Lately / Favorite Holiday Photos

Now that New Year’s has come and gone, I wanted to post a quick personal update and share some of my favorite holiday photos with you. These range from Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year’s. I love the holiday season because, first of all, I have an obsession with coziness (and what is cozier than Christmas?), and secondly, I love how much time I get to spend with my family.

favorite holiday photos christmas

favorite holiday photos christmas

This year was a little crazy, since it’s Scott and my first year trying to figure out how to see everyone over the holidays, but I think we accomplished it pretty well. A few of our favorite traditions this year were Thanksgiving dinner at my mom’s house, working at the Christmas tree farm with Scott’s family (his uncle owns it), the Christmas game with Scott’s parents, Christmas Eve together, and Christmas breakfast at my mom’s. In case anyone is wondering, the Christmas game is played as follows: you drive around and call out certain kinds of Christmas light decorations (stars, nativities, santas, and the like). Each type of decoration is worth a different number of points, and the person with the most points wins!

favorite holiday photos christmas

 

favorite holiday photos christmas

I also loved being able to capture some reactions to Christmas gifts with a simple tripod and remote setup (whoever wasn’t opening the gift would click the remote to snap a picture) – it worked like a charm and some of the pictures are priceless! (We used this tripod and this remote, if you’re wondering.) We both did pretty well at giving gifts this year, too. My favorite gifts were some hats/headbands (for the cold winter ahead), a Kitchenaid mixer (from Scott’s parents), and an Apple Watch (I’ve been having fun tracking my activity). Scott’s favorite gift was an RC helicopter, which he got a ton of use out of (there was a lot of helicopter flying going on in our apartment). It recently broke, and we spent several hours trying to fix it, to no avail (RIP helicopter).

 

favorite holiday photos christmas

(We attempted to take a picture on new year’s at midnight, and I did not angle the camera well, so we will just pretend it was an artistic decision.) As we move into 2016, Scott and I are very excited to spend our first whole year together as a married couple. We have some exciting things coming up – a new job (hopefully) for me, some traveling, and possibly even a move!

Gift Wrapping Ideas with Kraft Paper

gift wrapping with kraft paper
Christmas is coming up quick, and I know there are plenty of you out there that haven’t even begun to wrap your presents. I remember that almost every year when I was young, my mom would stay up until 2 or 3am (or later) to finish wrapping the gifts (my dad would always make sure we didn’t wake her up too early on Christmas morning!), but once I got older, I loved to help her wrap presents. There’s something about making a nice, neat, perfect-looking gift that is almost as satisfying as unwrapping one. Scott and I don’t have a lot of space or storage in our apartment this year, and we also don’t have a lot of money to spend on all kinds of wrapping paper and bits – enter kraft paper. We bought a huge roll on Amazon and have been using it for EVERYTHING. I love how cohesive it makes the presents look, but I do like to be a little creative with the packages. I’ve come up with some ways to dress up plain old kraft packages so they’ll look special under the tree!

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