Merry Christmas!

Hope you had a lovely holiday!

We had five lovely family gatherings for Christmas this year along with a birthday dinner within three days. Two of the five requested a dish to pass. In total, we traveled about 149 miles. Yikes!

With all of those festivities, let’s just say our house is terribly messy. I’m sure many of you feel the same way. Needless to say, the rest of the week will be spent whipping it back into shape.

The night before Christmas, my sister had asked if we would pick up the puppy (teacup Shih Tzu) and bring her over Christmas morning. So we spent the night with this little sweetie pie:

Cell Pic

In the spirit of giving, I also squeezed in some time to work on a surprise gift. A few years ago (ahem October 16th, 2010), we had a mini photo shoot.  This was around the time that I purchased my DSLR and was still figuring out how to use it. Also, not having a remote at the time, I busted out the tri-pod, set the program timer, and increased the continuous mode to 8 shots. We ended up with some hilarious ones. Like this one straight out of the camera:

Let’s just say our family is hilarious and I spent a lot of timePhotoshop-ing everyone’s beautiful smiling face to form this picture:

And since I can’t leave any photo well enough alone, here are two more versions which I printed for the family:

I attempted to use my Silhouette Cameo (purchased over a year ago) to cut out these cute tags:

 *Names changed for the sake of privacy

Without much success and running out of time- we ended up printing them double-sided and cutting them in a rectangle. I know, not quite as lovely but work with whacha got. The backside included this special message:

Running out of time (sensing a theme), I had the boyfriend put all the pics into the frames- left over from my sisters gallery wall by the way- ‘wrap’ them in ribbon and get them ready to attach the tag. Next year there may be a ‘film strip; of the outtakes.

Speaking of the boyfriend, he totally surprised me with this lovely gift:

Cell Pic

Yes, that is a clawfoot tub in need of some TLC, but it was the best gift ever! He totally threw me for a loop!

Story time: We decided to be impatient and exchange gifts a bit early. He had bought me a pillow (mine was ridiculously flat) and the movie Zombieland (one of my favorites btw). I bought him a router bit set, did I fool ya: Holiday Shopping?

Source: Sears

And the next few days he was saying: “I feel bad I didn’t get you such a thoughtful gift.” And I reassured him they were amazing gifts- the pillow and movie that is, thinking nothing of it. Then to my surprise, when at his parents house, we went to the garage for his gift- a chainsaw which was at the top of his Christmas list this year since it was ‘full of gas.’ He then proceeded to tell me he had gotten me one more surprise. And that’s when I saw her all wrapped up; I knew right away he found me a clawfoot tub- that shape is hard to fool. He knows me all to well, he's such a keeper!

So I have plenty of time to research the best way to get this sucker back to her prime. I was thinking new legs, new shiny coat of white inside, new hardware, and some creative exterior maybe something like this:

Source: Kammy's Korner- which also has a nice tutorial.

A simple curtain around the entire interior of the tub, DIY’d of course maybe something ruffled like this:

Source: Inda Rose

And to be completely random- while I was looking at some inspirational tubs- aren’t these cute?! They would totally match the outdoor bathroom idea we want in a garden- someday.

Found a lovely tutorial here, and a seller here.

I can’t wait to put in some more research, nail down a design (probably DIY’d myself), and get to work on this project!

What about you? How was your holiday? Did you have multiple gatherings? Do you have an unreasonable infatuation with Zombieland or any other movies? Do tell.