DIY Christmas

So I wanted to share the DIY gifts I made for Christmas this year for my friends and family.  Unfortunately you will have to deal with crappy cell phone pictures (I lost my camera battery charger for like 3 weeks in December, fail!).

Vanilla Extract. It is SUPER easy to make and you can get a bunch of vanilla beans online for much, much  cheaper than in the local stores.  I bought mine from Beanilla.  All you do is fill your jars up with vodka and add split vanilla beans. The ratio is about 1/3 cup of vodka to one vanilla bean.  You’re supposed to let it sit for at least six weeks in a dark, cool spot before you use it.  I cut out some circle tags out of kraft paper, stamped them, and attached them with some cute bakers twine.

I also made some fun necklaces. You can’t see them well here I know, but it started as a light piece of wood.  After lots of cutting, a dremmel purchase, sanding, staining and painting…they were done!  They were all the same colors (a dark wood stain with gold paint), but the shapes and designs were irregular.  I loved how they came out.

Feeling Christmas-y

This last week has been all about the holidays.  It’s started to get pretty cold, which mean hot drinks, fires and the holidays.  I love fall, but I also love winter almost as much 🙂  We picked up a tree yesterday and that evening I spent putting up the lights and ornaments.

We’ve also started a few fires this week.

And of course put up some more decor; and what are the holidays without some yummy seasonal beers?

Another thing we try to do every year is get together with my family and put together some gingerbread houses.  Usually we are up in the mountains but since we don’t have a cabin anymore, home it is.  I don’t know what it was, but this year everyone had the hardest time ever trying to make the houses look at least decent.  The kit that Chris and I (mostly me) had to deal with was a “mini” gingerbread house village.   No words are necessary to describe this mess:

Yeah, no comment.  I was beyond annoyed with the whole situation (but the spiked eggnog helped!).  And for any Bakersfieldians, we dubbed this “Oildale Village.

And today, I took some Christmas photos of my cousin’s freshly born baby boy, he is SO sweet.

Isn’t he sweet?  So precious.

Well, our little family also attempted some photos today.  Sadie was good at first, and Tundra wasn’t having it.

But somehow we got one, WITH the dogs. I know right? It was chaotic. I will probably share the outtakes later…hah.

toasty

I havent written a random blog post in quite a while! I’m currently sitting on my couch next to a warm fire that smells absolutely amazing, while making some Christmas gifts and watching Brew Masters. have you seen the show? its pretty interesting how the whole process works and how scientific brewing beer is. anyways…i had a long, tedious day at work and my brain is fried so it feels amazing right now to relax. im looking forward to this weekend and a weather forecast of RAIN for the next 5 days 🙂

Christmas Cheer

I can’t get enough of this time of year…

My niece during some family photos, she’s so CUTE! I love being an aunt.

Some cute deer; at a local zoo that put Christmas lights all over the park for the holidays.

 

I love this little penguin! I think we got it last year.

 

Oh, and Tundra wishes you a Merry Christmas. She’s very amused, as you can tell!