on saturday we hosted our second annual gingerbread house party. we had a great time - good food, fun houses, old christmas movies, and great friends. but i only took one picture the entire night!

and i didn't get either of the 2 cute babies in my one photo, booo. i was a little nervous about having 2 little ones in our house, but we just kept the dogs upstairs for the night and it worked out fine. trevi (the cat) was not happy though, apparently he does not like little kids.

yesterday we braved the crazy christmas shopppers and went to the mall... we still have some shopping to do, but we got a lot done. now on to wrapping (i love wrapping presents, i'm weird).

look what i found on my computer today...
and this why we got 2 puppies. this was taken when they were 7 weeks old.

and here they are 5.5 years later. :-)

any big plans for the weekend? we're having our second gingerbread house party tomorrow night and i'm very excited! and then on sunday we are (hopefully) finishing up our christmas shopping. have a great weekend everyone!

as i mentioned in my thanksgiving post, mike and i helped my parents make a headboard for their guest room when we were in columbus for thanksgiving. mom sent me a few images so i thought i'd share them with you:
mom made that quilt too, she's way better at all things fabric/sewing than i will ever be.
better picture with the fabric buttons. we did a good job spacing them, but maybe we should have started them higher so that some weren't covered by the pillows? i think the buttons were the hardest part :-)

i've seen a bunch of headboard tutorials online so i won't go through all of the details unless someone would like me to. it was great practice for our own headboard though, hopefully we will be able to make one for our room soon!

we put up lights outside this year


hate that front door, hopefully we can replace it this year???

my homegoods find - everyone needs a christmas tree in their bathroom

wow, the tree looks really short in this photo. it's a smaller tree than we normally get but it's still probably 6' or 7'. it's expensive to get a tree that is much taller than that!

you can see some of our new ornaments this year - the silver letter and the hawaiian santa. you can also see my favorite ornament - the ring box from my engagement ring, awww....

mike and i left last wednesday to drive to columbus for thanksgiving. luckily traffic wasn't all that bad and we got in early enough to have a nice dinner with his parents. thursday was packed full of family time, with a big lunch with my dad's family at my parents' house

followed by a big dinner with mike's family

so much good food!!

friday my mom and i did some shopping (we don't even leave the house until late morning, we are not part of that crazy black friday shoppers group). on saturday we were pretty lazy in the morning and early afternoon, and then helped my mom and dad make a headboard for their guest room. i'll have to get some pictures, it turned out great! and it was good practice for when we make our own headboard.

sunday we drove back to st louis and made record time with just under 6 1/2 hours... with all that time in the car, i was able to get a large portion of my blanket done. here it is all planned out, ready to be put together:

i'm almost done, i'll make sure to post another picture. i really like how it's turning out, the pattern looks a little more modern to me than typical crochet patterns. it hasn't taken me all that long either, maybe a couple of months? i mostly just work on it while watching tv. plus i saw a very similar looking blanket at anthropologie (love that store!) on friday, and it was priced over $300!