{Christmastime at the Millers}

This post is going to be chock full of pictures. The weekend after Thanksgiving we decorated the inside of the house for Christmas. So far the tree is still in tact even if I had to jerry-rig it to fix the big hole Emilee made in it last year. I've only had to tell Gracie about 100 times not to touch things but considering I had to tell her about 501x last year, that's an improvement! I also hosted my first (and actually only - how sad!) party of the season on Friday. It was a Celebrating Home party and a Gold party. I got some cash for holding the Gold party and some free Celebrating Home products so I totally made out! :) Yesterday I let the girls build a gingerbread house. They were looking forward to that all week.

So, here are some pictures from all that.


Here are some of the goodies I made for my party. Chewy Caramel Bars (recipe will be posted at The Girl Creative tomorrow in participation with our Creating Christmas Blog Fest) and red velvet cupcakes.


Here is some bark I made with dark chocolate, white chocolate, walnuts and M&M's. Yummy! And some Walnut Brownie Tartlets.



Now onto the decorations. I made these Christmas Countdown blocks which I thought the girls would be super excited about. Turns out they're not, but I am so that works. ;)


Here is our tree. Not a great picture because after almost 6 years I still have not figured out how to use my camera properly!

And the newest edition to our living room is this little shelf that I got super cheap at Hobby Lobby as well as the tall candle holders.

I did bake so much more stuff but in all the fuss of the party and the set up I forgot to take more pictures. I made a to die for hot spinach and artichoke dip. I made this anti-pasta bread featured at Kevin and Amanda and boy was it good (picture is from Kevinandamanda.com)!!!


Also on the menu was a cold anti-pasta, a bunch of M&M and Chocolate Chip Cookie and shrimp cocktail. I'd say the party was a success. Can't wait to do it again for Christmas. :)

Cooking Up Something Fun for the Holidays

So, over at my other blog, The Girl Creative, we are cooking up something really cool for the holidays. We are still working out the details and will announce it officially soon, but I'll give you the inside scoop. We are going to have 5 days of idea sharing. Basically, each day we will have a new topic and readers everywhere can link up to one of their posts that pertain to our topic. For example: on day one we may have Favorite Christmas Recipes as the topic. You would link up over at The Girl Creative via Mr. Linky with a post on your blog showing off your favorite Christmas recipe. We are going to do this for a whole week. I'm so excited. It's a great
way to expand your readership as well as to find new blogs to read.

The idea came to me after I had written a post about creative gift wrapping. I thought that it might be fun to do a segment on various creative ways to wrap gifts this Christmas season. Then I thought why not do a whole week of fun posts like that. I won't give you all the details but in the next couple of days we should have it all worked out. Stay tuned!!

Oh, and since I know my sister, Kate, is going to ask who "we" are since she knows I pretty much blog alone, I'll tell ya. The Girl Creative has a team of creative chics that are regular contributors now. Yeah! Go me! lol You can find out more about them by going HERE and finding the "Our Other Playgrounds" title on our sidebar. :)