Month in Review – December 2013
I absolutely love Christmas, but December sure is a busy time of year! Now that Christmas is officially over I have some down time to reflect on the past month…and let me tell you, it was a great one!
We kicked off the month with the official Tree Lighting in downtown Huntington Beach and it was a great reminder that we are fortunate enough to celebrate the holidays by the beach and with warm weather. I 100% agree with people that say a White Christmas is magical (don’t forget I lived back East for seven years so I know all about the magic of Christmas lights twinkling amidst the snow), but there is also something really nice about sand angels, lit up palm trees and getting to celebrate Christmas in flip flops!
Despite the fact that I had pinned about 112 Christmas crafts to my Pinterest boards during October and November, I didn’t have time to make a lot of them this holiday season 🙁 But I did make this awesome Advent calendar! It was pretty simple to make and I’m looking forward to using it again next year!
Let me just say, Disney sure does know how to do Christmas! From the parade down Main Street, to the Jingle Cruise, to the holiday Haunted Mansion, to the holiday makeover on It’s a Small World, to all of the small, holiday details all throughout the parks, Disney does Christmas up in a big way!
My sister and I went to Disneyland several times in December and loved getting to enjoy Christmas cheer at the happiest place on earth!
Both of my parents work at Biola University (It’s too bad they waited to work there until all three of us kids had finished college!) and we had a beautiful family night at the Wondrous Night of Miracles.
What a fun treat it was to see Disney on Ice’s Rockin’ Ever After featuring The Little Mermaid, Brave, Tangled, and Beauty and the Beast stories! I’ve never seen Tangled or Brave but they are now on my list of Movies to Watch 🙂
We also had the opportunity to attend my cousin’s Christmas program where we first had dinner and enjoyed a silent auction. And I am soooo excited about the auction item that I won…a dozen cupcakes every month for nine months!!! Since I am a big cupcake fan I’m pretty excited to get my first batch in January!
I was pretty excited about Christmas Eve/Day this year because…I got to host my family! That meant getting my first live tree (as a grown-up!), planning breakfast for Christmas morning (huge shout out to Ali over at GimmeSomeOven for her amazing Nutella Cinnamon Rolls!!!) and Christmas dinner. We enjoyed Christmas Eve services at church, appetizers and games to celebrate Christmas Eve, a yummy breakfast Christmas morning, opening gifts, watching Christmas movies, Christmas dinner and the crackling yule log on my tv (my dad and sister were not as amused by this as I was!)
Thank you for letting me share some of the highlights from December with you…I hope you enjoyed them as much as I do! And now it’s time to look forward to a new year…here’s to hoping 2014 is even more amazing than 2013! And if you want to stay updated you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, and here on the blog (you can subscribe on the right-hand side!)
