Valentine's Day

I have so much to share.  I have been loving my iphone.  It makes it so much easier to snap quick moments.

During the day I went with my friend Courtney shopping at The Vintage Rabbit and Spencer's.  We had a good time.  I'll share some photos in a separate post on all the little treasures I've recently acquired.

Our Valentine's Day was spent scraping the vinyl paper off of our closet.  We hired someone to refinish our hardwood floors and that was the best decision.  We are doing everything else ourselves, but we were in over our heads with the floors, so we knew it would be worth it to hire a professional.  Every night we had "homework" last week to stay a step ahead of Jim (our floor guy)

my etsy order from tboo

picture stolen from Courtney from Monday's Sugar Cookie Decorating Party

  

Luna is into giving kisses lately and it's so sweet!  Audrey practicing being a big sister to a little one!

 I love hanging out with my friends.  The kids all had a great time decorating sugar cookies and playing the day before Valentine's day at Chelle's house.

 This is a silly little vignette I did from some rejects that never sold in my etsy shop.

Here is my little cutie!

I wanted to make a nice Lobster dinner, but since I spent the day out shopping and was totally exhausted from staying up way too late scraping- we decided on the Arby's drive thru on Valentine's day.

 Here is the closet that we finished scraping on Valentine's day.

Here we are...                                                

kissing...

looking tired...

but happy...

and crazy...

laying on the floor out of exhaustion, and because I was loving the newly sanded floors, and so I could snap some before shots of the ceiling before we added texture.  I don't think I got any before shots, or during my popcorn ceiling removal.  That was a mess!

And here are our sweet little Valentine's:

Here is the dinner we ate the day after Valentine's Day, and the pretty bouquet that Sam picked up for me.  I must add that he picked out the flowers himself and got them from a florist.  I usually get grocery store flowers (not that you can ever complain about getting flowers, but these ones were a little prettier!)  I love that he knows me and knows that I love gerbera daisies and dahlias more than red roses!  And I love that he went to a florist, because they suggested adding some flowers with a nice fragrance- pretty and good smelling!

My first time trying mashed cauliflower, Sam loved it, I thought it could be better.

Our Decorations

 We hung a giant bulletin board in our entry way.  Come on upstairs.

Cutting Down the Tree 2011

We decided to get 3 this year.  One for the upstairs, one for Luna, and one for downstairs.  For once we decided to leave early so we wouldn't be hunting in the dark with our headlights.  We headed up the mountain road.  There were big icy ruts in the road, only a path for one car.  It was a little scary, I get to be such a chicken with Luna in the car.  We had a lot of fun hiking in the snow.

Our Christmas Tree Tradition

Yay!  We made it to December!  We cut down a tree from the forest every year. This might be my favorite Christmas tradition.  It all started when we lived in Winter Park and wanted a little adventure.  The only year we didn't do it was 2006 because we were in Wisconsin and the closest national forest was too far.  Here is 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 Yes it's legal.  We buy a $5 permit at the ranger station!

Our 2005 tree in Winter Park.  I didn't bring many ornaments with me so I blew some eggs and painted them gold.  I also took test tubes and put white daisies in them (after this pic was taken)

Our 2006 tree in Eau Claire, WI (the cheater year) It was from a lot-gasp!  It was a Fraser Fir tree, to remind us of the town we lived in in Colorado.

 Our 2007 tree in Gold Bar, WA

 Our 2008 tree in a duplex in Spokane

 Our 2009 tree while we were housesitting in Spokane.  This is probably our most pathetic tree.  It's quite ironic because it's the nicest house we've been in!

Our 2010 tree with our little baby!  And her first baby tree

Our 2011 upstairs tree

Our 2011 downstairs tree

Luna's tree 2011

Sam and I have come to love our Charlie Brown trees.  They may not be the most perfect, but they have character and hold memories of hunting them down.  If you've seen Christmas Vacation you know how the tree always looks smaller in the forest.  This always happens to us every year.  I like it when they're too big because then we can make a wreath out of the extra trimmings.  The other nice thing about trees that aren't so full is that you can load them with ornaments.  You can tuck them deep in the tree and outside.  A downside is that they usually require many strands of lights to get them glowing good!  I hope you enjoyed my little trip down memory lane!