Holiday Happenings

November began with my niece Kara's 7th birthday!

Thanksgiving was spent at my parents'.  It was a great day with the majority of my immediate family plus my sister-in-law Brittany's family.  That Saturday was my Dad's 60th birthday party!

And for a sweet end to the month, Nathaniel Quinn Davis was born November 30th to my sister Allene and her family!  This pic is from when he was a few weeks old...

Quinn

We celebrated our our 6-month anniversary in December with a date night to J. Peter's Grill for dinner and Hollywild Lights Safari afterwards =)

Crazy number of cars lined up to get in!

Basically we drove through the zoo and they had various lights displays.  Some smart people in the car in front of us for a while had a flashlight so they could search for animals in their cages!

Awesome whale of lights...

At the end they had a "Deer Forest" and people could get out and feed the deer.  We didn't care to feed them, but it was Insane getting to the exit!  Cars absolutely Everywhere in this huge field, some people out of their cars, herds of deer... it was nuts!

Needless to say, we made our way out and headed home.  Was a fun albeit interesting experience!

Later in the month we celebrated my brothers' birthdays.  No pics of them, lol.  Just one of Quinn and I =)

Andrew and I wanted to do stockings on Christmas day, and I wanted to try and make them.  I'd seen online about making stockings from sweaters.... so I decided to give it a try!  With help and an afternoon at Allene's using her sewing machine, followed by an afternoon at my Mom's with her help and serger (Extremely important to the success of this project!), and then a few hours of hand stitching... both were finished and ready to be hung =)

Basically how they started, except that for Andrew's, the sweater had a turtleneck that I incorporated into the stocking.

All finished!

Our first Christmas tree =)

December 22nd, we celebrated "Barron Christmas" with the extended Barron Family... 28 of us... only missing 4 people I think!

Andrew made Swedish Tea Rings, which were a big hit...

We had a great time eating, talking, exchanging gifts, and playing goofy games... one of which was dividing into teams and dressing up all the dads/uncles as Santas.  Hilarious.

Christmas Eve, we had a candlelight service at church and then spent the night at my parents' place.  Andrew made cinnamon rolls for breakfast/snacking until Christmas dinner which typically is mid/late afternoon.  Before everyone else started getting there, we celebrated our first Christmas as a married couple!

I love this guy =)

Ready to unload our stockings....

So blessed.

All my immediate family gradually made it over, and we started opening gifts.  For as long as I can remember, we have rotated around where each person gets to pick a gift out from under the tree that is to someone else, they open their gift, and then we move to the next.  It helps us all get to enjoy the gift giving aspect more, and necessarily it means opening presents takes a Long time! So we opened for a while, ate Christmas dinner, and went back to finish with presents.  And before the day was over, a family picture was in order =)

Chair Caning

This past week I caned my first chair.  Thought I would share a few pictures and a video of the process.

Before

Sorry about the water mark on the video I used some free software to change the video file format and they place their mark on the files.  This is about 6hrs worth of work and you can view it in 3.5 minutes.

Almost finished just still needs the binder cane to cover all the holes.

The finished seat.

Fall Catch-Up

On the September 14th, our church had a dinner and wedding shower for my brother and his then-fiancee, Brittany...

Later in the month we drove about an hour to the mountains to pick apples!  It was a gorgeous day, and we even ran into my sister, Laurel, at the apple orchard with a group of youth from their church!  SkyTop Apple Orchard is rather well-known and was Insanely busy... but we still found plenty of apples =)

I didn't exactly go prepared to climb apple trees, but who could resist the opportunity?!?  So much fun...

My handsome man who delivered the apples I picked safely to the basket on the ground.  

Beautiful view across the mountains from the top of an apple tree!

October arrived ever so quickly and with it came the final wedding for my family of 2012.  October 5th, we headed to Monroe, NC for David & Brittany's wedding the following day.  It was nice to be completely available to help however needed with preparations!  I rode up with my sister Laurel and her husband to help Brittany's family and friends with setting up for the reception.  Then we headed to the rehearsal dinner location to help my parents set up for that!  

Pretty table decorations by Laurel!

 

Beautiful wedding the following day! 

 

It needed to be done and, well, no one else was doing it, so.... Laurel and I looked around, found what was on hand, and had some get-away-car fun =)

 The same green truck we used to leave our wedding... except the starter went out a few days before their wedding.  So they got a pushing start from the groomsmen! 

The following weekend we went for a Sunday afternoon hike at Ceasar's Head State Park.

My handsome man on the bridge

Checking out the waterfall underneath the bridge...

Love this pic!

Another waterfall

So serene and beautiful!

As we were nearing the trail head, some vines were hanging rather low across the road.  Andrew decided to have a little fun...

One of the many uses of a Leatherman...

Hanging around in the trees =)

And the fun that ensued!

Near the end of October, all of my siblings and spouses got together to carve pumpkins! 

Our first pumpkin!

We concluded October at a fall festival in Greenwood, SC!  We took my nieces and nephews to my sister's where her church's fall festival was held this year.

My sister, Laurel, with Kara, Sadie, & Marshall

Kara on the hay ride.

Marshall and Uncle Andrew by the fire with s'mores fixings!

Not a whole lot to write or post pictures about from the end of October until late November.  We had several home projects in the works that I will post about soon.  Then it was on to Thanksgiving and Christmas...