It was my first Christmas as a Chaney!



I'm a big fan of the Christmas season - I don't think I go overboard but I love just about all of it. It starts with the radio station that switches to all Christmas songs right before Thanksgiving. You just can't be in a bad mood while listening to a Mariah Carey chart topper. Perfect for listening during my commute to and from work. Then, it's the decorations, upstairs, downstairs, and outside. Nothing over the top but I would feel remiss if I didn't have holiday decorations up. After that, wrapping gifts, looking at lights, and general merriment round out my December.

Somehow I married a man that's more Grinch than Buddy the Elf.  It just isn't his thing. Nor is celebrating his birthday. Such opposites I tell you!

But being that it's our first Christmas as a married couple, we wanted to try and make it feel more special. So we decided to host our families for our first ever Christmas dinner.

I was a little nervous. While I love to plan and prepare for events, the stress is inevitable. Have you seen the YouTube video called, "Company is Coming"?


While I'm not quite on that level, we kept joking through our preparations so we (I) didn't lose my cool.

We even had time to take advantage of the amazing December weather (before the rain and floods) and walk Candy Cane Lane.

Candy Cane Lane is just a couple of blocks from our house. It's a pretty big deal in St. Louis - the houses on a couple of blocks of one street all work together to create a light display for people to visit. The Mr. Potato Head was in our friend's yard.

Christmas eve was spent at my parent's house. My mom always plans an appetizer bar that never disappoints. We also do a secret santa gift exchange. My cousin got a selfie stick as a joke but it turned out to be pretty useful.




Christmas morning was pretty low key. We slept in and I made Pioneer Woman cinnamon rolls. I halved the recipe and made the dough the day before, otherwise there wouldn't have been enough time for them to rise before hanger set in. My first baking project from scratch. NBD.

Side note: We got a new oven! It was one of the first wedding gifts we purchased for ourselves and we love it. It is great being able to cook again!



We opened presents in front of the tree. I got Chris a new winter coat - not really a useful present yet considering that most of December has been around the 50-60 degree mark. Hoping that winter shows up sometime soon. Chris got me a new sweater and a new Blues hat. I've already worn both and love them!



The rest of the day was spent preparing for dinner. It is a Christmas tradition from Chris's side of the family to feast on lasagna on Christmas day. So I learned to make lasagna from Chris's stepdad, Gary. While lasagna can easily be thrown together, Gary makes his own sauce and came over to show me the way. I'm always amazed by people who can cook without following a recipe (I'm getting better at it the more I cook). We would add spices to the sauce, let it simmer, and then taste every couple of minutes or so until we we're happy with it.


It was heavenly. The cheese was so gooey and the sauce had just the right amount of basil and oregano. I'm going to make more this week for my friend who just had a baby. Hopefully her family will love it just as much as we did.

We ate, we drank, and opened more presents.


We were pretty exhausted after everyone left. It was definitely tiring hosting a gathering but I'm so glad that we did it.

How was your Christmas? Did you host your own celebration or did you travel over the river and through the woods? What traditions does your family have? Would love to hear about them in the comments!

Christmas has come and gone and in it's wake a trail of ugly sweaters and fabulous presents to play with on winter break.

Chris and I spent Christmas eve at my parent's house donning our finest Christmas apparel sourced from Goodwill only hours before. Chris won the title of "Most Authentic". What can I say? The man loves a good theme party. Just wait for new year's eve....it's 90s themed.


We look good.

Santa was very good to me this year.  Either my family knows me incredibly well  or I'm really good at dropping hints. I'm thinking it's the latter.
It was the year of scarves for me - even though only one is pictured I received 5 - I will be quite stylish when I return to school this week. I was most surprised by the Silhouette Cameo. I usually have a pretty good idea of what to expect for Christmas and it wasn't even on my radar. It is amazing!

So far I have used my Clarisonic Mia everyday since Christmas and I'm in love! My skin feels so smooth and I swear it looks better. It probably helps that I haven't worn makeup in a few days too.

Chris outfitted me with a beautiful new purse and an Under Armour hoodie. It is unbelievably warm.

I have firm no makeup policy on Christmas day.

Christmas day was spent eating our way from house to house - breakfast and mimosas at my parents and lasagna for dinner at Chris's parents. We were exhausted and stuffed by the time we got home.

Unfortunately, Chris came down with an awful flu that kept him on the couch from Thursday to Sunday. Such a rotten way to spend a vacation...sick on the couch. Hopefully we will be able to get out of the house and have some fun before I head back to work on Thursday.

Eww...work.

I hope your weekend/Christmas was swell! I'm off to get my house back to normal. There's just something about the week after Christmas that makes me want to hyper organize everything. You can find me shopping for some storage bins and rocking out with my label maker the rest of the week!

I have a confession.

I've lived in my house for two and half years and up until Friday my beautiful basement built-ins (one of the reasons why I loved this house) looked like this:


Empty! For over two years. Unbelievable.

When it came time to picking items to put there or even thinking about what they should like, I was just overwhelmed. It was too blank of a canvas.

But as Chris and I prepare to host a couple of holiday gatherings we decided that built-ins could be bare no more. So over Thanksgiving break, I did my best to fill those shelves with Christmas cheer.


Taking a tip from Young House Love, I lined the back of the shelves with some burlap looking wrapping paper for a temporary change. And then just started putting things up there and tinkering with them until I liked their placement.

How I wish I already owned most of the items but there was a little cost associated with this decorating adventure. Thankfully Hobby Lobby, Michaels, and Pier 1 all had great sales and coupons. I also shopped Goodwill and tried to get creative with things I already had - like the green "present" on the top left shelf are just my high school yearbooks wrapped in pretty paper.

Now that the basement is decorated we are officially ready for the holidays - at least decorations wise. Shopping is another story!

I'm loving that it's Wednesday and I'm sitting on the couch, still in my PJs, and reading my favorite blogs. Oh Christmas break - I love you.

As much as I love Christmas, it was exhausting yesterday. Chris and I got up around 8:30am, opened our presents then headed to my parent's for brunch and then to his parent's house for dinner. We didn't get home til almost 9pm. But it was a lot of fun spending time with both families and of course opening some super sweet presents wasn't bad either.

We all wore white, completely unplanned!

Chris and I both got new phones yesterday. Chris went from dumbphone to smartphone so we spent about two hours on the couch last night in silence playing with all the new features. We got Samsung Galaxy S3s and all I can say is wow. They are pretty darn cool.


I actually got clothes for Christmas this year, which never happens. I'm so excited for my new colored skinny jeans, aztec/fair isle print sweaters, and yoga pants!




I may actually get dressed today!

I'm also excited to thumb through my copy of Young House Love that I got yesterday from the boyfriend.



I'll be spending the rest of the day cleaning up the house and possibly venturing out into the cold to purchase some new cases for our phones. While I love how lightweight they are, I feel like one drop and the phone would be done for.

What are you doing today? Did you get any snow where you live? We didn't get a flake even though earlier in the week were supposed to get like six inches. What a bummer!

Merry Christmas Eve everybody!

Things are pretty low key around here today, just waiting to head over to my parent's house for hors d'oeuvres and the first round of present opening with my mom's side of the family.

I thought I would join the GBU of my weekend, here goes!



The Good: Finished my Christmas shopping Friday night in a frenzy, literally a spending frenzy. Dropped $300 in less than two hours - wait I'm pretty sure that should go under the "ugly" category. Chris was also off so we got to hang it for most of the weekend. We caught a afternoon showing of "This is 40"...it was good although I expected it to be funnier and it was also kind of awkward in a way.

The Bad: My mountain of laundry has grown! And no effort to do laundry has happened. But I did re-organize the kitchen. We finally figured out what all the hooks in the pantry were for. Huzzah! This goes under the bad because it took us 1.5 years to figure this out!


The Ugly: I woke up yesterday and today with major swollen joints. I'm not one to predict the weather based on my body pain, but there HAS to be some major snow coming our way.

Have a wonderful Christmas eve, look forward to seeing how your Christmas goes!

I've been dying to share a little crafting I did back in October but couldn't due to the fact that the crafts were gifts. So now that Christmas has come and gone, I figure it's okay to share.

I mentioned previously that I have a crafty friend, Megan, who made me that pretty Ho Ho Ho banner I showed during my Christmas house tour. Well for that exchange, I made her some cute wine glasses to give as gifts.



Using my Cricut and some outdoor vinyl, I cut out the letters and dots to make some adult "sippy" cups. I can't believe how easy they came together and so inexpensive. They should last through quite a few wine nights too, because I used outdoor/automotive grade vinyl, which was also nice and shiny.

Funny thing is, I saw wine glasses just like this at Bed, Bath, and Beyond right after I made them, but of course mine are way cuter...or at least I like to think so ; )

Hope everyone is having a wonderful and relaxing Christmas eve. Today I am just hanging around the house and enjoying being off work before heading to my parents' for dinner and fun.

The house has looked especially dapper this holiday season. It is has been so nice to come home to a warm and inviting inside. I am kinda sad that I will have to take it all down soon. I actually asked Chris if we could be those people who keep their tree up until like March but he quickly put the kibosh on that idea. Bummer.

But for being first time holiday decorators, I think we did a pretty good job with minimal expense, either borrowing or using items that had been passed down to each of us. The only thing that was bought this year was our tree and our stockings.






Chris and I were lucky that our parents collected ornaments for us each year since, we also have a few home made ornaments too.  Below are some of my favorites...




Grover! This is actually Chris' but my family has Bert and Ernie ornaments that we all fight over. I was so tickled when he brought this out.


Chris and I decided that each year we would get each other an ornament. I found this awesome glittery pencil in my stocking for St. Nick's day this year. I got Chris a Cardinal's World Series ornament to commemorate the awesome 2011 season, but it currently wrapped under the tree waiting for tomorrow. Shh!!


Another one of Chris' ornaments. I love the colors and the sequins.


My grandma gave me this ornament when I was in grade school when I played a variety of musical instruments...flute, piano, bells, and percussion.


There are quite a few penguins on the tree being that they are one of my favorite animals. This guy just looks so jolly!


A student of mine gave me this glass ornament this year and I absolutely love it.


Chris' mom collected quite a few of these rocking horse ornaments from Hallmark over the years. We are told that some of them are actually quite valuable. We have about 15 or so spread over the tree.


We put our Christmas cards up on our "mantle". I've seen a lot of great card holder ideas on Pinterest but never got around to making anything. Maybe next year.


And the house wouldn't be complete without some Christmas subway art. I found this over at Eighteen25. They have a totally cute new year's one I plan on printing soon for 2012.

Well, that is the tour. I have meaning to take some pictures of our outdoor decorations but haven't got to it yet. Maybe tonight!

Have a wonderful Christmas eve!