And So It Begins...

Christmas comes early for me every year!

No I don't mean that it sneaks up on me and I'm not ready for it (though that happens too) but that Christmas actually Comes Early. Because all of our extended family is in Brooklyn NY, every year, since I was born, that is where I have spent Christmas Eve & Christmas Day.
This year is no different.
So in order avoid carting all of our gifts to each other all the way down to NY, (in a vehicle that would surely not be able to handle the added load) just to bring it all back to MA with us after the holiday, we exchange gives Cape-side a week before that actual day.

This has been the definition of Christmas for me for my whole life and I've really come to love it. But you know what that means... I've already had one Christmas!

My Man and I exchanged our gifts to each other last Friday, I made a scrumptious dinner from my new Rachel Ray cookbook, that was given to me last weekend by a lovely lady, we played with our New Xbox Kinects games, and had a wonderful evening.

Saturday morning brought a little bit of unexpected Christmas when we found out that on our way to the Cape we'd be able to pick up my Man's truck, which had sadly been out of commission since the weekend before Thanksgiving!

Once we had both vehicles again, we started our Santa Delivery route to Family and Friends along the way to my folks'.

Mr. Man's grandparents were enthralled with the yarn wrapped frame I made for them with a picture of all of us from the Engagement Party already installed.

After our Santa sleigh route we continued on to the Folks' place where we spent all of Saturday afternoon baking and cooking and anticipating the morning's gift-opening extravaganza!

Way back a couple months ago I mentioned an art project that I created inspired through Pinterest. Well, since Christmas came early for me and my family, the Christmas reveal can come early for you as well.
Inspired from here I put my own spin on a very creative wall hanging. And as my brother pointed out, "uh... You missed one!" However, in that little empty spot is a lowercase rubber stamped "f" to represent our last name. (though my name will be changing next year, so it kind of adds to the specialness of it.)

My Mom was thrilled with the crafty gift (she says it's about time, almost 26 years later and her craftiness has finally rubbed off) and I'm sure I will play "find the wall hanging" next time I'm at the house.

Well, that was phase one of Christmas, and there's much more to come. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with your families and friends.
Merry Christmas!

Weekend Chronology

Life is short! I try very hard to live my life one day at a time and not wish the weeks away by just looking forward to the Friday each week...
...but how can you not wish for the weekends when they are this much fun!?!?

This weekend began with some family fun belatedly using My Man and My Dad's combined Groupon Birthday gifts from September. We went to F1 Boston Race tracks and sped our way around this winding track for 18 laps! (Mom played photographer from the Pit area.)

Those 18 laps went quick, but we had a great time.
[and yes, that's me in the kiddie size suit, so I didn't get the cool black highlights.]

Then we migrated about 1 mile to the left where a new Dave & Busters location has just opened in Braintree. We ate dinner and then partook in some wonderful arcade games of course. Mom managed to solve many-a Wheel of Fortune puzzle and earned us 1900 tickets to purchase crap with :) It was a very successful evening.

The next night was filled with friends and the first Christmas Gift exchanges of the season. We hosted a small party and had a great time drinking wine and toasting to the holiday season.

And the weekend isn't over yet!

Sunday my Man's dad came for an impromptu visit, and brought along his gift to the two of us... Xbox Kinect! We spent the rest of the afternoon moving the furniture out of the living room and playing games. It wasn't exactly a relaxing finish to the weekend, but it was definitely worth every ounce of energy.

Thanks to everyone who was a part of our weekend, it was a great one.

Next weekend is sure to be a "Friday Wisher" too. Having my man working local and home each night should help me enjoy the Monday through Friday more than usual though :)

Christmas is Coming

This weekend was the beginning of true Christmas for me. Yes the shopping had started before this, and many radio stations are already Decking the Halls with holiday tunes, but this weekend...I put up my Christmas tree!

My Man was home and went with me to pick one out, we tied it to the roof of my mom's car, held onto it through the sunroof (oops, mom I wasn't going to tell you that part, lol) and brought it home.

With ornaments that I've bought the past few years for my Christmas trees in apartments and here in the Condo, along with those that mom & dad bought for me for each year of my life, this year's Christmas tree was born.

I do love the happiness that Christmas decorations bring to life when they're in our living room.

(And yes those are already wrapped gifts under the tree, don't hate the prepared!)

It's a Party!

I cannot express enough how grateful I am to be surrounded by all the people who came out last weekend to celebrate our engagement with us. It was so amazing to be surrounded by my wedding girls. All of us together for the first time made the experience and excitement even more wonderful and real.

The man and I got all dressed up and had big smiles and thanks for mom after her heartfelt and warm speech that wished us happiness and much friendship in our lives.

My "little" bro is such a special guy, and he put that smile on my face just by being himself. I'm lucky to have him.

Surrounded by love, it was very easy to have a great time.

Thank you to everyone who came out in support of my Man and My new life together. Our lives just wouldn't be as awesome as it is without you all being part of it.

Thank You

There is so much to be Thankful for this Thanksgiving!!

The first of course is Bry and my engagement and the process of a life together that we have started.
Second is the family and friends that have surrounded us with love and support since the very beginning.

Wednesday began with a drive to the Cape and lots of cooking in preparation of Thursday's festivities. Gram and I took some quiet time to work on an awesomely random wordsearch book.

Wednesday night a surprise visit from sone great friends topped off the night with quite the night-cap. Chris and I hadn't seen each other in over a year, so catching up was quite nice.

(And no, the Man and I didn't coordinate our outfits on purpose, it was entirely accidental)

The family all together for Thanksgiving plus nice enough weather to allow us outside without too much shivering equals a full family photo with smiles, and soon to be very full bellies!

After our outdoor photoshoot, our annual Thanksgiving guests arrived to join in the rest of the festivities, including of course a 32 pound Turkey which put us into the livingroom and down for the night rather quickly.

It was a wonderul day overall, and I'm very thankful for each and every moment of it.

Engagement

In honor of our engagement party tonight I'd like to share some photos of the happiest day in my life thusfar.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Here are a couple shots from our Thanksgiving Celebration last year...Stay tuned for images of the hilarity that I'm sure is ensuing as you're reading this :)

Right now, on this very Thanksgiving day, in my Parents' house, we are 18 adults, 2 children, 1 16 month old, and 1 bull dog!

Good Times!!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope your day is filled with Family, Friends, and Many Thanks.

Busy Weeks

I know I know, I went MIA again. I'm sorry. You'd think I like, have other things going on in my life or something...? ;)

Well, since I last posted I have done a bit more than cover 20 more bottles of different shapes & sizes with yarn of various colors & patterns and successfully find places and uses for them all around my house.

In addition to many crafty projects and money spent at A.C. Moore, there have been a few wedding milestones achieved. I am very lucky to personally know the woman who is going to be putting together my floral arrangements for the wedding, and this week I decided on the designs and put in the order. The idea that I am a bride who's going to walk down an aisle with a bouquet has got me a little giddy, I'm not gonna lie!

The biggest event that has happened since my last post occurred on a Saturday morning, alongside some of my favorite people, in a dressing room down the street from my house...
We found a Bridesmaid Dress!!!!

For obvious reasons we will not be disclosing the details of the dress before the wedding, but I can tell you that it was a very fun, easy, and amusing experience to have all of my ladies together for the first time trying on beautiful dresses, and some ridiculous ones too. (My mom of course took this photo for us, so photo-shop her into this picture in your mind!)

The dress is fun and happy, these girls are gonna Rock It, and I can't wait!

I have been seriously looking forward to this coming week for a while now. Everyone loves the holidays, and (though the retail world would argue that Halloween starts it) I believe that Thanksgiving is the true start of this happiest time of year.
Along with the start of the holidays, my Man and I are also fortunate enough to be having a small Engagement gathering this coming Saturday that I am excited to share with a few close family friends.

I hope everyone reading this has family-filled and happy holiday plans for this week. And I promise to be back soon with Thanksgiving and Party recaps.

Pinterest!!

I'm addicted!

I'm new to the site, but I'm totally addicted to all of the fun crafts and ideas on here. So many different People coming together to share inspiration and ideas. I admit that I'm not fully versed in how all the different areas of inspiration work, I stick mostly to the Crafty areas, but I'm loving it just for that. Check it out here and you'll be addicted soon too!

I was introduced to Pinterest through a famous blogger that I stumbled across one day and have been glad to jump on their bandwagon. Sherry & John have certainly given me inspiration in many ways, if not just in the way that they are able to work together on all of these projects and raise their little girl together.

This week Sherry and a few fellow bloggers launched a Challenge to their readers to pick something that they "pinned" on Pinterest and re-create it in their own ways. They called it their:

They also did a summer edition a few months ago but I was a Pinterest virgin at that point and did not understand that this was AWESOME!

So this time around I joined in. My main project I actually can't share because it's sort of planned as a Christmas Gift for a certain very crafty person I happen to know will read this post, but I will definitely share project #2. This inspiration came from here, and had my attention right away. It's so simple, yet can have any variation to fit your personal style.

I started at the neck of each bottle using the slant of the bottle to help keep the yarn tight together, and then was sure to tack the yarn with hot glue at regular intervals so that the yarn wouldn't be able to shift and bunch leaving parts of the bottle exposed.

Here is my version below. They are currently sitting on the window ledge between my Kitchen and Dining room. I'm seriously hoping that this decoration keeps me from piling all of my junk on this ledge on a daily basis.

Here's a closer version of the Mason Jar option.

As you can tell, the bottom was a little difficult because the slant was downward, enticing my yarn to separate from the strand above it. This was the first bottle I did though, so I wasn't too hard on myself :)

Have you done any fun craft projects inspired by a picture you saw online recently?