Wonderful, Magical Christmas

Dear friends, did you all have a wonderful holiday weekend?  I most certainly did!  

My Christmas day was spent playing Santa, surprising my mom with an IPhone (she's been wanting one forever), watching A Christmas Story, baking pies and making rice krispie treats, and reading one of my gifts from my mom, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children.  I started reading it last night, and made my way to page 66 before I put it down to go to bed.  It's creepy and perfect.

On Saturday night, we all hopped in the car to go look at Christmas lights.  It's been a tradition in my family since I was little to drive around and see all of the lights that people have decorated their homes with.  (I look forward to this every year because I just love Christmas lights!)  This year, however, hardly anyone had lights up! My mom and I were quite disappointed.  Maybe it was just in my tiny part of the world, but it simply didn't seem as festive here in that regard!  But that's perfectly alright, because I made everything festive in my own way. :]

I'm curious...what's your favorite gift that you received this year?!

I hope you all had a wonderful, magical Christmas.

xo, A.

Holiday Happiness

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  I truly cannot believe it's Christmas Eve already.  It seems like I blinked and the past few weeks were completely gone.  I had a somewhat long list of gifts to crochet that I luckily finished just yesterday!

Last night, my mom and I stayed up late to wrap gifts, Sean will be returning from his parents' house later today, and it's so very cold outside...the perfect start to my Christmas weekend, I do believe.

Also, throughout today and tomorrow, I'm running a Christmas special in my shoppe!  Each item is 20% off!  (Just enter the discount code MERRYXMAS20 at checkout!)

Happy Christmas Eve, friends!

xo, A.

Our Magical Holiday.

Goodness, I can't believe how the time has flown lately!  It's already the last day of 2010!
I couldn't be more excited for 2011, but in the meantime, I thought I'd share photos from my holiday.  It was magical!



We took cheesy holiday photos.


Stuffed our stockings full...



Found the cutest ornaments...



And hung them on our very first Christmas tree.


I made some cute wintry pillows...


And decorated with pretty snowflakes...


We unwrapped our presents, started new traditions, and celebrated our very first Christmas together.


❤
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And I would just like to thank you all for being patient with me in my absence.  My lack of posting has been awful (and unfortunately, I've lost a couple of followers. :((( ).  But now that the holidays are over, and work is calming down, I'm working hard to get back on track here.  (Including bringing back 7 Things Sundays! C:)
You guys are the sweetest!
Have a lovely last day of 2010!!!
xxoo, Allie.

Christmas Garland D.I.Y.

Hi, everyone! I'm here with my very first D.I.Y...a fun Christmas garland using ornaments!  Since I didn't initially plan on posting this, I didn't take pictures of each step.  But it's easy, peasy, pumpkin peasy...I promise!

You will need:
Ornaments.  In any color you like!  I found mine at Goodwill...a pack of 15 for $2!
Alphabet Stickers.  I wanted my garland to say 'Merry Christmas', but you could of course choose any phrase or word you like.
Yarn.  Or string, twine, etc...to hang the ornaments on.

1.  Place the letter stickers on the ornaments.  I initially just stuck the stickers on, but I noticed after a while they started to come off, due to the curvature of the ornament.  So I took the stickers off, and using a paint brush, I laid a coat of clear craft glue on the back of each sticker, then put them back on.
2.  Once you've finished the ornaments, starting with the last letter of your phrase or word, run the yarn through the loop at the top, then loop it back around and through again.  This will hold your ornament in place when it's pulled tight, but also allow you to adjust its placement when loose.  Slide your ornament down, and repeat with each ornament until you're done.
3.  Hang your new garland!


Voila!  A pretty new Christmas garland to adorn your already lovely home.  Easy as pie!
If any of you try this, please do send me pictures!  I'd love to see how yours turn out!
Have a lovely night, dearies.
XO, A.