Holiday Shenanigans

I thought I would talk about all of the fun stuff that we did over holiday break. I'm fortunate enough to be able to take time off at the end of the year and be able to stay at home with my son and spend quality time with him. He also gets to hang out with his friends and play and I usually get a little time to myself too. It's a win-win! 

If you have been following along with me this year, you know I wasn't exactly in the whole spirit of Christmas. I waited to put up the tree and I was out shopping on Christmas Eve. I am usually more put together than that!  I think a lot of it had to do with being sick too and just not having a lot of energy. My friend Kelly tells me though that it's because we didn't do any Black Thursday/ Friday shopping. I think that might be right actually since this year I did stay out of the stores and the malls and did most shopping online. I missed the holiday decorations and displays at the mall and didn't even see Santa! Oh well. I'm already looking forward to this year and I'll make sure that I start it off right! 

Well, I did get to have some fun and continue on with some yearly tradition. I started off the season with a visit downtown to see the play Wicked. It's one of my favorites! I just love the music and the story and it's in my top three plays that I love to see! I was going to go with the hubby but ended up going with my friend Kelly and we had a nice dinner beforehand and then went to see the play. It was her first time seeing it and the seats were great! 

I also hosted my annual Ugly Christmas Cookie Party. I call it this because it's a combination of a cookie exchange and ugly Christmas sweater party. Again, I didn't put much effort into it this year at all because of not feeling well. It was truly all I could do to get the house straightened and ready for company and bake my cookies! I normally have prizes and inviatations and invite more people but this  year I literally did nothing but invite the 5 girls from book club and sent an invite on Facebook announcing that I was ordering pizza for dinner. I did make custom wine glasses for each of my friends though and that was a lot of fun. Again, this year I already know will be better. I didn't even make it out to get a sweater, but I did have this sweatshirt that my mom made for us back in the 90's. I glammed it up with a gold sequin skirt and some boots. Not quite the look I was going for, but hey, it worked. 

We made it out to the Holiday Lights display in Hines Park. We used to do this with my mom every year and have continued to make it a tradition. We have been going on Christmas Eve but decided to go earlier this year and it worked out better for us. We were able to get through the display a little earlier than normal in the evening and it was fun for us- we even took the dog! 

For the third or fourth year now, we went to church on Christmas Eve. One of my favorite things is the end candlelight singing of Silent Night. It's so beautiful with all of the candlelight and no music accompanying the song- just voices. Just beautiful. 

New pajamas for my son is always a must each Christmas Eve and I am loving his deer ones that I found from Gap this year! 

We got to spend lots of time with family and it was wonderful seeing my step-sister who visited from Florida! Even if it was for a lunch, it was great to see her and catch up. We spent time on Christmas with my husband's family and the day after with mine. We had lots of food and fun and exchanging of presents. At my in-laws, we did a Dirty Santa game and boy was it dirty! I ended up getting the chalkboard I wanted though and it's now proudly hanging in my kitchen! 

We had lots of down time that all of us were at home and my son got to try out his new games and build Legos. I took lots of baths with bath bombs that I got for Christmas from Lush (hubby gets me!), finished my entire book for book club (early?!?), worked on the blog, relaxed and watched movies, cleaned out the basement and an upstairs closet, listed tons of stuff on Poshmark and mailed out all orders, did a little shopping on New Year's Day and just all around had a relaxing time. 

I'm so glad that I was able to take this time off to rest and relax. I can honestly say this was one of the best times off that I have had in a while. I was checking emails and on-call for work, but thankfully did not have a ton of things to do! I think I really needed this time to relax and rejuvenate for the new year! Oh and I played dress-up with this blanket scarf on my dog...you can tell that she loves it, right? 

What did you all do on your holiday break? Anything fun? You know the only thing missing was snow! Good thing January got the memo and decided to give us some along with super cold temps! 

Hope you all had wonderful holidays! Thanks for reading and following along with me! 

Sandae