Christmas

I still have to go through all of the Christmas photos but here are a few favorites.

Merry, Merry

Santa brought some serious goodies to Sophy although she was showered with presents from friends and family. Her favorite was the cardboard box from Grandma and Granddad with her super cute coats. She did play with everything and has a few favorites - future photo ops!

Sophy and Santa - Northpark Santa is definitely THE BEST Santa. We did the legwork.

Merry Christmas from the Huff's - Rolland, Amy and Sophy!

So grateful for this Christmas with our family in town and our first with Sophy. She's definitely the best gift we've ever gotten and love her more everyday. Also, cute alert since she got lots of new clothes for Christmas. Happy Christmas - hope yours was also glorious on this White Christmas!

Cute Gift Idea

My Target love has a rival. Trader Joe's. Love, love, love Trader Joe's and it's a grocery store the husband and I can agree on which makes it perfect. They also shower lots of attention on Sophy so more bonus points.

I picked up this little chocolate set on our visit yesterday and am thinking this would make a cute little gift for her teacher's at school with a few other goodies in a holiday bag. Also good for a little something for co-workers and especially awesome since it's less than $5 bucks. Greatness.

Merry Christmas!

I hope your holiday is filled with family, friends and tasty goodness!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve has been very festive and quiet at our house. We went on the hunt for good sales at Anthropologie - sketchy this year - then braved the mall that was shockingly empty to check out The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was fantastic and I got a little snow fix with all the Swedish winter scenes. Also, I want to totally re-do the house in lots of white and grey with a little pale blue just to mix it up. I'm hoping this passes before I take any action that will get me in serious trouble with the husband. While out and about we did a little scenic tour of the fancy neighborhoods and had tasty lunch goodness before heading home with treats from the new Dunkin Donuts in McKinney and settling in with a fire and the puppies.

Now, we're watching the 24 hours of A Christmas Story which we've never ever seen before except every year for 24 hours!

A little festiveness on the square shown here.



Reindeer display that I'm stealing next year from Anthropologie



Me out and about today going a little steampunk. I'm working on desensitizing myself from pictures since it's going to be all pictures all the time with baby. Also, I feel a little bad we didn't take more in utero shots sooner but Mommy was ralphing a lot and looked like death. Frankly, I've just found my make up drawer again in the last two weeks!



I hope everyone is having a fantastic Christmas Eve!

Christmas Party 2011

Christmas party pictures from last night. I got to have fun and spend lots of time sitting which is fantastic at 7.5 months pregnant! The husband was super cute too.

Tasty food at a beautiful house of a friend means lots of fun with no work from us. :)

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Santa brought all the goodies on your list!

Festive Decorating

Tree in the kitchen.



Vintage tree in the dining room. All the ornaments except church, tree topper and magenta flowers are all yummy vintage ornaments.



Bird tree in the bedroom



Snowmen in the hallway bookcases



Some favorite ornaments on the big tree in living room




Sugar/glitter houses in the dining room



Studio tree



Another studio tree



Glowing Santa from my friend Bo the girl.



Large view of Christmas tree in the living room.

Merry Christmas!

With this year's white Christmas, I got everything I wanted and more. I hope your holiday has been filled with beauty and joy.

Happy Christmas Everyone!

Vacation in sight!

I can't believe how close to Christmas it is. I've got almost nothing done that I wanted to but am incredibly excited that tomorrow is Friday and I get an entire week off. I have huge, huge plans to play in the studio and the kitchen. We're also planning a date night for Did you Hear About the Morgans Cowboy Chow and Christmas lights. I've also ordered some urban fantasy that looks awesome so when I'm not playing I can do some fun mindless reading. Seriously, there's no way this vacation live up to these huge expectations but I'm going to risk.

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend planned.

Christmas

So today I know how an elf must feel working overtime at the North Pole. In fact, that elf would be totally wiped out and have extremely dry hands from paper, glue and ribbon. I finished wrapping all the presents and Rolland got them boxed up and ready to ship out tomorrow.


These are the packages headed north and hopefully will arrive in the next two weeks. I dread waiting in line while Rolland brings more in from the car and everyone gives us incredibly dirty looks.

Luckily, the 60 Christmas cards I finished up tonight can be dropped in the mail without any seeing the huge stack. I have no idea what possessed me this year. This week, baked goods. Normally I've been working on cookies since October and just have to slice and bake with the thawed rolls from the freezer but this year Christmas got away from me and I've done no pre-baking. OY! Do you think a group pan of brownies is horrible?

Now, I'm going to bed and am hell bent on regrouping for a new attitude of merriment. I've got some awesome plans involving spray painted plastic dinosaurs and a Lego Rockband Keychain. This minor lapse in holiday cheer will soon be forced into submission.

Weekend

So far, this weekend has been awesome. Tiring, but awesome. Last night was a girls night and we had dinner at The Porch then saw the Santaland Diaries which totally rocked. I love David Sedaris and the show at The Contemporary rocked it.
Today has been a lot of shopping, wrapping, repeat. Tomorrow I need to start stock piling the cookies for delivery on Friday. I'm taking the week of Christmas off so all office goodies need to be done by the 18th so I've got butter thawing as we speak. Pics of cookie goodness should be forthcoming.

Speaking of pics, this one is the tree at the Galleria and was taken with my iPhone using the Toy Camera application. Now, my new favorite thing about my iPhone since I took it with my phone, uploaded it to twitpic, saved it from there and posted it here... no finding the camera, downloading pic, photoshop, save, upload, etc. Although I apologize for twitter followers and blog readers on the shared photos but it's festive!

Last Weekend's Antique Outing

Apparently, there is a twice yearly antique sale in the design and antique district in Dallas. This was the first my friend Jen and I had heard of it so we promptly scratched other plans and made this our new destination. We've also added a new partner in crime, Bo, not to be confused with Bo, My husband has taken to referring to her as Bo the Girl and since she is delightful and charming she did not smack him. Bo, not the girl and I, are heading here for lunch on Tuesday but I digress.

The other shopping fiends and I met for breakfast here. It's incredibly tasty. In fact, the husband and I are planning to head there for breakfast in a couple of hours. 1. it's super tasty 2. It's my bribe for swinging by the antique store for more Christmas ornaments like these.



Sorry, I digressed. Again. Anyway, after breakfast we headed towards the design district thinking this was where all the sale goodness was happening but not so much. We were not deterred and headed down to Industrial where, in fact, all of the actual sales were happening. I have found a few new places to love like this, and this, and this one. Here are some pics that I didn't take because I was caught up in a vintage ornament/biscuit and gravy coma.

These are some of my other super great finds.




I also found these great dice and pics which are perfect for our guest bathroom. After our major bathroom re-model I was not discouraged (for long) or put off (much) about redoing the guest bathroom. It's mostly Rolland's, and where the puppies get baths, but I really want to do a vintage black and white bathroom even though it's incredibly over and done to death but still, I want my white subway tile! I decided it would help my cause to find some great old items that even he would love.
How could anyone say no to a b&w pic of a fighter pilot and over size vintage dice from Vegas?

Tomorrow, lunch then Pies and Tarts class at Sur la Table. I'll try to be a better blogger and take pics. Even if I am covered in flour with hand prints on my butt, not that this is something that occurs regularly when I'm in the kitchen or anything!

New Year ... almost

We've made it back from our Missouri road trip in time to head north once again. This time to visit my fam in Kansas and ring in the New Year with them. Luckily, I've taken the week off to get packed and then rest up but Rolland has to work Monday and Tuesday so we're not heading out until the crack of dawn on Weds. so not much change from our typical routine. :)

I've got my to do list already for tomorrow and have slotted in lots of art time to get some fun things started. I've also started working on a goals sheet for next year (it's in excel and everything! Not sure when I became that girl but nonetheless I'm risking total nerdom & keeping it). So far it seems doable and not overly ambitious but we'll see how it goes come Jan. 15th!

I hope Santa was good to you and everyone's ready for the New Year whether it's a book, bath and early bedtime (my idea of heaven any day of the week) or a huge blowout bash be sure to make the most of those last minutes of 2008!

P.S. for all the other sci-fi/fantasy readers out there I've been devouring the Nightside series by Simon Green and can't get enough! I'm seriously ticked that I've been blowing off the Amazon recommendation for years on this one! After this I do feel like I need to do some "spinach reading". Any recommendations on books I should checkout that are good for me? :)

Wow, Christmas is almost here!

This year has really gotten away from me. I mean, I am totally wheels off in my shopping, wrapping, decorating, etc. We didn't even put up the big tree! I do have baby trees scattered throughout the house and two in the studio but the big tree just seemed like a lot to bother with when it's just us. I finished up shopping for gifts I had to give today... uhm, this morning! Seriously, I don't know what it is with this year but it definitely got the best of me. I  have big plans for next year though!

In the meantime, I've had some gorgeous girlies enter my life and just had to share. The lovely bottle beauty was made by the fabulous and lovely Maija and she is going to be the queen of the doll head collection I've got going on the shelf by my work desk. The other lovely little girl was made for me by Kecia in an exchange we did a while back. I just love this piece! Kecia creates pieces with these dolls like no one else!

Finally, pics are here!

We've been incredibly busy lately but we've had requests for photos of the new patio. If you're related to us and want to see every tiny detail you can check out the complete set of pics here. Otherwise, I've just included some highlights. :)

Woo hoo, Christmas is here!

I know because the annual 12 Days of Christmas exchange has officially started the countdown. Check out the lovely pressies all wrapped and just ready to open! Alas, a few more days until the paper can fly. :)

Spice Girl

Christmas came early out our house! I've had my eye on one of these sculptures that we saw once at the Nasher store and I've gone in every time we're at the mall just to see if it was back on display. But always out of luck. Tonight, they had a grouping of them as a window display and I just fell in love with this one. Who wouldn't?! Creepy doll head, crown, Queen Elizabeth, oh my! The sales associate was asking if we wanted the details and was explaining the history of the dolls coming from Germany (I'm familiar with this process :) ) and how the artist put it's together, etc and Rolland just said "Sold". I almost fell over. He truly is one of the best husbands ever! Now, she's all mine. Swing by and visit. She greets guests in the entry way!

Studio Cheer

I've got the studio trees up and I love them! Every year I put the trees up and then like how they look so much I don't want to take them down until Easter! This year I added the china doll parts which my husband says makes them extra creepy. I'm ignoring him and adding them anyway. The smaller tree is also dressed in all vintage ornaments which I find super cute.

We have managed to get in a movie so far for the holiday break. We saw the new James Bond. The movie was decent and heavy on the M so even better. Judi Dench rocks. The new theme song - fairly awful. I usually love the opening sequence but I kind of hated this one. There weren't any especially good previews either so if you get down to the wire you're aren't missing anything here.

Now I'm off to watch some TV before heading to bed early.