Christmas: A Retrospective

No matter how much you plan the holidays kick down the door and then float on leaving dirty dishes, full bellies, happy/ tired kids, and full hearts. We enjoyed the day with family at our home, complete with a beautiful meal and lots of warm memories.

Here I sit with a cup of ginger tea relaxing reflecting:

The Gifts that keep on giving:

A Bay Wreath

Not only does it have awesome meaning, due to our Bay, but it was so pretty when it first arrived I actually shed a tear. A wonderful aroma has filled our house. Once the wreath dries completely you can harvest the bay leaves for soup! That is enough for a lifetime's supply of soup. I think we shall be giving this gift next year to a few friends. Wondering if I can find some large Bay trees... 

Homemade Soda Pop

As I have mentioned we usually do a handmade gift each year. This year, soda!  This could be good for any favor from a party to a wedding. Creamy Rootbeer and Fresh Ginger Beer. Big hit! Don't forget the custom label. 

Easy Year Round Decor: 

Twigs and Ornaments

This was a big hit at our house. Twigs with little Scandinavian straw ornaments! I love this for every occasion. Bats for Halloween, Stars for New Years, hearts for Valentine's Day. 

Toddler Art

Toddler art is never in short supply at our house. Giraffe brings home at least 5 pieces of art a week. We even gave some away with gifts this year.

Ok, only at Christmas: You can Never Have Too Many Trees:

This year there were 4 in our house. Here are the big two. The others were smaller, one in Giraffe's room ( I highly recommend this! Just be sure to secure outlets with covers etc. and use unbreakable ornaments) and one in the window. For Giraffe's tree ( not pictured) we opted for paper snowman gift toppers. He LOVED that tree.  Think about theme trees, one year we did a kitchen tree complete with spoons and small teacups we found at the thrift store. Don't want to put away the tree after New Years? One year we did a Valentine's tree!

Foodie

This year we really wanted to take a trip someplace warm. Lack of funds and the baby not having a passport didn't help so- we decided to have bring Mexico to us! Our Christmas menu was complete with Tequila Sunrises, Chili, Tortilla chips, fresh avocado, cheese, grilled shrimp and chicken.  Everyone loved the meal and complemented on how it was unexpected but yummy.

It's been a lovely holiday.  I hope to blog more as one of my many many NYresolutions because I missed most of the big holidays when I should have been blogging.  What would you like to see on this blog ? Reviews? Tutorials ? Enlighten me. 

 Happy Christmas to you and yours. I hope you had a wonderful day !