Valentine's Release!

 The new Valentines Collection is now on the website!   I never do a ton of decorating for Valentines' Day, but always enjoy sprinkling a few little touches around the house!  Click on the picture to check out the collection!

New Shop Open!

 I am so excited to share with you the opening of my brand new home decor shop, Oak Hill Home.  I would love for you to hop on over and check it out!  The entire shop is ON SALE right now for our grand opening; just click on the image below.

Happy Mother's Day!

 Happy Mother's Day to all of you!  I hope you have a wonderful day!  I am so thankful for these 4 gifts who call me Mom.

Quarantined Easter

Happy Easter!  This year's Easter celebrations were definitely different, but if I am being honest, it was one of my favorite Easters ever! Our morning was slower paced since church was in our living room and we weren't rushing to get out the door, and it was nice to be able to soak up and really enjoy those moments together.  The weather was nice, the kids were all pleasant even with an early wakeup call thanks to littlest sister (and you never know what you might get with two teenagers early in the morning!), and we just felt so much more grateful to be spending the day together this year.  I know not all families were able to do that, and I just am so thankful that our family has stayed safe throughout this so far.

I pray you all are doing well and staying healthy, both physically and mentally.  If there are any specific ways I can pray for you, please send me a message through here or my social media pages.  I know this is a difficult time for everyone and want to do my part to help in any way I can.

Since we have been in a stay at home order, no cute coordinating Easter outfits were bought for my crew this year, but we couldn't let the day pass by without a picture anyway.  I hope you all had a beautiful weekend with your families!

-Emily

Fall Mantle

Fall has finally arrived in the midwest!  It sure took long enough!  We were finally able to have our first fire of the season last night, and it was so wonderful after a freezing soccer game in the afternoon!  

Here is a little peak at my simple fall mantle this year.  We have been going 100 mph with kids activities, work, and photography sessions that I haven't had much time for fall decorating.  So our mantle did not get much of a makeover this season.  But sometimes I do prefer a more simplistic look, so I am good with this for now.....but Christmas decorating is coming soon and that's a whole new ballgame!

I would love to see your fall mantles!  Feel free to leave a link to yours in the comments :)

-Emily

Leprechaun Shenanigans!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!  One of my favorite traditions to do with the kids is have Lucky the Leprechaun visit on St. Patrick's Day.  Here is just a bit of the mess that he caused this year! (Excuse the low quality cell phone pics, it was late and I had forgotten about our little visitor coming! I was more focused on getting back in bed than getting good camera pictures ;) )  And note for next year, my youngest will not drink green milk so an alternative to cereal needs to be available for breakfast!!

Hope you guys have a fun week!

Simple Fall Mantle

There is nothing like the beautiful fall leaves and refreshing crisp air after the long hot and humid summers we have! 

About this time of year I spend lots of time drooling over everyone's beautiful fall decorations.   And while I love going all out this time of year, I have gone with a less is more approach this year and am really loving it!  So, I thought I would share some pics of how I dressed my mantle up just a bit for this change in seasons. 

I'm in love with these little light up pumpkins that I found!  They are on a timer and pop on every night just as the sun is going down, leaving a beautiful pattern on the walls.  Perfection!

I also added a new lantern to the right of the fireplace.  Thinking that I may add some pretty fall leaves in the side of it just to give it a little pop.

Love this view after a long day :)

50th Anniversary Party

Last weekend we had a fantastic time celebrating my parents' 50th wedding anniversary!  I have been working on this since January and felt like I was planning an entirely new wedding!  Even with the hours and hours of work (and 4:00am text messages from my mother along with about 500 phone calls a week!), it was totally worth it in the end!  We had such a fun time! 

I don't quite have permission from the approximately 100 people that attended to display their lovely faces here, so I will just share with you some of the decorations we had for our fun day :)

Our cake table, complete with a replica of the shoes my dad wore on his wedding day...his groomsmen had written "Help Me" on the bottom of his shoes so when he knelt down for the prayer everyone would see it!! 

Gold boxes filled with candies all in gold wrappers for favors at each spot.

Head table complete with flowers. 

 And of course, what's a party without a pouting three year old?!  Yep, that would be mine ;) 

We had such a wonderful time!  We were blessed to have so many people come to celebrate with us; including many who drove lots of hours for a quick up and down weekend trip!  Thanks for helping us create memories that will last a lifetime. 

Minion Valentine Box

I have mentioned before that my 7 year old son has an unhealthy addiction to minions!  So, when it came time to decorate his Valentine box for school this year, I knew what I had to do for his.  This was actually easier than I thought it would be, and he was SO excited with how it turned out.  He couldn't wait to show all of his friends at school today!

I think he turned out quite cute if I do say so myself :)

Elf on the Shelf: Minion Banana

Minions are a daily part of conversations around here.  My youngest son especially has an unhealthy obsession great love of minions!  So we knew that our kiddos would really get a kick out of this next trick by our elf, Zinkle!

There were lots of laughs at this little guy this morning!  If you want to check out some of the other tricks our elf has been up to just click on the pictures below!

Elf on the Shelf: Grocery List

Well, our silly elf, Zinkle, was a little calmer last night...we he must have been tired from all of his other tricks this week!  Last night he did change into a schnazzy Christmas sweater though and made his own grocery list for us.  The kids sure wanted me to take that list to the store when I was going grocery shopping! 

To see some of the other silly things this guy has done, just click on the pictures below!

Elf on the Shelf: Hiding in the Fridge

Happy Saturday!  I thought I would share the latest trick our elf, Zinkle, has done!  The kids searched and searched for him this morning and could not find him anywhere.  They even started saying that they were worried that he had not come back last night.  Finally, my oldest son ran to the refrigerator and threw the doors open.  He almost didn't see him, but as he was closing the doors he saw him there in the door, wrapped in a dish towel.

They laughed so hard at their funny little friend!  They loved reading his sign and couldn't get over the fact that he even had the lid off of the whipped cream!  Ha!  The little things kids pick up on :) 

This may be my new favorite trick that Zinkle has come up with!  

If you missed when Zinkle hid candy canes in our house a few days ago, you can read all about it here!

I can't wait to see what this funny little guy comes up with tonight!

Elf on the Shelf: Hiding Candy Canes

Are your kids as into the Elf on the Shelf as mine are?!  They are so excited to come downstairs every morning and see what our silly elf, Zinkle, has been up to the night before!  I will share a few more naughty things that he has done over the next couple of weeks, but here is a fun one that is new for us this year! 

Our kids had a whole big conversation at dinner tonight about candy canes.  Zinkle was by the table from the night before so one of my boys even looked over at him and said, "Zinkle, you need to bring us some candy canes because we don't have any on our tree!" I actually had already planned on doing this with him this year so I had candy canes hidden away in a cabinet, so the timing seemed perfect for tonight!  I can't wait for them to rush down the stairs in the morning and see that Zinkle really was listening to them :)  

While we make sure that our main focus at Christmas is on celebrating Jesus' birth, we also love these special traditions and memories while our kiddos are little.  Can't wait to share more of our adventures with Zinkle with you over the next couple of weeks!  And if you've got any great elf ideas I would love to hear them!!  Especially quick and easy ones for those nights that we may or may not forget to move him and have to rush first thing in the morning before the kids get out of bed....!

One Year Down!