Christmas Decorations

Welcome to The McWilliams Residence! I am happy to be participating in this year's Christmas Decor linkup from over at my sweet friend Kelly's blog, Kelly's Korner.

Our family LOVES to decorate for Christmas. In fact, I'm not sure which one of us loves it more between Aaron, Ava, and myself. We enjoy bringing the decorations out of the attic each year and discussing when we bought particular pieces, why it has sentimental value to us, or maybe we just recall the great deal we got on something! We look forward to decorating each year after Thanksgiving and can't wait to add even more decor as the years pass.

 

On the porch, I added the super cute gingerbread boy and girl to our porch swing, purchased from my friend Meredith's etsy shop. I fully intended to sew some red burlap pillows but never got around to it this year. I did get the deco mesh wreath made and am happy with how it turned out for the most part.

 

Once you come inside the house our formal dining room is off to the left. We currently use it as a play room since it's the only open carpeted area in our bottom story. Just comes as a great area for the baby since the tile floors are cold and hard.

Anyway, I added the holly berry balls to the ligh fixture of this room.

 

 

 

These snowmen handprints are to the left of the front door. We made these this Christmas and I think it's hysterical that Judd and Ava's hands are almost the same size yet they are 3.5 years apart in age.

 

 

To the right of the front door is our entry table where I have it decorated in a candy cane theme. The sleigh holds our Christmas cards. I like this look for this year and will keep it for a few more years, but eventually want to move the cards somewhere else where we can look at them all displayed. I think I will use the sleigh to hold Christmas crafts that the kids bring home. Or maybe Christmas recipe cards? Not sure yet.

On top of the entry way table, the window ledge, holds yearly Christmas photos. I like to choose 1 or 2 favorite pictures from each year and frame them. This has been a personal "bonus" tradition for me that I have come to love!

 

 

Back to the front room...Ava says "hi' as she photo bombs my picture. Isn't she cute in her summer pajamas? (Don't get me started on our daily battle with wearing sleeves and pants.) This little tree holds our memorable ornaments. It has old fashioned bubble lights that I had on my tree as a little girl, along with some of my ornaments as a baby, and then homemade ornaments of Ava's.

 

 

This is the gingerbread house we made tonight. We all had so much fun decorating it while listening to Christmas music and just talking about our day.

Here is our living room area. I have it semi-decorated in a toddler friendly fashion but it still has been a booger to keep little hands from redecorating each corner every time I turn around. 

The top picture is during the day and the bottom is at night. We don't have a fireplace so we hang the stockings on our entertainment center. I added the mesh garland this year and next year I'm going to add one more layer. I think I'll go with lime green. I love decorating with bright colors while my children are young. I'm not really sure why, but I just think it makes for "brighter memories". At least in my head that's how I picture it! 

 

The nutcracker on the TV center is our "candy cane advent calendar" and then we also do the "christmas book advent calendar". Ava opens the book in the morning and then opens a nutcracker door each evening after dinner. She has LOVED this tradition so much this year!!

 

 

 

This is the "kids table" with Ava's favorite village that plays Christmas songs, her two disney princess snowglobes, and this year's Santa picture. Don't you love that Santa picture? Don't report me to CPS please.

If you must know, we have gone through 5, FIVE, snowglobes this year. Judd loves to pick those up and chunk them across the room and watch water go everywhere. It's really fun. I also enjoy cleaning up the water then driving down the street to Walgreens in order to get my sobbing 4 year old to calm down. You do understand that damaged princess snowglobes are pretty much the end of the world for a 4 year old, don't you? It's a no win situation with those globes. I can't put them out of Judd's reach because then they are also out of Ava's reach. The DRAMA I tell you.

 

Aaron's favorite decoration. "The train village"

 

 Our dining room table. Decorated with holly berries, shimmer trees, and silver chargers.  

 

 

This is the kid's hallway. They helped me make this burlap stockings. Ava loves to tell everyone that "Judd's stocking is perfect and mine is a disaster!" She is so silly!

Ava's bedroom. We don't turn on the Christmas tree lights very often in her room. See Beth the elf hanging out on her tree today? And her pink star? She insisted that we find a pink star for the tree this year. Thankfully Wal Mart came to our rescue! Our LP nativity set is on her window seat, currently MIA are baby Jesus and Joseph. I asked Ava where they were and she said "prolly using the bathroom." I am SO OVER this 4 year old potty humor. So over it. Anyway, baby Jesus and Joseph are somewhere around the house. 

 

Ava's Hobby Lobby finds this year! 

 

This collage includes a few of my favorites among our trees in the house. I love picture frame ornaments and love looking at the ones from our first year of marriage. Aaron and I both were at the same school (he the VP and me the kindergarten teacher) and I put our school pictures in the ornaments. One is of Ava's tree. She has been adding bracelets and hairbows to it with each passing day. Haha! Last, do you see the tiara on the top of the front room tree? Wonder who did that... 

 

Thanks for stopping by. Sorry for my mommy's rambling stories. She doesn't have very much adult interaction these days and tends to get carried away.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Before pumpkin season is over...

It's so cliche but so true. Time is just slipping away. It was just summer practically yesterday and how is Thanksgiving NEXT WEEK? My goodness! I did notice that having a birthday party to plan close to a holiday makes the month fly by even faster, so there's that. But I still have a hard time comprehending that I'll be putting up the Christmas tree in 8-10 days!
Oh! And we went to Disney World in October so with that AND Judd's first birthday there was barely time to come up for air. WhooWee!

 

 Needless to say we never made it to a real pumpkin patch this year. Funny because for Ava's first Halloween I was all about going to that darn patch and getting a picture of her sitting in a pile of pumpkins. Then comes along the second child and I realize just how NOT important that is. At least to me. So, I found a cute nursery selling pumpkins and mums with this festive feel to it and a small area for photo ops to boot and decided this would be perfect!
Did I also mention said nursery was across the street from Abuelo's? Bonus! So we dressed up the kids in their pumpkin attire and went to "the pumpkin patch".

Notice how Aaron isn't looking at the camera? His eyes were focused on Abuelo's. I'm not even kidding. 

 

Judd was pretty much too smug for cheesing on this day. That's okay though. At least he is cute. Even with the disinterested looks he gave.

 

Before it's too late to say it.....Happy Fall Y'all!

Judd's First Birthday {the birthday boy & his guests}

Thank you for all the sweet sweet comments on his party decor. I feel so incredibly swamped and am drowning in emails at the moment but I appreciate the time you take to comment. This week has been nonstop and I am so ready for the weekend to get here so I can breathe and recharge my batteries. Whew!
Anyway, on to more exciting subjects such as this...

Sidenote: I had planned on taking all the pictures of his party myself but as soon as everyone started arriving Judd wanted nothing to do with anyone but his momma and he did NOT want me to put him down. Needless to say, I didn't get the last minute things set up exactly as I wanted and I most definitely didn't get to snap pictures. I think I got maybe 5 pictures total with my camera! As soon as Sarah arrived I asked her to take some pictures and some pictures turned into ALL of the pictures. And as always, she outdid herself. These pictures she sent me all look PROFESSIONAL! They ARE professional as far as I'm concerned. I seriously owe that girl my thirdborn child. Although I'm sure she would gladly decline an offspring of my genetics. HAHA! Thanks again Sarah!!!!!

I sent out about 23 invitations to close friends and family. We had maybe 25 people total and it was a perfect amount!! Not too overwhelming and enough people were there to eat all of the food. Haha!!! That's a great turnout in my books.

Some of our favorite people!

Our family of four ready to sing Happy Birthday and a close up of Judd's party day outfit! It was a smocked superhero shortall I ordered from Anavini before I knew if Judd was going to be a he or a she. I just LOVE this piece.

I got Judd's birthday hat and bib from here. It's the same place I used for Ava's first birthday and I am just a sucker for tradition. They never disappoint and have the BEST quality.

 

 

Speaking of Ava's first birthday...let's compare.

Both kids love to be sang to. Especially when an entire room is singing to them. Ahhh love it! Just look at that face. He is soaking it all in and loving every minute of it!

Checking out his rather LARGE smash cake. It was a white star cake.

He had a hard time getting into the cake and it was a tad difficult for him to eat, so we gave him a cupcake instead and he gobbled that up in seriously 10 seconds! Love his faces and all the different expressions Sarah captured.

He thought he was big time getting to eat that sugar all up and make a big mess!

 

Yayyyyyyy for messes!!!

And yayyyy for Daddy cleaning it all up because momma was "busy".

Mr. Man was even nice enough to share some of his cake with his favorite people.

 

 

I'd say he enjoyed his first birthday, wouldn't you? Thanks again to all those that came out to celebrate with us and thanks to all of you who are such an important part of Judd's life. We love you and are blessed by you.

Judd's Superhero FIRST Birthday {the decor}

How is it that he is one?!?!
Judd is one years old.
Twelve months more like (because that sounds like he is still a baby).
As much as I was excited to celebrate my little man's first this weekend, I was in disbelief that it has been an entire year. Some days sure were long but that year? It was way too short!
His official birthday was Sunday October 28th but we celebrated on the Saturday the 27th. It was just the perfect amount of people, everyone enjoyed the company and by the little food left over, I'm hoping that means they were satisfied with the food as well!
When Judd was in the hospital for the second time at 3 months old I couldn't help but think of what a tough little guy he was. He had gone through stomach surgery at 15 days old, had caught MANY of Ava's colds, and was on his second round of RSV. I told him he was mommy's hero. And that, my friends, is when his first birthday theme of "Superhero" was decided. I knew there were going to be plenty of years in the future that he'd want to have superhero parties and that was fine, but this year it was just SO fitting.
I didn't want to use specific Marvel superheroes for his party because that was not the focal point of this Superhero theme. The focal point was Judd! So I chose to decorate with generic child superhero characters, stars, pictures of Judd and incorporating the colors apple green, red, and cornflower blue.

This is the only picture I have of the entire food table. I took it with my phone so it's poor quality.
 

We served "Heroes" (subway sandwiches) with Power Packed Chips", "Kryptonite" (monster munch with green candy melts instead of almond bark), "Kapow Kabobs" (fruit skewers), and "Power Sticks" (candy coated pretzel rods).

The desserts were all homemade and included almond flavored cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese icing, vibrant green cake pops, various iced cookies, and superhero cookie dip with spiderman graham crackers. I am so thankful for my talented friends who made the delicious deserts!
The drink station. We served superhero punch (red white and blue punch consisting of cranberry juice, blue frost gatorade, and sprite) and party themed water bottles which I don't have a picture of either.

Back to sweets...Instead of doing favor bags I wanted to do a candy buffet. I've always wanted to do this sort of set up so I thought it would be perfect for our front "formal dining room" area. Well, I have this slight obsession about me that once I get something in my head I HAVE to do it. I lack self control I suppose. Otherwise I would have vetoed this great idea once I realized just how pricey candy is. I had no idea!! I tried to justify it by telling myself that Halloween would be a few days later and I could give away any unused candy. Except then I didn't want all the candy to be wrapped candy. Ughhh! I am my own worst enemy sometimes. Anyway, the candy buffet looked pretty neat and it was fun to set up. BUT! We have WAY TOO MUCH candy left over and I can't really give trick or treaters a handful of exposed jelly beans can I?

Candies were vanilla tootsie rolls, hot tamales, rasperry laffy taffy, red apple jelly belly, green apple licorice, cherry gummy bears, candy stars, blue marshmallows, apple candy sours and blueberry suckers.
This next table set up was off to the side of our kitchen and it was my "Judd table". The window ledge held his monthly pictures. I made a city scape with the monthly pictures the building billboards. I saw various city scapes on Superhero party sites and thought this would be a cool idea for the monthly pictures.

My friend Sarah made the "J" superman sign and the Subway art of his 12month milestones. I love the Subway art so very much! I hung it up on his wall in his room and know it will be something I always treasure. Sarah also made his invitation, party printables, and candy bag stickers.
We had a photobooth set up and I had great intentions of getting at least one picture of every guest at his party since of course Judd won't remember it. I wanted to make a cool photobook with everyone's name labeled next to the picture. But you know what they say about best laid plans...

This is when my plan started to crumble. I was yelling for Aaron to come get in the picture and right about this time he locked his keys in his car while bringing in the Subway sandwiches, 10 guests showed up at the same time and I needed to greet them...so yeah.

                                      
Hahaha!!! It was a cute idea and I'm glad we still got a few pictures!

Back to my first thought of Judd's party theme; I knew I wanted to have party guests donate to Cook's Children's Hospital in lieu of gifts. I remember Ava's first birthday and how it was a great celebration but the gifts were just unneccesary. A kind gesture and fun for the parents yes, but they are just too little to understand why on earth they need to sit still and open presents and then the mass overhaul of toys and clothes was just too much! It stressed Ava out and the mess and clutter stressed us out. It seemed so fitting for Judd to become a member of the "Peter Pan Birthday club" and I look forward to telling him what his party guests gave to in honor of his first birthday.

                  

This is where guests put their donation.

I will share more pictures of his guests and the birthday boy himself in the next post! Thanks so much to sweet Sarah, my lifesaver on more occasions than I care to admit, for taking the pictures of the party decor!

Happy Friday!!

Let the first birthday festivities begin!!!