lots of Christmas going on!

So I finally got around to making and mailing out our Christmas cards yesterday! I was beginning to think I may not even get around to it at all! I'm usually more on top of it but I'm convinced that each day of this month was cut short 5-6 hours! Time is flying by and I can't even believe that Christmas is in two days!

About a week after we put up our tree, we took our family Christmas picture in front of it for our cards. I wasn't happy with how they turned out so it was just a matter of getting us all situated again for a re-shoot. When that continued to fall through everyday, I finally took the reindeer by the horns (haha...snort snort!) and drove down to Ben's work and took our pictures at a park nearby during his lunch break. I really liked how they came out this time around and got busy with editing and creating the card in Photoshop. I had them printed at Costco (which was awesome by the way!) and off they went yesterday!

Here's a few of my favorites!

Sometimes you get the best shots when you're in a hurry and not making a giant deal out of the entire process! haha!

Last week, we spent the evening at my SIL's house where we decorated a gingerbread house and a gingerbread tree. The boys watched Toy Story on the TV and played on the iPad while us girls had fun with royal icing and candies!

I picked up the gingerbread kits on sale at Michaels and I chose to decorate the tree and Kathleen (SIL) decorated the house. It was a lot of fun! I hadn't ever decorated gingerbread anything before so I was quite surprised at how well the icing held everything together, especially on the house Kathleen made. 

Here's Kathleen with her pride and joy! hehe!

I think she did a great job!


And here I am with my tree!





I've also recently really got into decorating sugar cookies! I found this totally awesome fun and informative blog called University of Cookie and I fell in love the moment I visited it! They have tons of video tutorials on how to make royal icing, make cookie dough and decorate your cookies. Through this blog I also found some other cookie blogs and I haven't been able to close my laptop! They are just so much fun to look at and learn from! If any of you are or have ever been interested in making pretty decorated sugar cookies, I encourage you to visit University of Cookie and check it out! You'll love it too! I'd post pictures of my creations but they aren't finished yet! I've gotton so far as to draw on the outline and flood the cookie. I haven't gotten past that point but I'm hoping to get in the kitchen to finish them and make more really soon! Things are just so crazy!

Anyhow, I hope everyone is having a fun and hopefully not too hectic Christmas week and that you're enjoying time with family and friends! Not sure if I'll be on before Christmas so if I'm not, I just want to wish you all a wonderful Merry Merry Christmas!