Christmas Eve

7am Christmas Morning

Reagan Belle's first Christmas

Despite our car battery dying suddenly 2 days before our departure, plus the alternator going out, an oil leak, not to mention being flat broke: we made it to The Farm for Christmas! That's a 7 hour total drive to my grandparent's ranch to the sticks in Missouri. On our way we made stops at other relatives to break up the trip, and even to ditch our unlucky SUV in place of a smaller (but working) vehicle.

We had our discouraged moments and feelings of doubt about ever arriving at our destination... but call it a Christmas miracle, it was one of my favorite Christmas's to date!

I made gift baskets for our relative's families with homemade cookies and candy, homemade cranberry jam, a personalized ornament designed and made by moi, and a few choice accessories for the girls. Everybody seemed happy with their presents! :) I was pretty happy with ours too, we got a new 52 piece set of dishes and kitchenware, a bathroom rug, an electric mixer, a super fuzzy blanket, and of course lots of cute outfits and toys for Reagan!

The coolest thing we came home with though was some 3D artwork my grandma had made years ago that we found in storage while exploring her basement!

It's a spider web made of one long continuous thread. I painted the frame black after we got home to make it pop more on the wall in our dining room (see left). We are in love with it!

We built a bonfire and told stories outside in the cold, drank too much champagne/beer/wine than necessary, had some heated disagreements while playing spades/hearts/rummy, investigated and researched antiques around the house (some dated back to the early 1800s and had Free Mason symbols on them), and ate some AMAZING food. It was well worth the initial difficulties!

Website update:

Since I got so much great feedback about the gift baskets I made for everyone, I'm thinking of adding that on MommyWantsOnline.com. Personalized and custom baskets: for whoever and for whatever! In an effort to network with people around me, maybe I'll have the option to include items made by others in my community (like for example, I just tried some fabulous locally made wine), and then they can help cross market me as well.

Right now the site has all of the frame-work finished. The truth is I need to get some products together! :D And I need to be crankin' out some more of these blogs for your reading pleasure! Plus I have a few new recipes that need to go up soon, including apple crisps and apple taffy salad (grandma's recipe)!


Tomorrow is the last day of 2010, good luck to everyone in the new year!