Decking My Halls

Howdy!

I do {still} exist!
I guess life just took over for awhile.
And I'm okay with that.

But, I have a moment,

{and maybe I was harassed about not blogging....Jessica!},

so here we go!

After Thanksgiving 'break', I decided to start decorating my place.

As I was decorating, I quickly realized I was missing

one, if not two, tubs of Christmas decor!

That set me back a bit.  Jeesh!

But lucky for me, 

I feel that I was still able to decorate well with what I did have on hand,

in addition to some 'new' purchases.

{By 'new', I mean junk finds.}

This wreath was new new...
and I LOVE IT!!

On my sofa table, I had a tin container that was full of 'N's, 

so I dumped them out and added a bunch of
found ornaments.

The jumbo clothes pin is something I crafted last year,

and just change out the month flash card every month.

Well, for the most part.
I might have missed October and November.  :)

Next to it sits this...

The blue Ball jar has a chalkboard label on it.
I bought it with the bulbs inside for a great price,

from Rescued Junk a couple years ago.

My ladder mantle.

I kind of love it!

After I took this picture, there have been a few changes to it.

I can't get a new picture now,

because the top lights of the big tree blinked off a few days ago.

Any ideas on how to fix it?

I know I'm a little behind on the bottle brush trees scene,

but now I have 3 of them,

in different sizes.  :)

I like this little guy, hanging out with my little boot.
{They are on the far left side of my ladder mantle.}

This little truck was another junk find.

I believe I first saw the idea of using an

old toy truck for decorating

from Farmgirl Paints.

I'm still on the hunt for a different truck though.

I'd prefer Chevy or Ford, or even an IH.

This truck, I have never heard of the name.  

But at least it looks cute!

To wrap this up,

my obsession with 'fun' socks.

During the month of December,

I have enough Christmas/winter socks

to wear a different pair each day of the month....

and not repeat them!

Hopefully I'll be back in a few days

to share some more pictures from around my living room.

Have you ever lost/misplaced/forgotten

any of your decorations?

Oh My MissMatched Heart!

If you have a crazy thing for fun socks....like I do....then make your way over to LittleMissMatched and see what she has for you!

In addition, if you have kids...or know of kids who enjoy not matching...or maybe even for yourself, check out the outlet, since there are some fabulous sales!

There are lots of new products in the store, as well as some awesome sales to clear out the store to make room for some hopefully awesome new items. I just hope they come in soon!

Little MissMatched, thanks for making it okay to have fun missmatching your socks and clothes! It's a fun way to start out a work day when I put on a pair of missmatched socks.

Sock Drawer Chaos

How many of you are like me, and LOVE socks? I don't mean plain white socks. I'm talking socks with some life to them. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only that has a problem with a few too many fun socks. Well, I guess that isn't the problem...my lack of space or consistent organization of them is the problem. It seems that every fall, my sock drawer looks like this, and it drives me crazy.

(Do you see the white sock on the right with the the yellow toe and heal and green shamrocks? My sister Gina got me those socks when she and Jay visited Ireland. The other sock is green instead of white, with white shamrocks instead of green. VERY fun.)

And this drawer is usually home to my plain white socks and anklet socks.

After sorting through the drawers, rematching some of the pairs or sets, it's time to reorganize. I fold each of my pairs or sets of socks, so the tops don't stretch out. I then try to group them by color. On some of them, I have to decide which color group they should be with. In the picture below, you can see that I really like brown socks. I could possibly wear them every day with a different outfit if I wanted to. Do you see the socks that are on the bottom, just left of the brown socks? Well, those are all my LittleMissMatched socks. If you are wanting to get some great fun, crazy, kooky socks, that is the place to go. I love them!

And here's my other sock drawer. My white/athletic socks, as well as my anklet socks.

It's hard to believe, but I wear most of the socks in the main sock drawer. I do go through my drawer and take out ones I haven't worn for a long time and give them to friends. Otherwise, I wear the rest of them, and wear them a little too much. Many of them are very thin on the bottom of the foot, but I can't bring myself to throw them out yet. There have been times where I will double up my socks so I can wear one of the thinning pairs. Bad, I know. Does anyone have any suggestions of what to do with the thin fun socks? They don't make good rags like athletic socks, so I'm at a loss.

Many times people will comment on how well my socks match my outfit. But little do they know, I will often find a pair of socks I want to wear, then plan my outfit around the socks. It might also be a reason why I have a pretty solid colored wardrobe, and not too many patterns at all. It makes sock outfit planning much easier.

Oh, I'm also looking for better ways to store my socks. Any suggestions? Right now, they are all just folded in half. I've thought about rolling them up, but don't know if it will work much better. So if you have any creative ways that you store your socks, I would love to hear them!

And remember, it's okay to have fun socks! It can bring life to an otherwise simple outfit.

Lost Sock Memorial Day?!

Did you know there is a national holiday to celebrate lost socks? I sure didn't. But how fun!

This morning I received an email from Nicole (great name, I know) at LittleMissMatched regarding this holiday. And now I am passing it on to you. I already checked out the website she included, and there are some fun ideas to do with single socks.

Hi Nicole,

Hope you’re well. Just wanted to check in with you and let you know about a fabulously fun holiday that’s just around the corner. This Saturday, May 9th, is Lost Sock Memorial Day (it’s actually a real holiday!) and in honor of the special day, LittleMissMatched is asking people to revolutionize their sock drawers! As a company that was founded to solve the age old problem of the missing sock, we thought that this was the perfect job for us.

We’ve got some exciting things going on in honor of Lost Sock Memorial Day:
Buy one, get one free on LittleMissMatched Socks from May 7th to May 11th.
A new page (www.lostsockmemorialday.com) on the fun section of our website. It’s full of family fun games and arts and crafts that will give your single socks new life!

In honor of this holiday, I am going to host my first ever giveaway! But here is what you have to do.

*Take a before picture of your sock drawer.
*Sort through your sock drawer and find any single/lost/hiding socks and set them aside.
*Reorganize your sock drawer with all the pairs or 'missmatched' sets.
*Take an after picture of your sock drawer, in addition to all your single socks that didn't get put back in the drawer, to see how many lost socks you really have.
*Then blog about your sock drawer (or send me an email at nicoleigh at hotmail dot com if you don't blog).
*On Monday, May 11, I will post the winner in late afternoon.

The prize will be a set of LittleMissMatched socks that I have set aside for future use.

Disclaimer...this contest might be more for my benefit of organizing my sock drawer than for you. But I'm going to give someone else the reward for celebrating this holiday as well.

And We Are Famous!

Why I was writing my previous post/review, I received an email from LittleMissMatched, with a link that said 'check it out! :)'. So I did. And this is what I saw!

So like they said...GO CHECK IT OUT! :)

Just MARVELOUS!!

MissMatched Fun! 2

After my little post here and sharing the pictures with LittleMissMatched, I was contacted to see if I would like to do a review on some socks. Of course I said YES!!

Yesterday, after the UPS guy made yet another attempt to deliver me a package when I'm never home, I picked these up at the local UPS station.
Fresh out of the package.

When I first got them, I was wondering....what in the world could I wear these with? Of all the socks I have (even my MissMatched ones), the colors coordinate throughout all three socks...but none of the socks are the same color or have the same color. So these were a bit of a challange for me.

I'll be the first to admit that many times, I plan my outfits around my socks. This was definitely one of those times. I was a little worried I wouldn't find anything, since I am house/dog sitting all week. What clothes I have with me was the laundry that I have done (which was a lot since I can't bring myself to pay to wash my clothes in my building). I didn't really bring anything extra.
But low and behold, I did think of something! And here is how the colors match.

The funny thing (to me at least), this is a common outfit for me. Who knew that these socks would match them perfectly! Now the only problem was to figure out which 2 of the 3 socks to wear.

After much deliberation, here is the lone sock. But don't worry Fabulous 231, I will wear you some day soon, with either Fabulous 232 or 233.

The resulting outfit. (Please don't critique the picture.) It's the best one can do by herself, in a place not her own, with a dog that was interested in the camera or being in the picture. If she was in the picture with me, then you wouldn't see the socks! (She's not a small dog.)

FABULOUS (231,232,233)

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Thanks to my sis in Germany...while on her travels to Ireland, she picked up these sweet odd socks for me. And what a perfect day it is to wear them today!
And yesterday, my other sister in China emailed our family this precious picture of these little angels....

With this message.....

We hope you find your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

What a cute idea! I wish I could give them all a hug! But, I guess this post will have to do.

MissMatched Fun!

It has been just over a year since my 'little' sister got married. She is quite the sock fanatic like myself, so I thought it would be fun to get some crazy socks to match her colors. Low and behold, after an extensive internet search, I found some that were perfect!

I found these at LittleMissMatched. Aren't they marvelous? I sure think so! The fun thing about these socks....they come in a pack of 3! Not 2, not 4....3. Many of you have probably lost a sock somewhere along the way, right? Then you are left with 1 lonely sock. But with LittleMissMatched socks, you have 3 socks that you can mix and match, and you still have 2 socks to wear if you happen to lose one.

So if you need a little MissMatched fun in your life, to check out all they have to offer! If anything else, it will add a little excitement to your plain old work socks! :)

(And a special thanks to Kris Gardner with For Any Occasion Photography on the fabulous photos!