The Kari AnnAlysis

Posts Tagged ‘christmas’

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas! In my 25 years, I believe this was my favorite Christmas ever! At one time, Christmas was one of my least favorite holidays, but thanks to my amazing husband, I am back in the Christmas spirit.

We had six Christmases in two days and all of them went off without a hitch!

Here are some highlights of my holidays:

This is my Christmas sweater! For several days, I wore Goodwill sweaters with pearls and snowmen and all the bells and whistles, but this sweater is serious. My husband is an avid deer hunter and when I found it, I fell in love. I needed it! It was a very awesome present from my dad that I wore the rest of Christmas Eve!

This is little man Logan shooting his gun! He is my cousin’s son and three years old. Last year, we told his parents that we were going to get him a Red Ryder BB Gun. Logan looks just like Ralphie, he NEEDED one! So this year, we got it for him (along with the awesome camo rain boots he is wearing). And let me tell ya, this boy rocked it! He had to have a little help because it took both hands to pull the trigger, but he hit the target his first shot. I shot twice and missed both times lol. I’m a lousy shot compared to a three year old. The best part, we recorded a video on my phone so we could send it to my mom and tell her what he got. I asked him who got the BB Gun for him and he said, “Michael and Kari because my yuv them.” It brought tears to my eyes. He is such a loving little guy.

Yes, I am wearing antlers in this picture…and a mustache. The antlers were another gift we got for Logan, but they made their way around to most of the family. The mustache was one of several I won in the gift exchange. We do a $5 gag gift white elephant exchange. Then you put a $25 gift card in the bottom of the bag. Whatever gag gift you end up with is the gift card you end up with…although we do a lot of trading when it’s all said and done. We started this a few years back and I took a coffee mug that said “Coffee Makes Me Poop”. Everyone else brought nice gifts, but now everyone has jumped on the silly wagon with me. Someone got a bright orange chicken that sits in your kitchen, someone (my dad) got a bright lime green piece of plastic that is three feet tall and shaped like a kid to warn people that kids are in the area. Oh it was such a fun event, until it was time to take family pictures and my mustache had to come off. I was fully prepared for my husband to pull it off, until he did and it brought tears to my eyes. My upper lip burned for 5-10 minutes. Remember that before you sport the stache.

These little babies are two of my amazing gifts I got this year. Hubs and I got a mini Keurig coffee pot and my amazing awesome terrific fabulous husband got me a KitchenAid mixer. I was so excited I cried a little when I opened it. Notice the red! We also have red dishes. Yippee!

I will be the first one to say that I am very spoiled. My husband goes out of his way to surprise me and give me the most amazing presents every year at Christmas. Once we got married, he stepped right in where my parents left off, but at Christmas they step back into that role too. But, the part about being spoiled is that I appreciate their generosity more than they will ever know. They have all received several hugs and texts and verbal thank yous that will continue every time I use the new toys (except my dad….he would probably get tired of the thanks every time I turn on our tv).

 This year is a little different than the other years when it comes to presents. I made several presents this year for my family. I will do another post on that soon. I made my dad a wreath from wine corks and a button lamp that looks like Santa’s suit. I made my mom a picture book from our wedding and a picture thing with her last name on it. I was so excited to see the looks on the faces of my family as they opened their handmade gifts. Maybe if I start knitting now, I can give them all a nice, warm, knitted something next year! I also hope I can come up with good enough ideas to top this year! Let the planning begin!

How was your Christmas? Any big surprises? Did you make anything extra special?????

Although I am sure at some point over the next few days I’ll be poking around on the laptop, catching up on blogs and trying to find new stuff to pin, my goal is to take a break.

It has been a LONG year to say the least. I am very thankful for my husband, family, friends, job, you name it, but I will not be sad to see the door shut on 2011 and this little holiday break couldn’t come at a better time.

I will be staring at my Christmas tree and wrapped presents, admiring their beauty, eating the dozens of cookies I made, watching every Christmas movie I can keep my eyes open for, waiting to see the looks on the faces of my family members when they open their presents that I thought long and hard over and enjoying all of this with the most amazing man I could imagine!

I hope that you all have an amazing Christmas and enjoy your blessings as much as I plan to!

See you in a few days!

My feelings towards Christmas have gone to both extremes over the past few years. I wasn’t always a fan of Christmas, for reasons not to be spoken about on the Internets. But my husband restored my Christmas spirit when we started dating and I became a Christmas fanatic. Our apartment is decked out in holiday fashion, I bake several times in the month of December with holiday themes, I watch every Christmas movie Lifetime, Hallmark and LMN have to offer and I normally read only holiday themed books from Thanksgiving on.

This year, my spirit had been a little dulled. Before Thanksgiving was even over, I was already feeling the Christmas crunch. Every weekend in December, my schedule is booked with holiday parties, travelling and family get togethers. Those are all fantastic events that I eventually get excited for, but this year, just looking at the booked month of December on my calendar, I was overwhelmed and in tears before it even got here.

Luckily, I have snapped out of it. I got all my decorations out the weekend of Thanksgiving. I have kept up to date on the latest holiday movies, watching 3-4 on the weekends courtesy the DVR and am finally feeling Christmas spirit.

But the thing that pushed it over the top? A weekend getaway with my mom.

This past weekend, we went to Columbus, Ohio to go shopping. Our favorite place to shop is Easton. It’s an outdoor mall, with fantastic stores and an awesome atmosphere. We try to go at least once a year, but made a vow to go on a shopping trip, every three months, not necessarily to shop, but more to spend time together.

Now we both know that we can’t afford everything that Easton has to offer. There are a lot of high-end stores, that just aren’t in our local mall, like Nordstrom and J Crew. We like at all the pretty, shiny goods and just enjoy being there.

We always have such a great time, with lots of laughs when we spend these weekends together.

We left on Saturday morning at 8 a.m. We stopped and picked up an item in Chillicothe and got our usual breakfast of Tim Hortons. We always try to eat at places, and shop for that matter at places we can’t get a home.

We made the two hour drive to Columbus, and even though we talk daily and text dozens of times a day, there was not a quiet moment. We always have so much to talk about. When I was in high school, a teacher told me my mom would be my best friend one day. I laughed at her. Now, I wish she was still around and would welcome an “I told you so” from her.

So we finally got to the mall, which is huge and breathtaking in itself, knowing that Tiffany and Co. and Henri Bendel and Coach are all in our near future.

We spent nearly two hours in Macy’s. The store is huge and has furniture, which is not something our local Macy’s has. And it’s amazing how much different the merchandise is in Columbus compared to Huntington, W.Va.

Of course, all of our shopping trips end with lots of pictures. This one included the following:

I should have given you guys a warning about some of these pictures. We had to do a little training session about blurry pictures. She is ready to be a star iPhone photographer now Anywho, so these furry/hairy vests are a hot commodity right now. They have them in all different colors and furs and cuts. Obviously I was talking in this picture…but just not to anyone. I was talking to a lady who had a cart, in Macys, FULL of these jackets. She said she started wearing them in the Westminster dog show because she found one to look like her dog and she was on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams for her jacket. How fun!

But that wasn’t the only fun vest I found

Ok so it may not have been necessary to make this face, but it just seemed natural!

Since we were a couple of hours away from home and just couldn’t get through the entire mall in one day, we decided to stay with one of mom’s sorority sister’s from college. She has always been Aunt Molly to me and one of my fondest memories with her is our vacation to her dad’s house in Sarasota, Florida one year. He lived a couple of doors down from Lucille Ball. Although I was only five, I remember that trip like it was yesterday.

Well this past weekend, Molly was attending an annual White Elephant Party at her sister’s house down the street. We were invited and decided that if we could get all of our shopping done, we would stop by. Well that invitation became a definite when we found these goodies at this awesome local shop

If you have never been to a White Elephant gift exchange, here’s how it works. Everyone at the party brings a silly gift and puts it in a pile. They don’t have name tags or who they are from. You draw a number from a hat, which determines the order of gift grabbers. You start with number 1. That person picks a gift from the pile. The person with 2 goes next. They can either steal the first person’s gift or take from the pile. That continues on and you can either steal from anyone before you or choose from the pile. After two steals per turn, you have to go back to the pile. When everyone gets their turn, the person who drew number 1 gets to go one final time. They can either keep their gift, or steal from anybody they wish. It’s really fun and you get really funny presents. It can get old if there is not a steal limit per turn because it goes on and on and on and on. But the limit really makes it move.

Not to pat myself on the back, but the peace sign that I took was the gift of the party. People would just come up to the pile and put up a peace sign and it was known that’s what they wanted. It was soooo funny.

There were some crazy gifts that were given. Here’s a couple:

Why yes, that top picture is a sheep. And a huge one at that!! It was in a huge green bag and everyone coaxed the guy into getting it. Someone actually stole the sheep from him because at this party, it’s a tradition to put several of the funny gifts in the neighbor’s yard and this one was too good to pass up.

And the bottom picture, oh the bottom picture is actually what I got the first time I got up there. Yes, that is a painting of an urn on a piece of wood, Nice right? Fortunately, I didn’t get stuck with that for long. SOMEONE ACTUALLY STOLE IT FROM ME! And he held on to it all night long. Shooo! I ended up with a little girl’s hair care kit. That, along with what my mom got, Disney Princess Pez set, the little neighbor girl will have some fun new toys for Christmas lol.

So, you are probably thinking I got off on a major tangent. I started talking about Christmas Spirit and got way off mark. Not really! I am crediting all of this with getting me into the Christmas Spirit this year. We finished our weekend with another 6 hours of shopping at Easton on Sunday and headed home. Monday morning, I woke up feeling like sugarplums and mistletoe. I am finally in the Christmas spirit. I couldn’t stop smiling yesterday and I had the urge to watch Elf.

So now, it’s your turn. Do you automatically get into the Christmas Spirit at soon as Thanksgiving is over? Is there something special every year you do to get into the festive mood?

Yes my friends, I know that we still have Labor Day, Halloween, and Thanksgiving before it’s even time to start thinking about Christmas, but I just can’t help it.

Every year, I get into the Christmas spirit by reading holiday themed books, starting the minute Thanksgiving dinner is digested.

I was looking through my NetGalley and bookshelf TBR books and realized, I don’t have much more searching to round out my list for this year’s reading. Yes, I know it’s only August, but I’m a planner.

So, I wanted to go ahead and share my list of reads, so maybe you could start your pile or give me some extra tips

From NetGalley:

On My Bookshelf:

Are you starting to get into the Christmas spirit yet???? Ohhhh I am! I’ve already started making my Christmas list too! I have two

While we all love the clothes and jewelry and shoes and electronics at Christmas, there are a select few of us that live for the bookish gifts we will receive.

Every year I say this, but this year I hit the jackpot on the bookie gifts.

Here are the books I got:

What I normally do at Christmas is pick up a bunch of books I want and give them to my brother to give to me. Good deal, right? This year, I stuck with books from a series that I need. I love all of these series’ and can’t wait to read all of them.

I also got some awesome bookmarks this Christmas:

I’ve posted before about magnetic bookmarks. These are lifesavers for me. I always throw my book in my bag and go. With a regular bookmark, I am normally trying to remember which page I was on, because it’s almost always guaranteed to fall out. But with magnetic bookmarks, I never lose them, and I can put them on the line where I finished so I know exactly where to start again.

Now, I know I just talked about regular bookmarks and my lack of love for them, but how awesome is my wooden bookmark on the left? I got this at the Bob Evans Farm Festival this year. There was a booth with hundreds of bookmarks, each with a different design cut out of it. As soon as we found the booth, my mom and I started searching for one that would suit me. We were almost at the end and giving up until we found the on with the state of West Virginia, my new home state. I love it! (The state and the bookmark)

I didn’t take a picture of my gift cards, but I got so many gift cards, I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself. Along with my friend WriteMeg! , I am going to make 2011 the year I read what I want. I’m not changing much about my habits, but if I want to read something this year, I’m not going to hesitate. I’m going to jump on it! So, for me this year, gift cards are amazing! I got $100 worth of gift cards from Borders this year and $50 worth from Barnes and Noble (for my Nook). I have no idea where I am even going to start with these!

I have already made my first, after Christmas purchase for the year. My husband and I went shopping the day after Christmas, which I normally avoid. We both got some pretty good deals, but the best deal was this:

I follow Ally on Twitter and have wanted to read this book forever. But I am very reluctant about buying books. I have two bookshelves full at my house and am probably the biggest tight wad you’ll ever meet. So, when I was scanning the sale books at Borders this weekend, I jumped on this copy of Heist Society. It was on sale for $5.99. I figured I had enough in gift cards to make this purchase. Little did I know that I had $5 in Borders Bucks, so I ended up paying $1.05 for this hardcover copy. I was ecstatic and my husband was laughing hysterically. He asked if they knew me by name in Borders lol

So, as you can see, I’m extremely happy with my Christmas goods. What did you get this year????