over Thanksgiving, and editing while we planned Christmas. Our book is really very charming and accomplishes our goal of showing off the new ADORNit Happy Hearts fabric line. The book will accompany the fabrics when they arrive at quilt shops all over the world!

Here's what I wrote:

Did you hear that huge sigh of relief? Maybe you saw an extra sparkle in the sky because of the big smiles here at ADORNit. Why are we so happy? Well, we finished the Happy Hearts Pattern Book – a huge, love-filled project that we’ve been working on for the past six weeks.

This pattern book seems extra special because the projects are for Valentine’s Day – though any of them are adaptable to any time of year. Still, there’s something wonderful about the colors and sentiments that are related to Valentine’s. Sewing our quilts gave us happy hearts – the fabric just does that to you. You’ve got to love designer Carolee’s touch of folk art and smattering of hand-written sayings. And of course, hearts everywhere! This fabric collection is fun and easy to use for both quilting and crafting.

We can’t wait to share our pattern book with you! It should be arriving at your local quilt shop in a matter of weeks! Watch for it alongside the Happy Hearts Collection – 18 fabrics with ribbon (and paper!) to match.

We’ll be sharing more about the projects & products after Christmas.

{ babies in a row }

This was an event to remember! Six little 'second cousins' were born within two months of each other. I managed to get them all together for a little photo shoot last month. It was comical to try to arrange them on the couch. None of them was at the sitting-up stage, so posing them was impossible; they just leaned and fell over onto each other. Oh, they were so darling. Almost as cute as the babies was the moms and grandparents looking on. I love how you can see them in the mirror.

I gave the photos to my mom (the great-grandmother of these babies) for her birthday, which is today. She's 82 years old today and in love with all these babies.

I have one sister and two brothers. Each of us had grandchildren born in between July and September. For me, two little granddaughters. Gary had a granddaughter, Merilee, a grandson, and Doug got twin grandsons - their first grandchildren! So in our group shot, there are three girls and three boys. Their parents, of course, are first cousins. There had to be a photo!

The idea came to me when I saw these little baby pj's at the store...the red and white stripes are cute enough, but those reindeer faces on the bottoms and on the feet...irresistible! How fun it would be to dress the babies in the pj's and take their pictures together.

I didn't think we could pull it off. But everyone was able to come - some traveling a long distance to be here for the photo. Look at how the oldest baby was just far enough along in his development to hold up his cute little head in this shot.

I knew the little girls' moms would want their pj's to be feminine, so I got red dot grosgrain ribbon and Aimee and Brookelyn helped my sew bows onto the reindeer heads on the bottoms and the feet. It did the trick - they were adorable!

I love this picture of all the families gathered and waiting for the photo shoot to start. And I have to thank and compliment Arika Averett, our wonderful photographer. She did a great job!

* all is bright *

Seriously, Anthropologie never ceases to amaze me.

This past week we (me, Becky and Aimee) took a little girls' trip that expanded to a family weekend in Las Vegas with Suzie, Winston, and baby Lizzie. On top of a fabulous three days of shopping and laughing, we had a wonderful Sunday with Lizzie's baby blessing and family dinner after. More about that when I get my photos uploaded.

On Thursday we started our shopping marathon (pushing Suzie's little shopping- champ baby in the stroller) at the Galleria Mall in Henderson.

We continued on to Town Square for more shopping and the best giant baked potato ever at Claim Jumper restaurant.


Some of you will appreciate when I say we also stopped in and lost all track of time and place at H&M! That store, whoa.

Fueled by the carbs and sugar from lunch, we decided to top off the day with an evening stroll through the stores at Town Square Mall where all was bright - especially Anthropologie. That place is almost overwhelming. I visited the website this morning just for the memories lol.