Christmas Recap 2012

My goal for today? Try not to make this the longest post in blogging history.

Let's just say we had a lot going on this Christmas.

So to start (and try to keep it short and sweet) I'll cover our Christmas decor. We use a white Christmas tree that stood behind us on our wedding day, which I absolutely love. It reminds me of that special day every time I look at it. I've got an assortment of Christmas balls in pretty much any colour you can think of, but this year we went the same route we went last year and stuck to green, silver, turquoise, and red. It gives the tree a modern and fun-funky feel, while still keeping with the traditional Christmas colours.

We currently only have a couple of sentimental ornaments that we use, one is of my good friend and cousin who passed away not too long ago, and another has Oliver's handprint - his first Christmas ornament. Otherwise we just stick to balls (plastic with a toddler running around) and some silver beads, as well as our silver star.

The frame next to the tree I actually changed out into something more Christmassy. I found a line from a classic Christmas song that I love, typed it out in Photoshop and printed it in Christmas colours. It actually brightened my spirits all season long.

It's from "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" which is actually Matt's all time favourite Christmas song. So he really liked it too.

On the other side of the mirror above the love seat I changed out the frame as well. Usually I have a big "G" monogram in there, but again I wanted something cheap and festive so I found an art print of a partridge in a pear tree online, and then in Photoshop I changed the colours to match our particular Christmas colours, and voila! More Christmas to love.

I didn't end up getting a good shot of our mantle, but I hung our traditional stockings on it, and put the "faux snow" on top of it. And then on one side of our mounted flat-screen I hung two Dollarama white shadow-box-style frames. I grabbed a felt advent calendar of sorts from Dollarama that was made up of Santa hats and clothespins, and then some glittery cardboard ornaments in a bulk pack from the same store, and threw them all in the frames.

I had to try and figure out which numbers from the advent calendar to use, since I wanted them to be significant. I couldn't do our birth-dates, since Oliver's is on the 31st (and advent only goes to 24) so I had to try and come up with three significant numbers that were 24 or under. What I ended up going with was the years when significant events happened. '05 is when Matt and I got together, '09 is when we got married, and '11 was when Oliver was born. So it all worked out. And since I still have all of the numbers from the calendar I can pretty much change them to whatever I want whenever I want, so future Christmasses are all set.

Plus, now that I've cleaned Christmas up, I love the little clothespin frame so much that I'm trying to come up with something new to clamp in them, since I've removed the little Santa hats. Hmmm...

And last but not least I of course hung my DIY advent calendar, each day with a little tag that says some fun Christmas activity to do. This is a really easy step since usually I have a bunch of Polaroids in the clothespins, and I can just change them out and change them back when the season is finished. Matt and I are actually thinking that we'll switch them this time with our 24 top moments from 2012, and maybe start a new tradition. Every year just the highlights from the previous year. That way we can be reminded of all of the wonderful things the previous year brought, and when the year is over we can put them all in a book and look back at which moments were the most special to us each year.

But as far as advent goes, we totally sucked at it this year. We missed a bunch of days from being so busy, we doubled up other days, one day we actually tried to cram as many advent activities as possible since we wanted to make sure we did them but didn't think we'd have time. It was a wonderfully fun catastrophic mess but we did what we could. That's just life - busy and out of control but you make it work and you have fun in the process.

A couple of fun advent activities that I remember though were doing a joyful dance to a favourite Christmas song...

Decking the halls (Oliver was pretty much obsessed with Christmas trees/lights for the entire month of December. He called them "Wee-weesh" and I have absolutely no idea why or where he got that from.)

Making pancakes in Christmas shapes (this is Matt and my doing, because we're total dorks...)

Cutting out paper snowflakes, which Oliver thought were meant to be masks...

 Making a "just for fun" Christmas card. Those are our finger prints as Christmas lights! Thank you, Pinterest!

 Writing a letter to Santa Claus (we essentially just let Oliver scribble all over a piece of paper with red and green whiteboard markers so it was wipeable off of the countertop, and then wrote a couple of his favourite things overtop.)

Meeting with Santa Claus (you should see the other pictures! This guy was NOT happy about meeting "Santa" - who was actually just his Grandpa.)

 And going to the conservatory to check out the "Wee-weesh." One day when our kiddos are older, this advent activity will be "Drive around to look at the Christmas lights" but since Oliver's a little too young to get any entertainment out of that, we thought checking out his favourite thing in the world, Christmas trees, would definitely light up his day.

As for Christmas itself, we got to spend a lot of time with beloved friends and family, and weren't too concerned about presents. I mean, sure I got a kick-a$$ sewing machine, and we got to give Oliver his home-made play kitchen (which he LOVES) plus we got a ton of new gifts for Oliver so I have activities to do with him during the day while Daddy is away at school, but the best part was just hanging out with the people we loved. Oliver can't get enough of his uncles (my brothers) so he had an amazing time this Christmas.

And I definitely treasured every minute of our last Christmas as just the three of us. I know next year will be even greater since we'll have two incredible boys to share it with.

Oh, and yes. I am enormous.