2013 Christmas Cards

Hey all,

It’s been over a month since I last posted. Wow! It doesn’t feel that long. This year, the gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas was shorter than normal, but for me, Thanksgiving seems so long ago. Shortly after Turkey Day, my grandmother (mother’s mother) passed away. I flew to Oklahoma City to remember her life and be with that side of the family. Thankfully I was able to escape from work, which is not a given when working retail during the holiday season. I’m so grateful I got to be with my extended family during the holidays, even though the circumstances surrounding the occasion were somber.

In a way, I do feel like I got to “go home” for the holidays, even though my home is right here in CA. Being with my mom, dad, aunts, uncles, and cousins for Thanksgiving in the Midwest is something we haven’t been able to do in probably close to ten years(!), and this may be as close as we get for a while.

Then, I returned home and hit the ground running when it came to work. The Holidays, people, when many retailers make three months’ worth of revenue in two weeks. Did you know that? It’s totally, absolutely, literally exhausting. Please be gentle on us for a little while. We are still trying to recover.

All this to say, I have been notably absent from the blog. Part of me has missed blogging, and another part of me forgot all about it since life has been so crazy. It is something I enjoy doing, and I’ll try to climb back on the horse (as they say) and come up with some fun and interesting stuff to populate this little corner of the interweb.

This year, amidst all the madness, I wanted to try to illustrate our little family for a card, instead of having our photo taken. It was more work than I anticipated, and that is why I’m getting them sent out today, on the 27th (sad trombone noise). Drawing the sketch was fun, and outlining it in sharpie was stressful. Doug managed to scan it into the computer and used Adobe Illustrator to clean it up (I’ll have to have him show me how to do it).

2013 Christmas Card

Since the photo and message on the back are all black and white, I tried to inject a little pizzaz to the card by using leftover envelopes from Stephanie’s wedding invites. I love how special they are. I’ll probably order metallic envelopes for all my holiday cards from now on!

Thank you all for reading, and especially for commenting throughout 2013. The year went by so fast! I am eager to see what 2014 will bring.

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Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Staci, Doug, and Mosey

Merry Christmas from Staci, Doug, and Mosey

Squeeze your loved ones if they are near, call them and tell them you love them if they are far.
Here is wishing a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all.

Here’s one of my favorite Christmas songs! Have you ever really listened to the words?

Modestly Decked

I really like decorating for Christmas, in fact I was begging to put the tree up since Halloween ended, but at the same time I am not one to go all-out, over the top with seasonal decor. The halls have been decked, though, very merrily and I’m pretty sure I want to keep our Christmas tree up until April.

4-foot Christmas Tree

Of course we have the requisite Christmas tree, our third size in as many years. Maybe someday we’ll reuse one of our Christmas trees. That’s the whole point of buying faux, right?

Since our tree was much larger (6′ as opposed to 4′) last year, we have a lot of ornaments that didn’t make it up this year. However, it was not for lack of space–in fact I love a really crammed full tree, but we simply could not find our ornament hangers (and were out of paperclips, the cheater’s way to hang ornaments). So, truth be told, as soon as we ran out of hangers, we were done hanging.

Christmas Table Decorations

We may be fickle when it comes to the main tree, but every year since 2010, I have reused this cute little Christmas tree that I inherited from a friend when I moved into my first Kansas apartment. (Just thinking about how cold that winter was has got me shivering–9° the night I moved in!)  Isn’t this little tree adorable? The new candle holder is from Crate & Barrel… you will see its large counterpart on the sideboard in the next shot.

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