Christmas Celebrations

The holiday season certainly was in full swing in our house!  We decked out the house with lots of Christmas decorations, pine tree smelling candles, and holiday music.  While the festivities are all over we do still have a nice festive feeling in our place....we still haven't had the heart to take down the tree.  Maybe next weekend :)

We were busy making and getting presents for everyone this December.  It's always fun starting a new project, but I have to say, this time around every project took longer than we expected!  Thankfully, we started perhaps earlier than we needed to so we still got everything done with a little time to spare.  Sadly I didn't remember to take pictures of all the presents before we wrapped them up :(  I definitely dropped the ball on that.  We made some coaster sets, decorative painted wine bottles, and a pair of decorative (and reversible) cloth covered bulletin boards.  All in all, not bad for us.  We branched out from our normal painting based projects which was pretty fun actually.

We were lucky enough to be able to spend some holiday time with both of our families.  With the distance its not really possible to see both sides on Christmas or Christmas Eve.  Instead we had a nice dinner and opened presents with Matt's parents and sister the night before we left for Wisconsin.  We stayed with my family for a few days in Wisconsin and when we got back, spent New Years Eve with Matt's parents and cousin.  It worked out pretty well.  Thankfully the weather cooperated for the most part and travelling wasn't too bad.  We even got to spend a night in Madison on the way back.  It was really nice to break up the drive a bit and we got to stop and visit some friends and their little boy and even got to have dinner and breakfast with some of our good friends!  Overall not a bad trip :)

Since nobody reading this got to come to our Christmas party I thought I'd share a picture of our Christmas tree with almost all of our presents underneath:

So besides the general holiday happenings and busyness we also had our Christmas party.  We had one last year too and decided we want to make it a tradition for us.  It's pretty much the only party we throw all year so we generally go all out for it.  We make all of the food ourselves and its a big reason that we deck out the house so much.  Here are some pictures of the house all set up:

All of our more substantial and savory food.  I have to say-our cooking ability is slowly improving!  Here's what we made: 2 types of meatballs (one with regular BBQ sauce and one Cherry BBQ sauce), baked brie with cranberry sauce, cherry salsa and cream cheese dip, spinach and artichoke dip, a cute meat and cheese Christmas tree with tomatoes.

A nice little bar area, always a must for a party :)

All the sweets!

The sweets menu (my favorite part!): cream filled strawberries, pumpkin pie dip, dunkaroo dip (tastes like cake frosting!), home-made chocolate/mint fudge and the only item we didn't make: whoopie pies.  Matt's cousin who lives across the street brought those over.

I found this cool fireplace movie on Netflix that we played on our TV all night.  It was pretty awesome actually!

So that's what our party looked like.  For those who know me really well, I feel the photos are needed so I can prove we actually cooked all that :)

I've discovered something interesting about the auto industry-it completely shuts down between Christmas and New Years.  I personally loved it....I got to have Matt home for the whole week!  It was great.  We definitely kept ourselves busy but it was nice to have some time for whatever we wanted.  We made it a point to spend a day (well it turned into an evening) exploring something new that we haven't done yet.  So we decided to go to Cranbrook Institute of Science.  I had never heard of Cranbrook before moving here but it's a crazy good, and disgustingly expensive, private school.  They also have a science and art museum on the campus.  It was fantastic!  We ended up going at 5pm because it was 50% off after that time-but the place stayed open until 10 so it was perfect for us.  As usual-we were the only adults without kids but we enjoyed it just as much :)  I even got to go to my first planetarium show (at least I don't remember going to one before so I think it's my first!).  All in all it was a lovely evening.

Other than that not a whole lot is new.  Well, I guess except that Matt has accepted a position with a different company.  He is starting next Monday actually.  It was a nice opportunity with a good company and more along the lines of Matt's interest.  As I figured would happen when he took the job here, he got bored pretty quickly with the job that brought us here.  He is a guy who likes being in the thick of things and who works well under pressure.  His current position is a little too slow paced and not nearly challenging enough for him.  So this opportunity presented itself and we decided, why not?  We don't have to move and he'll be happier.  So he gets to start somewhere new on Monday.  I'm still looking for a position.  Still reaching out to anyone I can think of and I'm working with a staffing agency now that has some experience placing people in non-profits.  So hopefully the new year will bring new opportunities!

Happy New Year Everyone!!!