Christmas Season Happenings 2018

This Christmas Season was one of the best in a long time! I did so many fun things to celebrate the season that really helped me get into the Christmas spirit. 

To kick the season off, Beth, Vienne and I participated in Operation Christmas Child. Karin does this every year with her boys and it always sounded like such a fun, simple act of service that goes such a long way, so we decided to join in this year. 

We both filled a shoe box sized container with things for a child in need in another country. There is a list of items needed or wanted on their website to help us out. We had such a fun time at Target picking things out for our boxes. After our boxes were shipped, we got an email saying they were headed to Mexico to brighten a child's day.

When the Burton's arrived in town, the entire family went out to eat and to see the lights at temple square. We ate at Avenues Bistro on Third, The Maison's were the only ones that had eaten there before and they wanted to share it with the rest of the family. We all loved it! Half of our table ordered the bistro burger and it was delectable! This is such a fun, little restaurant with amazing food, I highly recommend it!

While we were downtown we drove past our favorite Christmas house located above the avenues. This guy goes all out every single Christmas, and he just adds more and more as the years go on. He is often out front, by a fire, handing out candy canes to people who come to see his decorations.

Kenzie Leonardson and I had dinner at Thrid and Pine and then headed to Abravanel Hall to hear the Utah Symphony play the soundtrack of the 3rd Harry Potter movie as it played on a giant screen. It was so much fun!

Alyssa was able to get 6 tickets to the First Presidency Devotional and she invited all of card club to go with her. It was a blizzard that night. so all of downtown was covered in a fresh blanket of snow and it looked beautiful.

Even though Bethy's birthday is in November, it took us a while to find a Sunday where the whole family would be there to celebrate her with the traditional Backer's cake, so we celebrated it in December. We got a Christmas themed cake, which we hadn't ever had before since we don't have any December birthdays. It was so adorable covered in Poinsettias, Christmas ornaments and dusted with snow.

I love wrapping gifts, I find it so fun and so rewarding. I always watch christmas movies while I wrap, and the kitties are always eager to "help" by sitting on the wrapping paper and chewing on the tape dispenser.

The entire family attended Nora and Evie's orchestra's Christmas concert. They both did an amazing job.

After the concert, Beth, Vienne and I went on a search for an epic Christmas house Bethy had heard about. We didn't ever find it, but we found this incredible Christmas display instead. The unicorn and panda were some of our favorite parts.

While this isn't super Christmas related, I spent a lot of time with this little cutie during the Christmas season. I picked up Winston as a client at the very beginning of December, he was 12 weeks old and his owner had just barely brought him home. I got to send an hour cuddling this sweet pup for an hour 2 times a day as he was crate training and needed to be let out every 3 hours. He was obsessed with his purple stuffed duck and would often fall asleep on my lap during my visits.

I had Winston as a client all the way until he was full grown. It's so adorable and tender to see pictures of him when he was so young and little.

Our ward had a temple night together at the Salt Lake Temple, and then we all went to see the lights together afterward. I did baptisms then took my time getting ready and met up with everyone else after their session.

I LIVED in these fleece pajamas I got from Walmart all season long. They are the softest, coziest pair of pajamas I have ever owned. I could not wait to put them on whenever I got home. I went threw withdrawals when I would wash them.

Jess and I had a cookie bake night, were we baked all different kinds of cookies then put together plates to deliver to our friends and neighbors! They turned out so cute!

Card club had a favorite things gift exchange before our last game in December. This is the gift I put together. We had a price limit of $20. This gift has layers of some of my favorite things. First, I love to curate a gift with several different elements, I have a hard time just giving a gift of one item, I like to include lots of different things, I think it makes it more fun. Second, the items themselves:

Pacifica face masks - I love pampering myself with a face mask and I love Pacifica's packaging.

A set of cat themed playing cards - a combination of 2 of my favorite things, cats and card games

Stoopwafels - One of my all time favorite European treats, plus I love anything in an adorable tin

Ginger hand cream - This is from Trader joes, I love that store, I love ginger anything, and I love a good hand cream.

The gift I got was from Alyssa and was a jade face massager, I had been wanting one of those so bad! and a couple of packages of under eye masks, which are always good to have on hand.

Kenzie came over one night and we made a batch of gingerbread cookies while drinking ginger beer, we really embraced the ginger theme. We tried out these fun decorated rollers from my mom. It was a little bit of a learning curve to get the pattern to show up on the cookies, but by the end of the night, we were pros.

We discovered that if you smudged a little powdered sugar on them, the pattern showed up a lot better, and gave the cookies a somewhat frosted look!

I got to make two gingerbread houses this year, at two separate parties. I decorated a regular gingerbread house at one party and then decorated a gingerbread dog house at the other which was a fun little switch up from the norm.

I loved how both of them turned out!

Some of my pet sits were Christmasy as well, it was fun seeing how all my clients decorated for the holidays. My favorite was Sister and Skipper's house, their dad's had 5 Christmas trees throughout the house, each one decorated with a different theme!

Bear and Blu's parents had bought them these adorable sweaters with fur and little reindeer antlers on the hood. I couldn't resist putting them on for some pictures in the snow.

Bear didn't seem to mind his, but Blu was not a fan.

I thought it would be fun to leave a little holiday gift for all my clients that booked during December. I designed holiday cards and got Martinelli's to leave at each of their houses on my last visit. For my doggie clients, I left them Christmas tree cookies from Ma & Paws bakery in American Fork.

A couple of may clients also got me a Christmas gift, which I wasn't expecting and was so excited about! Sister and Skipper's Dad sent these adorable itty bitty cupcakes to my house from a bakery in New York!

Chelsie hosted our annual high school friend Christmas dinner at her new house! Her home is gorgeous and she cooked us a delicious meal of clam chowder with home made strawberry shortcakes for dessert. The 7 of us always have a great time when we get together.

Such a fun Christmas season filled with service, friends, family and happy memories.