Merry Christmas!

We had an action-packed Christmas weekend! On Friday, Harrison and I went to his parents home and hung out with his sister, who was in town from Tampa, and their parents. After finishing all of the wrapping on Saturday morning, Christmas Eve, we went back to Beauregard where we shot skeet behind The Williams' home. This is becoming a Christmas tradition for us, which I like very much! Harrison's cousin, Katie was in town also, and we took some pretty great photos around the Christmas tree with our guns. I'm waiting on Mr. Williams to send me those photos so that I can post them here. For now, I'll post the photos of our brown paper packages tied up in string and stamped with our 'W' wax seal:

We went to our first Christmas Eve Mass at St. Michael's and it was beautiful. We arrived 30 minutes early and still had to sit in the 'extra' seats at the back! They only have two Christmas Eve Masses and the other one was 10pm, so this one was the more popular service. Here's a picture of our new church:

After Mass, we went back to Harrison's parents for Christmas dinner and to exchange gifts. Because Harrison rarely ever lets me take pictures of him/us, I convinced him to take a few since we were spiffy from Mass. I thought it turned out okay, other than the doll on his parents mantle being in the background. By the way, I'm wearing a skirt, not pants (as a friend had originally thought)!

The beautiful Williams' family tree:

Beth playing her role of 'Santa,' Nana sipping on her coffee, and Esther taking it all in.

The coolest cat ever, The Senator:

On Sunday/Christmas, Harrison and I woke up in our own bed at our own home. This is the first time that neither of us have been with our families on Christmas. I guess we're grown-ups now. We went over to The Williams' for the traditional Christmas breakfast (frozen summer fruit cocktail/slushy, sausage balls, banana bread, coffee) and the opening of stockings from Santa.

Afterward, we hopped in the car and headed to meet my side of the family at The Swartz's home in Newnan, GA. We met up with my parents, Aileen, Andrew, Ryan, Blake, Hailey, Nate, Kellye, Paige, David, and my Uncle Dave (in from Raleigh, NC). The house was packed with family and laughter and we had a great time together. Aren't these kiddos adorable:

I love how Ryan is wearing his Spider man muscles costume and Blake has Baby Sue's legs wrapped around his neck.

Here's a classic photo of Harrison at the dinner table:

Aileen and I with my newest niece, Hailey:

The Cunningham kids with the newest addition to the family:

Paige unwrapping Elmo. She loves him and the color red!

Bottles for the both of 'em:

Look at those thighs and rosy cheeks! Isn't she the most adorable kid ever?

Uncle Dave is known as the family trickster. Here he is with his newest 'creature.' He's got the boys convinced that it's a pet and they're a little hesitant about it.

This year, we all played Dirty Santa or White Elephant. Nate's gift was this Big AL whose shirt read 'I love Bama.' Luckily, it came with a noose!

Pops, Aileen, and Hailey

Gigi with Hailey

After making it back to Auburn on Monday morning, I needed some time to decompress from the adventurous weekend. I took a long nap while Harrison's family went to see a movie. Afterward I met up with them at a new restaurant in Opelika, Ma Fia's. They've only been open for a couple of months and business is booming for them, so the service was a bit delayed. I can't say enough great things about the food though. All the ingredients are fresh and prepared via scratch at the restaurant. The red sangria is outstanding...the salmon pizza is fantastic... I'm still dreaming about the lobster ravioli... and the smores pizza is a great dessert (as well as their Tiramisu). They also have three choices of Sangiovese, which is rare to find and is my favorite red wine. I can't wait to go back.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Our (current) home for the holidays

Currently, we're living in a townhouse that my in-laws own. Renting in a college town typically means that you are stuck in a 1 year lease, and we wanted flexibility in case we find a home that we want to buy during that time. It's enough space for our current needs, but it isn't all that big, so we decided to forgo the Christmas tree this year. I've found other ways (courtesy of Pinterest) to Christmas-up the place and I've found that we're not even really missing the tree.

I gathered up a bunch of discarded fir limbs at a local Christmas tree sale lot and arranged them in my urns with silver spray-painted pinecones, faux holly berries, and some twigs from Hobby Lobby. I tied glittery bows from Big Lots to the bottoms of the urns for a nice touch.

For the wreathy thing, I just laid out several branches on top of each other and covered up the ends of the branches with more branches facing the other direction. In the middle, I tied all of the branches together using jute string. Then I banded three silver glittery ornaments together and tied those to the branches. I stuck some faux holly in and added and red bow and I was done. What do you think?

For our living room, I purchased two $10 decorated garlands from Big Lots, strung my own lights on them, and placed them on top of the bookcases. I made a cute garland from an idea I saw on Pinterest. See below for details.

I purchased 14 gold-ish ornaments from Mike's Merchandise for a total of $4, 2 packs of glittery sticker letters from Hobby Lobby ($3 per pack but I used a 40% coupon), and two small rolls of red shimmery fabric ribbon from Hobby Lobby ($2 each). I threaded the ribbon through the ornaments, hung the garland up with sewing pins, and then stuck on the letters. It was so easy and I'm very pleased with the outcome!

Because we have no tree, I decorated my pussy willow branches in small silver ornaments. The glass Hurricane container holds peppermints and candy canes. I might consider tying a lovely red bow around the glass to add a little more color.

This year we did an E-card because we procrastinated and didn't get Christmas cards out in the mail in time. Oops! I'll make sure to get a head start next year. This is a photo of us taken in May '11 in Kauai, Hawaii.

Long weekend in Asheville

I've been a bit of a slacker on my blog posts lately, so I'm going to give a quick little update of our awesome long weekend trip in Asheville (first December weekend). One of our favorite bands, Beirut, was going to be playing in Asheville on Monday, December 5th, so Harrison and I chose to take a couple of days off work and have a mini-vacation is Asheville. We had so much fun going back to all of our favorite establishments and seeing all of our friends again. Since we've moved in late July, we've already been back to visit twice! It's only a 5 hour drive, so maybe we can keep this up (visiting about every 3 months or so).

Here are some photos we took while hiking around the grounds of the Biltmore Estate:

My friend, Renee and I in front of the lovely bridge on the Estate (it was featured in Last of the Mohican's).

We had High Tea (3:30pm) at Chelsea's tea room...a favorite spot of mine in Biltmore Village. The Earl Grey tea that I mix with a bit of Splenda and a 'spot' of milk is so good!

I always make sure to order the tea plate of super tasty desserts:

Finally, on Monday night we got to see the show that we've been waiting years to see. Beirut...live!

He is an extremely talented young musician and he and the band put on a great show! They played all of our favorites.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjzVbXeD_8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWSz_PAfgNc
Several of our Asheville buddies joined us for the concert:

Isn't he adorable? I want to squeeze those cheeks!