Christmas in July Blog Hop

Good morning and welcome to the "Christmas in July" Blog Hop hosted by Jazzy from Jazzy's Cards. If you are coming from Libby then you are in the right place, but if you are just checking on my blog and stumbled across this, go start at the beginning. This is Jazzy's first time hosting a hop, and I know she would appreciate the love.

The theme for the hop was something Christmas related that included the colors green and red. This is what I came up with...

I remember as a kid I couldn't wait for Christmas Eve.  In Germany, my family celebrated Christmas Eve with a real tree that the Christchild brought and decorated while we ate sandwiches and soup in the kitchen.  Then the Christchild would ring a bell letting us know we could now enter the livingroom.  The room would be dark except for the tree with it's real candles and beautiful glistening ornaments.  I remember the smell of the fresh pine tree and the baked goods in a basket on the table, usually cookies and small cakes.  Boy do I miss those days...my parents still celebrate Christmas Eve, but we, at home, celebrate Christmas morning.  When we still lived in MN near my parents, we would celebrate Christmas Eve at my mom's house and then we would take the kiddos home and prepare for Christmas morning.  Now, we have changed our tradition a bit since we don't live close to family anymore.  The weather can be so unpredictable in the MN and SD areas that we do not go home for Christmas anymore.  We still have a real tree, but no real candles and we usually get the tree the first Saturday in December and decorate it the next day after church.  Now we usually have a munchy night on Christmas Eve.  Everyone in the family gets to choose up to 3 items they love the best.  Mine is usually shrimp cocktail, brie cheese with crackers and herring.  I know, odd combination, but when you get 4-6 people with up to 3 choices, there is a lot of food.  Most of the time we have mini hotdogs, bbq smokies, meatballs, rye bread with swiss cheese melted ontop, pizza poppers, breaded mushrooms, veggie tray, cookies, my 3 items and then there are some various items that get added or deleted each year.  It just depends on their moods.  (Just writing this is making me hungry)  Every year, since my kiddos were babies, we have bought brand new pajamas for everyone for Christmas eve.  This way everyone has new jamies for pictures on Christmas morning.  We usually change into them, and then we have a new family game to play or new movie to watch.  When that is done, we all help clean up and get ready for bed.  When the kids are in bed or have gone home to their own place, hubby and I finish wrapping any Santa gifts that are still needed and head off to bed ourselves.  Christmas morning we all get up, make coffee, mamossas, and usually monkey bread and then the fun begins.  I love watching the kids' faces when they get to come downstairs and see what Santa brought.  Remember, if you don't believe, you don't receive.  That's the motto in our house...it's getting close to that non-believing for our youngest, but thank goodness we now have grandkids to keep up the tradition!  The rest of the day is usually spent just lounging, playing with any new toys or gadgets and watching Christmas movies all day.  All the left over food (and there is usually a ton yet) from the night before gets brought out again and we just munch all day long.  I hope I haven't bored you with my Christmas tradition, but I just wanted to share what we do.  Leave me a comment and tell me what your favorite tradition is.

Now onto my project; it started like this:

On of our neighbors is selling her house, so she has been
cleaning out any unneeded things.  She knows how much I
love redoing things, so she thought of me.  Isn't that so sweet?
Hubby doesn't understand my obsession of other people's junk,
but wait till you see what I did.  She had two of these and this is
what I made with one of them.

and ended like like this:

This will be great to put some Christmas food on and carry from upstairs to downstairs, or just to have sitting on the coffee table with Christmas cookies and tea for holiday guests.

Here are some more pictures if you are interested.  I used my E-craft to cut the vinyl.  LOVE IT!!!

Not a single miss cut or bad cut.  Other than the fact that I have a lot of cricut carts, I might be using the E-Craft exclusively.  

Thank you so much for checking out my project... now head on over to Darlene but first I hope you remembered to wish everyone a "Merry Christmas" in order to be eligible for Jazzy's Cricut Cartridge Blog Candy.

1. Jazzy - www.JazzysCards.Blogspot.com
2. Amy - http://www.lovetocrop.com/
3. Gina - http://californiascrappin-gcinderella21.blogspot.com/
4. Theresa - www.thescrapbookingqueen.com
5. Nadia - www.nadiasbeautifulmess.blogspot.com
6. Elizabeth - http://visionsofpaper.blogspot.com/
7. Anita-http://www.anitaandbugs.blogspot.com
8. Libby - www.psastampcamp.blogspot.com
9. Brenda - http://createbyburffrau.blogspot.com/
10. Darlene  Simple Southern Blessings
11. LaKesha at Scrapping Diva