From Our Family To Yours

Merry Christmas from the Fentons! 

This Year's Christmas Decor

This year we got a really late start on our Christmas decorating. Not intentionally, since I was really excited we had "an extra week of Christmas" with Thanksgiving being so early this year. It was just an unfortunate combination of not being at home and a certain husband getting the stomach bug that delayed us just a little bitty bit. ;) But alas, the halls have been decked at the Fentons, so come on in and check out how we decorated this year!

One of the first things you'll see when you walk in our kitchen is this vignette in the window nook.

On the opposite side of the kitchen, we have our Christmas card wreath hanging up on the wall.

From the kitchen, you'll walk into the dining room and see this centerpiece on our table. I decided to switch it up this year and use our cake stand to display some red ornaments. It could use a little bit of greenery, but overall I like how it turned out!

From the dining room, you can see our stockings hanging on the wall in the living room since we do not have a mantle. I can't wait until we have a fireplace someday! 

On our TV console, we have gold honeycomb votives to add a little Christmas cheer to an otherwise mundane part of our living room (please excuse the dust, DSLRs can be unforgiving in the detail they pick up).

You'll remember from this post that we have Frosty as our coffee table centerpiece.

And behind Frosty, you can see the main attraction--our tree! I love how Kyle and I are both on Team Fraser Fir. It makes our house smell heavenly!

  

Some new ornaments we have on our tree this year were souvenirs from various trips we took throughout the year. This red glittery one is from the Biltmore Estate when we visited back in July. It doesn't say Biltmore on it anywhere since all the ones that did were really expensive, so I got this one to commemorate the occasion instead. I think it's prettier anyway!

Another new ornament we have is from our sailing trip in the British Virgin Islands. We found this cute one at a little shop in Soper's Hole on the West End of Tortola. I can't wait to continue our tradition of buying an ornament everywhere we travel. We'll see where 2013 takes us!

Kyle's Mom gave us this glittery tree ornament just a couple of days ago. It's the perfect addition to our tree! 

And continuing the tradition of getting an ornament whenever we take a trip, Kyle surprised me with this cute ornament a few days ago when he got back from his Colorado skiing trip. I absolutely love it!

Moving along to our gift wrap, we used kraft paper with various ribbons and toppers this year. I like how cohesive it makes everything look.

And of course, we still have our glow present brightening things up under the tree.

 So to wrap it up (tee hee), I'll leave you with these adorable pictures of Doc curled up under the tree. Does it get any cuter than that? 

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Christmas Morning Breakfast Recipe

Cream Cheese Sausage Pinwheels

I had every intention of posting this recipe yesterday, but between cooking a dish for today's office Christmas party and getting cards ready for everyone, it just didn't happen. I think you'll find it in your heart to forgive me though--this recipe is a good one!

As everyone is getting their menus together for Christmas, I thought it would be a good time to share this recipe as an idea for Christmas morning breakfast. You can make it any time of year really, it would be great as part of a tailgate spread, and I've made it several times for various office parties and when it was our turn to bring breakfast to church. It's a very versatile recipe. Every time we make it, it has been a huge hit and we never have any leftovers! Best of all, it's super easy to make and only requires three ingredients. Here's what you will need:

1 Roll Breakfast Sausage

1 Tube Pillsbury Crescent Rolls

1 8 oz. Package Cream Cheese

Start by browning the sausage. Remove from pan and drain.

Meanwhile, soften the cream cheese in a microwavable mixing bowl. 

In the mixing bowl, combine cooked sausage with softened cream cheese. 

Remove crescent roll dough from the package, but do not separate it into sections. Roll it out to form a rectangle, and be sure to seal the perforated edges so the cream cheese mixture can't come out through the cracks. 

Spread the cream cheese and sausage mixture on top of the dough in a thin even layer (I forgot to take a picture of this stage--had a little brain fart! We were trying to decorate our house for Christmas at the same time I was making this I think.) 

Roll the dough up lengthwise (you can roll it up on the short side - you'll have bigger pinwheels but not as many). You can see one of my rolls in the photo above, I doubled the recipe so that's why there is another rectangle of dough on the pan. 

Once rolled up, stick it in the freezer for 10-20 minutes so it can firm up before you slice it. Cut in about 1/4" slices and lay out on baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until the crescent rolls are cooked.

And there you have it - a super delicious and super easy option for Christmas morning breakfast! What are your favorite things to cook on Christmas morning? Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments!

P.S. All credit for this recipe goes to Leah from Take A Bite Of My Life. Found this recipe on her blog through Pinterest!

Scenes from Thanksgiving

I know, I am way late to the Thanksgiving post party. As my gift to you, I'm not going to bore you with excessive dialogue about everything we ate and everything we did with our families. I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. Hope you enjoy as we look forward to the next holiday! :)

Stay tuned for a yummy Christmas Morning breakfast recipe later today. I know, two posts in one day! The anomaly!

Frosty Gets a Makeover

A couple of Christmases ago, our office had a White Elephant gift exchange and I was lucky enough to come home with this bad boy.

Frosty was looking a little plain, and even though a snowman should be white since snow=white, I had the inkling to glam him up a little bit with some metallic gold spray paint. So I grabbed this can of Krylon spray paint from Michael's, and went to work on a makeover for Mr. Frosty.

I sprayed a few thin, even coats (with an hour in between each coat) and then let it dry for a day before I added anything else. (Contrary to what it looks like, that's actually not a murder scene behind Mr. Frosty, just where the husband has been working on staining and refinishing our dining room table and chairs--hopefully we'll have a post ready to go on that in the new year!).

After Frosty had plenty of time to dry, I added these cream vanilla-scented candles in the candle holders, and the white and gold swag I found at Target (which I got for free since I had a gift card).

And voila! Frosty fits right in with the rest of the Christmas decor in our living room now. He's actually hanging out center stage on our coffee table, sitting on a glass tray with gold glitter snowflakes underneath and various gold ornaments behind him. I actually like this little vignette I created, but maybe next year I'll have Mr. Snowman sitting on a gold or rustic wooden tray to switch things up a little bit.

 And because no post is complete without detail shots:

I'm linking up with the Christmas Cheer Link Party again today, head on over to A Thoughtful Place to see some other fun Christmas vignettes!