Christmas Lights By American Dream Home Remodeling

Tis' the season for all things holiday! Not only did I find myself ordering an enormous 15 foot artificial Christmas tree this year but I also wanted to make sure our holiday cheer spread to the curb appeal of our home. Just one problem, my husband wasn't volunteering to climb up on the roof to install the white Christmas lights I dreamt up in my head. In fact, he was avoiding my holiday nesting all together. You would have thought I had the plague and I clearly wasn't getting up on the roof since I'm pregnant. So I had to get a little creative.

I started to call around to those companies that put up lights professionally and get some quotes. The average quote started at $1000.00. Most of these companies have preset packages and don't have much wiggle room if you are looking to custom your order to get the prices down. However I did find one, and it was a company I have hired in the past to do my driveway pressure cleaning so I was familiar with them. American Dream Home Remodeling installs Christmas lights during the holidays. I had no idea you could call companies like this to help you out and they were a fraction of the price! 

I loved working with them because when Ben came out to give me my quote, everything was line itemed. That way I could pick and choose what I actually wanted to do. I decided on having his company do the roofline and the two big trees in front of our house. I also ended up adding a huge light-up wreath for over my garage because I still had some budget left over. It was perfect, I would have them do the lights and Elena and I would handle the smaller wreaths we hung from each window and the front door. We did a little, they did a lot! 

All in all, I am really pleased with the way our holiday decorations came out. It's our first Christmas in our new home and I wanted it to be special and make a splash in the neighborhood. I think I accomplished both. 

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Salt Dough Ornament Recipe

I love family activities and I know with the kids about to be on Christmas break you will too! This is a fun project to work on with the kids while they are cooped up in the house during the holidays. As much as I would love to take credit for this idea it was our Aupair Elena, who is a former preschool teacher who came up with this one. She is great about creating fun ideas and games for our family to do together.

When I came home from work, Elena asked me if we had flour and salt. My reply to the items most people keep in their household was, “of course we do”.  We followed a simple recipe involving just 3 ingredients.  My son Cash loved helping mix the blend together, squeezing the concoction in his fingers until it turned to dough. Then, he helped roll out the dough and created little trees, gingerbread people and stars to be put in the oven for 2-3 hours.

After they were cool Elena used her artistic skills to paint the most beautiful ornaments to hang on our Christmas tree!

To see the recipe we used watch the YouTube video below:

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Baby Strager Is Coming June 2020!

Talk about a tough secret to keep! I feel like I have been sneaking around long enough. I have lied to everyone close to me, dodging get-togethers and holiday parties to conceal the fact that we are expecting another little bundle of joy this coming June! 

There are multiple reasons a woman keeps this secret. Early pregnancy is a sensitive subject, and as an expecting mom, you want to make sure that everything is okay with the baby before shouting your announcement from the rooftops. This was an especially surprising time for Dallas and I because we were just "pre-family planning" at this point. It took us over a year to get pregnant with Cashton and we were trying so hard then. So, imagine our astonishment after realizing that after only 3 months of being off of birth control that I hadn't had a normal "cycle" in over 40 days. 

Shock, amazement, and excitement flushed over mine and Dallas's faces when I immerged from the bathroom holding a positive drug store pregnancy test. We just kinda stood there staring at each other for a few seconds before the news finally sank in. 

I wasn't sure how we were going to be able to contain this news with so many events on the horizon. After all, October to December is our busiest time of the year for social events. Gravediggers Ball, Friendsgivings, holiday parties, and social get-togethers flood our calendars for the last portion of the year. I knew I would get busted the second I showed up to my first gathering and declined a cocktail. EVERYONE would be onto me! So Dallas and I developed a plan to attend every single bash together until we made our announcement. We would BOTH order drinks and he would drink both of our cocktails on the sly. We would just continuously switch glasses until both drinks were gone. It was a match made in heaven. I had a designated drinker and he had a designated driver!   

We also decided that we wanted to tell our family during our Thanksgiving gathering. We had already planned to host the holiday at our new home this year and since this would be the first time since our wedding (10 years ago) both sides of our family would be together I wanted to tack on a holiday family photoshoot for our Christmas Cards. It all seemed to be coming together. If I could dodge the champagne and smoked Manhattans all weekend we could tell them at the end of the photoshoot and catch their priceless reactions on film. 

   

Somehow by the grace of God, we were able to pull it off. No one knew except Dallas and I. Not Cash. Not Elena. Not even our parents. I kept this secret so tight to the vest that our photographer didn't even know until she showed up. 

I had the whole thing planned to a tee! We would finish our shoot and I would announce that I forgot to include a "Merry Christmas" sign I had made for the photos. I would ask everyone to get together one last time and present my "The More the Merrier. Baby Strager, June 2020" sign instead. Here are some of the amazing photos of everyone's reactions.

Of course, the fun didn't stop there. Genetic testing is something we decided to do at the recommendation of our doctor. Apparently having a baby at 35 years old makes you a "high-risk pregnancy", which is laughable but true. The upside to having this test is that they can tell you the sex of your baby as early as 10 weeks! So we were able to share our gender reveal with our family the same day we told them we were expecting.

However, word to the wise. If YOU do not want to know the sex of your baby have someone else check your test outcome because "Boy" or "Girl" is printed right there on the Myriad results. We wanted to know so we check the test ourselves. This way I could order gender reveal poppers on Amazon and have them ready to go for our fam. 

So, we were excited to announce that we are having a ...

BOY!

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