Wahoo! It’s Christmas Eve! And today is one of our favorite days EVER! We have so many traditions that fill today with magic, joy, and fun… one of our favorites will happen tonight at MeMe’s house when we all gather in the living room to read T’was The Night Before Christmas. On this 24th Day of our AMAZING Life Holiday Advent Calendar, we invite you to gather your loved ones together and read T’was The Night Before Christmas. Magic will definitely fill the air!Picture about 60 people (probably more once you add in the friends that come and go throughout the evening) packed in the living room of a home. Kids running around with their toys, conversations running over each others conversations from across the room, people sitting on each others laps and many people hanging out on the floor! This is the reality of our Christmas Eve and it is everything that we dream of! ;) The best moment is when we gather around to read T’was The Night Before Christmas. The room suddenly gets quiet and the wide-eyed kids start to feel an extra bit of magic! As soon as the story is over, we start singing… and every single year we have been blessed by a visit from Santa!! Santa comes to MeMe’s house and it is pretty much the most magical thing you can ever imagine! Yes, I am no longer a little kid… but that is one of the moments that I look forward to year after year! The wide-eyed kids quickly spread the magic in the air and there is nothing quite like it!Wherever you are today and tonight, take some time to soak in the magic! Read T’was the Night Before Christmas and hug your loved ones tight!
The past few days have definitely felt a lot like winter. Mother nature apparently realized that it’s not really supposed to be 60 degrees and sunny everyday in December. Well, at least not for those of us in the Northeast and Midatlantic. Although we don’t really like the cold all that much, we LOVE LOVE LOVE the snow! I have probably been signing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” for the past week now. Fortunately you don’t have to be subjected to my extremely off pitch tone. I definitely won’t be signing up for The Voice anytime soon! :)
As we were wrapping up all our Christmas gifts, we took a glance at the weather and to our pleasant surprise, the weatherman was forecasting 1-3 inches of snow on Christmas Eve!!!! We might finally get a white Christmas after all!! Once the first snowflakes begin to fall you can guarantee that Liz and I will be the first ones outside making a snowman! So for Day 23 of our AMAZING Life Holiday Advent Calendar (and for the rest of winter) go play in the snow! Playing in the snow brings out the child in us. Whether I am picking up Liz and running outside while she doesn’t have shoes on like I did in this picture from high school, or if we are sled riding, making snow angels, or snowmen, playing in the snow just makes us laugh and giggle with joy. And that is definitely what life is all about. Laugh out loud, roll around in the snow, and have fun. And for all of you that are lucky enough to have a white Christmas, be sure to take a picture and share it on Facebook or Instagram with us! We’d love to see your smiling faces!
Have a Very Merry White Christmas! :)
Side note, I really wanted this post to be about sending a snowball to someone that doesn’t get snow. Unfortunately we haven’t had any snow as of yet to make a snowball, and although I think my plan of buying 5 lbs of dry ice and a giant Styrofoam cooler are flawless, I let Liz talk me out of it this time. Although if you live in Florida, don’t be surprised if a giant snowball shows up in the mail this February! :)
“I saw mommy kissing Santa Clause, underneath the mistletoe last night…” As that song plays over and over in our heads (and lets be honest, as we sing it loud and proud throughout the house!), we thought it would be fun to pull a little mistletoe into our Amazing Life Holiday Advent Calendar! On day 22, we invite you to go out and purchase some mistletoe to hang in your home and watch the magic happen! ;) lol. Ok, well… share a few extra kisses with your loved ones this holiday season! Ok, this post was probably one of the most fun to create! ;) Not necessarily because we got to kiss a lot in order to make sure we got the “perfect” picture! Haha! But because we reminisced about our very first Christmas together! ;) One of my all time favorite pictures of Ryan and I is from our very first Christmas together underneath the kissing ball that hung in our home! (Yes, a whole ball of mistletoe!! So fun!). We went back to our scrapbooks to find that photo and a whole rush of memories came back! There was something so amazingly raw about our emotions that year and it was so much fun to relive that through our photos!
As we hang some mistletoe in our home (or Ryan just starts to carry it around with him over his head! Lol) we welcome those raw emotions and carefree spirit! We are so blessed to be surrounded by so much love and having the mistletoe around is a perfect reminder!
Happy Holidays! Only four days left until Christmas! If you haven’t checked out our AMAZING Life Holiday Advent Calendar yet be sure to do so today!
Some of my most vivid memories from childhood was going to bed on Christmas Eve and not being able to sleep all night. Fortunately Santa never checked to make sure I wasn’t awake. Although I wouldn’t have minded as long as he shared some of his milk and cookies with me! :)
At about 5am on Christmas morning, I would wake up and sneak over to my brother’s room. There we would eagerly wait until 6am when we could finally wake up our parents to go open the gifts that were wrapped nicely under the tree. There would be presents from Santa, Rudolph, the elves, Mrs. Claus, you name it … Apparently everyone at the North Pole liked giving us gifts! We would start with the stockings stuffed to the top with Candy and toys. Of course my mom would always be sure to sneak in a new toothbrush so we wouldn’t rot our teeth with all the Peanut Butter Smidgens Santa left us.
Although Santa would give some cool presents, the best were always the ones from our parents and family. It’s heartbreaking to think that some children may not have the same experience of joy and happiness on Christmas Morning that stands out so vividly to me over 20 years later.
Fortunately there are many AMAZING organizations that collect toys and gifts for families in need. One of our favorites is Toys for Tots. On Day 21 of Advent we encourage you to donate to Toys for Tots.
There is still time to donate a toy to Toys for Tots. Go to www.toysfortots.org, select donate a toy, select your state, and then your local area. You will then be given a list of locations that are collecting toys. Since Christmas is quickly approaching (where did December go?), many places have stopped collecting gifts, but there are still a few that will collect donations up until Christmas Day. If you can’t find a location that is still collecting, you can still make a monetary donation to Toys for Tots that will help purchase gifts for those in need. Help bring a smile and a lasting memory to a child’s face this year by donating to Toys for Tots!
Thanks to the AMAZING staff at the North Hammonds Ferry Rd Fed Ex! Everyone was so excited and grateful when we showed up to drop off our toys!
Ryan and I are HUGE fans of packaging! (I think it stems way back to our mentor and Board of Life Director Dean Badal!) She would have packaging parties around Halloween to send gifts to friends and there was never a detail that was forgotten! She taught us that the box and the wrapping is often just as important (if not more important) than the gift itself!
We thought it would be fun to personalize our gifts this year with an extra special touch! We made DIY Gift tags that were super easy but are sure to leave a lasting impact. Join us on Day 20 of the AMAZING Life Holiday Advent Calendar and spruce up your gifts with some DIY Gift tags!We saw a picture for these Salt Dough gift tags on Pinterest (of course! ;) ) and just loved them! Then we looked at the recipe and read the directions and we were sold! ;) With only 3 ingredients and no baking involved, this project is super super easy! We followed the instructions from blogger She Knows for step-by-step instructions! But seriously, all you need to do is:
Mix 1 cup of salt with 2 cups of flour. Then add 1 cup of warm water and mix again.
Form the dough into a ball.
Roll the dough until it is about ¼ inch thick and then use cookie cutters to cut the shape you would like! We used a round shape, but you could do ANYTHING that you would like! So fun!
Stamp the shape with anything you would like… again, we used our Liz and Ryan stamp, but the sky is the limit here!
Let the gift tags dry 24-48 hours!
Once they are dry, we plan to write the recipients name on the opposite side of our gift tags! Once we have all of our gifts wrapped and completed with these DIY Salt Dough Gift tags, we will definitely post a photo on Instagram and Facebook! Stay tuned! ;)
Picture about 60 people (probably more once you add in the friends that come and go throughout the evening) packed in the living room of a home. Kids running around with their toys, conversations running over each others conversations from across the room, people sitting on each others laps and many people hanging out on the floor! This is the reality of our Christmas Eve and it is everything that we dream of! ;) The best moment is when we gather around to read T’was The Night Before Christmas. The room suddenly gets quiet and the wide-eyed kids start to feel an extra bit of magic! As soon as the story is over, we start singing… and every single year we have been blessed by a visit from Santa!! Santa comes to MeMe’s house and it is pretty much the most magical thing you can ever imagine! Yes, I am no longer a little kid… but that is one of the moments that I look forward to year after year! The wide-eyed kids quickly spread the magic in the air and there is nothing quite like it!
Wherever you are today and tonight, take some time to soak in the magic! Read T’was the Night Before Christmas and hug your loved ones tight!
