Holiday Cheer

Wow! The holidays are truly exhausting. In my mind {Utopia} the holidays are relaxing and stress free and the perfect time to spend with family and reflecting on the real reason for Christmas, Christ's birth. But alas like everyone else I find my self sucked into "holiday season". There are gifts to buy hunt down wrap wrestle with paper and tape, and give bestow. One of my favorite things is finding the perfect gift for someone, something they will use, love like a lot {you shouldn't love things}, and keep forever or use all the time. I talked blogged a little about how I like to make gifts here, and I did some of that this Christmas but lets be honest that's not really practical when your time is at a premium around the holidays.  Man I am good at getting off on tangents, anyway... I will show you what I've been up to the past 2 weeks ...

Well here's the thing, I should have showed you my tree around Thanksgiving when we put it up, but I did't so now that I'm talking about Christmas it seems like a good time.

Traditional Red and Green Glass Ornaments,
with silver, lime and red poinsettas
and some sparkly red feather looking things

Presents under the tree

Between my Kansas trip and Christmas my friend Amanda, came over to work on a gift for her sister-in-law. For some reason people think I am creative or something and that this will rub off on them if they are in a close proximity. This isn't true, but I let them think it so I have an excuse to get out paints, scisors, modge podge, magazines, Dr. Pepper, etc. and play. So we each started with a blank canvas, and Amanda ended with a beautiful tree for a gift, and I (after lots and lots of cutting) ended up with a blank canvas, but made lots of head way toward a cool project.

Mine is on the left and is inspired by this image from Pinterest.
Hopefully soon I will have a Pinned It/Made It post for you with the completed canvas.

My photographer husband was very sick on Christmas so I do not have any pictures, but did have a great day with both of our families while said photographer husband was at home in bed/the bathroom. 

For New Years Eve I got to have lunch and catch up with some wonderful college friends, Liz & Linda. We have all been friends since we lived on the same floor freshman year and are a subset of the larger group that you saw here at Liz's wedding.  She has a nice bronze glow from her recent honeymoon!

Later Jeremy and I went out for dinner downtown with some friends. And although it was hard (because we are lame grown ups) stayed up to toast the New Year at midnight. 

Well here are the ladies that celebrated the New Year together.
{Me, Sara, and Courtney}
For some reason there is no picture of the guys. 

New Year's Day was spent in (Sara's) comfy sweats, doing stuff around the house.  Sara calls this look the Grey Goblin and I really enjoyed it! We did end up having a couple friends over for an impromptu dinner party, which is one of our favorite things to do. 

We also painted our bedroom on the 1st and will finish putting it back together today. We decided to go with the same color {Valspar's Cincinnatian Hotel Nichols Taupe} from our living room and hallway because (1) We love it! (2) It's a great neutral & (3) I may have purchased a giant 5 gallon bucket {which made me feel really cool at the time, like some champion of home remodels} and have had half of it left. I will have an after picture for you soon.  

Hi hansom husband - thanks for posing for a picture for my blog

And then last night, I added names to bags for my Mom's girl scout troop {They are moving up to brownies so their blue daisy bags needed to be replaced. And they are running out of room for patches on the old bags. }...

while I cooked dinner {lemon pepper tilapia, rice, green beans, and salad}, ...

A picture of raw fish is kind of gross and doesn't exactly help you
visualize me cooking, but its the picture I have and blogs are much
better with lots of pictures

set the table {I love really like my colorful fiesta ware and napkins with mismatched silverware}, ...

and wrote most of this blog post. 

Kansas City

I will be heading home in the morning but I wanted to share a few photos from the trip. 

Yesterday at Arthur Bryant's Barbeque - a Kansas City landmark.
With my uncle Brian, my dad, (me)  cousins Mary, Jack and Annie,
 aunt Maggie, and cousin Elle. I love them all.

Then we saw Mission Impossible 4 at the IMAX. 

Dad and me right before Trans-Siberian Orchestra - maybe the weirdest
show I'ver ever seen. If I were to give it a title it would be "Christmas".
I won't get into it, but read here if you want to know what it was like.
Neither of us knew what to expect, but we made the best of it together. 

Updates

Inky (our stray stalker kitty) has been living with Chris, Jeremy's Twin, for more than a month now. Turns out she is a he, and that he loves living inside particularly with Chris.

Several weeks ago we finished our kitchen update, but like a bad blogger I am just now supplying you with pictures.

The light fixture is from Ikea, and the underside of the soffit is navy blue (Valspar - Night Shift). There was some speculation that I had chosen some shade of purple when the paint was still wet, but it is like blueberries the blueberries are blue (the dry color) but the juice (wet paint) looks a little purple. (Up next: painting the cabinets, I only have to convince my husband it will be worth all the work.)

We also hosted an awesome surprise birthday party for Amanda's husband, Patrick. It was way too fun, and I love all of our friends!

Last weekend,  we were able to witness the marriage of my college friend Elizabeth to her high school boyfriend (Michael) Silver. It was a beautiful and light hearted ceremony that suited them both. Elizabeth was is a beautiful bride, inside and out. I was able to play double duty as friend and florist, which was fun for me. When I put up flower pictures for work I will show you too. 

It was like a mini college reunion! It was wonderful to see my Olivet friends and roommates. 

And yesterday I traveled to Kansas City to visit my dad. I flew through O'Hare and got a beautiful view of the city and all its lights at night (I tried to capture it but it doesn't do the view justice).