Journey to Bethlehem

BACK POST!!

In December, we had the opportunity to attend a Jerusalem Christmas type event.  It was so cool!  They had a gym with different activities that you could do.  They also had rooms that each acted out a part of the Christmas story.  

I stole this picture from Cameron's friend Johnny.  It is of the angels telling the shepherds of Christ's birth.  

A not so good picture of the shepherd's room.  It literally smelled like sagebrush.  The backgrounds were painted beautifully.

They also had a room with a bunch of different nativities.

A beautiful display.

Another nativity.

They were all so different but all intricate and lovely.

The three wise men.

They also had live camels!!

All the people were dressed in Bethlehem-y outfits.  The bright lights washed out the pictures.

Heidi posing with a camel.

Melissa with the camels.

Me and the camel.  They were kind of stinky, but also cute.

The camel dudes.

They had a fake well in the middle of the gym, but it looked so real!

They also had a silhouette of a Bethlehem horizon.

Heidi learned how to write in Hebrew!  They also had a super cool wood ornament making station.  

The King Herod room.

Okay, I'm sorry for this next comment.  But, I really feel the need to point out how amazing his tight shiny pants are.  Pretty darn cool.  

They did such a great job saying their parts and communicating the story.

Love it.  

Afterwards, we went to see a house that had it's lights synced with some Christmas songs.  It was super, super cool!  

Thanks for being patient with my catch-ups from 2014.

Love you guys so much!

Courtney

PS-Thanks for being such supportive and amazing readers.  Your kind words on my last blog post were so kind and helped me a lot.

Ornament Exchange 2014

This was so much fun!  Basically, in the middle of October I asked these fabulous ladies to each make enough ornaments for everyone in the group.  Then, we got together the weekend after Thanksgiving and exchanged them!  So each person received about 11 new ornaments.  Here are all the ornaments and the people who made them.

 Gauchay joined the exchange and we were so happy to have her!

I thought it might be fun to share a picture of each participant too!  This is Gauchay! :)

Her lovely ornament.  She actually had quite a variety of different types, but they were all adorable!

My aunt Alysa and her baby Mirren.

She made these super cool terrariums!  I wish there was a picture of each individual one because they were all so fun!

My aunt Wendy.

She made these sweet lollipop ornaments.  They look good enough to eat!

My lovely Mom.

She made these super cute penguins!  She also had a few other cute ornaments.

My sister Miranda.

She made these awesome color swirl ornaments!  Each one was unique and had its own design.

My sister-in-law Melissa.

She made these cute painted wood ornaments.  They were all so intricate and detailed!!  There were a variety of adorable shapes which were all painted beautifully.

My aunt Alyson.

She made these disco ball ornaments.  They are so pretty on the tree when they catch the light.  It is so cool!!

My sister-in-law Jenni.

She made super cute, sparkly ornament shapes out of clay/dough.  They were all so cool looking with sparkles!

My sister-in-law Tawnee.

She made these cute poinsettia ornaments, which are also sparkle-full.  So cute!

My sister-in-law Heidi.

She made these cardinal/dove ornaments!  She painted them and put feathers on them.  They look so, so awesome!  

Finally, these are the ornaments that I made:

I made a variety of different ones, they all involved burlap in some way (love/hate relationship there).  My Mom totally saved my bacon at the last minute!!  Thanks Mom!

Here is a picture of all the ornaments!  

Hopefully you can see all the names!

This kind of allows you to see the variety of different ornaments that people made.

Loved all of the ornaments.

I cannot tell you how much fun this was!  We had some treats, played holiday taboo and admired all the ornaments.  It was so cool to see all the creativity involved in each persons ornament.  Thanks so much to all who participated and helped me out, it wouldn't have been possible without you!  Hopefully, we can make this a yearly tradition!

Love,

Courtney

The Festival of Trees

This was a super fun community festival that happened the week before Thanksgiving.  Basically, very talented people decorate beautiful trees and sell them.  The profits from the ticket sales, food sales and the trees, go to help people with disabilities.  Here are some of my favorite trees:

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A cool ladder/lantern tree.  So rustic, so fabulous.  

Sorry, my camera decided to have a case of the visual diarrheas that day.  This is one of my favorite red and green trees.

Love, love, love this gorgeous tree!!

This garland was so sparkly, wish you could see that!

What is this called?  A sprig?  Anyway, I love it!

Best tree topper, ever!

This white tree is so pretty!

There is so much going on here that it blows my mind.

I'm crazy about the whole "cranberries in decorations" craze this year.  Love this guy!

Heidi and Melissa graciously invited us to come with them!  

All four of us.

They had this super cute Santa's workshop display too.  

I love all of these trees!  So gorgeous!!

These letters are half silver, half sheet music!  So creative!!

More of the Santa's desk/workshop display.  Those are bags full of letters for him.

The naughty and nice list.  

This was so much fun!  It was great to see all the talents in our community.  Each individual/group who decorated their trees did SUCH a great job!  All of the trees were beautiful and amazing.  The performing groups that they had were just awesome and it was an all around good time!  I'm so glad that Heidi and Melissa invited us to come with them!  Hope you all are having a great holiday season so far!

Love,

Courtney