Happy Valentine's Day

I took this photo on my way home from work one night.
It just so happened the lights in this building were on in the shape of a heart.

I know, I know for many Valentine's is a disgustingly commercial holiday. However, I am sap. I love Valentine's Day, but not for the typical reasons. I don't expect my husband to take me to a romantic dinner or show up with an extravagant bouquet of flowers. I enjoy the holiday because I use it as a moment to celebrate my friendships and relationships. This year, I made my own cards. Here's a photo of my creation.

Enjoy your day and take time to celebrate your friendships. Sorry this post is so short, but I gotta get back to work.

Holiday Card fun

This year, I participated in Holiday Card Swap sponsored by Vane at Brooklyn Bride. The instructions were simple:

• You receive the names and addresses of up to 5 people to send cards to.
  
• Your cards can be store bought or handmade [think Gocco, glitter, photoshop, cut + paste, sewing, etc....]
  
• Send out your cards by December 15!
• Wait patiently by your mailbox!

I designed and painstakingly assembled my cards. I cut each pop-up window by hand using just an Xacto blade and a t-square. I ended up making 35 extra cards for friends and family. Despite the hard labor involved, I am pleased with my finished product.

Here is my contribution to the card swap.

Envelope with label

Return Address Label

Exterior of the card

Interior of the card

Opening the pop-ups

I was inspired to do a pop-up card by Clement Clarke Moore & Robert Sabuda. They were guests on the Martha Stewart Show. They did a step by step demo on how to make your own pop-up christmas card. It looked like fun. So, I was inspired to do something similar.

Here's one of their really great pop-up books.

Xmas for Mr. & Mrs.

Our First Christmas Tree

Left: The 1st Ornament in our collection
Right: An ornament for Dottie

I am a sap. I've always loved Christmas. I guess this could have been surmised by my pre-holiday posts. For the last couple of years, Rob & I have skipped a tree. Thankfully this year, we decided to do one since it's our first Christmas as a married couple. It's corny I know.

Our home is shoebox-sized. Because of the space constraints, we decided to get a mini-tree. Rob’s only request is that we get a fresh tree. I wanted to cheat and buy a plastic one that already had lights from Target. In the spirit of marital compromise, I agreed to get a fresh one so long as it was affordable.
We trudged off to a local Christmas tree lot to look at trees. It was funny to go to a lot for a small tree. Among the regular-sized trees, there were the mini trees. I actually felt tall standing beside them. Sadly, the mini trees did not have mini prices to match. $30 for a 3 ft. tree! Were they out of their minds?!

Luckily, my clever hubby overhead them complaining about how hungry they were. So, he offered them a solution. We buy two Double-Double combos from In-n-Out and they give us a tree. They hungrily accepted.

In the end, our Christmas tree end up costing us two of these...

the monetary equivalent of $10.37. That, my friends, is how Mr. & Mrs. R got a Christmas Tree

It's that time of the year

I can't believe it is December already. I love this time of year. What can I say? I am a sap. I have always associated this time of year with fond memories.

As I mentioned previously, our holiday season started with Black Friday shopping. As the oldest, I helped my mom with the rest of the decorating, shopping, and gift wrapping. I loved the bonding time. My mom has always been a career woman. This made one-on-one time with her very limited. The holidays afforded me time with my mom. It's one of the things that I miss now that I live so far from her.

Another aspect of the holidays that I love is gift-giving. I love getting gifts, but I love giving them even more. I enjoy finding little gems for the people on my list and their reactions when they open the gifts. For a short time, the shopping frenzy that takes place here in L.A. ruined my gift-giving delight. You haven't seen anything until you try shopping out here. The pushing, the shoving, the rudeness are unprecedented.

Thankfully, I have found a workaround. I now buy gifts online. This year I am being extra sporting, I am striving to buy mostly handmade gifts. No macramé or bead bracelets. I would post photos of my finds, but it will have to wait until after the holidays. It'll be good I promise. Until then, here's an article about buying handmade gifts.

Black Friday

For the fourth year in a row, I have skipped the shopping frenzy known as "Black Friday". While growing up, it was considered a sport by my family. My mother would have us scour the sales papers and we would come up with a "plan of attack". Our clothes would be laid out the night before. The woman was a machine. She would have us up promptly at 4 am with breakfast already on the table. To some this may be considered a smaller form of child abuse. To us, it was fun. It was the one time that we were ALLOWED to run around the store and grab what we were assigned to pick it up. What kid wouldn't want that? It was a weird form of family bonding. My mother had our undivided attention while we stood in line. She would subtly pick our brains as to what each of us wanted for Christmas. The woman was good.

Flash forward several years. I now live in Los Angeles which is considered a major shopping mecca. I tried "Black Friday" shopping with my cousin. I have never seen pushing shoving and maneuvering quite like that. These people were professionals! The thrill was gone. It was then that I realized that I was completely out of my league. As a realist, I decided that standing in line for $5 DVDs was not worth it for me. I have respectfully chosen not to participate.

As a result, I have become an online shopper. Last year I bought 50% of my gifts online. This year, I intend to buy 75% of my gifts online. To add to the challenge, I am attempting to buy mostly handmade gifts. Handmade gifts no longer mean ugly sweaters made by your Aunt. With sites like Etsy, unique and well-made handmade gifts are much more accessible. I plan to post my finds. We'll see how this goes...