Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

This year has brought so many fun opportunities and changes.

The highlights include celebrating Ronny’s 30th birthday in February with our family who came to help us dedicate Chisum, had a fun family vacation to Cape Cod, celebrated Chisum’s first birthday, moved to Colorado, and mostly enjoyed our time as a family of three (four with Hanky!).

Chisum did well meeting Santa for his second Christmas.

What a difference a year makes.

Let us Rejoice in our King who was Born to save our sins! Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our family!

I didn’t get a Christmas letter put together this year since I just sent out Chisum’s birth announcements. However, I’m grateful for our blog to be able to keep family and friends updated on our happenings throughout the year.

Obviously the biggest excitement of the year was welcoming Chisum Marshall! And excitement might be an understatement. He made quite the entrance, but we are so blessed to be healthy and thriving – Praise the Lord! Time is flying by - he is now 3 months old.

And we are excited for our first Christmas with him! He got to meet Santa last week. He didn’t think Santa was too scary…

…but he still wasn’t quite impressed. :)

He also had his first Christmas program at school! The Rudolph nose was my favorite part.

We celebrated Christmas with the Pope side of the family last weekend. The grandkids enjoyed reading the story about the Birth of Jesus with Grandma and we got some nice family pictures after church on Sunday.

We are grateful to celebrate the Birth of Jesus and all of the Blessings we’ve been given this year! Merry Christmas!

Snow angels

I love making snow angels – especially with my sister. It must be an inherited thing because our Mom had made one after her workout to cool off the day before! :)

Happy New Year!

DIY doll blanket and pillow

For my cousin, Katie’s Christmas present, I made her a dolly blanket and pillow. She is really into dolls right now, and according to her dad, is always wanting to put them to sleep. Perfect gift idea!

I didn’t use any particular pattern, although I got the idea for the doll quilt from my friend, Shelley’s Garden Bricks Quilt.

I simply used 4 inch strips and tried to alternate the lengths in each row. The finished quilt size was approximately 24”x18”. I used some pink embroidery floss to tie the quilt top to the solid pink backing.

To make the pillow, I used two pieces of fabric that were 6”x9”, sewed the right sides together and flipped inside out, then filled with stuffing.

I’m pretty sure she liked it! :)

Christmas Day | 2012

It was so nice to relax at home on Christmas Day after our fun Christmas Eve outing with my sister and parents! We missed my brother and sis-in-law though, but they are expecting a baby any day!

Ronny was excited about his K-State gear and Mom and Dad were excited about dinner and a musical.


Emily got a Prince William collectors doll. “I’m staring at you, Emily!” (in a British accent of course). :)

In the evening, we did our intermediate family tradition – fondue! Ronny stole the camera while we were preparing all of the food.


Hello Mama!


The table was all ready to go and we ate ourselves full of delicious meat and veggies. Then chocolate with cake and strawberries. Another great tradition besides our Swedish ones! We missed you, Ryan and Lindsay!



We celebrated an early Christmas with Ronny’s family in early December – but I unfortunately didn’t take my camera to get any pictures! The whole fam was there and we enjoyed all of the little kids celebrating Christmas.

Christmas Eve | 2012

Ronny and I traveled to Colorado this year for Christmas. Hello mountains!

My uncle hosted Christmas Eve at his house and we had some great food and good conversations with my aunts, uncles, cousin and Grams. Unfortunately, Mama got the flu bug and had to stay home. :( But we were able to video chat her in a few times.



We used Grams’ Lennox Christmas china – a great tradition! We also had some other Swedish Christmas traditions mixed in for our Christmas dinner. One of them is courses – Grams usually had a five-course Swedish meal – we only had three this year, but it still counts as a tradition.


We usually eat Lutefisk – white Swedish fish – but this year was prime rib….delish!


For desert we had the traditional Ostkaka (grrr I didn’t take a picture! It is a Swedish cheesecake), peppakakor and sugar cookies.


New this year was a gift exchange for all of the adults. Cousin Katie of course got her own gifts. :)


It was a great time with family!

Christmas card

Merry Christmas from us! This year I had my friend, Claire design our Christmas cards. She is working on building her design portfolio and I believe she did an awesome job with our cards!
Can you see our “Where’s Waldo?” Hank? :)



If you’re interested in any design work – birth announcements, invitations, Christmas cards, etc. – Claire’s you’re gal! Contact her at clairemasker at gmail dot com. Thanks again, Claire!

December via InstaFriday

Most of my Instagram photos I’ve shared in recent posts, but here is the month December via Instagram. Merry Christmas!

Doggy playdate in the snow with neighbor, Avery.

Grandma Bailey’s Sausage Soup, perfect for a cold day. Recipe here.

Cookie weekend with friends.

Our brand.

Gotta love Baxter Black!

We met Rudolph at the Red Nose Run in Seward.

Sporting purple in the NE Corn office for K-State game day!

Hank loves is doggy vest!

Merry Christmas!