Merry (belated) Christmas and Happy 2010!!!

Well, we had an AMAZING Christmas at home in Georgia and stayed very busy, to say the least, while we were there.  We got to spend some much-needed family time with both of our families and were able to see as many friends as we could squeeze into the time in between, though our time with friends felt brief and there were still friends we didn't get to see.  

We came back to Durham for New Years and enjoyed a quiet few days of no work and playing with Christmas toys - Ryan has already beat the Call of Duty game and I've read two and half books and just installed my new Photoshop program last night.  We watched the Sugar Bowl on Friday, saw Sherlock Holmes in theaters last night and are looking forward to meeting baby Quin later today, born to our friends Jared and Jodi on New Years Day.  And that is as eventful as this New Years break has been and I have LOVED it!!

Now, here are some of the things that I love so much about Christmas-time at home...

Taking the Jeep to the mountains in Highlands, NC to find some snow...

and hiking a very familiar little trail...

...with Ryan's parents this time...

...to Sunset Rock, where the magic happened two years ago on December 23, 2007...

It was right about there that Ryan made me read a sweet letter that ended with "Erin Nicole Pridemore, will you marry me?" and I turned around to find him down on one knee...

Ahh, sweet memories.  But about 30 seconds of reminiscing was all we could take before we had to get off that cold, windy rock. 

And since there are quite a few more pictures and "favorite" things from home, moving on...

Britney, the "Bunny Whisperer" as we call her.  This is Bella the bunny who runs the Pridemore house.  Many of you have heard my stories of Bella - well here she is!  And we call Britney the "bunny whisperer" because she can make Bella do all kinds of tricks we never knew.  This bunny is potty-trained, does NOT live in a cage but instead has the entire house to roam, shares a water bowl with Sadie the black Lab, and loves animal crackers and other cookies.  haha!

We played lots of Bananagrams, an official game of what we formerly had called "speed scrabble"...

Two of the most competitive people you'll ever meet - Britney and Dad - were constantly suspicious of the other trying to cheat, haha!

Notice the coffee mugs in nearly all the pictures from the Pridemore house.  This house has some serious coffee drinkers and you can't resist a cup every few hours when there are so many options for how to take your coffee...

That, or we're a very indesicive family that needs lots of options.  This could also likely be the case, ha!

YUM.

can you tell I like the coffee at home?  ok, moving on... ;)

Another favorite: I like how home feels like the country! 

Ryan's just chillin' while Jamie tries to get her horse under control.  :) 

Come on James...

And alas, they're off.

And the reigning favorite of being home:  spending time with family...

On the 23rd, we had our annual get together with my mom's side of the family.

Cousin pic 2009.  It makes the moms and grandmother happy. :)

And of course, the Pridemore kid pic!  TJ, don't fight it - the quicker you give us a smile, the less painful this will be and the sooner it's over :)

Afro man and his girl

Couple shot - Ryan and I with Afro man and Jennica. I think she's a great companion for my little brother.  Know why?  Because she picks out great gifts and she helps TJ with all of his Christmas shopping (or does it for him, I don't really know).  I wore the earrings from them today :)  kidding...I love Jenn for a LOT of reasons, but she does pick out good gifts!

Two of my favorites here: A fire in the fireplace and Joycie, my grandmother!  Yes, it feels like home...

And Matt sang for us.  Did he not get the memo that Pridemore's were not blessed with talented vocal cords??  ha, apparently he's the surprising exception.  It was fun to hear him play his twangy Robert Earl Keen and Lynard Skynard renditions.

Joyce with her girls - Mom and my aunt Elaine

We spent Christmas Eve with Ryan's family and enjoyed the Christmas Eve Candlelight service at Perimeter, Ryan's home church.

Ryan, his parents, and Rachel and Jeff spent time visiting with lots of friends afterwards, most that I either didn't know or had only met once or twice before, so I did a lot of standing in conversations and saying "nice to meet you" and "good to see you again".  Ryan and I talked to one guy for a little while who looked familiar, but I wasn't sure where from.  A few mintues later, Ryan said to me, "you have no idea who we were just talking to, do you?".  I said, "no, but I meant to ask.  Who was he?".  It was Jeff Franceour.  Oops.  How did I miss that? 

As always, I just soaked up the time we got to spend with our nieces and nephew.  Couldn't you just eat them up?!

A cute grandkid picture with Dexter and Martha. :)

Here's our 2nd married Christmas Eve picture in front of the fireplace at my parents house

Ryan and I decided to exchange gifts first thing on Christmas morning by ourselves instead of with everyone else, so before bed, I hung our stockings on the dresser and put our gifts underneath at the foot of the bed.

At the Pridemore house, Santa doesn't always wrap all the gifts, so us kids always get each other out of bed and go in the den together on Christmas morning.  I love how even though we're grown and I'm married, that doesn't change.  With modern technology...aka...texting, this was changed slightly.  Just in the sense that I first got a text from Jamie saying "are you awake yet?"  and when I responded "yes, Ryan and I just exchanged gifts in my room", she said "ok, I'm coming up" and a minute later knocked on the door and came in and we all sat in my bed in our pjs til the boys came upstairs. 

After our traditional Christmas breakfast of Monkey Bread and cheesy eggs, we all sat down in the den and listened to Dad read the Christmas story from the Bible before opening gifts.

And then everyone attacks their pile of "Santa" gifts!  Hey, we put out milk and cookies and he DOES still come to see us! :)

haha, they really were "new" and they were larger than a remote control car's tires, but he had to have something to "unwrap"!

After Christmas morning at the Pridemore house, we moseyed our way on down Buford Highway to spend the afternoon and the remaining days at the Wood house.

Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree...with lots of presents under it!  Samuel and Ellie Kate divied up the gifts.

My sister-in-law Rachel is such a great gift-wrapper.  Her gifts were exciting even before they were unwrapped! :)

It's so much fun to watch kids open gifts at Christmas!  Uncle Ryan and Aunt Erin got Samuel, EK, and Abigail a popcorn maker and some popcorn bowls.

I think this is just such a cute picture of Ryan with his sweet Mama! And although Ryan's the spitting image of his dad, I have to say, he looks a lot like his mom right here.

On Sunday, our last day in Georgia, Ryan's grandparents, aunt/uncle and cousins came over from Alabama to spend the day.  It was so fun to visit with them and see them before we started our I-85 North trek back to Durham.

I somehow did not get pictures of the whole crew, but I did get this cute one of the Wood siblings - Ryan and his sister Rachel.  We don't have a lot of just these two together, so I love this one!

And the last picture of our trip...with Rachel and Jeff. We have some fun fun memories with those two, especially from when they lived in Athens while I lived there during my UGA days and we got to see them a LOT more often.  It was so fun to get to spend some time with them and have a movie date night to see the Blind Side while we were all home together.  Miss you guys!

Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season and a great start to 2010!

Bringing a Southern Christmas to the North...Carolina.

I'm so excited to be a part of this year's Christmas Tour of Homes!  I just recently started this blog and remember when my sister-in-law Rachel participated in this tour of homes last year and I thought it was so fun!  So as soon as I got mine up and running, I found the blog that was hosting and planned to participate this year.  But then, the date snuck up on me and this working lady had to fight I-40 traffic to run a couple errands at the mall and then go to the grocery store, followed by dinner/clean up, etc, so hopefully I'm not too late! :)

Christmas is my FAVORITE time of year!  And in the short year and a half that Ryan and I have been married, he's already learned that I'm a sucker for Christmas stuff...especially Christmas stuff on sale! Even if it's the middle of July. :)  So he is constantly trying to put blinders on me and steer me clear of the Christmas displays, haha!  (I get it from my mother...) I love when Christmas songs come on the radio, I love walking around the mall when it's decorated, I love decorating, but mostly I love the time spent with family and friends treasuring the relationships and the reason for the season and the hope that we have in our Savior who was born!

Welcome to our apartment! I found this cute wreath at Belk for $40 last year, so I waited til after Christmas and bought it for $8!  Last year was our first married Christmas (but our 8th together!) and since we were in a pretty small apartment (and turns out we're still here!) and were going to be spending Christmas at home in Georgia, I decided to not go all out decorating and to just wait until decorations went on sale after Christmas.  So this year decorating was a little bit more fun! ;)  Now, come on inside...

Mr. Snowman on the wall was a find from this year when I was shopping for a baby shower.  He had a broken arm, so I got him for $4 and with a drop of super glue, he's all better!

Here's a view of the living room when you walk in the door.  I'm glad I'm posting these pics since a lot of our friends haven't made it to Durham yet and haven't seen where we live.

When Ryan and I were home for Thanksgiving, we picked a whole trash bag of holly and magnolia leaves from his parents house with the help of our nephew Samuel and niece Ellie Kate.

Here are a few things I did with the Holly and Magnolia leaves...

I put together this centerpiece for the coffee table with some cranberries around the outside, some of the holly in a vase in the middle and then...dun, dun, dun...my pottery barn candles that I spent a total of $10 on last year...for ALL of them.  The candles are sugar cookie scented and they make the whole room smell delicious - it's the first thing I smell when I walk in the door from work.  I love the holy family in the background of the above picture.

And this is the centerpiece I made for the breakfast table, although it's not a very good picture between the shadow and the fact that you can't see the bowl it's in.  I also did not have my table set with the Christmas dishes yet when I took this picture (and the magnolia leaves and holly aren't looking as fresh now for a retake).

Since we have no fireplace...therfore no mantle...we decorate our TV stand instead.  $100 to anyone who can find where we hang our stockings... :) I don't have a hundred bucks to give away, so I thought that would be a safe bet.  You won't find our stockings because I left them in Georgia over Thanksgiving to have them monogrammed.  Besides, I can't really figure out a good place to hang them.  So as you look through these pictures and see our apartment, let me know if you have any suggestions!

Here is where we display all of our Christmas cards, which I just love!  I love reading the updates on people's lives that I don't get to talk to and see nearly enough and the adorable pictures of everyone's ever-growing families!  I love the "JOY" nativity scene on the left - it was a wedding gift from the Cagles, some good friends of my family and Georgia's Lieutenant Governer.  They gave us a whole basket of ornaments for our tree too, which was one of my favorite wedding gifts!  I thought it was so creative for a summer wedding.

And here's a closer look at the Willow Tree Nativity on the right side of the table that I also just LOVE!  It was also a wedding gift from a sweet sweet family that I babysat for - Tricia was my Sunday School teacher in high school and her husband Jeff was our veterinarian.

And here is our tree!

Thanks to Ryan's parents who bought it for our first Christmas, it was one of our only decorations last year and the ornaments from the Cagles filled it up! One day when we have more room, I want to get a live tree - nothing smells better than a Christmas tree!  But we will always keep this tree and put it out somewhere since it is special to us and will always bring back so many sweet memories from our first married Christmas living in North Carolina.

 And here's the kitchen...

 A closer look...

And our Christmas dishes!!!  You have NO IDEA how much I love these...but oh, Ryan knows! Poor guy...  I registered for these dishes and got a couple of pieces surprisingly (with it being a summer wedding) and intended to just add pieces each year until I had completed the set.  So last year, I waited until they went WAY, WAY, WAY on sale after Christmas and bought whatever was left, random pieces here and there.  Well this year, I planned to do the same, until they started disappearing off the shelves.  So, it turns out they have been discontinued, so I have spent the last week searching high and low for anywhere with ANY remainging pieces (Lenox, Macys, Belk, even Replacements.com!) and have had to have dinner plates shipped from New Jersey and accent plates shipped from Atlanta and the bowls from somewhere else. It's been crazy trying to round up the whole set and I think Ryan would be happy to never look at the again at this point, but I FINALLY got all of the ones I needed to complete my set.  

And these are the plates I hope to use with kids one day!  I think these are just so cute!  This was another after Christmas find from last year.  Ryan and I went to Wilmington on the North Carolina coast a couple hours from here during the dead time between Christmas and New Years when I was still off work and he was out of school.  I found these in a little Christmas shop at the Cotton Exchange there and the lady gave the whole set to me for $10!  They had originally been $45.

This Jim Shore angel was given to us as a gift recently from Lisa Cook, my mom's best friend and a very special person in my life.  She brought it to us when she came to visit recently with her grandson, KJ, who was a ring-bearer in our wedding. It's hand-crafted from wood and I just love the brilliant colors of it with the nativity scene on the body.

It sits on the desk in the guest bedroom...

And lastly, also in our guest bedroom, is our beautiful Fontanini Nativity set that my Crossett babies - Ked, Luke & Marigrace - gave us as a wedding gift.  I was blessed to spend two of my college summers with these precious kids while helping their busy mom, my dear friend Ashley, with them when they were 3 years old (Ked) and 18 months old (Luke/MG are twins).  Crazy life for sure, but a FUN one! :)

This is not only a gorgeous nativity set made by the Fontanini family (family-owned business) from Italy, but it's also such a kid-friendly nativity set as all of the figurines are made of a rubbery-plastic material so they won't break if they're dropped or played with.  Leave it to Ashley (supermom) to think ahead like that, haha!

The Fontanini set is also really cool because you can pick from a variety of different mangers and can add pieces over the years - they have hundreds!  Wise men on camels or wise men on foot, different angels, donkeys, shepards, and on and on... Also, Baby Jesus is a separate piece from the manger he lays in, so one day with kids, I can leave the manger empty until Christmas day as an activity to teach that Christmas is celebrated because of Christ's birth in the manger.  

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests"... Luke 2:14

Goodnight y'all - hope you enjoyed the tour!