Christmas Through Lens


Finally, after about five years, we went to see Christmas lights. I know, that's a long time, but with our work schedule, our daughters school schedule, shopping, cooking and everything in between, we just never find the time, or if we do find the time, we do not want to sit in the one hour long traffic to see them.

We happened to be lucky enough to live just 8 miles from Christmas Town USA. Unfortunately, this is the lined up traffic I was talking about, therefore, we usually skip this show and go 10 more miles down the road to Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens . Here you walk through what looks like a never ending winter wonder land. I would say its about a mile walk. Maybe longer. They also have horse buggy rides (lost that photo) keep reading.

While we were walking through, and after I had taken many pictures, my memory card got an error.  "Blogger nightmare". Lost it all. Once we completed the walk through, I got it back to working. So, we went through it again. Christmas lights are hard to take photos of and of course my camera even lost all my settings so the resolution, size, etc. was all messed up and it was so dark other than the lights, I did the best I could. Here are a few picture I took. Enjoy.

This is the Entrance before you go into the gardens. Inside you will find a gift shop, coffee shop, Santa Claus, live music, and crafts to make!




I took this photo through a door from outside of a teenager talking to Santa.
 
Some of the cute stuff in the gift shop. (cell phone picture, ha)

In the garden there was live music, and a wonderland of lights, a fire pit, tropical hot house, water falls, lighted tunnels, bridges and even some mazes to go through.
 






 
 Art sculptures along the way were fun too!

 
 Children love running through this water tunnel. Barely getting wet.

 
fa la la la la

DIY Grapevine Wreath

I came home the other day to find that my neighbor next door had cleaned out all of his grape vines and left them on the side of the road for trash. The saying goes, "One mans trash is another mans treasure." I will make this statement true.


I came inside and told my husband that I sure wish I knew how to make a grapevine wreath.
I bet I could google it and learn how to make one. Even though he just rolled his eyes, I could tell he didn't really doubt me.
Other than crochet, drawing, painting or cooking, I don't attempt too much of just anything.

The determination kept building inside me as I kept looking out of the windows, seeing the giant bundles of wirey vine just waiting to be made into something beautiful.
So I did googled it and learned in two minutes how to make a grapevine wreath.
I used this video here..


So I gathered up my vines (It kind of took me back to the day where I had to pick my own hickory switch, ha ha, but I wont go there).


Ta Da! I think my first one turned out pretty good. I plan to decorate it for New Years or Valentines Day.

I've shared this on
sunday-show-off-linky-party at twiggstudios. 
Make-It-Yourself at anoriginalbelle
therusticpig's creatively-tuesday
nifty-thrifty-tuesday linda-coastalcharm
adornedfromabove Blog hop
under-100-linky-party at beyondthepicketfence