Sprinkles of Christmas In The Kitchen & Perfect, Lazy Weekends

Our plan to relax during the holidays was probably the best decision we've ever made. Except for the fact that I'm doing a lot of relaxing and Josh is still working really hard around the house in his free time. But, today he finished prepping our closet for painting, so it's possible we could have that done before the New Year.

In the meantime, I've just been walking around the house in my PJs in my free time trying to add more sprinkles of Christmas in places that didn't seem ... well ... Christmasy yet. Like our kitchen. We spend a lot of time in there and it needed some holiday touches. So I just decided to wrap some twine and pinecones around our mint green cake stand and put a burlap tree on it. Done.

The wall we started and never finished over the summer has looked sad ever since, and because of that, I wasn't going to do anything to it at all for Christmas, but I decided to throw another burlap tree on it, and make that our Christmas card display area this year. Since doing that, it's already brightened my mood. And thank you to everyone that has sent us a card this year so far! Especially Jess' photo card of little Miss Ruby Tuesday. Hopefully by this time next year, the open shelving that's supposed to go here will be done, and the beadboard trim will be installed. 

This morning I slept in (which feels amazing when you wake up at 4 a.m. every day) and then I started to bake cookies. Baking cookies during Christmas, for me, is relaxing and it totally makes me happy. I bought a cookie press this year, too, because I'm always coveting the perfectly shaped little butter cookies I see in Italian bakeshops. And this very not Italian girl had way too much fun with it.

I also set aside time to wrap Josh's presents today, too (while watching a horrible Lifetime Christmas movie, of course).

I also filled Josh's stocking, which sometimes, I think I enjoy more than presents. We could just do stockings every year and I'd be way too excited about it.

And finally, we put up some outside lights. We've had these snowflake lights for a few years, and we knew we wanted to put them up on our front porch here so we could see them twinkle from our kitchen window.

On a side note, my new favorite thing is this Reindeer Farts lip balm from Long Winter Farm Soap Co. I tried it for the first time yesterday and it straight up smells like Christmas. I can haz all the reindeer farts?