By this time in the Christmas activities, Hubby is rolling his eyes every time he has to pull an envelope. Lol. And when he pulled this one out, he yelled, "Another art project? Ugh!" Maybe next year, I will do less art in my plans.
For today's activity, I chose for Hubby and I to build a gingerbread house. Can you believe that I have only done this once in my life in elementary school? I have seriously missed lots of candy, sticky icing fun in my life.
I was all game to do this from scratch, but since that idea seemed a little expensive, I just picked up a kit from good old Walmart. Who knew there were so many choices? Gingerbread house, gingerbread townhome, gingerbread train, gingerbread village. Being the overachiever that I am, I chose the village. Why mess up my dining room for one stinking house? Lol.
Hubby and I had a really good time. To build the houses took some teamwork since someone needed to hold it up while the other glued it together with icing. And just when we thought we were done, the whole thing collapsed on us! How horrible! It took us about two hours to just put the basic assembly then it told us to wait overnight before we could decorate. Bummer.
Oh well, we have a part two coming for this activity. Decorating is the best part though. Can't wait to share our masterpiece!
So I was feeling better and ready to get back on track with our newlywed Christmas activities. On Day 15, we took Christmas photos of our zoo. As you all know, we currently have eleven pets in our household. They are our babies and we love them so much. Since we had taken photos of ourselves, it only seemed obvious that we needed ones of the zoo.
Let me say that I now have a newfound respect for all pet photographers. I went into this thinking, "Oh, this won't be too hard. Our pets are pretty mellow." Ha! I lied to myself. Have you ever tried getting pets to sit still on crunchy paper that they hated, while looking into a camera? It is so hard!
To set up my makeshift studio, I went into our guest room and constructed a background with some striped wrapping paper and some tape. In addition, I got an old basket, wrapped it in wrapping paper, and put the tree skirt from our Christmas tree inside. (The thought was that the cats could sit inside.)
After we had everything ready, we proceeded to wrangle the cats. To summarize the photos with the cats, they were NOT having it. They hated the paper, they hated the basket, and even with copious amounts of treats and toys, they refused to stay still long enough for us to get more than one decent photo. Here are the results.
Artie
Silver
Midnight
Ray
Burnice - She was really not feeling this. We could not even get her in the background.
So now was the time to gather the canine members of the family. They were a bit easier than the cats, but they just would not look into the camera. Hubby did not help by standing to the right of me with treats, so they are all looking upper right in these photos. Sigh...
Biscuit
Rasbee
Another one of Rasbee
Frankie
Bella
Mumu
Shylow - our supermodel
Another of Shylow - We got her to pose in the basket WITH the hat. Success!
Next year, I think we will forgo this activity and just take the pets to one of those "photos with Santa" events that the local rescues have. At least I have some good pics to remember this Christmas by.
Days 11 - 14 were not very enjoyable for me. I was sick. Sore throat, earache, and all over body ache. In between work, sleep was my best friend during these days. Although I was not at my best, I rearranged some of our newlywed activities around so that we could do some of the more tamer ideas, like watch movies and mail our Christmas cards.
On Day 11, the plan was to lay around and watch "The Christmas Story," but Hubby objected to this idea because he wanted to watch the 24 hour marathon on Christmas day. I was up for another suggestion, so we instead decided to watch "Let's Be Cops." I know, I know! Not a Christmas movie at all, but any excuse for me to cuddle up to Hubby in my feverish state is good with me.
I actually did not expect to like this movie and truthfully, most of the plot was obvious, but it gave me a few laughs and it fulfilled my new crush on Damon Wayans, Jr. I watched him in Happy Endings and now in New Girl and he is funny!
On Day 12, we mailed out our Christmas cards. After a few days of texting, emailing, and calling people for their addresses, we finally had all of the info to mail out the cards. It felt sooo good to put those envelopes in the mailbox for the postman to pick up. For once, I succeeded in getting Christmas cards on time! Right? Stay tuned.
On Day 13, we made it another movie night, but with the added pleasure of apple pie! There is nothing more soothing to the soul than a warm slice of apple pie with cold vanilla ice cream. And while you are soothing the soul with good dessert, you should also add in my favorite movie, "Love Actually!"
Dear Makers of "Love Actually," You took everything I like about romantic comedies and put it into one amazing movie. Thank you and I thank God for you wonderful souls every time I watch it. Love, Crystal (Ok, that is enough of my ode to "Love Actually."
PLUS
EQUALS
Here is a very funny parody of the movie that you must watch.
On Day 14, I was feeling so much better. Still not 100%, but good enough to get out of bed, play with my dogs, and cook dinner. So on this day, I went out and picked up some needed items for the next few days of activities. Plus, my mom was going to be coming into town, so I needed to get the guest room ready for her arrival. To round out the day, Lifetime was having a marathon of Christmas movies, so all day, the TV was on and I was watching some great movies about Santa, finding love, and the general spirit of the season.
In all, these four days did not go as planned, but I think Hubby and I made the most of the situation. A lot of the Christmas activities that you can do don't have to involve a lot. Just use that time to spend some needed time with a loved one and cuddle. And if all else fails, watch every Christmas movie that you can get on TV and enjoy!
For the tenth day of newlywed Christmas activities, I thought I would bring out our competitive sides. There is nothing better for raising the blood pressure than a spirited game of Monopoly, right? Well for tonight's family game night, I introduced Christmas-opoly! (Evil Laugh)
My friends will tell you that I can get very competitive and very serious quickly. No matter the game, I tend to hyperfocus on winning and when I lose, it is not good. Recently while in Las Vegas, I became addicted to Bingo. While my friends were laughing, joking, and probably missing numbers, I was focused on getting every number, double checking my board, and daubing the paper like my life depended on it. At the end of the game, it looked like I had killed a marker because I had blue ink all over me. I did not win the first night, which led me to go back three nights in a row until I finally won. Anyway, when I thought to do a Christmas-themed game night, I promised myself that I would not get so into it and try to enjoy the spirit of the game. Did I succeed? Uh, sort of...lol.
I decided that Monopoly would be a great game. It is about strategy, versus luck, so I knew Hubby would like it. I searched Amazon to purchase the game and came upon a Christmas version. It was called Christmas-opoly and was super cute. The board, the player pieces, and the cards were all created with Christmas themes. And for less than $25, it was a good value.
Front of Box
Back of Box
Hubby and I set-up the board, ordered a pizza and proceeded to play. For the next three hours, we played...and played...and played. At first, Hubby was winning. He had lots of property, money, and was beating me at every turn. Well, this is where I started getting serious. No way was I going to lose! I starting buying properties, multiplying my value, and soon, I was on top again! (HAHAHAHAHA)
The board game before we started playing.
Defeated! (Mortal Kombat sound effect)
As you can tell from the photo above, I won! While, I did get somewhat competitive, I was able to have a lot of fun. Hubby, as always, stayed calm and merely laughed at my serious nature. And the game kept it fun, by making us sing Christmas carols at various parts of the game. We definitely will be playing this again before the end of the year, especially when my mom comes to visit because she loves playing games.
What is the moral of this story? Don't ever play games with Crystal and please keep me out of the Bingo Halls...lol.
On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...cheesy Christmas photos of Hubby and me! Can I tell you that I have been really excited about this activity for over a month?! For today's activity, I arranged for us to take a special Christmas photo.
I love photos! I have thousands of pictures on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and my cell phone of myself, Hubby, our animals, our food, and random things I see. I am just a visual person and to me photos are the ultimate memory. And lucky for me, Hubby indulges me in my obsession.
With most of my Christmas activities, I tried not to spend a fortune for a good time. You don't need to spend lots of money to create memories. With a little research and discount shopping, I have been able to keep most activities under $30...most being absolutely free. With that being said, for this activity, I went to my favorite deal site, LivingSocial!
Last month, LivingSocial had a deal with the Picture People for an in-studio photo session with the following prints:
One 10x13 Print
One 8x10 Print
Four 5x7 Prints
16 Wallet-Sized Prints
and 30 Gift Tags
I only paid $15 dollars for this great deal!!!! The value of this package was over $130!!!! (Did I use enough exclamation marks there?) With this deal, we could only choose one image for all of these, which was a bummer, but we knew this going in.
For this activity, I actually had to let Hubby open the envelope a day early because we had an early morning appointment and needed to coordinate our outfits. So away I went to do a fashion show for Hubby!
The next day was picture day and Hubby and I went to the Picture People studio in Perimeter Mall here in Atlanta. The studio was well lit, colored in bright, festive colors and our photographer, Courtney, was amazing! We let her know from the start that we did not want any cheesy, hand-on-shoulder, high school photos. We wanted fun, silly, and very us! She definitely got what we were wanting and after 20 minutes of posing and laughing (mostly from her because we were being our typical comedy act couple), we got some great shots.
They let us review all of the photos then we selected the one we thought was the best. This was not an easy decision and we had to pull in some fellow picture takers to give their feedback. In the end, we choose....DRUMROLL...
We plan on sending our Christmas photo to family members to enjoy in their Christmas cards. I hope they like it as much as we loved taking the photo.
Also, BONUS, Hubby said it was his most favorite activity of all and couldn't stop talking about all of the fun that he had at our photo shoot and how beautiful I looked (blushing). Gosh, I love that man.
Day eight of our newlywed Christmas activities consisted of more Christmas decorating. In our neighborhood, some people are really starting to get the Christmas spirit. There are lights on trees, large blow-up figures, bows, garland, the works. Well tonight, we bundled up and did a little decorating of our front door.
Hubby with our "baby" Shylow.
While I would have loved to go crazy with the decorations, we have a strict budget, so I kept it simple with some cheap decorations from the Dollar Tree. I picked up some garland, red bows, and two sparkly Christmas wreaths. Hubby and I aren't very crafty and own barely any tools, so our decorations went up with some staples and tape. (Don't laugh, that is all we had!)
In the end, I think it looks very simple and classy. I am going to go out and get some white Christmas lights to add to it, to give it a little more glamour. It took us about 20 minutes to put everything up and gave us some much needed fresh air.
I hope you are getting great ideas for your Christmas activities. Even if you can't do 25 days, I encourage you to grab one or two of these ideas to do with your kids, pets, or significant other.
I must admit to my blog audience that I have failed in one of my Christmas activities. Shame...disgrace...disappointment...I know! Today's activity was supposed to be an especially fun one, but Hubby and I woke up on Sunday feeling like death. So instead of doing our activity, we either stayed in bed or slept on the couch all day.
For the seventh day of Christmas, I had planned for Hubby and I do go to a handbell choir concert at our church. I love handbells! To me, they exemplify the essence of Christmas. I was really looking forward to it, but alas, I will have to catch it next year.
Unfortunately, now I have to think of a Christmas activity to replace it and squeeze it into our other activities.
On a happier note, my mom is coming to stay for Christmas and New Years! Although we only stay four hours away, I haven't seen her for almost a year! I can't wait to introduce her to our new zoo members, let her and Hubby bond, and enjoy having her around for the holidays.
I will now leave you with this wonderful video of the Oregon State Handbell Choir doing "Let It Go" from Frozen!
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