Our First Christmas

Belated Yule-Tide Greetings!  :)

I finally finished this post.  I hope my tardiness does not keep you from being interested, but if it does I totally understand.  :)  I wanted to get all of our Christmas stuff into one post, so it took a while - ya dig?

Mr. Robinson and I were not dating last Christmas, so as you can imagine...this Christmas was very special to us.  It was our first one together and our first Christmas as a married couple!  We really had a wonderful Christmas together, and this post captures every moment, detail, laugh, and ounce of crazy.  :)  After all, Christmas with family members always involved a little crazy right?  No?  Just my family then!  :)  So....get ready for a long post with lots of pictures!

Our First Christmas

My favorite thing about our first Christmas is that I started a tradition that I just know we will always cherish.  I created a Christmas Memory Book that looks like a scrapbook but behaves like a journal.

  We wrote down every memory we made this Christmas season, and we will continue to do so for the rest of our lives.  :)  The best part is that the book looks pretty and is displayed with our Christmas decorations.  Not to mention the fact that it will be an heirloom passed down for generations - and y'all know I'm all about a good heirloom!  :)  I highly recommend that each of you make/buy a Christmas Memory Journal.  You can read the post I wrote about ours here.
Mr. Robinson and I had a huge Christmas this year.  However, my grandparents are pretty loaded and everything with them is huge and big and expensive, and all around over-the-top.  Needless to say, we had a huge Christmas this year.
Christmas Eve:We went to Pa & Ma's house (my parental grandparents) at 3.  We ate so much yummy food.  The first course was an old Italian recipe (my family is Italian) called anyalanes.  I have no idea how to spell it, I'm sorry.  It is similar to chicken and dumplings, but better.  Homemade, handmade noddles stuffed with  veal and chicken.  Mmm...  We had tons of other food too....ham, macaroni, bbq, etc.  My crazy aunt (anyone else have one of those?) forced all of us into taking about 7-trillion pictures.  Oh. My. Gosh.  BUT....they did turn out pretty cute.  

The Robinson's! 

Mr. & Mrs. Robinson

Zombie aka "Santa Paws!"

My husband, the photobomber

Ma, with all of her grandbabies! 

funny face picture ... & grab my boob I guess?  That's grandma-appropriate fa-sho.

funny face pictures do not amuse or flatter me...

L-R:  Me, Pa, Nicole, and Miranda (my sister)

got me some good Christmas lovin'!

Ater much food and many, many pictures.... we all went to church for a candlelight service.  Our church is currently without a pastor right now...which actually pretty much sucks, but the Body is amazing and we don't want to leave.  However, that made our Christmas Eve service a little...different.  A member of the church just so happens to be a retired pastor, but he has never been our pastor.  He filled in and headed up communion.  However, he is very old and is on a lot of medication and is just...kind of losing it.  We all felt like the service was not very reverent, and didn't really enjoy the way he did it.  However, it was still good to be in the Lord's house!  

After church, we went back to Pa and Ma's house to open presents.  Picture this....a large living room.  11 people.  2 dogs.  Each person received at least twenty gifts.  It was pure chaos, but it's my family and I loved it because it felt so familiar.  Last Christmas, I was waiting tables and was not able to be there with my family.  It felt good to be back, and to bring my brand new hubby with me! :)  My grandparent's dog is a Yorkie Silky Terrier named Beauhiggens.  Beau is a boy and is neutered, and humped poor Zombie (also a boy, but not neutered).  Also, in the series of events....Mr. Robinson and I got caught regifting.  But before you think I'm tacky and cheap, please allow me to explain.
We are talking about my crazy aunt that took all of the pictures okay?  She is the definition of tacky.  I mean...you really just have no idea.  She is known, far and wide, for her re-gifting.  A few years ago, the Christmas gift she gave my sister a day planner that was two years old and had already been used and written in.  At one of my showers (a pounding, where people give you non-perishable food and cleaning products) she gave me me a gift bag full of "non-perishable" food items.  It was so obvious that she had cleaned out her pantry.  There were boxes that had little mouse or rat teeth marks in the corner, a few empty boxes, a bag of pretzels that had been opened and eaten out of, limited edition season jello (like the kinds you buy during thanksgiving or Christmas), among other crazy things.  Did I mention that this shower took place in July?  After further investigation, I discovered that every single item she gave me was expired.  The oldest item she "gave" us had expired in 2006.  She gave us 5 year old food.  I mean, get real, she did not  buy that from Food Lion or Walmart.  She did not buy a box of jello that a rat had eaten out of and she did not buy an already opened bag of food.  She pulled it out of her pantry.  At a different shower, she gave me crystal wine glasses that have been used before...I could tell by the grease stains around the rim left over by washed-away lipstick , the re-applied stickers, and old box they came in.  I mean, you guys, she is TACKY.  And nobody ever calls her out on it, not even me!  And I'm the queen of telling people like it is!  So, after her acting as though she was doing Mr. and I a huge favor with all of the "gifts" she gave when in  reality, she was just cleaning out her pantry...I decided I was not going to spend money on her.  Maybe I was in the wrong.  But my goodness, Mr. Robinson and I surely do not have money growing on a tree in the back yard.  She was just going to give us something she received and didn't like.  So, I regifted.  And idiot me, forgot to take the little to-from tag out of the inside of the box.  And got caught.  :(  I was embarrassed, but more so...I was mad.  I was mad because nobody ever calls her out on it because it is rude to say "hey, you're a really tacky person.  I can't believe you re-gifted me!"  She re-gifts everyone, everyone KNOWS it, and everyone just smiles and plays along.  But she announces my re-gift to the entire room.  I mean, we received so many re-gifts at our wedding showers.  And that's fine because I like all of the gifts we got and I am still thankful for the love and thought expressed by those gifts.  At least they tried.  And sometimes people just get two gifts of the same thing...I mean, you never know.  I just felt like the queen of tacky called me out on being tacky in a very tacky way, and it made me mad.  In any event, I learned my lesson and will never again re-gift.
So, like I was saying.  My boy dog (nuts in tact) got humped by another boy dog (who has no nuts).  We got caught re-gifting.  
Moving on... :) 
A few weeks ago, we went to crazy aunt's house.  She took this picture.  From left to right we have....Mr. Robinson, myself, my two cousins Nicole and Daniel (crazy aunt's children), and my sister on the end.  We four (plus my new hubby) make up Pa and Ma's grandchildren.  We framed this picture and gave it to them for Christmas.  Crazy aunt was the photographer.  This was at her house.  She did a good job.  Gorgeous background!  So this was the grandkids present to the grandparents, and they loved it!    

One gift I was really excited about was a gift that was not even given to me, it was given to my husband.  My grandfather bought all of the men the same gun, and they had consecutive serial numbers.  They are collector's edition guns that were made in honor of or in memory of the Civil War.  My grandpa bought one for himself, for my dad, for crazy aunt's husband, for Daniel (crazy aunt's son), and for my husband.  All of the men got one.  I could care less about the gun, but it made me really, really happy that my grandpa considers my husband "one of our men."  My grandparent's were a little iffy about our quick marriage at first, so this was kind of a symbol of their acceptance of him and of our marriage.  It made me happy that he was included in that.  :)  
THEN...my grandpa pulls me into the kitchen and tells me that the guns have consecutive serial numbers.  I say "okay."  I really could care less about the guns, haha.  He said that he bought 6 guns.  I said "okay."  He said, "That's one gun for every man in this family with an extra gun left over."  I said, "okay."  He nudges me with his elbow and says, "The 6th one is for my first grandson."  Ughh.  Why do people think newlyweds HAVE TO HAVE BABIES?!  Haha.  Crazy old man.  :)
So anyway, after we all opened the gifts and cleaned up their living room...it was time to go home.  My parents were kind enough to come over to our house and take some pictures of my husband and I in front of our very first Christmas tree in our very first home together!  :)   I owe credit to Pinterest for the inspiration behind these pictures.  I think they turned out pretty darn precious!  :)  We plan on using them next year on our Christmas cards, since we didn't make it around to sending any out this year.  Ooops ;) 

 

Which one is your favorite?  :)

After my parents left, we unloaded all of the presents from Pa & Ma's house into the living room and loaded up the car with presents to our parents.  Then, we changed into our jammies and started watching A Christmas Story.  Well, we didn't finish it.  We were both tired and had full bellies, and A Christmas Story is not a movie you can fall asleep to.  So we turned it off and went to bed.
Mr. Robinson "snuck" into the living room and wouldn't let me leave our room until the next morning.  He was being Santa, isn't that precious?  I woke him up at 7 am Christmas Morning by getting in his face and poking his arm.  I'm a 5 year old sometimes, too.  :)  He woke up and begged for more sleep, which I denied him, and we got up to open presents!  :)  We went to our stockings first, where we both found cards.  :)  It was sweet because his card was addresses to "My Wife" and my card was addressed to "My Husband" and we didn't plan it!  :)  The cards were very sweet.  His made my tear up a little.
Then, we went to the Christmas tree to open presents.  I had two gifts, he had four.  Our limit was $250.  
I gave him a pair of custom orange and black chuck's that I designed just for him.  They have his name down the back.  He is a SF Giants fan, and orange and black are his favorite colors.  He loved the shoes.  Flipped out over them, even.  :)  I also gave him an orange and black watch because while we were on our honeymoon, he kept looking at orange and black watches but couldn't justify spending a lot of money on one.  So I found a cheaper one on Amazon and he loves it.  Then, I gave him a sign for his man cave.  Finally....I gave him "The 12 Dates of Christmas" which you will hear more about later!  :)  Basically, I arranged 12 boy-dates and he gets to pick when we go on them.  One each month.  I am SO super pumped about this, and can't wait to share all of the dates with y'all!  
He gave me a Pandora charm for my bracelet that we started on our honeymoon!  The charm he gave me for Christmas is red and white striped, like a peppermint, to mark our first Christmas together!  Pandora does have a Christmas tree charm, but the star on top is made from yellow gold and he knows I basically hate yellow gold.  So he got creative.  He's the best.  :)  He was so cute because in the box, with the charm, he put in a ton of peppermints to "hide" the charm.  It was so cute.  AND it answered my question:  "where did all the peppermints go!?"  He also gave me a SEWING MACHINE and I am pumped!  I can't wait to take it out of the box and play with it.  First, I need some practice fabric.  I guess t-shirts would work well as a practice-fabric.  I guess first I need some time.  We stay so busy, haha.  But oh man, it's a nice one!  It's for sewing and quilting.  So keep your eyes open for some sewing-centered posts.  Hopefully before next year!  
For breakfast, I made Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Pancakes.  They were delicious!  

Source: thatssoyummy.com via Kristina on Pinterest

After we ate, we got ready for church.  Mr. Robinson wore his new orange and black shoes, khaki pants, a black shirt, orange tie, and his new orange and black watch.  I wore a red dress and a (faux) fur leopard print jacket.  
After church, we went home and changed quickly.  We finished packing.  We grabbed Zombie-girl and ran out the door, and off to my parent's house for lunch with my mom, dad, sister, Grandmudder, Grumps, Uncle Damon, Uncle Oscar, and my little cousin Gracie.  We ate lunch...and oh man, was it good....and exchanged gifts!  This is when I gave my grandma the chocolate covered cherries I had been working on.  (For recipes, click on my recipe tab!  There are three!)  My parents gave us a lap top!  Yay!!  We sure did need one.  We have three broken lap tops in our house, how crazy is that?  
Then, we packed up the car with gifts from my family and headed to see his parents.  They ate lunch, so we missed it.  But we had dinner with just us and his folks.  Yummy, yummy leftovers.  And I am not being sarcastic.  We exchanged gifts with them, and then pretty much went to bed.  The next day, we hung around the house with them.  The four of us went outside and had some target practice and played around with our guns.  Hubby got to shoot his new gun for the first time, and I got to shoot my little pink gun.  Maybe one day I'll write a post on my opinions regarding guns, gun control, and packing-heat.  (Hint:  I am FOR it, and I carry my gun everywhere.)  It always good to practice.  The last thing you want to do is make a robber MAD by shooting him in the toe or something.  Then, Mr. Robinson went deer hunting with his dad and I went shopping with his mom.  I bought some GREAT boots that came up to my knees and fit my fat calves perfectly.  This is no small accomplishment, ladies.  Then, we ate again (are you seeing a trend, here?).
Finally, we packed up the car and went home.  It was the longest drive ever.  We were both very, very sleepy and very, very full.  We finally got home around 10:30 that Monday night, and we both had to work the next day.  We unloaded everything out of my car, and passed out from pure exhaustion.  
The End :)  

Here are some links to Christmassy posts I did this season...

Click here to read about our decorations.

Click here to read about the Christmas Show we saw.

Click here to see how I made a Christmas ornament out of a key.

Click here for my Homemade Holiday sugar Scrub recipes.

Click here to see how I made a festive centerpiece out of wine glasses.

Click here to check out our salt dough ornaments, with the recipe!

Click here for Breanna's guest post on making ornaments out of clear Christmas balls!

Click here for my post about cheap ideas to spread Christmas cheer!

And click here if you want to know what took me so long to write this post.  

Tuesday Morning Ramblings

Good Morning!

Source: xaxor.com via Finkiyaya on Pinterest

How funny...my coffee cup is about a million times the size of this little shrimpy cup.  ;)

As I sit here drinking my daily cup of coffee, I can't help but think of how Christmas Eve is just four short days away.  I feel like Christmas starts on December 1st.  I'm kind of sad that the season is already almost over.  This is my first Christmas with my husband...and I've had a ball making it special and capturing every moment in a picture or in our Christmas journal.  I am super excited about the gifts I'm giving him, and I can't wait to see his face when he opens them!  But still....I'm not quite ready for it all to be over.

Source: gettyimages.ca via lise on Pinterest

I feel like I didn't really get to decorate the way I wanted to... and that makes me sad.  I did decorate...but you see, this is the thing.  The house we are currently living in is ginormous.  It's really huge...it's the house I grew up in.  I figured my parents would be giving me a lot of the decorations they won't have room for in their smaller home (they down-sized after their two kids moved out).  But by the time they got around to it, I did not feel like putting up a bunch of decorations just to take them down in a week and a half.  But we did decorate some..and you can see tons of pictures here.

Hmm...I am so sorry that this post kind of sounds a little sad.  That was not my intentions!  I am loving Christmas!  I just don't want it to be over because I've been having FUN, but at the same time...I don't feel like I did it as big as I could have.  Either way, Christmas is not about decorations or pictures.  It's about God's love in our hearts and showing that love to other people.  :)  

In other news....

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Yesterday, something amazing happened.  I published my 100th post, and it was a guest post, and it was written by a sweet girl named Breanna who had never guest-posted before.  You can check it out here.

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Also, I read the GREATEST post this morning!  It's by Mrs. Pancakes and it was the coolest thing to read.  It's about love and marriage and Christmas...all of my favorite things!  It's a must read, so go ahead and click here.  

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Do remember how I told out love story in an 8-part series?  It started in November and ended in December, but I told it.  Click here if you missed it!  Anyway, yesterday....I started working on my wedding posts and I am so excited!  :-D Squeak!

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Today, I'm going to be rearranging a few things on the ol blog-front and hopefully get more organized.  So....stay tuned!  :)  And please be patient.

That's about it!  Thanks for sharing a little piece of your morning with me.  I hope y'all have a fabulous day!

Our Christmas Decorations {so far}

Everyone else is doing it.  I might as well post pictures of our Christmas Decorations.  Watch out...a tutorial will be sneaking up on you in here.  :)

On the Front-Door-knob hang Christmas bells

You are greatest with the wonderful scent of Christmas!  :)  I love my wax-warmer.  I have one in every room of our house.  I have a ton of Christmas~sy scents - ranging from Christmas cookies to pine to peppermint!  This poinsettia wax warmer was a wedding gift.  I have it right by the front door so that people are greeted with a subtle but delicious scent.  

When you walk in the front door of our house, the first thing you see is the staircase.  There is a small foyer.

"If you don't have Christmas in your heart, you will never find  it under a tree."

 Below, you'll find the Christmas details of the foyer from left to right.  :)  Enjoy!

This little corner is to the left of the front door.  That curtain?  It's hiding a door.  :)  Don't tell!  I hated the door there.  It goes to the den...a room that is currently used for storage.  I covered it up!  If you follow me on Pinterest, you might recognize the framed fabrics on the right.  No?  You mean you DON'T follow me on Pinterest?  Well, let's just fix that.  Click Here, please.  :)  You can see the Christmas pillow in the chair.  It was a wedding gift.  :)  Also, the little gift bags under the desk?  Those are my Homemade Sugar Scrubs!  Read all about those here.  I had fun making the sugar scrubs and they were super easy!  They'll make great gifts.  Wrapping them was simple, too!  I covered the jars in tissue paper, covered the tissue paper in a clear sandwich bag, and tied them up with a silver ribbon.  So simple.  Highly recommended.  

This is just an outdoor snowflake that I picked up from a dollar store over three years ago.  It's held up nicely.  :)  The smaller snowflakes were cheap & old ornaments that I pushed into a picture-holder / card-display.  I'll be putting the Christmas cards we receive opposite of the snowflakes!  Cute, huh?  At the very bottom is some of that white-glittery felt "snow" stuff that I had left over from my freshman dorm-room Christmas decor!  Yikes!  But I am proof that you don't have to spend money to make your home look cute and festive.  I didn't spend a single penny this year!  

The stairs going up to the second floor of the house.  That's where he has his music room & I have my craft room!  :)  I wrapped the banisters in cheap garland that I had front my college days.  Between the garland is some really cute snowflake ribbon that I had on my tree last year!  I tied little ribbons around the looped garland on the left of the picture.  Again, the ribbons were just something I had.  They had little twisty-ties on the back.    

The Christmas Tree

It's my favorite part of decorating.  :)  I love old-fashioned and simple looking trees.  I've seen a lot of pictures on Pinterest lately of gorgeous trees that are dripping with ribbons, bows, ornaments, garland, lights, glitter, etc.  They are lovely.  But I love our pitiful little po-dunk tree.  I love it in all of it's simplicity and I wouldn't trade it for anything.  

    

"Jesus knows me, this I LOVE!"  

Skeleton Keys from the wedding :)

"Just Married" Ornament from Lennox

from my grandma 

(it's okay that neither of us are brunettes, right?)

Handmade Clay Ornaments We Bought Ourselves

in Rockhill, SC

Our First Home

DIY Ornament

Click HERE for the tutorial :)

Check out the "flower" I made out of wrapping paper!  Cool, huh?  Remember the labels I used when I made the sugar scrub?   If you didn't click on it the first time, it's okay.  Here's your second chance.  :)  Click HERE.  Also, the same label I used in the "Our First Home" ornament pictured above. Well, I used the same labels for Mr. Robinson's Christmas gifts.  They say "To My Precious Husband."  Both of these presents pictured are for him.  Ya know what he said when he saw these?  "You have more than one husband?!"  Cracks me up.  Love that guy.    

This is pretty cool.  It's a lantern.  It was a wedding gift.  I have a battery-operated candle in it to keep it mess-free!  I like it.  It's to the right of the tree, at the bottom of the stairs.  I'm sure you could have guessed that.  :)    

On the far right side of the foyer is this little table.  I love this little table.  On top of the table is a whimsical little tree.  Don't tell anyone, but it was not crooked when I bought it.  It got bent in storage.  I don't call it damaged.  I called it whimsical, weren't you paying attention?  ;)  AND..none other than our Christmas Memories book!!  WHAT?!  You don't know what that is?!  Click here and here, please, and I'll forgive you.  :)    

NOW, we can finally leave the foyer.  Do you remember the old, vintage, heirloom trunks that I came into possession of fairly recently?  Click here.  They've been replaced.  I had to rearrange some stuff to make room for Christmas decorum!  (Yep.  Decorum.  I said it.)  Below is a picture of what's keeping their spot warm.

 Now, here we find ourselves in the living room.  Our huge living room has not been touched at all.  We did not decorate it one little bit.

Until...I got a wild hair up my self this morning and decided I'd rather decorate our fire place full of gas logs that have no gas instead of make it to work on time!  Welcome to my life.

Actually, it all started with stockings.  Where to hang the stockings?

Here?

 I liked the way the stockings looked here, but they weren't very accessible.  Plus, I'm not convinced that the garland would support the weight of the stockings once they're filled with gifts!

So I decided to try and bring some Christmas cheer into our living room.  Hmm...how to hang them?  We don't have any decorative stocking hooks.  I had some tension rods in the craft room.
  

I had to stretch the tension rod allll the way out so that it would reach.  By doing so, it made the rod crooked.  It wasn't sturdy enough to support the stockings.  Grr.  

I tried hanging some little snowflakes on the rod to disguise the crookedness. 

 Which, as you can see...did not work.  It helped a little, but not enough.  

Then, I decided to try and cover up the crookedness with some ribbon!  

Which I decided to braid, for some reason.

That was a horrible idea.  It looked really bad.  I didn't even take a picture.  Sorry.  I unraveled the braid and stuck the ribbon in a tiny mason jar.  Cute.  :)   

After tinkering with it for a while, I came up with this:  If I lowered the tension rod to the top of the gasless gas logs, maybe the gold rod would blend in with the gold fireplace cover.  It did!  So, the rod is still crooked.  But, you can't tell!  AND I kept the snowflakes because I liked the way they contrasted against the gold.  

And I had some Wal-Mart "Warm Apple Pie" candles in the craft room that got to make their debut!  They are in the corner opposite of the mason-jar-full-of-ribbon.

Whew.  THAT was a long post!

So, what do you think of our decor so far?!

Have you finished with your decorations yet?  Or do you think it will be more of a month-long process that never really ends?  I'm thinking that's how my decorating is going to go!  But that's okay!  :)  I'd love to go look at your decorations if you leave me a link.  If you made it this far, thanks for reading!  :)  You're my favorite.