Christmas Cookies

This weekend I put together some of my grandmother's Christmas Spritz cookies with her old cookie press. I colored these with food coloring and added orange extract.

Christmas Lights

All of our snow is gone. Melted completely. Today and yesterday were in the 50's here in the Salt Lake valley. It's hard to believe that Christmas is in less then two weeks, with this beautiful weather. Ha. and I don't like it!

During the day, I'm commuting without a jacket and mittens, and I've lost all of the "feelings" of Christmas around the corner. But at night, when the Christmas lights are twinkling all around me, I can't help but get in the mood to bake Christmas cookies and watch Christmas movies!

I've added this song, and some other unconventional Christmas songs to my play list. Enjoy!

The Christmas Wreath

This weekend I finished my Christmas decorating. I strung our lights on the outside of our house and put together this wreath for our front door. It's pretty lopsided, but I like it like that. I like the disorganized, haphazard look of it.

When the husband was trimming the bottom branches off of our tree, I asked him to toss them on the front porch so I could put them on a wreath. 

 

Cheap supplies

I just cut the big branches into manageable pieces and wired them together.

Then I used the wire to secure them to the form

I overlapped each piece, securing each bundle all the way around the wreath. Doons suggested that I trimmed the longer stems to make the wreath look synchronized, but I didn't want stubs sticking out around it - I wanted the stems and branches to have their natural ends. I guess next year I could plan a little bit better to make it look a bit better, but I still like it. 

Snowflake Pillow

Here is a VERY easy winter craft that I have enjoyed lately. My snowflake pillow. 

I used a brown and white flannel - just some left over fabric that I had. The snowflake I made using the famous and fabulous method of folding and cutting - like we did in elementary school. I found that flannel is much more difficult to cut than computer paper, so my snowflake is quite a bit out of balance. But that's okay.

Once the snowflake was cut and opened, I pinned it to my web interface.

My craft store sold this stuff by the yard. It was in reams just like the fabric. 

 

See how this material is just like a tight little web?

I pinned the snowflake flannel to the web interface and cut through the webbing right along the edges of the snowflake. After about 10 minutes with the scissors, I surrendered and just used a razor blade, which was much easier and quicker.

I don't have any pictures of the rest of the process, but it's just as easy as the first few steps. I took snowflake (still pinned to the webbing) and positioned it on my brown flannel as I wanted and ironed it on. Very easy.

Next, I sewed the pillowcase. I just sewed the fabric with the softer sides (and the snowflake side) inside of the pillow, overlapping the two ends of the fabric. When I turned it inside out, it looked like this on the back - a perfect little pocket to put the pillow inside. 

I'm loving making things snowflakey this year. If you didn't know, the snow bums out here are calling last month "Snowvember". For good reason - 140 inches in the early ski season is pretty close to miraculous. It's awesome.

Christmas Coffee

This jolly time of year has me craving something a little more festive than my morning favorite (black coffee). So I threw some of the season's best flavors together to have a special cup of Christmas coffee love!

1/4 Cup water with scoops of hot cocoa in the bottom of the coffee pot before brewing

1 tsp. of cinnamon on top of the grounds

Yields a delicious cup of Christmas coffee. 

Poured into my favorite Christmas mug and topped with marshmallows, I'm in the Yuletide mood!

"How often has the Christmas tree Afforded me the greatest glee!"

I watch deals on Groupon.

Groupon is great. It offers great deal from LOCAL companies. I love the idea of supporting local companies almost as much as I love the idea of awesome deals!

One of the deals that I indulged in was a Christmas tree for us this year from prepaidchristmastrees.com.

We had it delivered this weekend and it is WONDERFUL!!!

We've only had Christmas trees 2 of our 6 past Christmases together. Mainly because they cost some money and we are always gone during Christmas anyway (and usually for 10-15 days). The two years that we have had trees, we cut them down from Pike National Forest outside of Colorado Springs. We were a day too late to get our permit this year to cut down our tree. I LOVED getting our tree delivered - it is fresh and purchased from a company completely run by a local family. 

It's just beautiful!!! This Noble Fir is a lot fuller than any tree we have ever cut from our National Forests. 

And it smells amazing.

We love it!

 Just a little glimpse of what's been going on at the McBrayer bungalow 

The Long Sleeve Dress

I'd love a long sleeve dress. Dresses are hard to wear in the winter. Most dresses are sleeveless and not made from necessarily warm materials. Even the cute little black dresses aren't suitable for winter weather.

I've been doing some casual searches the last few nights online for long sleeve winter dresses and have come up seriously short. It's hard to find one that isn't: a wedding dress, cowl neck, lacy, mini skirt, open back (or bust), wrap dress, super slouchy, or bohemian.  I don't know why, but i don't want a dress that is any of these things.

Here's just a taste of what I found:

 Rachel Berry, anyone?

Cute, although short.

 Mini skirt, maxi hole

 I kind of love this but I could never sport it

Yikes

I like this mock-wrap

This one is cute, but has no form.

 Which I guess is okay for mannequin-esque humans like this lady pictured.

Sweater mini. Cute, but still a bit chilly, right?

I like the boat neck, but that's about it. 

Forget that this model is strangling herself with that beautiful sting of turquoise beads.

I actually love this

This designer (xiaolizi) has several charming long sleeve dresses:

Sorry, no other photo credits. 

So what do you think? Do you even own any long sleeve dresses? I don't even have any in my wardrobe. I usually wear winter dresses and skirts with sweaters anyway. But, I hate to admit that I wore a long wool skirt to work yesterday and wore knee-highs and my winter snow boots underneath. I need a nice pair of leather boots for Christmas - something I can wear with a dress. But I was glad I wore the boots, I had to tromp through about a foot of snow throughout the day as I walked around the Aviary - I didn't regret the fashion crime at all. It was so practical.

Things I'm Loving Lately

This video.

Well, and 'bucks, of course

Snow

Sewing

Wasatch Winter Alpenglow

Harry Potter Movies

Skiing

i'm not prego, even though I look it in this picture. it was 3 degrees on Thanksgiving and i was wearing 4 layers

Christmas Music

Check out my Christmas play list on the right --->

Heated Seats in the Jetta during these cold and snowy days

that car is amaaaazing.....

Purple Fingernail Polish

now that i'm no longer on the job search, I've indulged my sausagey-fingers in some color!

The Jesus Storybook Bible 

written by Sally Lloyd-Jones

I purchased this precious book to have at my house for all of the precious kiddos in my life, present and future. And I've enjoyed it so much myself! Landon has been reading me stories from the book before I got to bed at night. It's precious.