Our first live Christmas tree!!!

It may only be 18 inches tall, but she makes the perfect little centerpiece for our dining table.

Aldi had these little live trees for $6.99. So I snatched one up. And of course I had to decorate it!
I think she adds a nice glow to our dining room. I want to know...do you have a fake or live Christmas tree?

P.S. I am loving everything chocolate with peppermint. Do you have any great recipes? I'd LOVE to see them!

Deck the Stalls

Haha.

So, since we just have one bathroom in our lil' shoebox home, I like to decorate it just a tad for the seasons.

The normal color palette for the room is spa blue with chocolate brown and a little turquoise.

I don't like to actually challenge the colors of the room, so I use accents to go with it.

For example, for the Holidays, I added brown and gold ornaments.

And some live greenery.

And some mason jars.

And some gold glitter pine cones.

And here's how it looks.

I used some of the greenery bouquet I got at Lowe's ($3.97) and arranged some brown and bronze ornaments I had gotten on super clearance after season last year.

Then I used some more of the ornaments and just poured them into two different sized mason jars.

I think they add a nice festive touch to the vanity, while still being the right colors for the room.

And I kept a few gold glittered pine cones from fall and arranged them on top of the medicine cabinet.

That's it!

Just a little Christmas spirit.

What do you think?

Yay!!!!

The Wrapping Center I made a few weeks ago is featured on the

DIY Show Off today!!!

Check it out!!!!

Things I'm Loving Right Now...

Our home being nearly completely organized!

Online shopping.

Boots.

They keep my tootsies warm!

Our advent calendar.

It makes me feel like a kid, looking forward to opening the next day til Christmas and get a piece of chocolate!

Amaretto Coffe-mate.

Major mmmmmm.....

Getting Christmas cards!

2 and counting...

My 'Winter' scented Wallflower from B&BW.

I seriously, seriously love this scent.

The perfect blend of Cinnamon and other holiday spices!

Scarves.

They keep me warm and help hide my unflattering tummy.

Iced caramel brulee latte's.

The.best.drink.ever.

Our lil' home all pretty for Christmas!

What are you loving right now?

Holiday Cards time!

Attention fellow bloggers!

Shutterfly is offering a great promotion for 50 free holiday photo cards for blogging about their cards!

It's quite the deal!

Check it out here!

Mr. Free and I like to send out photo Christmas cards.

I know we don't have any cute little ones, but we still find a card with photos on them much more personable.

I know I love getting Christmas cards in the mail and hanging them up on our door. I especially love when people send cards with photos. Often times it is people I haven't seen in awhile so it's so good to see them and how they are doing.
By Christmas our whole door is full of cards and I love stopping to look at all the photos!

Last year I was a Scrooge and got plain Christmas cards.

It just wasn't the same.

Before that I've bought the Christmas cards that you slide in a 4 x 6 picture in, but often the picture would slide out.

So this year I've been looking at Shutterfly and found some great options.

I like how the picture is printed right onto the card, so it can't slip out.

And really, the prices aren't bad!

Before I was buying the card, plus paying to print the photos.

So it really comes out to the same price without the hassle.

Mr. Free and I are going to be taking our Christmas pictures this weekend, but we are thinking of wearing our ugly Christmas sweaters, rocking some classic 80's hair and taking an 80's classic family portrait.

You know we can't take a serious photo....

We also want to include pictures of our 3 cute pets.

Because if nothing else...those 3 will make people smile!

Here is the design I think I've decided on

But here are others I really liked too!

Check out the many other styles here and here!
Also with Mr. Free graduating in a couple of weeks and my graduation this Spring, there are some great graduation announcements too!

I'll be sure to show you the finished product, and bloggers be sure to check out this deal!

So...tell me about your favorite holiday card!

Christmas Decor: Living Room

I don't have a lot of pictures of my living room on here.

I have a hard time taking good pictures of it.

But she does look mighty perdy all dressed up for Christmas.

So I thought I'd share.

We use our entertainment center as our 'mantle'.

It's all we got.

Don't judge.

I nabbed the poinsetta for $.98 on Black Friday at Lowe's!

And it looks beautiful!

We even add a little tinsel to the arc lamp!

Hi Harriet!

It's very faded, but we've had this since our first Christmas.

It says 'Merry Chris-moose'.

It's very....'us'.

Our advent calendar

Added a few red ornaments to our milk glass

Our cheapo red stockings adored with our initials.

So Santa doesn't get mixed up. : )

All lit up.

What do you think???

Christmas Decor: Dining Room

Here is another peek into our shoebox home.

Here is our dining room all decked out for Christmas!

Our home for the Holidays is usually a red & white theme with some accents of green.

We go for good ol' Classic Christmas.

No fancy gold, burgundy or trendy colors here.

More like candy canes and white lights.

I re-used our Fall centerpiece of Mason jars, tea lights and I swapped out the glitter pine cones for red ornaments.

Very cheap!

I used our ever-practical white dishes layered with red to give them a festive look.

I used cheapo red placemats, red chargers and red napkins for a frugal new look!

I bought a fresh wreath from Lowe's ($7.97) and some fresh greenery ($3.97) for our home. I used the greenery all around the house and laid two branches next to the centerpiece with picks from Michaels laying on to ($1.60).

I really like how it looks!
Our hutch is filled with family treasures.
The stained glass angel on top was a wedding gift from a family friend.

The cook books were from my husbands family.
The Santa Claus' were carved and painted by Mr. Free's grandparents.
They had quite the carving studio and every year they would give each family a new Santa at Thanksgiving for the Holidays.

So there you go!

I really love our home all decorated.

It makes me smile when I walk in the door!

Is your home decorated for the Holidays yet?

Oh Christmas Tree....

Mr. Free and I (OK....sometimes just me...) usually shop til we drop on Black Friday then set the house all up for Christmas when we get home.

Needless to say we relax all day Saturday....

Over the next week or so I will show you little glimpses into our decked-out-for-the-holidays home.

I thought today I'd start with our tree.

She is just 6 ft. tall.

She isn't pre-lit.

She was just $15 four years ago.

We have adorned her with decorations from the $1 store.

She is outfitted with

white lights

red garland

red ornaments

snowflakes

icecicles

red bows

candy canes

special ornaments

with a

big bow and star on top

We decided to start fresh with our 'married tree' and not hang up our childhood ornaments.

We still have them though.

So our tree has an ornament for each of our animals

As well as an ornament for each Christmas we've had married.

Our first year ornament is the snowflake with our wedding picture in it that is in the top picture.

The second year ornament is the Peanuts classroom. This is the year Mr. Free went back to school to be a teacher.

We are now both teachers.

Music and Art.

We are hippies.

The third year ornament is one of a cat and dog.

Because we love our little furbabies.

And this year I got a dove that says 'hope'.

It just seemed very, very appropraite for the year we've had.

Our first year married my mom got each each an ornament to reflect us.

I got a treble clef.

And Mr. Free got a fireman Santa.

Our first year married Mr. Free had just graduated the Fire Academy and was volunteer firefighting on weekends.

He obviously has had a career change since then.

So there you have it.

Our little tree for our little home.

Want to know a secret?

We don't trim the tree every year.

We put a big bag over it, decorated and all and simply put it down in our storage room.

Fully intact.

Each year we just bring it up stairs, take the bag of and voila!

I don't know if it's genius or trashy......

*shrug*

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I've wanted to make this for a long time and I finally ran out of my massive Costco container of laundry detergent.

It was really easy and very inexpensive.

Here's what you need

I found all of the ingredients at Hy-Vee.

Grocery stores seem to carry these things more than like Target or Wal-Mart.

Here is the recipe

1 c. Washing Soda

1/2 c. Borax

1 grated Fels-Naptha bar

1. Combine the Washing soda and Borax

2. Grate the soap

3. Mix all three ingredient in large bowl then pour into pretty container!

Put in pretty container!

Easy!

We went ahead and tripled the batch, but only used 2 bars of soap since no more would fit in our container.

For use:

Light load- 1 tbs.

Larger load or heavier soiled- 2 tbs.

Why make your own laundry detergent?

Because it's cheap!

Let's break it down.

Up front, here were the costs:

Arm and Hammer Washing Soda $2.48

20 Mule Team Borax $3.97

2 Fels-Naptha Bars $ $1.66 ($.83 each)

Total: $8.11

Per batch, the total comes out to $1.40 which makes 40 loads.

That is $.04 per load!

My Costco container of detergent costs $11.99 for 160 loads.

That is $.075 per load!

Nearly half the price!

Woohoo!

So there you have it, I can cross that off my 101 things to do!

Please let me know if you try it out!