Introduction
Once Upon a Time… it was two days before Halloween this year and Josh was hard at work on his fabulous haunt experience. At some point during the day of setting up for our little family party the idea struck me that we needed a cozy faux fur rug for our Christmas decor. I can’t tell you why I had that thought. But I did and then I hit pinterest, first for rug stuff, then for all Christmas stuff. In my perusing I found out about “Christmas Home Tour”s. Established interior design bloggers get together and post their gorgeously decorated homes.  I looked through a good handful of them and it was really quite exhilarating! I wanted to have my own Christmas Home Tour!!!! And Josh was delightfully supportive, so here it is!

Disclaimer
Some things you ought to know about this little tour include: I am NOT a real interior designer. So if you happen to be familiar with these design blogs and/or are a designer yourself, don’t get your hopes too high.

Also, I am not a professional photographer (in case you haven’t noticed yet), nor am I very well acquainted with our photo editing software. Also, by the time I could take pictures it was already dark, so we only have our artificial lighting. Due to all these things, the pictures are not as spectacular as the ones from the real design blogs.

Another thing you should know, especially if you are a mother of young children, is that my house looked like this for approximately 20 minutes and those minutes came at the cost of an entire day of cleaning most of which my children spent watching movies or playing by themselves. So yeah.

Anyway, on with the tour!

Our front room is where the magic all starts! I decided the easiest way to go about decoration color schemes was to keep with the existing color scheme of each room I decorated. The front room is purple and gray, so the colors I chose were metallics and purple. I also wanted this room to be the more Christ centered one.

The highlight, as ever, of this room is the beautiful mantel (Josh made it for me, by the way 🙂 ). I made the star out of dowels which I spray-painted gold. Josh made the nativity for me! It turned out perfectly! And I made the Glory to the Newborn King sign. It is extremely reflective paint, though, so I might have to redo the letters one day.

I originally had the same stockings I made last year (tan instead of purple), but Josh said that the stockings kind of blended in with the white of the mantel. Plus there wasn’t any of the purple on the mantel and it sort of interrupted the flow of the room. I agreed and I am very pleased to have the purple ones. Fortunately, stockings don’t take too long to make. 🙂

The next room is the kitchen/dining room. I wanted the tablescape to be an extension of the metallic theme from the tree, though sans purple. I feel like the middle could have used a little something more fleshing out, but I had already exhausted my resources, and I was still quite content with it as it was.

Here is a close-up of the table setting itself.

The counter in the kitchen may be my favorite thing in there because it looks SO good and Josh did it all basically by himself! He was especially proud of his impractical and trendy use of twine around the peppermint tea! Also, we borrowed the gorgeous olive-wood nativity from my mom for a Relief Society activity and have yet to return it, so it is making a special appearance.

Then we move to the family room which, apparently, has the worst lighting in the house because I had to turn my iso up to 3200 for all the pictures, so they’re super grainy. Plus, no matter how I messed with the white-balance before the pictures were taken and no matter how I tinkered with it on the computer, everything looks super yellow. Oh well.

My goal with this room was stick with the existing blue and white and make it sort of winter-wonderland-esque. 

I feel like this might be a nice time to show what this room looked like a year ago. I wanted to do a great big before and after post about it, but I feel like I’ll never be all the way done with it. ha ha!

Here are some more details from the family room. The star of the show here has to be this sign. Josh made this happen for me! (He’s the best, if you hadn’t heard!) I told him what I wanted and found a font I liked, then he free-handed ALL OF IT! I guess he did use a bowl to get the circles perfect for the bells. But everything else was Josh’s magnificent artist hand.

We just got this sign little sign from the amazing Lacey at a party last weekend and it fit so perfectly with everything!

I made this pillow cover. I have painted so many pillows in the past year that I tried to take a shortcut. The pen I got is the reason for the nasty W. It just goes to show that you can’t always find good shortcuts.

This gorgeous nativity was a gift from my brother and sister-in-law from their trip to Curacao.

Then on the other side of the room we find:

The tree was a little more nicely decorated at multiple points during the past few weeks. But the kids have been such champs at leaving the big tree alone that I can’t be too upset at them for having fun with one tree.

And, just for fun, this is what this chair looked like when we bought it a year ago at DI for $20.

Feel free to be impressed with the fact that we reupholstered an armchair!

And so ends my own personal Christmas Home Tour! I do not exaggerate when I say I could NOT have done any of this without Josh’s love, support, and manpower. He really is the very best!

 

As 2017 comes to a close, I wanted to share some things about my theme for this past year: delight.

First off, I’m basically totally converted to the idea of choosing a verb to focus on throughout the year as opposed to individual goals. It was so much easier to just think delight than think about all the ways I wanted to be better. And simply having that theme in the back of my mind really helped me to make some of those changes that easily could have been written out goals. So, just plan on themes from here on out.

Also, I wanted to share the story of delight with you.  This time last year I was weighed down with more things than I care to mention, one of the largest of them being postpartum anxiety/OCD/depression/overall mental distress and emotional turmoil. For months of 2016 it never even occurred to me that my thinking was irrational and caused by my poor, hormonal, sleep-deprived brain, and so I believed all the terrible things I was thinking.  Then my blessed sister came to visit me one day and could see very clearly that my thinking was anything but rational. She called on other siblings to help me–siblings who have experienced similar things–and they all helped me to see that I didn’t have to feel hopeless and miserable all the time. They also shared with me amazing tools and resources without which I don’t know if I ever would have made much progress.  That was all in August or so, and my journey towards healing began there.

But healing is frequently a long road filled with some great days, some terrible days, and some days in between. So at Christmas last year I was still trying to figure out how to have more of the great days and fewer of the terrible ones. It was such an enormous blessing for me to partake of the Sacrament on Christmas day. I remember praying for help during the Sacrament to be able to feel the peace that I was fortunate enough to be feeling on that day more often. The Spirit confirmed to me, undeniably, that Heavenly Father sent His Son to this world so that I CAN have that peace each day. That is the whole reason Christmas is such a magical day and time of year! It is because Jesus really is the Hope of this world!  It was an experience that changed me!

The next week was New Year’s and again I got to take the Sacrament! This time I was praying about how to be better in the new year–what goals I ought to make. I discussed my hopes and desires with the Lord as I sat there in church (probably ignoring my kids and making Josh do all the work–thank you a million, Honey!!!) and I felt the Spirit again. This time the message was that it was time for me to embrace the Atonement of Jesus Christ and find real healing. This year!  I was so encouraged and excited! Thus Delight was born!

Throughout the year, as I focused on enjoying the life the Lord has given me, relishing the small things, and especially rejoicing in the power of the Savior, there were a few things that became cherished blessings for me. One HUGE one was the power of daily, thoughtful scripture study.  When I was having those terrible days filled with worry (also when I still DO have some of those days) the scriptures always brought/bring peace. It isn’t always immediate, but sometimes it is!  But more than peace even it was hope. I remember one occasion where I was reading the scriptures with worries and frustrations raging in my mind. As I read, though, it really hit me that this trial will NOT be mine forever. Even if I wrestle with mental illness for the rest of my entire life, because of the Savior Jesus Christ, I CAN have good days! I WILL ultimately be resurrected with a perfect body AND mind! I CAN still have a life filled with joy even though this is stinkin’ hard!

Another thing that I have cherished more is real, fervent prayer. I feel real power, real hope, when I am humble enough to realize how desperately I need the Savior and ask for that help in prayer.

And so delight led me to hope this year. And those two things have really changed the way I feel each day. But, of course, what has really changed me is Jesus Christ. And that is why I wanted to share this with… you know… whoever reads this, including my future self. This year I have come to know Christ in a way that I never have before. And even though this is totally cliche to say, the frustration of the anxiety and OCD have genuinely been worth it! I wouldn’t wish them on anyone and I would never ask for them, but I’m really okay with even the days recently that I have dealt with them because they remind me that Christ is on my team. He is there with me with hope to spare no matter what is going on in my life and/or brain.

Other things that have come from delight this year are that, not only do I try to cherish the little special moments with my family more, but I also have the desire to create such moments more frequently. Delight reminds me that I am in charge of the life I have as well as a lot of the experience my children have right now and I can choose to make it more delightful by putting more into it. So that often does mean more effort, but the little extra effort more than pays for itself in delight! Also, I find I use the words “delight,” “delightful,” and “delighted” a lot more in daily conversation, which I think is downright classy!

I have been so grateful for this past year! It truly has been delightful! And I’m getting really excited about a new theme for next year. My hope is that it will be something that can maintain the idea of delight while taking it to the next level. We’ll see if I can find the perfect word. 🙂

I don’t have anything particularly fancy to say this week. But we did enjoy living it! So here are some pictures of what we enjoyed.

On Monday, while Fay was at school, Carter, Portia and I played in some leaves as we were raking them. I would say that approximately 80% of the leaves in our yard did not come from trees in our yard. But they are still fun to jump in! The kids pretended they were in the swimming pool in Florida. They have pretended to be in Florida and/or asked to go back to Florida every day since we have been back. I guess they had fun!

One of the days this week Fay got an empty diaper box and turned it into a rocket. She drew flames on the back, wings on the flaps, and control buttons on the bottom of the box. This is her in her “space-suit” flying to somewhere wonderful in her rocket.

On Friday it rained all day long! It was all quite exciting!  Carter wanted to go out and play in it from the moment he woke up. He went out by himself for a while in the morning, but got cold pretty quickly.  When Fay got home from school all three cuties ventured out together.

After about 10 minutes in the rain, they all got too cold to enjoy it anymore and came in hoping to warm up. I gave them some hot chocolate and it basically made their day! And watching them all joyfully warm up together basically made my day!

I am really grateful for simple moments like these ones with the kids. I wish I could report that I always enjoy my children this well; but I have lots of ordinary-type moments and a decent handful of pretty lousy moments with them. My hope is that we will all remember the sweet moments together more than the other ones.

 

This past week we spent at a family reunion in Florida! The weather was absolutely glorious most of the time, and a little on the hot side one of the days.

We are really cool (aka: not cool) and hardly took any pictures. But here’s what we’ve got.

First we rode on an airplane. Carter said this was one of the highlights for him.

While in Florida we saw some really cool things like manatees!

There were actually a ton of really cool animals at this animal rehabilitation facility, all of which are native to Florida except the hippo. But the hippo was the most exciting hippo I have ever seen (Others I have seen just sit there and stink, this one did lots of moving around and cool-noise-making along with stinking.) so we were glad they made an exception for him.

We also went to a beautiful spring of which the water was 99.8% pure H2O! A lot of people tried the water and said it tasted exactly like water. The bottle never made it to me, but I believed them. We also went to the beach (where the water was full of salt, believe it or not) and enjoyed the waves and sand and sun. Plus we hung out a lot at the house which had an ice-cream shaped pool in the back yard which was loved by all.

There were also cousin activities.

Josh described the cousin olympics as a “contest to see who was oldest.” Fay was a little saddened by how much of an edge the 8 and 9 year old boy cousins had over her. But there are only so many ways to involve all the ages in a single activity.

One exciting moment from the reunion came when Portia found my make up bag. 🙂 Everyone was impressed by how very obviously intentional the locations of make up application were. I was probably the most impressed because I know how infrequently she ever witnesses somebody applying make up. She must have been watching very closely that one time I did it this year. 😉

So many more memories were made than have been shared here!

When we got home Fay lost her first tooth! Truth be told, I pulled it out without asking her express permission and she was very distraught about it (I blame the 10 solid minutes of bawling on fatigue). But by the next day she was quite pleased. And now that she has put her tooth under her pillow and the “tooth fairy associates” have replaced it with money and she has replaced that money with a new toy from the dollar store I would say she has pretty good feelings about the tooth-losing process.

And one last, very important, thing happened this week. Yesterday we were working on household projects and Josh asked if I wanted him to start on the bench for the table. I told him that I would love it and by the time we went to bed, look what my man had whipped up!

He really is so good to me! I told him I might ask him to make me fewer things except that he just keeps delivering! Also, he keeps claiming to enjoy the projects I give him.

Anyway, I am super grateful for this past week! And I’m still grateful for this season of being grateful!

 

We had a crazy whirlwind of a final week of October.  We had parties literally every night but one and we also had the stomach flu. So, not everybody attended every party, but still. Plus, we had our annual Halloween production, if you will. Check it out!

First, our costumes. I made/assembled all the costumes except Josh’s. He was the mastermind of his own attire!

Carter and Fay each had parties at school and little parades to show off their costumes. I only took a video of Fay’s and it isn’t great. But here is Carter’s adorable preschool class!

I also didn’t manage to take any pictures from the party we hosted. But it’s okay, because the party was really all about The Haunt. So here is a little tour of Josh’s creation!

First, he set the stage as you arrive at the house with a grave yard!

Then you see the official sign for the laboratory!

Next, the grand entrance with the terrifyingly evil Mad Scientist!

When you walk into the entrance, you find yourself surrounded by questionable experiments.

Next, you move through a maze of creepy hanging items accentuated by a flashing strobe.

Followed by creepy, radioactive activity. (None of these pictures are doing the experience justice, by the way.)

Finally, you enter the final room where the Mad Scientist himself greets you and then explains what his laboratory is all about. BUT, there is a problem! And only YOU can save the lab!
Josh always makes it an interactive game experience along with your standard fun, creepy haunt. I feel like it sets his haunts apart from the others I’ve seen.

Anyway, we were all very pleased with how it turned out! And we’re even back to parking in our garage again, so we’re even MORE pleased. 🙂

While all of this excitement was going on at home, I got to take the cuties trick-or-treating. I LOVE taking them trick-or-treating and watching how excited they get with each new candy put into their bag! I was enjoying it so much, in fact, that I didn’t document it at all. One of my favorite parts this year was watching Portia just munch on the candy she got from the ward trunk-or-treat in the wagon instead of going to collect more treats.

I have a tradition of allowing the kids to eat all the candy they want between trick-or-treating and bedtime. I feel like it is good for a child’s soul to just get exactly what they want every now and again. I think it is also good for my soul to be able to just say yes instead of being responsible.

Here are the kids enjoying their sweet freedom!

Anyway, we had a marvelous Halloween season and Halloween day! And now we are enjoying taking moments each day to share the things we’re thankful for!  I LOVE holidays!

 

 

A couple very exciting things happened on Monday. First was that we got Fay’s first school picture back and it looks flawlessly cute! (This was actually a huge relief, because when Fay came home from school on picture day her hair looked like she had gotten the little pony-tail stuck on a tree branch or something and had pulled it loose. ha ha! I have been very interested to see the results of this photo ever since then.)

The other exciting thing that happened was that Fay realized she had a loose tooth! It is her first one!  She had somehow earned the right to decide what we did for family party that night and after discovering the loose tooth, she changed the plans she had previously made and decided we needed to celebrate her loose tooth with decorations, balloons, and ice-cream.

I wonder what she will call for when the tooth actually comes out!

One of the days this week I was folding laundry and I opened the windows. This is the view from my bedroom window! I’m sad about how much I take this fabulous view of an oasis in the middle of suburbia for granted, so I thought I would share it. When I actually take the time to stop and think about it, it really makes my day better! I should, clearly, do it more.

Portia is starting to get interested in dressing up. The other day she went full-on Princess on me! So, naturally, I had to take pictures!

Also, here is Portia looking … conniving(?) at the table. ?

And for some reason I don’t have any pictures of Carter from this past week. So I’ll post this picture of him 3 years ago today and tell you that he is beyond excited for Halloween! On Saturday I went to the library costume swap and found a Lightning McQueen driver outfit. He LOVES it and wears it as often as he can! (Mom victory!) He is going to wear it along with his other costume which is rather bulky and may need to be removed for certain activities.

 

 

 

The autumn enjoyment continues around here! This past week we went to our kids’ favorite autumn destination: Cornbelly’s. There are a lot of places around that have similar fall festivities, but Cornbelly’s has the corn-maze which is what sells it for me. But also, there is just SO much to do there! We never get around to doing it all because the kids can only handle so much fun in one day, plus they could spend the entire day in the “corn box”–like unto a sandbox, but filled with corn instead of sand.

Here are some other pictures from the outing.

The other night we decorated pumpkins (we’re not grown up enough to carve them yet). The big kids decorated theirs with stickers and paint. Josh made the cool one. Mine is the one with only one sticker on it. Portia decorated hers, but when nobody was helping her actually decorate the pumpkin, she started decorating easier things like walls, so I opted to help her instead of further embellishing mine.

In non-autumn-related news: The other day, Carter got out his crown from Fay’s birthday and decorated it anew and then thoroughly enjoyed being a king for awhile.

Portia wanted in on the crown action too!

I love my little royalty!

Also, this is the kids brushing their teeth the other night. It is pretty much the cutest ever. I love that my cuties love each other!

 

Last, but not least, I HAD to share this! For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, I guarantee it will make your day better.

We Monsons love Halloween! First of all, it is just fun to have spooky stuff around, like adorable ghosts, cutsie smiling jack-o-lanterns, and happy undead mummies! I don’t like scary or gruesome things, and Josh is very kind and tries to keep things to just the spooky level. I greatly appreciate that!

Anyway, we have all kinds of fun Halloween traditions! Here’s what we’ve got so far.

For the past few years we have done mummies (using our reject walmart toilet paper) for family party (aka: FHE). We like this activity because everybody can join in and it is just fun and silly. We listen to Halloweeny music and we all have a great time! Here is Carter as he was bursting out of his mummy-ness.

One tradition we are rather proud of is making a supercool Halloween experience for the trick-or-treaters! Josh has, for the third year now, created a completely original game with a Halloween theme, which, coupled with his amazing knack for creating spooky ambiance, always excites and entertains little kiddos like ours, their parents, and every age in between! I am honestly quite impressed with his ability to make a spook alley type thing that is so accessible to all who want to participate!

Other traditions we have include watching Halloween movies, visiting corn maze type places, pumpkin decorating/carving, and looking around Halloween stores just for fun. It’s a good time of year!

But right now isn’t just Halloween season. It is autumn! (In case you hadn’t heard. 🙂  )  So we have to do some autumny stuff too! Fay has been counting down the days ’til we had enough leaves on the ground to rake them up and jump into them! Yesterday was the day!

We didn’t get to spend as much time as we all could’ve enjoyed because we were all starving and went in for dinner. But never fear! We are just getting started! It is kind of fabulous that a chore that really ought to be done just happens to be super enjoyable if you but add a little bit of jumping to it!

Today, for some autumn enjoyment, we drove up the canyon to look at the changing leaves! It was so beautiful! I knew the pictures wouldn’t be able to do the experience justice; but I suppose that is why Heavenly Father sends autumn every year! Here is one picture from our drive.

At the mouth of the canyon the colors looked like this: lots of reds and oranges. As we drove higher up the canyon the only deciduous trees were quaking aspens and so there was just yellow mixed in with the coniferous deep green. That was actually my favorite part–the contrast was just so striking–but I wasn’t able to get a decent picture. But I also did love the sea of red and orange. Hmmm… maybe the whole canyon was my favorite part.  It was also rather exhilarating to see snow at the top of the canyon! We came home and drank apple cider and wassail-style herbal tea! Yay autumn!

Anyway, we like fall and stuff. 🙂

Here are some random things to make you happy.

The other day, Josh gave the kids lunch in the garage on a fancy “wood table” (Carter thought having a table made of wood was rather novel.) They were really cute. So here they are.

Happy autumn! And happy Halloween season!

 

I have been super excited for Autumn ever since my birthday in July. But I have been trying to be patient and wait for it to actually get here before I decorate for it and celebrate it. I decided back in August (I think) that I would wait no longer than the autumnal equinox (the first official calendar day of autumn) to begin my reveling in the season. I decided we needed to have an autumn kick-off party where we eat and do and see all things autumn, and I was determined to do it even if it was still 90 degrees outside. Quite delightfully, September 22 was perfectly autumny weather! And we had the following fun:

Tablescape!

A couple weeks ago we were at Tai-Pan Trading to look at autumn things and I saw so many lovely decorated tables around. After seeing them I knew I needed to do my very own tablescape. If you’ve never heard of a tablescape, rest assured they are totally a thing, and they make your life happy!

I was fortunate as far as the table settings went as we just happen to have all these beautiful autumn colored dishes from our wedding. I did get a few extra things like the napkins, the chargers, the candles, and the glasses just for this; though they will, naturally, make appearances in future tablescapes. And if you think I’m totally crazy for letting my toddlers drink from wine glasses, think again! They are actually “beverage plastics” from the dollar store! I was thrilled with how good they looked for so little hassle and money!

I found the candles at the dollar store and was super excited about having candles on the table. But I couldn’t, for the life of me, find candlestick holders for any reasonable price. I almost panicked. But then, in my pinterest searching, I came across little branchy-style candlestick holders and knew I was saved! What actually saved me is Josh. (Of course!) Because he took the little branch we had from his parents’ back yard and turned them into perfectly rustic, classy candlestick holders! He really is the best!

And speaking of Josh being the best, I wanted to take this opportunity to mention this table he made for me!  We got a beautiful brown table and chair set for our wedding, and we loved it for 6 good years. But as we now have 5 family members, we had quite outgrown it. I asked my private everything-man to make me a new table–farmhouse style–and then to help me transform our brown chairs into matching chairs for the table.

Josh made all my dreams come true again with this table! He really REALLY is the very best ever in the whole world!

Anyway, back to the autumn kick-off party.

Food!

I didn’t get any pictures of the finished food as I was too busy devouring it. But we had butternut squash soup, pumpkin scones, apple pie and ice-cream, and hot chocolate. They were each fabulously delicious.

I have been using a butternut squash soup recipe for a few years and have really liked it until I tried this recipe my brother-in-law made last year. Then I knew I could never make the old recipe again. This was my first time using the recipe he has and I am seriously NEVER going back! This new recipe has such a greater depth of flavor and is more filling as well as all around superior.

We made apple pie using apples from our neighbor’s tree! She always offers apples to us in the autumn and her apples are seriously SO DELICIOUS!!! They are sweet, juicy, and perfectly crisp! The pie turned out so yummy thanks to our wonderful neighbors’ generosity!

The hot chocolate we had is based off the hot chocolate you get at the cafe in Paris called Angelina. A full serving of this hot chocolate is literally 1000 calories, mostly fat, and it is worth every. single. one. of those calories!  You just can’t drink it every day. 🙂

Witch Hunt!

Our family so looks forward to when Gardner Village puts out all their witches for the Halloween season! We did the witch scavenger hunt and found every witch! The kids are rather proud of this accomplishment. And they were truly such great helpers!

Some final, smaller, things we did in conjunction with the party were watch some Halloween movies, read our Halloween picture books, and I sprayed my favorite autumn scent all over the house!

My sister, Christina, joined us for some of the festivities, and it made me really happy to have another person to share all my hard work with. I genuinely don’t know if anybody else got as much of a kick out of this party as I did, but it really was a delightful thing for me, so I’m glad I did it!

 

 

Fay has mentioned that it really isn’t back to school as she has never gone. But I was going to school FOREVER, so it definitely feels like going back for me!

Anyway, I debated whether to post Fay’s picture before (her first day was last Thursday), but I thought it would be fun to post Fay and Carter together.

Fay has loved kindergarten so far! She is also quite good at remember what she did during the day.  Carter had his very first day of preschool today. He wasn’t at all nervous (neither was Fay, come to mention it), but very excited to go. And when I picked him up he seemed very happy and also quite tired. They are both excited to go again! I hope it lasts and lasts! (Because school will last whether their enthusiasm does or not, ha ha!)

Also, I decided what I needed was a back-to-school mantel. It has helped me keep from decorating my whole life for autumn while it is still 95 degrees outside!