Happy New Year!
I hope that everyone had a great holiday and that the new year is off to a fabulous start.
After wrapping up all of the holiday orders, I immediately moved on to holiday baking – something I do a crazy amount of each year. It’s pretty much a given that if I’m coming to your house for the holiday’s, that I’ll be bringing dessert. I don’t keep track, but I usually make at least six or more types of cookies, a few types of bars and brownies, fudge, peppermint bark, white and dark chocolate covered pretzels (a ridiculous amount of those) white and dark chocolate covered peanut butter balls, chocolate haystacks, muffins, breads and a partridge in a pear tree. Okay, maybe not the last one, but it certainly feels like it.
After that it was finally time to relax and enjoy Christmas. We were able to spend a lot of quality time with family and friends, as well as just the three of us at home. Rick usually has some unused vacation time, and he burns it up at the end of the year. We had a great Christmas, and Bella loved her American Girl Doll and her Zhu Zhu Pets (though honestly, I think I spent more time finding those Zhu Zhu pets than she will spend playing with them – I’m just thankful I only paid retail and didn’t pay the Ebay rates!).
Christmas Morning
The Zhu Zhu Pets. And their ball which I thought Santa would never find...
The stocking is always a favorite.
Chrissa. We've entered the world of American Girl Dolls.
We also attended a really special dinner for my Grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary, which was great – and allowed us to visit with more family that we simply do not manage to see enough of.
50th Anniversary Dinner
We even managed to get a few projects done around the house. One of them was moving Bella into the slightly bigger bedroom in our house. We’ve talked about doing it for years, but were never quite motivated enough to actually get started on it. This Christmas, my Father gave Bella a beautiful antique four poster bed – gorgeous – and LARGE. This pretty much gave us no choice but to make the move. So over a few long days we took everything out of the extra bedroom (and that everything spent some quality time cluttering up my hallway, bedroom, living room, and any other spot we could find), primed it, painted it, moved all of Bella’s furniture, toys and in, decorated it, and moved everything from the extra bedroom into her old bedroom. It was a lot of work, but we are SO thrilled with the result. It’s amazing how much difference a few extra feet of floor space makes.
Painting her room
Yay! It's done. Bright, colorful and totally Bella.
The pink Christmas tree will stay put through Valentine's Day.
Look - room to play!
Super happy with her new room!
Because I’ve had a few friends ask – a number of the items in the room came from Target. While my Dad gave her the beautiful bed, my mom gave her the gorgeous rainbow bedding that totally pulls together all the colors in the room.
The funky colored bright rugs are from Target (and quite soft)…
The cube organizer for her toys (and the colorful bins in it) are Target finds as well…
So happy it turned out well, and that she’s happy with it. The bed, being an antique, is not a perfect full size. I guess that’s pretty typical with antique beds. And it’s HIGH off the ground. So high I was able to put her former train table drawers under it for storage. She has a stool to help her get up (though she prefers to leap of course) and she loves being up so high. Makes mom a bit nervous, but as mom, everything makes me a bit nervous!
Now it’s time to get back to school and work. I have lots of new things coming up at Sentimental Silver, some great ways to reward my wonderful customers as well as some cool new ideas and pieces. Stay tuned, I hope to have them up and rolling very soon!
January 5th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Nice pink tree! Those rugs looks so soft and colorful, and the comforter really does pull all the colors together. I love it.
Now that Bella is into American Girl Dolls, you will have to take her to have lunch (or a tea party) at the store (is it in San Francisco?). How fun.