Five on Friday

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I'm super excited to finally share our Christmas cards this year! They should all be delivered by now but we were so excited with how they turned out. The day before Thanksgiving, I wanted to get a feel for what cards we liked and which company we wanted to go with before the black Friday sales. Stephen mentioned Amazon did cards so we looked into them and were shocked to see how cheap they were! We ended up purchasing them that night and we're super pleased with the quality for the price - they even included free return address printed on the envelope!! Definitely using them again

Since we traveled around the country a lot earlier this year, we decided to use a picture from NYC & San Fran and incorporate that into the card text.

Two

At work on Wednesday, they had our annual Christmas lunch. It's something fun they do and provide all of the employees a Christmas style lunch. Y'all, best cornbread I've ever had in my life. Every year, I look forward to this event because of the cornbread lol

Three

We made another one of Christina's soups this week and it was delicious! We have yet to find a recipe of hers that we didn't love and this tortellini soup was no exception

Four

Last night, one of my co-workers hosted our second annual cookie exchange. It was so much fun and I can't wait to try all the delicious cookies! My sister sent me an amazing sugar cookie recipe and then I dipped half the cookies in dark chocolate and added sprinkles & crushed candy canes to them. 

Five
And now that I've realized almost my entire FoF post is about food... we are hosting our #basicchristmasparty tonight with our friends from our fall party! We are so excited to have hot chocolate, see Christmas lights, build gingerbread houses and play a Christmas game :) Tomorrow, we're going to Disney to see the Christmas decorations before we lose our passes and hopefully, we'll get to see Kurt Russell read the Christmas story at Epcot!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! Can't believe Christmas is coming so quickly!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Christmas cards are one of my favorite things to send and receive during the month of December. There's nothing more fun than getting snail mail from family and friends wishing each other Merry Christmas. Every year I look forward to designing, assembling, addressing and sending out our Christmas cards.

This year, we went with Tiny Prints for our Christmas cards and absolutely love them. Stephen and I had so much fun looking through all of their amazing designs and had a hard time deciding on just one card. Since we used a picture from our Anniversary photo shoot, we ended up picking a card design that reminded us of our big Colorado trip. The design came out perfect and I had to laugh because the colors even match our outfits.



I was very impressed with the quality of the whole package - the cards are made of a very thick card stock and the envelopes are also sturdy and thick. We decided to add envelope liners this year (which were super easy to assemble) to add some fun pop when people open the card! We love how there are so many fun details within our cards this year from the intricate design of the card to the ticket style cut-out to the design on the back of the card and even down to the envelopes.

I can't wait for everyone to receive our cards this year!

Christmas Photos

Last week I debuted our Christmas card but never shared any of the other pictures we took. Even though these pictures were taken with a tripod, in our back yard and not at an adorable tree farm, I think they turned out pretty well! Here are some other pictures from that day

This was supposed to be one of those cute blanket pictures but the blanket was wayy too big. This quilt was actually handmade from Stephen's home church as a wedding gift

Cheesin' with our coffee mugs in 80 degree Florida

Linking up with Annie.

Christmas Card 2015

We sent our Christmas cards out last week so everyone should be receiving theirs any day now so I figured I'm safe to share them here.

We took our Christmas card photos a few weeks ago but we weren't sure exactly what card we wanted to use. I LOVE Minted's cards but they're so expensive and I can't justify spending that much money on a few Christmas cards that will just be thrown out in January. After entering into every Minted giveaway I found and not winning, we decided to look into other options. We received a Vistaprint catalog in the mail with a 50% off coupon and decided to browse their website one night. We weren't planning on buying anything that night, until we found a design that we really liked and could get 30 cards for $16. We were sold and hit purchase. They arrived a few days later and were ready to be sent out!

I'm really happy with what we picked - it's a little different than a typical Christmas card but I love the design and colors. Without further adieu, here's our Christmas card for 2015:

And for kicks, here's our Christmas cards for 2014 and 2013:

Overall, I'm really happy with how our card turned out this year and the shipping was lightning fast!

Linking up with Katie & Jessica.

Five on Friday: Christmas Edition

It's so hard to believe Christmas is LESS than a week away!

One
Last weekend I finally sent out our Christmas cards! There are so many cards that are adorable from Minted but I couldn't bring myself to pay ~$50 for 30 cards. (Please let me know if you know any tricks to make them affordable!) Stephen's pretty savvy with Photoshop so I figured he could so a small design on our cards but after finding out if we printed them, we'd have to cut them all and buy envelopes, we scratched that idea. I found a Groupon for Staples photo service and we decided to pull the trigger - $10 for 50 5x7 cards with envelopes. We figured even if the design isn't amazing, that's a great deal. When we went to pick out our cards, we realized you could upload a design! So Stephen ended up designing our Christmas cards and I love the way they turned out!

Our 2014 Card: Front

Our 2014 Card: Back

Since I wasn't blogging last year, I thought I'd share our 2013 card. We got this one from Walgreen's... old school. I was surprised they had some more modern designs and it wasn't too cartoonish.

Our 2013 Card

Two

I am so thankful that today is my last day at work until 2015! Hello Christmas Vacation! Soon we'll be heading down south to spend Christmas with Stephen's family. I've never spent Christmas not with my family so this is going to be a huge adjustment but I'm excited to spend time with everyone and see their traditions! Since we won't be home to celebrate Christmas, Stephen and I are doing Christmas tomorrow. I'm looking forward to spending all day in our pj's, celebrating our Savior's birth, doing lots of cooking, watching movies and opening presents!

I'll be doing a lot of this the next few days!

Three

I feel like I'm running out of time to watch all the Christmas movies we usually watch. Stephen said we didn't have to watch them all if I didn't want to but I don't want to not watch them and once December 26 rolls around get all sad because I missed out this year. Thank goodness for no more work, we're going to have to have some Christmas movie marathons the next few days ;)

Four
Ever since I can remember, my mom has always done a little something for the mailman, garbage men, etc. around Christmas. Usually she makes them something but now with how the world is, it's better to buy something packaged and wrapped. I wanted to continue that tradition with my own family so last year I saw this picture on Pinterest and wanted to recreate it as a little Christmas gift/pick-me-up for our mailman. This year we bought him m&ms again but used a label from the Chex Mix gifts I made. We got a Christmas card from the mailman thanking us and he remembered we gave him m&ms last year too! I thought it was so sweet and wanted to share that even the smallest things, can lighten someones day.

Apparently this is for "Thank a Mailman Day" but we altered it for Christmas. I also failed at getting a picture of the one we made for him. via

Five

I have been in a baking mood and have been baking all sorts of goodies. I have decided to make some Christmas Crack to bring with us to my in-laws for Christmas. They're super easy to make and you can't stop eating them - hence the name. Hopefully everyone enjoys them, but if not I'm sure Stephen and his brothers will devour them in no time. 

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