christmas

A new tradition

Hi! Can you believe it’s almost Christmas? I’m very excited to spend time with mine and Jimmy’s families. This time of year–when we remember and celebrate Christ’s birth–is incredibly special. The traditions and festivities are always so memorable, too. Over the weekend, my mom and I decided to start a new tradition. We got together and spent the day baking cookies and treats, and assembled the baked goods on trays to give to our neighbors.

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I think that we spent about eight hours baking. I’m sure four of those hours were probably spent laughing. I don’t know what it was, but we had a major case of the giggles all day. It could have been because my hand twitched when I was holding candy eyeballs?

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Then I said something (I can’t remember what) and it made my mom laugh so hard that she drooled on a cookie…which we promptly threw away. We also burned a batch of gingersnaps and couldn’t figure out why. It turned out that we accidentally used wax paper to line the cookie sheet instead of parchment. Yikes!

My sister and her boyfriend were at my parent’s house for a little while on Saturday, and they wanted me to take pictures of them by the Christmas tree. Hannah’s boyfriend was helping her get ready and I walked by the bathroom and saw him blow drying her hair. It was such a sweet moment!

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It was also nice to hang out with my parent’s dogs, Brandy and Reggie. When I talk to Jimmy about them I sometimes refer to them as one unit and call them “Breggie” haha.

My mom and I ended up making sugar cookies, gingersnaps, Russian tea cakes (also called snowballs or Mexican wedding cookies), peanut butter blossoms, penguin cookies, chocolate crinkles, cranberry bars, and peppermint bark. We both agreed that either the cranberry bars or the penguins were the hardest thing to make because they required so many different steps and ingredients. The easiest cookies were probably the Russian tea cakes. The treat that was the biggest hit was the peppermint bark.

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Jimmy and I delivered cookie trays to seven of our neighbors on Sunday afternoon, and I don’t think I stopped smiling for the rest of the day. We both agreed that it felt amazing and like it was the least we could do to give back to the people who have been so friendly and welcoming to us since we moved to our community in 2014.

Do you bake around Christmas time?
What’s your favorite type of cookie?

Absentee Me

I have been a bit of an absentee blogger lately, and for that I apologize! When the weather became colder, Jimmy and I started discussing indoor house projects we wanted to work on. One of the most pressing things we discussed was painting. When we bought our house, all of the walls were powder blue except for the kitchen and living room (which are a dingy off-white…). We’ve been living in our house for over a year, and we’re pretty much done with outdoor projects for 2015, so we are now focusing on small indoor renovations like painting.

We decided to paint what we have dubbed our “closet room,” which is one of the bedrooms. The closets in our house are pretty tiny, so we just used an empty bedroom as a walk-in closet. When we moved in, we bought an Ikea wardrobe, and put it in the closet room. It worked, but it was also huge and hulking in the tiny bedroom.

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In order to paint the closet room, we had to pull the wardrobe away from the wall. Then Jimmy was like “Let’s just sell this and install shelving on the wall.” and I was more than happy to go with his plan. He then suggested we do a complete overhaul of the room before installing shelving, including:

– Sanding and re-staining the hardwood floors
– Installing new baseboards
– Painting the walls
– Painting the doors
– Installing a new light fixture
– Installing new door knobs

So, we’ve been at it for a few weeks and we’re finally getting close to finishing! Jimmy has been doing everything himself, and he’s working on making the shelving after work today. I feel incredibly blessed to have a husband that is so capable and knowledgeable about household things. He inspires me because he has never done some of these things before (like sanding and re-staining the floors), yet he just dives in and goes for it. I try my best to help, which usually means painting and staying out of his way.

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The floor mid-sanding

Things have been a little disheveled around the house, which can drive this organization freak nuts. We sold the wardrobe (which paid for the project we’re undertaking-yay!), so we had no where to put our clothes. I’ve had to be creative with finding places to put our clothes and shoes. Needless to say, almost every room in the house is storing some item of clothing. I know it will be worth it all in the end, though! I will make sure to share pictures of the whole process, too.

Along with the closet project, I’ve been pet sitting a lot lately (I think I say that every time I blog, though?). I watched five dogs last weekend, and I have three this week. Love it. Jimmy and I also had my mom, Hannah, her boyfriend (!!!), and his friend over this weekend (at seperate times, if that makes sense?), which was a blast. My mom and I made Christmas wreaths. Yes, it’s probably a bit early, but Christmas is less than two months away now. I can’t wait!

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What have you been up to lately?

Do you get ready for holidays early?