A Very Merry Christmas 2018 Recap

(Photo from here.)

I love the holiday season. My favorite part of the holidays is definitely the lead up to Christmas because that's when everyone seems to be in a better mood. There's decorating, yummy dinners, holiday treats, spending time with family and friends, exchanging Christmas cards, wrapping gifts, hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree, and just general activities that really set up the holiday cheer. Today I wanted to share a little bit of what we've been up to the last few weeks.

It was our first Christmas in our new house so that meant one thing to me....decorating! And of course we decorated the day after Thanksgiving. It's never too early for Christmas carols and Christmas decor, am I right? We're still figuring out how to decorate the place so we didn't go too crazy but we did add some festive wreaths and garlands around our main level. Here's a peak:

Also I love Christmas trees so I tried to put one in every room. A few in our entry way, one in our living room, a tiny glitter one in our dining room, a mini tree on our kitchen table, and of course the main tree in the family room. We also put Christmas lights outside on our bushes and added a light up reindeer and sleigh. I like to think it was just the right amount of festive.  

I also had some festive fun with some arts and crafts. You know about Painting with a Twist paint parties? Well, my mom always gets canvases from a woman at her school so we pretty much have a quarterly paint party. This time I painted a gingerbread house.

I like to think my painting skills are improving but somehow I just don't think so. It's always fun though to spend time with my family and I do enjoy seeing everyone's finished products. My sister and my husband both have very unique and identifiable painting styles. My sister's looks almost cartoon like (no matter what she paints--it's kind of cool) and my husband always has a certain amount of shading/layers. You can always pick out which ones they did.

And I finished our Christmas stockings finally! Can I just say...I am obsessed. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy cross stitch? It seems so tedious but the end result is really spectacular. I'm already working on a new project that I'll post about later. Maybe I'll take a photo every month or so to see the progress? It's big...so it will take a while.

We also had some tasty treats during this holiday season. We don't host any holidays but we still try to make a traditional holiday meal usually the weekend before the holiday. So we make a mini Thanksgiving feast the weekend before Thanksgiving and we made a delicious mini-Christmas feast the weekend before Christmas. Oddly enough, they both turned out to be pretty much the same--turkey and gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, jellied cranberries (my favorite!), and stuffing.  Mmm, yummy. We also made a gingerbread house.

And on Christmas morning we enjoyed some cinnamon baked french toast (courtesy of Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond) with strawberries, whipped cream, and bacon.  If you like french toast you definitely need to try this recipe. We make it every Christmas morning--and select other weekend mornings throughout the year! Yes I talked about this recipe last year too.

There are even things to look forward to after Christmas....like the day-after-Christmas ornament sale hustle. We are slowly building up our collection of ornaments and every year I pick a few ornaments that I really want and then a boatload that are nice but I am not willing to pay full price for. Then the day after Christmas we go out and have a haul at Hallmark's 50% discount. I even posted my 2016 ornament haul here on the blog.

I really want the santa with presents and the tree trimmer elf. They are just so cute! 

That pretty much wraps it up for me over here. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are looking forward to a fantastic new year as much as I am. Anyone making new year's resolutions?