A Holly Jolly Christmas (and Christmas Party!)

As you may have noticed, I've slacked on the blog, but for once it's not because of lack of anything exciting to write about--there was too much excitement to write! Let's go in chronological order, shall we?

December 15th (aprox. 9 months after moving in) was our 1st Annual Holiday Brunch/House Warming Party. It was a hit! I've never had a child friendly party before, but I will say it went quite well. And because I couldn't let my Pinterest inspired decor outshine the food, I made some delicious holiday themed Pinterest inspired goodies...

Cheese Ball Snowman

Doughnut Snowmen

Their fruit roll up scarves are keeping them warm! ;)

Brownie Christmas Trees

Melted Snowman Cookies

Oh No!

The spread minus the pancakes and baked french toast

Cinnamon Roll Wreath

The food was fabulous, and because this was a brunch of course there were mimosas! Yum! We had a blast, and were pleasantly surprised by 30+ guests. The kids made edible Christmas trees on the patio, and played in the yard (with a ball that a neighbor kicked over our fence, that we decided to wait to return until after the party ;) ). The adults ate, drank, got house tours, and were merry!!

We truly had a blast!

For Christmas, we did our usual tour of Florida. First stop was Derek's Grandma Joyce's house where his sister, Monica, and brother-in-law, Larry met up with us.

Lucy enjoyed her presents until she could no longer stay awake!

Lucy was, as always, the fashionista of Christmas!

PRESENTS!!!!!!

It was at Joyce's house that Derek received his big present from Monica, Larry, Jacquee, my parents, Kyle, and myself...

Yeah baby! Derek got a riding lawn mower for Christmas (and this gorgeous construction paper picture)!!! He is super excited! He will no longer have to spend an ENTIRE day mowing the lawn on our 1/4 acre lot!

After two days in Port St. Sleepy, we headed south to see my family, and Derek's brother Kyle. As always, we stayed with the ever gracious Cassie and Justin (whom for whatever reason we didn't take a picture with this year...schucks!)

It was good times, but after 4 days away from home, we were ready to head back.

This weekend we undecorated the house. It was a little sad. The house felt so cheery with all our snazzy decorations up. I did, however, find a way to repurpose the hurricane jars that housed some of our holiday decor...

Before

After

This weekend I also worked on a little HUGE project... our office/first grade classroom/junk room/unpacked box storage facility/tornado disaster area...

...yeah. It was embarrassing. My first task was to figure out storage, and because I am dimensionally handicapped, I had to be clever to "see" how big the various shelving units I was looking into were...

I decided to get two of these...

And I had Derek put them together (and he thought he had the day off! HA! He just had a hotter boss!)...

With the added storage, the office is nearly complete...

And once the drywall is repaired from the plumbing (you know, the plumbing that was finished in July), and the shelves are hung in the closet, the floor will be completely free of clutter, and the desk (which is currently in one of our guest rooms) will be able to go into the office.

2012 was quite an adventure for us, and we have big dreams for 2013, but in the immediate future, our eyes are on tonight's deserts!

Slutty Brownies: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Oreos, and Brownie Mix baked to prefection

Cookie Dough Dip

Happy New Year! Stay tuned for more adventures in 2013!

A Very Pinspired Christmas!

As you already know, I've been very excited about decorating for Christmas this year, but, while I'm quite crafty, I don't have much in the ideas department. And then Pinterest entered my life. So with the help of Pinterest I've got our halls fully decked, and today I'm going to take a break from my usual complaining about the lack of things that have been done to do a little bragging/showing off.

This was my first craft, and if I do say so myself, I blew my Pinspiration out of the water!

Left- Pinspiration, Right- mine!

It was so easy and cheap! I just used foam sheets, which I got at Michaels for 89 cents a sheet, and magnets with sticky backs, and POOF! Instant Christmas in the kitchen!


My next craft took a little bit more time, but it was also a cheap way to jazz up our kitchen. Just 4 spools of 99 cent Christmas ribbon from Joann's, plain computer paper, and left over glittery white foam from my snowman refrigerator's scarf...

Above- Pinspiration, Below- my take on it.

The best part (although I'm sure you can't see it in this pic) are the tree trunks. A while ago as a joke, I got Derek a pad of paper that had wood grain printed on it, and it ended up being perfect for the tree trunks!

Now we all know I can't fully get into any holiday's spirit without themed toes, and Pinterest was able to help me there too! And yes, that's thread on my toes!!!

Top Left- Pinspiration, Others- Me

 Quick note on that one, it's not as easy as it looks. I will NEVER do these again even though they're super cute.

This inspiration came from Target. I saw this Holiday Card Garland, and thought, "I can do that cheaper and waaaaay better!" Well I was wrong on the cheaper (although Target's was cheaper looking), but not by much, and now we have a super cute way to use our Christmas cards as decorations. PS- Where is your card? Did you get my new address?

Top Left- inspiration from Target, Others- Mine

This next one took some help from my co-workers, and my husband because I'm lactose intolerant!

Top Left- Pinspiration (which I actually found in an Oriental  Trading catalog long before I saw it on Pinterest, Others-US!

I saw this and just KNEW I had to do it, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to somehow make it into Derek, Lucy and I. So, I sent out an SOS via school email for milk jugs, and got them in no time, then Derek crafted some snazzy arms for us and legs for Lucy out of wood. They're probably my fav decoration!

Thanksgiving morning was busy! I was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and stringing ornaments together with wire, while Derek was drilling holes into  the bottoms of the rest of my required ornaments!

Left- Pinspiration, Right- Mine

I absolutely LOVE this! Such a pretty way to decorate the window above our front door, and it can be seen from the inside and outside making it a 2-for-1 special!

Thanksgiving morning I also spent some time cleaning up what looked like a crime scene for the murder of a fairy (our sidewalk by the front door, and the grass all around it is STILL glittery btw).

Top Left- Pinspiration, Others- Mine

Originally I was going to try and stripe the big ones like a candy cane... but that didn't work out so well. Either way, I love that these add a little sparkle to the kitchen and really draw your eyes up. They were also super cheap: $2 foam 'trees' from Old Time Pottery and $3 each for the extra fine (translation: extra able to get onto every surface within a square mile) glitter at Michaels.

I had some ornaments left after making my arch decoration, so I decorated the passway between the kitchen and the dining room...

Top- Pinspiration (although I didn't use the rolls, Bottom- Mine

With the ORC Christmas party closely after Thanksgiving, I needed to come up with something creative for the white elephant gift exchange...

Left- Pinspiration, Right- mine (well, was mine until I gave it away)

Mine definately isn't as fancy, but it was still a hit! It ended up being won by one of our Japanese guests who snagged it from Amy...

 I also had to bake something festive for the party, so I made these cute reindeer cookies

Top- Pinspiration, Bottom- Mine nom nom nom

These were super easy and super delish. Derek doesn't like peanut butter cookies (I know, I'm embarrassed to say that), so I made some peanut butter (they're buried), and the rest as sugar cookies.

My next was by far my cheapest... unless you count time and labor as $$, in which case it cost a fortune!

Top Left- Pinspiration, Others- mine, although the pictures do them no justice

These snowflakes are quite fancy, and who knew fancy snowflakes were so complicated. I just figured fold a piece of paper up and cut, right?!? Wrong! There was a crazy 7 step folding process, and templates to make these bad boys, but the effect is well worth it!

Derek did his part this holiday season too, and our house finally got lit...

The Christmas tree is even up, and has presents ready for the giving!

The best project of this season, though, had no inspiration at all. Just a desire to somehow, without the time or the money to rip it out, make this pretty for Christmas...

(That's our realtor Erica btw) :)

So how do you make a hideous and useless built in entertainment system pretty you ask? With some bulletin board paper, some paint, some tissue paper, and some fire wood. Yup I said fire wood...

Yup, I turned it into a fireplace, and we like it so much, it just may stay that way for a while.

Let's Get Lit

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at our usual spot, Brodie and Sara's House. It's a great way to enjoy a delicious meal without the family drama...

But my favorite part of Thanksgiving always is, and always will be the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade...

The grand conclusion of the parade is Santa, and I've always said that the Christmas season officially starts when Santa's sleigh reaches Macy's at the Thanksgiving Day Parade. This year I am especially excited about Christmas, and I have been since early October (strange I know). It must have something to do with the new house, but I'm going all out.

Every year our tradition is to spend Black Friday decking the halls, and this Black Friday was no different. Unfortunately, no Goodfriend home project (even decorative ones) can get done without something that is in need of fixing rearing it's ugly head. This time it was the gutters....

When Derek got on the ladder to hang our icicle lights, he discovered that there was standing water in the gutters... no bueno. So most of the day was spent fixing them. But alas, the time came to hang our icicles! I was very excited. The ones we had from our last place had gotten quite old, and sections would frequently shut off, so we tossed them and got new ones this year. We decided to upgrade and get twinkling icicles because they add a little extra flair. So we headed over to Lowes and picked them up. But that's when the trouble began. Derek hung the first set while I opened all the boxes, untwisted the twist ties, and stretched out the remaining packages. When he was ready for set 2, he realized that the icicles we bought don't connect end-to-end. For rizzle?!? I mean you know that the perfectly lit mansion on the box wasn't lit with one set. And no one in their right mind (especially someone who can afford to have their lights done for them since their house is so big) would run extension cords to every single strand. That's just insane! So we boxed them back up, which was quite a task...

Seriously, it is humanly impossible to put those things back in their boxes without the boxes looking like they're going to bust. Fortunately Lowes took them back despite my not-so-perfect repackaging, and we bought a second set at Big Lots. These ones were slightly more expensive, but we decided that the twinkle effect was totally worth it, so we got them. This time Derek played it smart, and plugged in a set before he even undid the twist ties, and it's a good thing too because that set got returned as well. The box said "Twinkling," but I think the person who wrote that description needs a dictionary.

from www.dictionary.com

I think the person got the word twinkle mixed up with the word flashing because those icicles were practically strobe lights. It was obnoxious, and I'm pretty sure if someone prone to seizures drove down our street we would have ended up with a car parked in our living room. So set number 2 got returned.

Meanwhile, Sunday I had my favorite half marathon, the Space Coast Half...

But no matter how tired I was, I was determined to get our lights up this weekend, so when we got back, we began the hunt once again. For set number 3 we decided to scour the internet to see if we could get a preview of what our local stores carry. Home Depot didn't have any twinkling icicles. Lowes, however, did, and their online site provided a lot of information including whether or not the lights connect end-to-end, and if they are constant, twinkling or strobing (which none of them were because again, that's obnoxious). I found ones that twinkle, connect end-to-end, and were the desired length and price range. They even had them in stock at our local store, and would be available for pick up within 20 minutes. I was sold! We placed the order and headed over to Lowes, and I almost died when I saw what they set aside for me. THE EXACT SAME ONES I STUFFED BACK IN THE BOXES AND RETURNED!!!!!! Are you kidding me?!?!? Here is how the conversation with the sales lady went:
Me: "Those don't connect end-to-end, and the ones I ordered do. Can you check the item number to make sure they're the right ones?"

Lady: (looks puzzled) "Huh? How do you know they don't connect end-to-end? I checked and the item number is the same, and online it says they connect end-to-end."

Me: "Listen, this isn't my first rodeo. If you check out those boxes, you'll see that they've clearly been opened and poorly restuffed back in their boxes... by me... 2 days ago. Feel free to take them out and check for yourself. It's not like you have to worry about restuffing them nicely. I didn't... 2 days ago when I stuffed those exact same boxes."

Lady: (again looks puzzled, she did the whole time in fact) "But online--"

Me: "Check."

Lady: (Opens the box and sees that they don't connect end-to-end. Checks the item number in the computer and on the box... 3 times. Reads and rereads the description online... 3 times. Attempts to shove the lights back into the box.) "I guess you're right. Sorry about that, the description online must be wrong. I just don't get it. It's never wrong..."

This is just plain ridiculous.

On to set 4! Last night I resumed my internet searches, and found that Target had sets of 300 count twinkling lights in stock at the Sanford Target. I figured this would be easy because there's a Big Lots next door (where I needed to return set #2), and its close to work. So after work today I went in, and no dice. There was a huge hole next to the 300 count non-twinkling icicles, so I figured they ran out since I checked last night. Fortunately when I checked (anticipating more ridiculousness), I made sure to check Oviedo too, and they had some in stock as well. So on my way home I stopped in the Oviedo Target, and again didn't see any. FML. They had them in the 150 count, but that would mean I would need 10 strands, and that seems a little ridiculous. This time the Christmas section was littered with employees busily stocking the shelves, so I decided to ask one if they had any twinkling 300ct icicle lights. She went to the large gaping hole next to the 300 count non-twinkling lights and looked. Then she scanned the SKU on the shelf and found out that that SKU was for net lights. She searched the Target computers, and said that they never had any in stock. She then searched online, and wouldn't you know their website had a mistake too. At this point I could do nothing but laugh, thank her for her efforts and walk away.

Time for Plan B. When looking through the decorations, I discovered that last year I must have bought some new icicles on clearance because I had 3 boxes. They don't twinkle, but at least they're icicles, and we can buy more non-twinkling icicles easily (I hope). So I got home and took out the boxes....

Sigh. Two boxes with green wire (why ICEicles even have green wire is beyond me), and one with white wire.

So alas, it's 4 days into the Christmas season, and the woman with the most Christmas in her heart STILL doesn't have Christmas hanging from her roof. At least I found an alternative form of Christmas cheer...