LATELY...

Its CHRISTMAS! As a result this entire post will be filled with Christmassy ponderings. Its pretty much all that has been filling my Pinterest board of late and I can't say I'm bothered by it at all. In fact I quite like it. 

This picture struck my eye, after we had already bought our tree. I have to say our experience was nowhere near this. Not only was there no snow, but carrying our insanely tall tree wasn't that easy either!

With some rain falling last week I have spent some time snuggled up under a blanket drinking warm beverages. We've even dipped into our stash of Cadbury's white hot chocolate (or hazelnut in Andrew's case). I must say we didn't have fancy marshmallows, but we have made the regular kind before. Maybe its time to try them again!

I purchased this book last week and have spent a lot of time snuggled up in bed reading it. It's written buy three Christian authors and surrounds Christmas during World War II. Each author writes a separate part of the story, but it involves just one family. So far I'm loving it!

I've been pondering what I should do to decorate our table for Christmas. So far I've established that I need to find a white tablecloth, beyond that I've done nothing but look at fancy place settings online. This one caught my eye and surprised me because it involves gold. For some reason I've never been a fan of gold, but I think I might be changing. Slowly of course!

And because no post is finished without a bear post, here are some bears in snow with mountains. As we are in California, we have some snowy mountains so maybe, just maybe I'll meet a bear! That would make my year!

H

MACINTOSH MONDAY

This past week, after thanksgiving, Christmas arrived at the Woodruff household. The previous post showed what the Christmas decorations looked like. Well during the decorating process Macintosh got rather involved! 

The fact we bought a 9 foot tree scared him somewhat so there was lots of edging around, unsure of what we had bought and what it was going to do. Once he had got over that fact he then wanted nothing more than to be under the tree sniffing at it, or attempting to drink from the tree stand. I didn't manage to get a picture of that because I was shooing him away constantly. In England he could have drunk from the tree stand, but here where the tree has a greater risk of drying out there's not a chance he can drink from it!

He also found our mince pies irresistible and was found poking around near them on numerous occasions. Having told him off too many time we moved them to a higher location. Obviously that didn't deter him. He is just so determined!

But the funniest thing was when we were attempting to take an artistic photo of him near the tree so that the lights behind him would blur. In theory it was a straight forward photo shoot, but no. Macintosh wouldn't look anywhere near where he was supposed too, or he stole the treat from my hand mid shot. 

                                

                                                     

                                     

However the funniest photo and the point at which Andrew and I creased up in laughter and were unable to continue was this one.....

I mean seriously! People say he's a photogenic dog but after looking at that photo... Oh dear Macintosh! He definitely inherited Andrew's photo-face!
H

CHRISTMAS TREE, OH CHRISTMAS TREE...

Some of you may have seen this picture on Instagram...

It is a picture of the 9 foot tall Christmas tree that Andrew gleefully bought. Since we have such tall ceilings he was determined to get a tall tree as in his own words, "We'll never get to do this again as we can't afford the houses in England that have tall ceilings." I must admit I couldn't fault his logic but the tree was a bit on the large side. Still whether it was love that won out, or submission, or just simply me being outmanoeuvred, whatever the case, we got the tree!

Getting it into the back of the Victor the Volvo to get it home was quite amusing and we even had one friendly American suggest we just put it in his truck and he'll take it home with him instead. I think that was the final kick Andrew needed as he suddenly managed to fit it in! Once it was home poor Macintosh got quite a shock as we dragged this giant tree through the house. The sight of me standing on a stool whilst Andrew scrabbled around underneath the swaying tree as he fixed it into the base caused Mac some worry too. Eventually it was secured though and the mammoth task of decorating began. 

We already had some ideas of what we wanted to do. I like matching colour schemes and for everything to look thematic. Andrew is a perfectionist too, who likes the simple Nordic styles. As you can imagine the combination of the two us meant that this was no simple operation. It took a few days of prep to create what was needed and some frustration too on my part when surprisingly we didn't have enough ornaments for our now 9 foot tree! Thankfully Andrew and I like the tree to be more on the sparse side so that the greenery shows through, but still there's sparse in a stylish way and simply not enough! Our style this year is pretty similar to our usual one. Its Nordic, so there are lots of reds, whites and natural materials, with some greys thrown in as I love them so much! 

This year Macintosh even has his own little bit of decoration with his stocking up! Yes we are those people!

Now this photo shows my favourite part of the decoration (minus the tree). These houses were made by Andrew, out of card and without any templates. He got the initial idea from pinterest but the houses like these you can buy are ridiculously over priced. So he simply looked at a photo we found on the internet of a house, or church and then created these! They had battery operated tea-lights in so that the light flickers out through the windows. I know I'm slightly biased but I think they are amazing!

That church is just my favourite. He even added a rose window in it for me. Its the little touches that I love.

So there we go, that's our Christmas decoration. We are now mostly ready for Christmas and as we count down through advent we'll be reading some devotions written by John Piper so that we can focus on the true meaning of Christmas, because although decorating is fun, that's really not the focus for us. I'm pretty excited though. It'l be different out here but that could be fun!

H

THANKSGIVING 2014

Thanksgiving has come and gone but we can say that our first American thanksgiving together was a success! We enjoyed every minute of it, even the American football! It was enjoyed so much we barely took any photos, so that's saying something. 

We spent the daytime lounging around the house and hanging out with Mr Macintosh. We also had some food to prepare for our gathering later on. About 4pm we went over to a friends house where ten adults and five children sat down for a thanksgiving meal. We had shared the cooking out so no one person had to manage all that food. And boy was there a lot of food!

I had been worried that two turkey dinners in the space of a month would be too much but thanksgiving dinner is so different to what our christmas dinner is that I needn't have worried. There was turkey, mashed potato, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, sweet bread rolls, stuffing and more! We literally ate until we could eat no more!

The rest of the evening was spent watching American football and Snoopy's version of why thanksgiving happened! The football was a let down as the San Francisco 49ers lost to the Seattle Seahawks. I had adopted the 49ers and Andrew obviously adopted the opposing team. Their win made him rather happy! Snoopy however was delightful and his fight with a deck chair whilst setting the table made us all laugh out loud!

The following day Andrew also had off work so we spent some time wandering around Tehachapi with friends. It was lovely to have another simple day without anything drastic to do except enjoy our friends company. We could have participated in the Black Friday sales, but the fact there had been tents camping outside some stores for a week put me off. No savings can really be worth that! Instead we were rewarded with the sight of lots of amazing monarch butterflies and just the wonders of Tehachapi.

So overall we had a wonderful thanksgiving and so as I said in Macintosh Monday the countdown to Christmas has begun. In fact check back later in the week for our Christmas decorations which have been in the works for quite some time. I think they look awesome!
H

MACINTOSH MONDAY

Macintosh had a wonderful thanksgiving this year. Although he didn't come to the thanksgiving meal itself he was still able to munch on some delicious turkey. He may have had to work for it, as we are such mean owners but hopefully that makes him all the more appreciative. He certainly was very attentive to where the turkey was, not necessarily to what he should have been doing!

Mac also got to spend some time with some of his human friends the following day. We went for a lovely long walk around the nearby town of Tehachapi and then played in the park for a bit. Macintosh was attached to a pole so his roaming was restricted but he was able to enjoy sniffing around. He also participated in a leaf fight, although to be fair he may have had more leaves thrown at him than he threw himself!

Now with all that excitement over, Macintosh is gearing up for his favourite holiday of the year....Christmas! The reason, well all that wrapping paper of course!
H

HAPPY THANKSGIVING Y'ALL!

We hope you are having a wonderful day whatever you are doing. Ours will consist of lazing around in pjs, followed by a long walk with Mr Macintosh and then finally thanksgiving dinner with lots of friends from our church. There may even be some American football thrown in for good measure! 

So we are all set to enjoy our first thanksgiving over in California. Not sure we are ready for the extreme amount of food though....

H & A

GALLERY WALL

Now I did warn you that I would be posting more updates to about our house as we did them, so for those who find our house details uninteresting go ahead and skip this post. For those who are still interested, we had decided early on that a gallery wall above the computer was a good option but we wanted to live in the house for a bit see how it would work, plus we needed to gather some pictures. Slowly but surely we gathered some pictures or pieces of art ready for the wall so this past weekend we set about putting it up.

Prior to actually knocking holes into the wall we had made some paper templates of the picture frames and had played about with different combinations. We wanted to get it right was this is the base of the gallery wall and we will add to it but it needs to look good now too. We had been living for the past week with the templates in the arrangement we thought we wanted and were pretty set on it, until about 10 minutes before we put them up when Andrew decided to change them round again. Cue my groans! 

Once he had finalised (again) the set up he began putting the pictures up, starting with the largest picture in the centre. It wasn't the most accurate of processes. We did mark on the paper templates where the nails needed to go and Andrew made the holes through the templates, but getting everything level involved a plank of wood and a spirit level on our iPhones! We got there in the end. 

And behold the gallery wall....

We are still going to collect different art pieces and will build it up over time but we are pretty glad to have it started and its already making our home feel that little bit more homely!
H