Thanksgiving 2018

Last November was busy as usual, but we had a nice set of Thanksgivings with my family and KC's. We are always grateful for time together, especially with our extended families. :)

We also made a gratitude "wall" which was a nice way to keep the focus on being grateful during the holiday season. I wrote about it for Year of Gratitude, here.

For my family's Thanksgiving I totally forgot to take any photos... but it was great. I'm really glad that we all got to get together early to celebrate, the meal was amazing, and I love that we've been getting to see my grandma more.

Thanksgiving with KC's family was great too. We had a nice meal with KC's parents, his sister and her husband, and his grandparents. It was great to share a meal and spend more time in a big group together. We took a family photo which doesn't happen a lot, so that was special. KC and his dad's test shot was cracking me up so I had to include it.

So that's it. We had our pie and cranberries and lots of great family moments.

Thanks for bearing with me as catch up on old holiday posts. I want to be able to look back on these here.

Do you have specific Thanksgiving traditions?

XO,

Alexandra

Halloween 2018!

If you saw my recent post you'll know that I'm catching up on some of the festive moments of 2018. Since we were moving into our home and getting settled, blogging took a backseat, so here we go, my very favorite holiday... Halloween!

Last Halloween we had our annual costume party game night which was super fun! It was especially fun to have it for the first time in our new home!

The Decor:

We used our black and white decorations that we made a few years ago and have been using ever since. We also added in some postcards that we picked up while we visited Salem earlier that month. We only added decorations in a few places, but it felt very festive!

The Playlist:

We're still listening to my Halloween playlist from 2014! I have added to it over time and it is nice and long, which is perfect for a games evening!

The Food: 

We decided to make Halleweeños again and friends filled in the gaps since we were still getting settled in our home! One thing of note were the GBBO themed pumpkin macarons that our friends Will and Cara brought. They dressed up as Paul and Mary Berry so it was a funny touch that they decorated their macarons to say things like "scrumy"!

The Costumes:

We dressed up like garden gnomes and had such a blast with it! We were able to wear our ordinary clothes in a much more colorful way. All we had to do was pick up red felt to make our hats and a fake hair material for a beard and eyebrows for KC.

I love how they turned out, and I was super excited that ModCloth shared my costume with all of their followers since my green dress is one I bought from their store. How flattering! Overall we had a great time being gnomes, but it is always nice to be noticed! :) I will definitely share a tutorial sometime closer to Halloween to add to my costume tutorial collection!

How cute is Duchess with one of the hats?!? We couldn't believe that she sat there for so long. It was adorable.

We had a great night playing board games with everyone, and showing off our house a little. At this point we had only been there for two months, so we weren't at all settled, but it was nice to show everyone what we'd been working on!

Does anyone else love Halloween?!

Is anyone else already thinking about this year's costumes?!

XO,

Alexandra

Focusing on the Festive // Back in the Swing of Things

When I started this blog 9 (WOW!) years ago, my intention was to document things that inspired me and to keep a record of special moments.

Many of those moments for me are holidays. I love to cook, bake, and mix up fun drinks for special occasions and most importantly share those things with incredible people. So, yes that means that I especially love holidays and throwing parties for friends and family!

When we moved in with KC's family to finish saving for our home, and then moved into our house last year, this space took a bit of a back seat, and so I'm going to go ahead and do some catch up posts! I didn't even post about Halloween last year. GASP! I'm looking forward to revisiting the festive parts of last year, and to keep sharing more festive moments as this year goes on.

We did have lovely festive moments with friends and family that I am excited to retroactively share and document here. It doesn't seem right to leave them out any longer!

Thank you to anyone who has been a reader here, I'm looking forward to continuing blogging about festive moments along with books, planners, and scrapbooks as the year goes on. :)

If there is anything specific you'd like to see, please let me know!

XO,

Alexandra

29 // Birthday Celebrations + Fourth of July 2019

Hello Friends! I hope that you had a lovely fourth of July and weekend! I wanted to share a little bit about my birthday and the fourth!

Why my Birthday & The Fourth are Complicated (aka making new traditions):

My whole life until my parents moved to Arizona we had a cookout for the fourth with family that was also my birthday party, and often my aunt's as well. It was so nice to have everyone together, to share meals, and to set off fireworks. (the city where I grew up doesn't have any restrictions about setting off fireworks within city limits.) Once they moved, KC and I spent a few years traveling for my birthday, and every year I ended up feeling really sad and missing how things used to be. KC's family doesn't really have any traditions for the holiday, so we didn't have an easy replacement for the old traditions. This was the first year in a long time where I didn't feel sad because that tradition no longer happens. It was so so nice, and such a relief. Overall I had a much nicer birthday and holiday than I've had in a really long time. A big big big part of that is KC, his patience, and his planning. It also feels like it was meant to be that our new home happens to have a great view of the city fireworks, and a big enough yard to hang out in. Especially for a girl who grew up thinking the fireworks were for her birthday, and not America's. ;) I felt like we were creating a new tradition and

Here we go!

My Birthday!

This year I turned 29, and KC really spoiled me. We had breakfast at home and he gave me gifts to unwrap before we headed out to a few bookstores, the mall (obviously had a pretzel), and then went to Papersource before getting tapas for happy hour. It was a fun day to spend together doing fairly normal things that I enjoy. It was nice just to be together without any obligations or worries.

 

The Fourth!

On the fourth we had people over for a cookout/potluck/my birthday party. Our house has a really good view of the city fireworks. We had a lot of fun eating, chatting, watching fireworks, and making sparkler art. I was so grateful to everyone who wished me happy birthday! Our sweet neighbor even came over and had a vegetarian only grill for our veggie guests. He grilled the best sweet corn and brought over homemade herb compound butters. So spoiled by his generosity!

Family Dinner:

Then on Saturday we went to visit my mom and grandma. She made hot dogs and mac and cheese which we never have anymore, but was a treat for us growing up. My sister and nephew came and we looked at old pictures which was such a blast from the past. These photos of KC and Darrick kill me. Too cute.

What about you guys?

Do you have any fourth of July or birthday traditions?

I'm really enjoying making new ones. :) 

XO,

Alexandra