Ornament Tree


Today I made this cute little ornament tree to go in our guest bathroom. It was like something I had seen in a store, but I didn’t want to pay $30 for it. It was really simple.
To make it, all you need is: a Styrofoam cone, garland, small ornaments of different sizes, and a hot glue gun. You will need more ornaments than you might think. For this small tree, I used 36 medium-sized ornaments and 40 small ornaments.

1. Dab some hot glue on the bottom of the cone and attach the garland. Wrap the garland around the cone all the way to the top, periodically gluing, so that no Styrofoam shows.
2. Remove the tops of the ornaments so that they will be able to pierce the Styrofoam.
3. Hot glue the ornaments on the cone. Use larger ornaments on the bottom, smaller ornaments on the top, and mix the sizes in the middle. Cover in any gaps.

Christmas Earrings

You may recall that Chad got me some beautiful diamond earrings for Christmas.  Some may also know that we have a ring holder in our bathroom that we keep our wedding rings on when we aren’t wearing them.  Well, I decided that this would be the perfect place to keep the earrings because of its convenient location and the fact that I will wear these earrings more often then any others.  Chad was able to foresee a problem with this.  “I think we should move that ring holder,” he said.  “We wouldn’t want to knock it over and one of those go down the drain.”

Nonsense, I thought, and went about my normal jewelry routine.  Well, you see, there was one problem with my thinking.  One of our sinks had been dripping, so Chad turned the water off until it was fixed and had to use the sink on my side instead.

Wouldn’t you know it?  One day, I get the email at school: Jennie, I knocked over the ring holder.  But it’s not what you think.  The earrings did not go down the drain.  No.  They fell to the floor.  However, one of the the earrings went right down a vent that is directly next to our sink.  Oops.  Chad looked but could not see it.  He thought maybe it was somewhere on the floor or maybe rolled into the closet.  He took off the vent cover and looked, but could not see it.  This was less than 2 weeks after I got the earrings, and I knew it would be at least 2 years for me to get any more if they were really gone.  Chad didn’t have much time to look because he had to go to work, so there was still hope that the earring wasn’t long gone.

Chad mentioned that if it had gone all the way down the vent, he would not go under the house to try to find it.  For my engagement ring, it would be an option, but this earring was not worth it.  When I got home, I was hopeful.  Then, I saw what was under the vent grate.  I didn’t realize the it went almost straight down.  Almost!  I looked at some dust and other small particles that had gathered in there, but could not see an earring.  I took a flashlight and searched down the vent and there it was! It was inches from falling over the edge never to be seen again.  I carefully took my hand and felt my way around until I reached it, pulling the earring to safety.

Whew! That was great news.  I knew that Chad would be so disappointed that such a new (and nice)  gift had been lost so soon, and he would have been even more upset because he had already mentioned that the ring holder was in a bad location.  Fortunately, all is well in the land of white gold and diamonds.  I have my rings and my beautiful new earrings and our ring holder now sits safely in our closet.

Christmas ’09

Chad and I are super blessed to have another great Christmas time together.

At school, I got more presents than ever from my students.  The most popular gift to get Mrs. Webb this year?  A mug!  Whether filled with candy or part of a hot chocolate set, you apparently couldn’t go wrong with a mug.  I suppose that’s why I got 6 of them this year.  My favorite gift from a student was a chocolate pizza with chocolate, peanuts, marshmallows, cherries, and more.  It was fantastic, and I got the recipe too.  They were all very kind, but the most precious gift was lotion from a student whom the other teachers and I purchased clothes for.  One of the other teachers gave her a pack of 4 different kinds of lotions, and she gave each one of us a bottle.  It was so sweet because she didn’t know that we had given her the stuff, and she just wanted to be able to give us a gift.

Our first family Christmas function was the Sunday before at the Webbs’ in Hendersonville.  We got together to eat and play games.  We decided not to get each other gifts, but we got Brody something because he didn’t tell us not to.  Chad picked out a little outfit with little baby Jordans, a jersey, and a cap.   We also, along with Ashley and Brock, got Brad, Peggy, and Laura a calendar of Hawaii pictures of Brad.  It had kind of become a joke when we were on our cruise that Brad was posing for a calendar, so there were a lot of really good pictures for it.  Something fun was getting Chad’s baby book.  It was neat to look through and see all the details of when he was really little.  His mom did a good job of keeping up with all of that stuff.  I thought it was really funny that she had a baby shower on February 13th, the day before Chad was born.  Nothing like the last minute!

One of the greatest gifts to me was that Chad took the entire week of Christmas off so that we could spend it together.  He usually likes to work around that time because there aren’t a lot of other people working and there isn’t much going on.  So, I thought it was very nice that he took the time off while I was off work.  It was great sleeping in together and doing some last minute shopping.

On Monday, we had our small group over for a Christmas party.  We had lots of really good food and Jenny Borders even made a hot chocolate buffet with all kinds of fixings.  We played “dirty Santa,” where each couple brought a board game.  We brought Last Word.  We already have it, but we think it is pretty fun.  The funny thing is 2 other couples brought it too.  We ended up with Bop It.  I think Chad opened it and started playing with it before the “dirty Santa” was even over.

On Wednesday, Chad and I headed to Louisville to spend Christmas with my family.  On Christmas eve, my mom and dad had over my aunt and uncle and my grandma and uncle.  We ate all kinds of wonderful food and opened gifts.  For Christmas, our family decided to get my grandmother a new kitchen floor.  Obviously we couldn’t physically do that, so the plan was to give her a tile of flooring and a gift card to Home Depot.  Well, before Christmas, she decided to go purchase some flooring for her kitchen herself.  So, the plan changed and we decided that we should pay for the labor to have the flooring installed.  On Christmas eve, my sisters and I came up with a cute little poem to recite to her as she opened the tile.  She loved it!  She thought was so cute and sweet.  I don’t think an actual gift was needed at all.  It actually turns out that she had already had her new floor put in anyway, so she really just got a check that she can do whatever she wants with.

On Christmas day, we woke up at my parents’ house and opened presents with the family.  We had a lot of fun.  Chad and I got NFL snuggies for my dad and my sisters’ boyfriends (Brendan and Travis): Raiders for Dad and Bengals for Brendan and Travis.  By the way, don’t ever mention you like a particular sports team or our family will assume you want every type of paraphernalia for that team that was ever made.  Brendan got the family a game called Wits and Wagers, and we played that after eating lunch.  It was pretty fun.  Chad won both times.

Later that evening, my mom, Chad, and I went to see the movie “The Blindside.”  It was really good.  I have found that I get bored during a lot of movies, but I thought this was entertaining.  After the movie, we went over to Jill’s where the guys watched a football game and the girls played dominoes.   Nobody had eaten dinner, and we were getting a little hungry.  With our options few being it was Christmas day, my parents went home, and the rest of us went to Waffle House.  They seemed a little busy, but more so the people working there seemed to be at each others’ throats.  Everybody was really mean to our server.   I felt bad for him.

The next day, Chad and I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond because he wanted to get a travel cup and we wanted this candle that was on sale.  It smells like peppermint patties.  Yum!  We also headed to the mall so I could make an exchange, and then we met Mom, Dad, Jessie, and Brendan at Olive Garden for lunch.  It had been a while since we had been there, and it was good!  After heading back to the house to get our things, Dad sewed a button on my coat for me and we left to go back to Bowling Green.  I later found a needle in the lining of my coat- my last little Christmas present from Dad.  Thanks again!

When we got home, Chad and I had our own little Christmas celebration.  We started the fire and opened our gifts from each other.  He got me some very nice earrings, but my favorite gift is a photo book he made of our first year of marriage.  We had talked about doing this on our anniversary, but we never got around to doing it.  It is so sweet.  I hope we can keep it up so that each year we will have kind of a memory book of our years of marriage. Chad was happy to receive from me clothes that actually fit him.  He has been giving away clothes that are too big, and his closet was getting very bare.  He was also excited about some new shorts for biking, swimming, and running.  Look forward to upcoming posts about tri-athlete Chad.

I’m still so amazed at how blessed I am to have such a great husband and a wonderful family.  Thank you to everyone for making this another special Christmas.

Weezer Christmas

Weezer has a 6 song Christmas EP available on iTunes and Amazon. Support them, they need your money. And they need to put out a good album…burn.

Happy Birfday Jeff. Yes your birfday always comes second to the weez, but atleast I gave you your own category on the blog.

Sugar Cookie Tree

Jennie and I saw a ginger bread house kit at Wal-Mart and I really wanted to get it, but it was like 20 bucks, and with financial apocalypse upon us, we decided to save our money for bread and water. Then later in the next aisle we saw a similar Christmas tree kit that was made with star ginger bread cookies. It was pretty cool looking and only 15 bucks. But alas for some reason in the past 6 months I have become uber cheap, so I said forget it.

Earlier this week Jennie bought some sugar cookie stuff, so we decided to use that to make our own Christmas tree. Turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. Below are some pics of the hot Christmas tree action.