Cookies Galore!!

What better way is there to celebrate Christmas than decorations, cooking baking and friends and family visiting?

I made the decision in November to combine all of these things....it turned into what I hope is our 1st annual Christmas cocktail party. I baked for two straight weeks, decorated like crazy and celebrated with friends and family last night.

Let's start with the cookie baking, shall we?

The kitchen counters were scattered with blue and white snowflakes,

Raspberry shortbread,

which were packaged and sent home with our guests.

I also made snicker doodles, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter chip cookies, peanut butter cup cookies and jam thumbprints

And just because I'm thrilled with how my snowflake cookies turned out, here are some more pictures. :)

I'll let the house decorations speak for themselves. 

 

   

And of course, here are the obligated night time shots.

When the party started, I put down my camera and enjoyed the moments laughing, telling stories and make memories with family and friends! After all, that's what this season is all about right?


Merry Christmas!

Christmas on The Hill

I feel like I need to explain the title of this post. You may now know that our house sits on a ridge with a bunch of other homes. When we first moved in, the neighbors told us, Welcome to The Hill. So that I how we affectionately refer to the location of our home.

Anyways, we've just been hanging around the house the few days - wrapping gifts, drinking wine with neighbors, enjoying fires,

and just admiring our Christmas tree.

I promise I'll take some pictures of the house, once I get the basement decorated this week for our party on Sunday.

Shed Building

I'm getting my very own craft room! It's been in the works for a while but it's finally happening. We had only one storage room in the house and no garage, so our spare 4th bedroom has been our temporary storage room. In order to gain that space back, we have talked about building a shed since we've moved in and last weekend we made it happen. 

We started with a cleared spot in the woods, since it was the flattest area in the backyard. 

Mike had the lumber delivered and we were ready to go. 

Before Wes was able to come and help Mike and I got the base built. 

Wes and Mike got the floor laid and we were ready for walls! 

Day 2 started with a change of crew and a lumber run. Andrew came over to help finish.

They started by putting up the roof joists,

but we quickly discovered that we should have charged the batteries for all the hand tools the night before so we had to switch gears and finish the walls. 

After a quick lunch break, the batteries were charged and we ready to finish the roof!

We were racing the rain the entire 2nd day and Michael was hoping to get the shed water tight, so the boys started the doors.

Yay one door is up and it works! 

Here is where Libby sat most of the afternoon watching all the action.

This is what the shed looked like for a week.

Michael went back the yesterday and finished the doors and added a ramp. So here is how it looks finished. 

We had a lot of heavy rain this past week and the shed stayed water tight. Today we moved all of outside gardening things in and everything out of our spare room in the basement. 

Next up on the to do list, create my craft room! :)