Christmas Verse

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It is at last the week of Christmas! I hope all of your days are merry and bright, full of joy, peace and thanksgiving as we celebrate Christ the Lord.

 

Christmas Verse

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Are you starting to get a little bit more excited about Christmas? I can hardly believe it is just over a week away. Let us not get caught up in the hustle and bustle of buying last-minute gifts and forget the real meaning of this special holiday, the birth of Jesus. Enjoy this wonderful Sunday, friends!



12 Beers of Christmas Advent

The past few weeks I've been trying to figure out something fun to do for Bryan this holiday season. I thought about doing 12 Dates of Christmas or some type of homemade chocolate advent calendar for each day of December. Then, I came up with the best solution yet: 12 Beers of Christmas Advent.

 

With advent calendars, you normally open up a gift each day of December. And we all know that in the song the 12 Days of Christmas you end up with 24 gifts at the end.  I made up my own rules to form a 12 Beers of Christmas Advent.

 

I went to the liquor store and picked out twelve different beers. Some were Bryan's favorites and some he hadn't tried before. Ideally I would have loved to have gotten just holiday ales or winter lagers, but there wasn't a huge selection of those.

 

 

Next, all you need is Christmas paper and a hot glue gun. I have gobs and gobs of Christmas stickers, paper and embellishments all in storage, so I made a quick run to Michael's and purchased a 12x12 stack of Christmas paper. {The paper had a sheet with the dates of December!} With my handy Cutter Bee I quickly and easily cut strips of paper to wrap around the beer so that each night the brand and type would be a surprise. I tried a couple of different ways trying to get the paper to stay on the bottles and figure out that using a hot glue gun was the best.

 

 

To semi-disguise the bottle caps I used a snowflake punch with some of the paper and adhered them to the top with 3D pop dots.

 

 

Time is precious to me right now, so I didn't have a lot of time to put a lot of effort into this. I think I spent about an hour and a half total. It is a little something extra special for my hubby to enjoy each day this season so that he knows how much I love him.

 

 

And it is nice to have a festive and happy fridge full of beers to enjoy.

 

 

Do you have an advent calendar that you are opening each day this month? Or are you doing any form of gift giving for the 12 days of Christmas? If so, please share!



Holiday Gift Guide: for the Food Lover

 

Snow in the Uintas

Hellooooo, friends! I'm sorry for my absence the past week. I got a new job {hooray!}, but now I am working every day of the week, since I am still at the boutique. Also, I was a tad under the weather last week, so when I got home each day the last thing I wanted to do was turn on my computer. I thought I wasn't going to have a day off until Christmas, but there was a text waiting for me yesterday when I got out of church that said I had the day off from the boutique. {Squeal of delight!} It was the first day on a weekend that I could spend with Bryan in almost three months.

 

We packed up hot chocolate, Ivy, and the Jeep and headed about an hour south into the Uinta Mountains.

 

 

We were in search of a Christmas tree, but ended up not finding one at Renegade, where we stopped for a little fishing. Ok, I did not fish, it was below freezing, but Bryan threw out a line and was successful.

 

 

 

Does anyone notice that my pictures are better? I got my new camera last week!!! I ended up going with the Canon D5100. There was a great sale at Best Buy, so I went up a couple of levels from what I had planned on getting. These are the first pictures I have taken with it. No adjusting had been done and I had not even played with it. I think the pictures turned out pretty well considering all of that.

 

This isn't the best shot, but Ivy was very interested when her daddy landed a fish.

 

 

It was bitter cold, with snow falling on us almost the whole time we were up there. On the way back it really started coming down hard. Some of the roads in the national forest were already blocked off for the winter. I doubt I will get another chance to go up there any time soon, so it was a fun afternoon trip for us to take together.

 

 

Hopefully you will see more of my own pictures posted on the blog from now on. You might have to endure some that aren't so great, but I am excited that they are much better quality that I have been posting.

 

 

I'll be back tomorrow with another Holiday Gift Guide. Thank you all for being such wonderful followers and friends. Have a great day!



Christmas Verse

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Growing up I remember playing with the nativity set that my mother had placed on our buffet each year during the Christmas season. There were three angles hanging at the top and I always imagined them saying this verse. My mother loves telling the story about how my little sister would pull out her Barbies and have them worship the baby Lord Jesus. Do you all have a nativity set somewhere in your house? I realized last year that I didn't have a full set anywhere as decor. Back in October I found a Fontanini set at Tuesday Morning! It's the little things that add such special touches here and there.



Holiday Gift Guide: Outdoor Guru

How is the Christmas shopping going? Thank you to all of you who have sent me messages or left comments about items you have found through my Gift Guides. It does take me a while to get them together, and it really encourages me when I get positive feedback from you. Picking gifts for people who love the outdoors can be difficult since there are so many outdoor activities. Let me tell you, it is much easier to find things for men than women! Here are a few of the things I've found. Have a wonderful Tuesday!
   

 

Christmas Verse

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My favorite time of year at church is the Christmas season. I always enjoy the seeing the red poinsettas, singing Christmas songs and hearing about the events leading up to our Savior's birth. I hope you all are blessed during this wonderful time of year.



Birthday Day

Thank you all for the sweet birthday wishes that you sent my way. I had a very relaxing, wonderful day. Bryan got up and made homemade biscuits, eggs and bacon. Bless his heart, but the biscuit recipe was not written down correctly and they were awful!They didn't rise and were a tad bit salty. He was such a sweetheart getting up so early to cook for me before he went to work. I had a Lululemon bag sitting in my chair at the kitchen table. I was super excited!

 

 

Ivy and I went for a hike on a new trail that I hadn't been on before. It was a fairly warm day and I got hot in the fleece that I was wearing.

 

 

There are a couple of restaurants that Bryan and I really want to try, but we opted to go to a local sushi favorite of ours. Everything was very yummy.

 

 

Next week I'm going to get a new iPhone!!! Finally you won't have to endure the horrible quality pictures that I keep posting. I'm also going back and forth over the Canon vs. Nikon debate over a good camera. Thoughts?? I was very bummed that Bryan and I didn't get a picture together, so we took one once we got home.

 

 

My neighbor brought me a bottle of wine and another friend brought me a variety of tea--she insists she is going to make me a tea snob! When I opened my mail box, it was full of sweet birthday cards. I certainly felt like the birthday girl all day long! I am looking forward to my last year in my 20's, I know it will be a good one!