Sign & Wine Party

On Friday night, I was invited to a "Sign & Wine Party". There are a lot of home parties here on Okinawa with all kind of things from wreath making, candles, nail polishes etc etc. This business is made of a lady that custom cuts the wood after your design, so you have to choose a design a week in advance and then pay, at the party the paint, supplies, ribbons etc is all provided for you to paint and decorate your sign after your wishes. 

My friend Shelley, had invited about 10 people and we had a great time. She has made wine glasses for all of us, which was a sweet keepsake, and there were plenty of food, snacks and wine. I was driving so I stuck to water, but had a great time anyway. 

I wanted a design that I could display all year around, not just seasonal, and I didn't want a door sign, but something for inside the house, and I found some ideas online which I changed up a bit to fit my wishes. 

 

One of the ladies lived next door and had just gotten two puppies. They were so cute!

 

Waiting for it to dry to finish it up with the edge.

My finished sign! 

It was getting late and some of the ladies chatted more than painted and the night was far from over when I left after 10pm. The next day, Shelley posted this group picture that they took much later, when the rest was finished!

 

These are my inspiration pictures. The "Home sign" normally has the Home state cut out instead of the "O", but as we don't have a Home State, I thought it would be great if she could cut out the Eagle, Globe and Anchor, which is the official emblem and insignia of the the United States Marine Corps. After much searching, I found this very simplified version as a cake topper, and thought that would look great to place where the "O" is supposed to be. Seemed very fitting, as Home is where the USMC sends us!

Christmas Tree

So last weekend it was first of Advent. We had been busy and not getting the tree up and ready, but on Monday, I took the tree in from storage. It wasn't the normal "let's go and get our Christmas tree" joyful event that we normally have. For those knowing us, know that Cassie is our specialist on spotting the most beautiful Christmas tree even if they are already tied up in the net. She has an eye for it, and we have always been happy with the trees we have gotten. We have always had a REAL tree, and thought that we never would have a fake plastic one up in our house.

BUT, as living on a tropical island where they don't send real Christmas trees, we had to prepare for a different kind of Christmas. I had heard that it was hard to get a fake tree too, so knowing this, I already purchased one on the after Christmas sales last year and we sent it with us in the move. Now it was time to unpack this tree, and I called the kids to get a picture!

Cassie came out of her room, asking me if she really had to be excited for this very unusual event!?

We had never unpacked it, so we didn't really know how wide it would  be, and it looked pretty tiny when unpacked, but after fluffing up the three different parts on the tree it didn't look too bad, even if I wish it would  have been bigger in every way! But, not knowing how big of a house/apartment we would get, we didn't want to order a much bigger one. We had problems finding a spot for this one, the rooms aren't very big.. and I ended up having to rearrange the sofa and the end tables to find a spot in the living room. To me thats where the tree belongs, where we all sit the most and where we can enjoy it at all times.

The kids dug into the boxes of Christmas decorations to find the ones for the tree. As we weren't able to bring everything, I only took some of all our decorations with us, so it was "like Christmas" to see what made the cut and came with us in the move. So many things that I have thought we brought ended up in the storage back in the States. I hung the lights to start with, and then the kids took over for a while.

I love that you can have an fireplace in your living room through the Smart TV! Perfect, comes along with Christmas music all through the You.tube. Made it feel very "Christmassy" while we were decorating! 

In the evening before bedtime, we lit the first candle for Advent and all the kids gathered up on the sofa to listen to the story about "Tomtens Jul" by Ingrid Elf, to see what he does all days for Christmas. A tradition in our family to read about his day every day before Christmas. It tells all about the Swedish traditions before Christmas, and it's really cute pictures.

As I wrote on Instagram, this little Santa is very special to me and our family. Chris gave this one to me on our very first Christmas together, that is now almost 20 years ago. Every year it's with anticipation to unpack him to see if he still works! He says Ho, ho ho Merry Christmas, and then plays 1/15 different Christmas carols and then after the carol wishes you Happy New Year!

And, even after a move from Switzerland to Germany, Germany to Sweden, Sweden to North Carolina, North Carolina to Kansas, Kansas to Arizona and now from Arizona all the way to Okinawa - he still works!!! I'm so very happy about that!!

With tree up, first candle lit, it was pretty cosy on the sofa reading the book. Only some "julmust" or "glogg" would have made it better!! 

It's Fall Y'all!

Last time I wrote here it was far away from Fall, but it's clearly mid October now and Fall is here! There has been a lot going on here, but the number one reason to why it's been so quiet here on the blog lately, is because the internet in the towers is, and has been for a long time now, terrible!!! We have sometimes weeks where we don't have functional internet, the download and upload speed is way too slow that it's just loading and loading and it's impossible to even open up the blog from the computer. It's almost impossible to download pictures, and as I exclusively blog from the computer, there is a lot of pictures that I want to share and write about!

This week it seems like we have a little bit better speed, so I'll see how often I can get online!! 

The last two weeks, it's slowly but surely getting nicer weather! We have had a long summer here, it's been very hot and humid, and lately it's cooler outside, atleast in the mornings. It's nice, as we like to go outside and do things, and we like to explore and we have, despite the heat and humidity. So, we can apprechiate the cooler weather even more now!

So, even if it's getting cooler, it's not at all cold, and the regular temperature this week is around 85F/28C. It's wonderful and the humidity that we have had around 100% for so long now, is down to about 50-60% only!! Well, atleast we have Fall inside! I love to decorate for different seasons and if there is something that I miss now, is to have a house!! Not being able to decorate a porch, or even a front entry is sad. I don't even know if we will get pumpkins..It's not allowed to decorate out in the hallways in the towers, so it's not the same thing to only have inside to decorate. We also didn't take all our decorations with us, a lot is in storage, so it's a bit interesting to try to decorate with what we have, with the new space we have..

But, before I sum up in coming entries about what has been going on here lately, I'll share some of the pictures I quickly shot the other night when I had put the orange lights up in the balcony window.

I hope that someone is still out there checking in here, so for all of you that I haven't been able to follow much, Happy Fall Y'all!!

Decorating

One afternoon during Spring break, when we couldn't get out of the house, as the kids weren't feeling well, I decided to get a few finishing touches done in the bedroom. We've lived in this house for a year now...and some pictures on the wall were still waiting to be hung, and the big mirror on the dresses was not put on again after the move. We weren't sure if we wanted to leave the furniture this way, as this room is a bit bigger than our last bedroom, but we still didn't find a good spot for the dresser, but in front of the window. Not that we really use that window anyway, we mostly leave the blinds shut, especially as Chris is often sleeping during the day with his night shifts, which means that putting the mirror back on, made the room even a bit darker. I still have to get really dark curtains for the French doors leading out to the patio, and maybe even some for the window, behind the mirror.

My plan was to make this big wall in the bedroom into a huge collage with black/white pics and black frames, but so far I only got these four pictures up...not that I don't have thousands and more to choose from, I'm just not that good in developing them. Actually, I think that choosing a few good ones to enlarge and hang, THAT'S the biggest challenge and that's why I haven't tackled that task yet!