Christmas 2016

Merry Christmas!!

Okay, okay, I'm a few days early, but we're officially on Christmas break and our family celebrations start today so we are definitely in the Christmas mood!

Overall I'm happy with how our Christmas card turned out this year, but I'll be the first to admit that it's a little spastic!

We took the main picture back in September, during Arden's 1st birthday session. We've been on a tight budget lately so we couldn't justify booking another photo session a few weeks later, just to get a Christmas card photo, so I earmarked this cute one for our Christmas cards. Yes, it was still about 100 degrees in Dallas at the time - that's why Arden is in a romper!

Well a few weeks after we took this photo I found out I was pregnant! We had snapped a few pictures of Arden in her big sis shirt for our pregnancy announcement (which just happened to be around Halloween so pumpkins were out in full force!), and so I decided to just include those pictures in our card too.

So there you go, pictures from summer + fall...all on our Christmas card!

Our tree this year (we always get a live one!):

We decided to do a $5 Christmas with Taylor's family this year - that's right, limit of $5 per person (think stocking stuffers). At first it seemed impossible, but the more time we spent brainstorming, the more fun it became to come up with creative ideas. It was also pretty liberating to be honest. There wasn't the pressure of spending tons of money on dozens of gifts for everyone in the family - as previously mentioned, we've been on a tight budget since Arden started daycare & having a small spending limit definitely helped take the pressure off! We decided to take the same approach for my family & we really did have a blast trying to come up with $5ish (but still good!) gifts for everyone.

Stocking stuffer-sized gifts tend to be small though, so the majority of gifts under our tree are pretty tiny. It still looks full though!

Surprisingly enough, Arden has done a fabulous job of not touching the Christmas tree. We decided early that we just wouldn't let her touch the tree without us there (we didn't want to spend a month worrying about her pulling it down on herself!). In the beginning she was actually a little intimidated by the tree and would just point and it and then point at the trees outside; she was definitely trying to connect why there was a tree in the house! She's become more brave since then, but will usually just point and then get one of us to come over if she wants to touch a branch. She hasn't touched any of the presents either. I'm sure in future years she'll be the one showing little brother how to pull off ornaments and shake gifts, ha!

Every year Taylor and I go out and choose a special ornament or two for the year. Here are our 2016 ornaments. This one is a beautiful glass ball - it catches the light so prettily!

This is our first photo-ornament & I love it! We may need to get one every year. Again with the pumpkins, I know! We just felt like being pregnant with #2 was kind of the big deal of 2016 (and so far these are the only pictures we have of Arden in that shirt!).

And 1 cute silver reindeer. We love reindeer. So cute. So festive.

Lastly, Arden made her first ornament in school, a little popsicle stick Christmas tree! We'll probably hang on to this one!

We're pretty minimal Christmas decorators around the house (we didn't even put up lights outside this year, oy!), but we did put up our stockings. I love seeing all the Christmas cards that come in from friends and family!

And yes, we do need a stocking for baby boy. Gotta decide on a name first!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!

A Christmas tree surrounded by gifts is the prettiest sight! And the smell of fresh pine is amazing!

And yes, in case you can't tell, our 3-foot tree is sitting on our dining room table! Perfect, isn't it??

Each year we hunt for a special ornament for the tree. This year we found a beautiful vintage hand-blown glass ball!

Saturday we drove out to Glen Rose to celebrate Christmas with Taylor's grandparents (Granny and Papa John). There was a delicious meal, and a pretty competitive white elephant gift exchange!

Monday we lounged at home, went to see The Hobbit in 3D (meh movie unfortunately), and the headed to the Candlelight Service at our church with Taylor's family.

After church, Taylor and I celebrated our own Christmas together over a bottle of champagne. This morning we got to dig through our stockings to each other and then we spent the day with Taylor's family. There was an abundance of gifts, food, and family fun!

Merry Christmas everyone!! May your day be full of kisses!

Merry Christmas...a little late.

Better late than never?
Yes.
Right?
Uhg.

As an excuse, I may have blogger ADD. I start writing a post, get interrupted, and promise myself I’m going to go back and finish it. Instead, I end up with 3 different half-finished blog posts.

Before it gets any later, I thought I should just go ahead and smush everything into one big holiday recap post.

Pre-Christmas: Cookies

Taylor and I decided to bake cookies for our respective workplaces as Christmas gifts and man was it an undertaking. I LOVE baking but this was such a different scale than I’m used to! We baked 5 different kinds of cookies and ended up with over 200 cookies total.

This was the lineup:

Gingerbread Cookies (men, trees, and Texas)

Lemony Slice-And-Bakes (with lemon icing)

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

Almond-Oat Lace Cookies

Brickle Brownie Bites

It was a lot of fun getting to bring so many cookies in to work! Every single one was eaten so I would say our gifts were fairly successful!

Christmas in Dallas & New York

Our Christmas festivities officially kicked off on Thursday night when we met Taylor’s whole family at the movie theater for a showing of Mission Impossible. Have you seen it yet? It was incredible. It’s definitely up there with my favorite movies of the year.

Early Friday morning (Christmas Eve-Eve), Taylor and I went to a showing of Sherlock Holmes. Yes, two movies in two days. Guilty. But it was worth it. Morning movies are awesome - the theater tends to be empty and the tickets are wonderfully matinee-priced.

Friday afternoon we packed shopping bags full of gifts and headed over to Williams’ house for a delicious dinner followed by an evening full of gift-exchanging.

Saturday morning we headed to the airport for our flight to New York. The first three days were jam-packed with family fun. In summary: Christmas Eve we celebrated with my mom, Christmas Day we went to Long Island to celebrate with my dad’s side of the family, and the day after Christmas we spent the day in the city with my mom’s side of the family. The time in the city with my cousins involved crêpes for brunch, a walk through Central Park on our way to The Met, and ended with burgers at Shake Shack!

Taylor and I then had two days in the city to ourselves and we made sure they were not only productive, but involved visiting a lot of yummy eateries.

Ess-A-Bagel.

Self-explanatory.

And yes, we brought 4 bagels back to Dallas.

The MOMA.

Coolest exhibit? An artist set up a kitchen and served free Thai Curry to museum guests. The goal was to explore the juxtaposition between quite conversation that typically takes place in a museum versus the lively conversation that takes place over a meal. Food is totally art.

Knave Coffee Bar.

Super pretty coffee.

While we were at Knave it started to rain. We had thought ahead when we were packing and brought not just one, but TWO umbrellas with us to New York. I even got a third [adorable little polka dot] umbrella for Christmas. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a single one of them with us at this point and got absolutely soaked on our way to our next destination, which was The Soup Man. No pictures were taken at The Soup Man since we resembled drowned rates.

Crif Dogs/PDT.

Crif Dogs is a hot dog joint in the St. Marks area with phenomenal French fries. PDT stands for Please Don’t Tell – Manhattan’s very own speakeasy. You enter it through a hidden phone booth in Crif Dogs. Favorite place ever.

Stumptown

Best coffee in Manhattan. We always visit when we go to NY. The one and only bummer about Stumptown? They only take cash.

Brooklyn Bridge

Did you know that you can walk across the Brooklyn Bridge? It's prettier to walk from the Brooklyn side to the Manhattan side because you get an awesome view of the city skyline and can see the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty. Coincidentally we got to the bridge right at sunset – it was gorgeous!! But extremely cold. Maybe don't go in the dead of winter.

Milk & Cookies Bakery

I've been swooning over this cookbook for the past few months and was beyond thrilled to receive a my very own copy for Christmas while we were in New York.

After I had flipped through a few pages - okay - read the book from cover to cover, I discovered that the cookie recipes were from an actual bakery....and that bakery was located in downtown Manhattan!!!

We of course just had to go and try the cookies for ourselves and made the trip to the shop on our last evening in NY. The special of the day was a bacon-cranberry-chocolate chip cookie. Yes, seriously, bacon! It was surprisingly very tasty!

DIY Christmas Card Wreath

This Christmas card wreath is definitely one of my top favorite crafts I've made this year.

Make one.

You'll love it.

I fell in love with the idea when I stumbled across someones blog through Pinterest (the same place I got the idea for the glittery clothespins I posted about last week) and just had to make one for myself.

The Materials

• Some sort of large craft ring/embroidery hoop which will be your wreath
• Glitter clothespins
• Glue gun
• Optional: spray paint

Directions

First: Prep your "wreath."

I went to JoAnns in search of  an embroidery hoop but couldn't find one big enough. Instead, I found a large, gold, metal ring that I decided would work perfectly. Whatever you choose to use, make sure the width of the ring is at least thick enough to glue something to and sturdy enough to hold up lots of clothespins and cards (so something like wire wouldn't work for this)!

I has decided that my wreath was going to be white and silver so I spray painted it white before I started. We had the spray paint on hand, but you can use anything you want to cover the ring/hoop. And if you happen to find a ring/hoop that doesn't need to be painted....well then you've saved yourself a step!

While the ring/hoop is drying, you can prep the glitter clothespins. I spray painted these white before glittering.

Now that everything is ready, you can begin the assembly process.

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of these next few pictures.

1. It was getting dark and so there wasn't as much light in the room
2. It's very difficult to actually glue gun something and take pictures at the same time. You can go ahead and try doing it yourself if you don't believe me!!

Determine ahead of time how many clothespins you want to use and where you want them to be around the ring/hoop.

Also decide which direction you want them to face. You can mix facing them inside and out or keep them all facing out like I did.

When you're ready to get gluing, apply a drop of glue on the back of your first clothespin.

Then stick the clothespin on the ring/hoop.

Continue the entire way around until you're done!

Since my ring was on the thinner side, I turned it over once the pins had dried and applied glue on the back as well, just to make sure they were securely fastened!

 

Once it's totally dry, find a pretty ribbon and tie it in a bow. Hang your wreath somewhere it can be admired and clip away as your Christmas cards start arriving!!!