Christmas in Pictures

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

I'm dreaming...

...of a White Christmas! 

Well, we may not get a white christmas, but December got off to a good start here in Texas with a little snowfall on the morning of December 1st! 

Randall woke me up as he was leaving for work, and I thought something must be wrong but he just wanted to make sure I saw the snow. It was so nice eating my breakfast at the table and watching the flakes come down! It really put me in the Christmas mood. So a few days later we got to work making the house ready for the holidays and decorating the tree. 

Of course we had to watch The Christmas Story as we decked the halls! 

Here it is all done with the presents wrapped. 

I'm a little OCD and have to have all my gift wrap coordinating... 

This year the color scheme is brown/red/cream and is a little on the country side. I love wrapping paper! I think wrapping the presents may be more fun for me than unwrapping them! I know it's crazy. 

Speaking of paper... I also love scrapbook paper, and my mom gave me a big stack of Christmas printed scrapbook paper last year. Since I haven't done much scrapbooking lately (okay more like not any at all!) I decided to use it to make some Christmas decorations. I came up with an idea for a banner that I hung from some of my shelves. It was REALLY easy to do. I just printed letters spelling out PEACE in a font I liked off the computer in a really large size. Then I cute out the letters and traced them on the scrapbook paper and cut them out again. Then I glued them on a square piece of coordinating scrapbook paper, used a hole punch to punch some holes, strung it on some twine and voila! A festive Christmas banner! It looks homemade but that was the look I was going for. You should try it!

November in a Nutshell

Yes I realize that it's December 12. I also realize that I am a MUCH better blog READER than a blog WRITER. It's just more fun to see what other people are up to instead of writing about something you've already done. But I want to have some recollection of my life as it is now so I will do a little recap of November since it came and went so quickly without a word on this blog! I'll warn you now it might be a long one, so just look at the pictures and make up your own fun story to go with them if you don't feel like reading!

So, we had a pretty rough start to the month of November (read with heavy sarcasm). We spent it lying on the beautiful beaches of Cabo San Lucas. I have an awesome job, and as a reward they gave me this wonderful vacation! Needless to say, we were pretty ecstatic! 

To get to the resort you go through a tunnel through a mountain lit with flaming sconces and candelabras and it opens up on the Pacific Ocean. 

Once in the resort the mountain separated us from the rest of the city and gave us an amazing view of the ocean. 

The place we stayed at was sort of a timeshare/condo thing so it was even more fancy and secluded than a normal hotel. Here's our kitchen & living areas:

Both the main balcony and the balcony in our room had infinity pools.

We were forced to eat a huge Mexican breakfast each morning and I even got my first massage from the spa there! I also think I took a nap just about every day - that sun wears you out! 

One day we did manage to ventured away from our little paradise and took a fishing trip. 

We rented a private boat and two men took us out into the pacific to fish for Mahi Mahi and Marlin. I was enjoying the boat for about the first hour and then not so much... Randall caught two Mahi Mahi though so the day was well spent! Too bad I didn't feel like eating fish that evening! 

Our last evening there we decided to go all out and order room service for dessert. We order something called "Tour of Chocolate" yes that's right, the "Tour of Chocolate". It was an amazing assortment of chocolate in all shapes and sizes, souffles, mouses, creme brulees, raw, with coffee, you get the picture. It was fantastic and I only wished that we had gotten it earlier in the week and I could have ordered it every day!

All rested and relaxed, we came home from our sunny vacation to see that fall had arrived while we were gone. The trees on our street were beautiful and our yard looked like this: I loved it! Not so sure about Randall since he was doing the raking.

Then finally Thanksgiving came and since my camera battery died that day this is the only picture of Thanksgiving I have. These are my in-laws.... a little odd looking if you ask me ;)