"Our Christmas"

Starting the first holiday season we were dating (2006), Jason & I have celebrated "Our Christmas." It started as the weekend day that we exchanged gifts & made a special dinner to celebrate the holiday, before we would each go to our own families for the holiday. It was an excellent tradition to start, and it is one we still continue, even though we spend the actual holiday together now (we spend half of it with my family & half with his...making the exciting trek between Indy & Evansville early on Christmas morning). This past weekend we celebrated "Our Christmas."

First of all--Jason got his main Christmas present from me early...I took him to see "Star Wars in Concert" at Conseco Fieldhouse on 12/12. "Star Wars in Concert" is a live-orchestra playing of a lot of the music from Star Wars, with scenes from the movie flashing in the background.  The music was great--it was great people watching--and we got to see lots of neat props from the movies. 

Apparently the force is not strong with this one...

Ewoks! I want an ewok!...these were behind glass though

A very shiney C3P0...I still can't believe the actor fit inside of this costume...so skinny

This year, "Our Christmas" started with our gift exchange...this would best be demonstrated in photos....

We woke up to a "White Christmas" with a new 1.5 inches of snow...

Our beautiful tree...loaded with presents...

Bentley kept trying to stick his nose into all of the presents as they were being unwrapped...

Jason holding up his Vader ornament--representing his main Christmas present of the concert

The dogs finally realized they weren't getting presents...so started playing with one of their old toys...

So is it cheating that I bought Jason's "stocking stuffers" from our wedding registry? He needed this chisel so he can break into some geodes he found hiking/kayaking awhile back...Here he is breaking into Bentley...

Check out that bedhead...gotta love it...but also gotta love chocolate oranges :-P

I got a grown-up jewelry box for Christmas :-) It's HUGE...and I love it :-)  I've wanted a grown-up jewelry box for a long time--maybe now I'll stop leaving my necklaces/earrings in every room...eh...probably not... :-P

Isn't it beautiful? He did a great job picking it out. 

After our gift exchange we made brunch--and then went to go see Avatar in 3D. We both really enjoyed the movie. Unfortunately, we didn't appropriately plan for how long the movie was going to be...so we ended up having to go get dinner out Saturday night. We made our "Our Christmas" dinner on Sunday night instead. So really, we got to celebrate all weekend long :-). This year I made a fairly simple dinner of a baked ham, country style green beans, cornbread, & individual potatoes au gratin. It all ended up being quite yummy, if I can just brag a little :-P. Jason made a delicious blackberry cobbler for dessert.

Oh...and I guess this is pretty obvious in the photos above...but I now have glasses. I'm planning on wearing contacts about 75% of the time and my glasses the rest of the time...but honestly, enjoy rocking the glasses on occasion. What do you think? :-P... too scary?  Gotta love the eyesight getting bad as I'm getting "old"...

Scary?...yes. :-P

Happy Holidays everyone!!!  I wish everyone safe travels!  ~Amy

A "Big Fail" for my blogging skills...

If I was being graded on my blogging skills-- I would apparently get a big fat "F" for the end of the semester in Blogging 101. I've been wrapped up getting things ready for Christmas, and trying to survive the cold of winter. Is it too early to be wishing for spring? (and especially wishing for the wedding date in spring to be here? :-) ).

Thanksgiving went really well for both sides of our family...we had a great time with family, had a lot of laughs, and had a lot of good food (too much good food in fact). Here's photo evidence-- for some reason YEARS ago my dad started a tradition of having pictures of the meal taken before we can eat. So here is the turkey lunch spread from my side of the family...

Wedding planning has been sporadic--it's kind of at standstill until after the first of the year, then some stuff will kick into high gear. Other than an occasional Goodwill trip for a few decorating things for the reception (yes...I like eclectic reception...what better place to get the reception-site decor than goodwill? :-p). Today we made a big breakthrough decision: instead of my original uber-thrifty idea of making our own cupcakes/cake for the wedding reception--we are going to cave & go with really cute cupcakes & top tier concept from a local bakery, Sugar Mamas. I've had a couple of pieces of cake from here at different events & they were great.

I'll save the details about the cake for another post after we have set everything up [and made sure it's possible]....but the final product will be similar to this, but with totally different bakery products in style, design & color.

I ordered the stand today from Save-on-crafts.com. I can't wait until it gets here so I can start getting hands-on with how the stand will be decorated... I'm really excited that we decided to go ahead & buy the baked goods. This will save us A LOT of stress in the 48 hour time-period before the reception...and I'll be honest...my icing piping skills are reallllly rusty. :-P I think my mom was relieved too.. PLUS---now Jason & I get to go on a cake tasting...how could that possibly be bad?

That's all for now--I have a couple of holiday-themed posts in the works. Hopefully they'll be up by Christmas :-). At this rate though, no promises...
 
I'll leave you with a question though-- what do you think of this as a cake topper? ;-) (joking....maybe...)