i art a day.

At the moment I’m on my flight home from Charleston, SC – heading home after a truly wonderful Christmas with my family. I arrived on Christmas eve with the rest of the fam already on the ground, and headed for my Aunt’s house where the majority of the holiday festivities went down. Of course, the gift part of Christmas day was awesome. One of the MANY amazing gifts I received is this pair of tangeriney sweet pair of slippers:

made by em & sprout

Not to mention, the personalized cake pan from my Aunt T, beautiful original print from my cousins, Planet Earth on dvd (finally!!!) and great books all around! But of course, the gifts were only a fraction of the holiday experience. No trip to Charleston would be complete without indulging in the following meals:

tasty Christmas dinner…

Fried Shrimp (with Key Lime pie not pictured)

Bessinger’s barbeque…

While my friends and the boyf were shivering up north I was enjoying every moment in flip flops and a sweatshirt in the 50ish degree weather of the south. The time spent with my family was so long overdue and so comforting. Love was pouring out of every person I was around, and laughter was in every smile. Holidays like this one make me wish I was a little closer to all of these amazing people! If you’re one of my twitter friends you probably saw that every post of mine for the past two weeks talked about making gifts, which turned out pretty well:

I hope all of your holidays were just as awesome! Are your ready for the New Year? While taking a holiday I had the opportunity to really think about the past year, and the upcoming one and deliberate on my hopes and intentions for 2010. More on that next time =)

This year I’ve found myself with the Christmas Spirit in FULL FORCE. If I sing another Christmas carol I think the boyf is going to end it. I’ve boiled it down to a couple of reasons:

1. I finally found the Muppet Christmas Carol on DVD (thanks Amazon). I’ve been looking for this for years, especially since I don’t have a VHS player anymore. Best Christmas Movie EVER.
2. I haven’t seen my family in a long time. TOO long. Like, a year and a half too long. I’m ecstatic to see them come Christmas Eve.
3. I already have my Christmas present (this gorgeous laptop!), which is a mood elevator every time I look at it.

To channel some of this glee I made a gingerbread house for a museum charity fundraiser, which was way larger than it needed to be, but came out alright. I have a little dough left over to make another (smaller) one as a gift. I’ve also picked up some household holiday gear have a little bit of cheer in every room including a couple of large holiday mugs perfect for coffee and hot chocolate in front of the laptop:

and a set of prep bowls from Pier 1 for the large quantities of cookies I’ll be whipping up over the next two weeks:

We’ve put a tree up and put lights on it (colored lights for the first time in years!), but can’t decorate it much more because the cat has climbed it a couple of times, and all of those baubles would probably just throw her over the edge this year. I’ve picked up some of my favorite holiday songs on iTunes and have played them on repeat (top 3: Wham! – Last Christmas, Judy Garland – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Mariah Carey – All I Want for Christmas is You) probably to everyone else’s distress. We even picked up a live wreath and hung it on the door today:

With all of this excitement Christmas itself is coming up on me pretty quickly, so I’d better get to gift making. Speaking of which – time to whip up a couple of “test cookies”. ;c)