Christmas recap

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas! Ours was pretty uneventful, we just stayed home and unfortunately my dad was not able to be home with us this year! But we were able to Facetime with him a little while we opened presents which was nice!

So starting a few days before Christmas, my sister and I did a little baking and made some sugar and gingerbread cookies.

In the afternoon on Christmas eve we decorated our cookies! My brother didn't have to work either, so it was fun for the four of us to spend some time decorating. And it's always interesting to see what everyone does!

Top left: my sister Hannah's | Top right: my brother Michael's

Bottom left: My mom's | Bottom right: mine

After decorating cookies I cleaned up the mess and got to fixing dinner. Every Christmas eve we make snacks and finger foods and watch Christmas movies. We are not really into Christmas movies, so Christmas eve is the only time we watch them. We ended up not watching Elf this year, and just watched the Charlie Brown Christmas and Christmas With The Kranks.

Christmas morning we were all very excited to look outside and see snow! It just makes Christmas a little more special when there's snow on the ground! 

We checked out our stockings and then opened presents! We all got some great stuff! We take turns opening presents, which makes it more fun because we all get to see what we got each other and it's so fun seeing their reactions! I got a 50mm camera lens, which I am excited to try out, as well as some Harry Potter stuff (like the Sorcerer's Stone illustrated version) and some other cool stuff! 

 After presents we had cinnamon rolls for breakfast. And yes, they tasted as good as they look! ;)

After breakfast we played with/looked at our presents for a while. My sister got the Lego Dimensions game, so her and I played that for a little while. The game took a little bit to figure out how to play, but it is fun; although the levels are SO long!

The new sweater I got from my brother and the Paris necklace my parents got for me!

Later in the afternoon my mom and I fixed dinner. Since my dad wasn't there, and it was just the four of us, we didn't fix a big dinner. Just a ham and a few sides.

We opened our Christmas crackers before we started eating. It's always fun to wear a paper crown while you eat! ;)

 For dessert we had fudge and nanaimo bars! Nanaimo bars are a must have every Christmas around here! They are so so good!

After dinner we watched some TV, and Hannah and I watched the Doctor Who Christmas special (which we were both disappointed with :( the show has kind of gone downhill the last couple of seasons).

Overall, we had a quiet, but very nice Christmas!

How was your Christmas? Did you give or receive any fun gifts?

Christmas decorations

Since Christmas is only 4 days away (!!!) I thought I would share our Christmas decorations! My mom has a lot of decorations and loves to decorate for Christmas. Our house definitely looks festive and it's sad when we have to take everything down!

There will be no more posts for the rest of the week, so I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Five for Friday

Hello and welcome to my Five for Friday! I am linking up with Cup of Tea , Della Devoted , Bright on a Budget and Coffee With Caitlin!

1. My birthday was earlier this week and my mom bought these pretty flowers for me! Apparently, one of the problems with having a December birthday is the stores only carry Christmas flowers. Oh well, they definitely are pretty though!

And my birthday cake. I baked and frosted it, then my mom decorated it. It was a chocolate cake with an Oreo cream filling which was really good!

2. Hannah and I decorated our gingerbread house earlier this week. We do one every year and we enjoyed decorating this one! Although we had some trouble coming up with ideas on how to decorate it! I think it turned out pretty good though!

3. My brother went to a French bakery yesterday and brought home some treats for us. I have no idea what they actually are, but they sure looked pretty and tasted really good! 

4. I shared a fun DIY project on Monday. You should check it out here!

5.  We bought Star Wars tickets! We're pretty excited! We waited too long and won't get to see it on opening day, but we will get to see the new movie on Monday! We've spent the week rewatching all of the movies so we'll be prepared for Monday! Is anyone else excited to see it?

Have a great week! It's only a week until Christmas!

Harry Potter Happy Christmas garland

So I haven't posted a DIY project in quite a while, and when I stumbled across this tutorial, I knew I had to make it!

While looking through their instructions though, I thought it was crazy that they wanted you to hand write the letters. Yeah. Like that is going to turn out right! And theirs looked tacky because they traced the letters on the wrong side of the paper so you could see all of the pencil lines! So I thought I would make up my own tutorial AND I made you these nifty printable letters using this free font!

This is what you'll need...

-Thick scrapbooking paper (I thought the gold was pretty! But you could really use whatever you like.)
-String
-Scissors
-Mini clothes pins (I bought those at Walmart for just a couple of dollars. They were with the scrapbooking stuff)
-Letters

HAP Printable image link

TIMS Printable image link

CRY Printable image link

Start off by printing out the letters. I'd recommend using cardstock paper because it's thicker and easier to cut out and trace.

I did end up needing the third piece of paper, I didn't realize until after I took this picture that I was short one "S". 

Just make sure when you trace the letters, that they're backwards, because you want the glitter side to have the letters facing the correct way.

Cut out all of your letters.

Then hang them up with the clothes pins! Super simple and fun! 

Five for Friday

It's been a few weeks since I've posted a Five for Friday, but I actually have a few things to post today! I hope you all had a great week! I am linking up with Cup of Tea , Della Devoted , Bright on a Budget and Coffee With Caitlin!

1. My friend came over Wednesday night and we broke out our baking stuff and baked some Christmas treats while watching Star Wars (Episode IV in case you're wondering ;) )

We had so much fun and baked a lot of stuff! Cake pops (which neither of us had made in a long time!) As well as gingerbread men and sugar cookies!

2. So, funny story: about a month ago, I came across a Christmas ornament I had bought when we were in Germany. I remember thinking that I needed to be sure to put it somewhere I would remember, so I would be sure to put it out at Christmas. Fast forward a month and I can't find the darn thing anywhere! I searched my entire room multiple times and could not find it. I was so annoyed considering I distinctly remember thinking when I put it away that I HAD to put it somewhere I would remember, and of course wherever I put it was somewhere I couldn't remember! 

So randomly the other night I remembered another Christmas decoration I had bought wanted to put out, and, behind that, I finally found the ornament! It was just so frustrating but I'm glad I finally found it!

3. Yesterday was a big mail day for me! I received the last of the things I ordered in the mail yesterday; meaning I finally got my Christmas shopping done! All I have left is to wrap them! 

4. It's always a good day when you get new things to read!

 5. We went shopping last week and my mom had some Gap cash to spend. She was almost to the dollar amount but couldn't find anything else to get, so I got a new scarf ;) I'm not really a scarf person, but this one had such pretty colors and is SO soft that I couldn't pass it up! And it does get pretty cold here (it gets down into the single digits here) so a scarf is definitely useful!

Hope you all have a great weekend! Do you have any fun or exciting weekend plans? Let me know in the comments!