A Very Merry Christmas :)

Vince and I had a great holiday weekend with both of our families. It was really busy, but a lot of fun! Here is a little photo recap from our VERY Merry Christmas :)

My family on Christmas Eve:

Nana and Papa:

Christmas Eve at Vince's parent's house:

Vince and I got Pierce skis and he LOVED them :)

Vince's new ski outfit haha

 

Christmas Morning (warning: NO makeup lol)

 

Ty loved the paper LOL

 

 

My gift to Vince <3 (and he got me a really nice new camera!)

Then on Saturday night we had a little party so my parents could get together with all of their friends from around here since they were only home for a couple days. It was a really good time, we ended up with about 25 people and everyone seemed to have fun!

Hope you all had a great Christmas too! Now time to get ready for New Year's ;)

A Fishy Christmas Eve

I still can't believe today is Christmas Eve already! This month just flew by! Last night my grandparents, parents and sister all got into town and we were up way too late catching up (especially since I had to come to work early this morning for a meeting) Yep, that's right I am working on Christmas eve. Fun. But it will be a short day and I am getting all kinds of cute Christmas goodies from my coworkers so at least it's not too bad haha. 

Tonight we are all going to Vince's parents house to celebrate Christmas with his whole family and then going to a late service at church afterwards. His family is Italian and they do the whole "Feast of the 7 Fishes" for Christmas. (yea apparently all Italian families do that as a tradition for Christmas, I didn't know that until I met vince) Well I am not big on seafood and they have to make 7 different types... so I will eat a little shrimp and scallops wrapped in bacon, but other than that it's not my favorite meal ever. Luckily one of Vince's brothers isn't a seafood fan either, so a couple of years ago his mom started making him and I our own pot of sauce and meatballs so we can eat too haha. (Everyone else has a clam sauce for their pasta that night to count as another fish item..I have a feeling my sister will be eating some of my sauce of meatballs too lol) 

Even though the 7 fish thing wouldn't be my first choice for dinner, I do love holiday traditions and getting to go over with the whole family for Christmas Eve. And besides tomorrow I am making dinner (my first time to host Christmas dinner for the family) and I get to make what I want to eat haha. So anyways, I hope you all are getting to spend the next couple days with your family and loved ones and are enjoying some of your favorite holiday traditions together. 

Merry Christmas blog friends <3

Tomorrow :)

The last two days have been extremely busy. I have been getting stuff wrapped up at work before the holidays, finishing some last minutes things before Christmas, making sure the house is spotless before we have everyone here, grocery shopping for Christmas dinner, etc. But it hasn't been all work and no play... I did get a  chance to meet up with 2 of my bests, Kaitlin and Beth, tonight after work for drinks and to catch up for a little bit :) Now I am finishing up a few more things before heading to bed, because when I get done work tomorrow my grandparents will be here! Then only a few hours after that my parents and sister's flight should be in... I seriously CAN'T WAIT! 

Hope everyone else is having a good week so far... only 3 more days will Christmas! 

I never said I was good at baking..

... but I thought it would be fun to try :) I am actually decent with cooking these days, but baking is a whole other story. Normally when I make cookies I buy the break and bake type (which I guess doesn't really count as making them, more like I pull them apart and put them on a cookie sheet).. you know like these:

The only time I have ever actually made cookies was when I was little and really my mom did those, all I did was help pour in a thing or two and then pretend like I did it all myself  :) So last night my friend Angela and I decided we wanted to do something festive since it's almost Christmas and we thought it would be fun to make holiday cookies.

 So I started pulling out some ingredients..

and she started mixing them together.

 

..and while it was a good idea, I guess we didn't really think it through. Neither of us had ever made cookies ourselves before, but for some reason we both figured making them from scratch was super easy and we didn't even need a recipe.  After our first batch we realized we needed a little help, and decided to call Ang's grandmother for some advice (thank goodness for her, otherwise we may still be in the kitchen trying to figure it out!).Thankfully our next batch turned out much better:

 

Then we attempted decorating some of the sugar cookies....

 

my side got a little bit messy

So after almost 4 hours in the kitchen we ended up with 3 dozen sugar cookies, 4 dozen chocolate chip cookies, and TONS of laughs! We each only decorated about 6 sugar cookies before deciding to call it quits and just put the rest in bags haha... but Ang did get us these cute little containers that we used for the chocolate chip cookies :)

Also, I had to share this picture of what Vince and Ty did the whole time we were busy in the kitchen:

Overall it was a really fun night and now maybe next time I decide to bake some cookies I will have a better idea of what the heck I am doing! lol.

It's almost C H R I S T M A S :)

I saw this list over at Gina's blog and I thought it would be fun to do since Christmas is only 2 weeks from Friday! (crazy how fast this month is going!)

1. Have you started your Christmas shopping? 

Yes I have! I am actually done other than getting a gift for my dad (and I do at least know what I am getting him) A lot of my gifts are even wrapped already :)

2. Tell me about one of your special traditions.
Ever since I can remember on Christmas Eve right before we go to bed my dad will read a story about the first Christmas and the birth of Jesus to all of us. He reads it every year right after we hang our stockings (that's another tradition- we don't hang them at my parent's house until Christmas eve) even though it was a kids book and we are grown up and I still love it. It's just something sweet and simple and it wouldn't seem like Christmas without it.

3. When do you put up your Tree?

Well typically my family puts up a tree right after Thanksgiving, but this year I had one up the week before Thanksgiving and one the week after :)

4. Are you a Black Friday shopper?

Yes. I love the craziness and excitement of it all. I don't really know why, but I actually like to get up WAY too early just to wait outside in the cold with a bunch of pushy mom's just to get things I don't really need haha. I guess to me it just marks the start of the holiday season haha. Plus, it's the first day that I allow myself to start listening to Christmas music 24/7 ;)

5. Do you Travel at Christmas or Stay home?
Both, it just depends on the year. Last year my grandparents bought the whole family tickets for a cruise that week as our Christmas gift, so we were actually in Saint Thomas on Christmas Day. This year we are staying home and my family is coming to stay with us. Either way I always have a great time and get just as excited, as long as my family is with me it doesn't matter where we are.

6. What is your funniest Christmas memory? 

hmm... not really sure.. I would have to think about that one and it's too late for me to want to think right now.

7. What is your favorite Christmas Movie of all time?

It's a tie between Christmas Vacation (just watched that tonight actually lol) or Jingle all the Way. They both get me laughing no matter what.

8. Do you do your own Christmas baking? What’s your favorite treat?
Hahaha... this is good questions considering my friend Angela and I just spent 3 hours in my kitchen making Christmas cookies... it was a rather interesting evening. (I will post about that later) But, no before that I have never baked anything for Christmas. I like cooking, but I am not the biggest fan of baking (and I am not very good at it either haha). I don't really have a favorite treat, I like lots of them :)

9. Fake or Real Tree?
Fake. I know that real tree's smell good and make it your house really smell like Christmas and there is something special about having a real tree versus just a fake one... BUT the real ones leave pine needles everywhere, plus you have to water them, and you have to hang lights on them (ugh, thats the worst!)... so this is the first year that I have given up on the real ones and decided to do just fake trees (with lights already on them.. yesss!). It's just so much easier.

10. What day does the actual panic set in to get it all done?
I actually don't usually panic about it, because I like to get everything done well in advance. However, I know when I have kids I may not be able to get it done as early so I might be more likely to panic at some point.

11. Are you still wrapping presents on Christmas Eve?

Nope not normally. (that might make me panic)

12. What is your favorite family fun time at Christmas?

Christmas night after gifts have all been open and dinner is done (and cleaned up).. we all just sit around, relax, and watch a good Christmas movie. It's a nice way to end the holiday :)

13. What Christmas craft do you like the best? 

decorating gingerbread houses

14. Christmas music? Yes or No, and if yes, what is your favorite song?
Heck YES! How can anyone not like Christmas music??? haha. hmm... what is my favorite song? That's hard because there are SO many I like! I guess if I have to pick my favorite would be Baby it's Cold Outside (the Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey version), I just think it's so cute and I love singing along to it. I also love Grown up Christmas list (there are so many versions and I like them all!), Hard Candy Christmas by Dolly Parton, and Christmas Shoes by Kenny Chesney (even though it makes me tear up!)
 

15. When do you plan to finish all your shopping? 

Sometime within the next few days.


 

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Winter Wonderland :)

We got our first snow of the year today and it looks SO pretty outside :) (Thankfully though I was able to go to lunch with Ang and do a little more Christmas shopping before it started sticking, because I seriously hate driving in the snow!)

(view from our deck)

So since Vince is out of town for the night and I don't want to drive anywhere in the snow, I decided to do some more Christmas things around the house :) I wrapped some gifts and put them under our tree, I added a few finishing touches to our second tree downstairs, and I found a fun way to hang our Christmas cards as we get them during the next month.

 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..

our 2nd tree in the basement :)

This tree has more traditional colors and is where we hang all of our favorite ornaments. These are just some of the ones we got last year at our wedding from family and friends. The one of the right is probably my favorite of all of our ornaments.. its says "Your heart will always lead you home" and "new home 2008" is on the ribbon. <3

We will continue to add more cards to the ribbon as we get them :)

I plan to spend the rest of the evening curled up with Ty and watching a couple good movies. Hope you all have a great night!

25 Days of Christmas

For the next 25 days I will wake up every morning and grab a piece of chocolate out of our advent calendar on my way to work, I will listen to nothing but Christmas music in my car, I will continue to add to our decorations around the house, I will make holiday treats and decorate ginger bread houses, I will shop more than normal and wrap gifts with more bows than necessary.... and most importantly I will be crossing off each day on my calendar until my family come to celebrate Christmas with us <3

update: I thought I should make a few color changes to my blog in celebration of the holiday season ;-)