Catching up on December

I have been really bad at my blog posts this month, but it is for all good reasons! There was just SO much going on as I am sure you can all agree on that!

Here is a catch up on what Holland and I have been up to the past few weeks.

Hollands sister graduated with her Masters in Education! She has been working SO hard and not only did she get her M.Ed, but she also has two kids and a full time job! Any one of those tasks is a lot to handle, but Allison did amazing at all three which is not so surprising if you know her. She is one of the greatest people I know and gives her full heart into everything that she does.

Allison and her Husband, Kevin. 

The Bailey Family

Future Aggie graduate! :)

 We celebrated all of Allison's hard work at the Gribbles house in New Braunfels.  We decorated, sat around and relaxed, walked down to the river and played with lots of sweet little babies.

Raya and her cousin, Katie. 

Baby Michael. 

Another thing we did this December was prepare for Christmas.  At school, my students put on a Holiday concert, we made homemade ornaments for the kids to give to their families and we sang a bunch of jungle bell rock and the most favorite song for my class was Feliz Navidad. It was really funny to hear them sing it. It sounded more like "Marie Namipah".

I tried to take on a task this year of making many of my Christmas gifts. There were stressful times but in the end they all turned out amazing. My favorite project was these etched glass baking dishes. Believe it or not, finding the dishes was the most difficult part! I got the idea off interest and put my own spin on it and instead of using amor etch acid I used Martha Stewart etching cream from Michaels. This was the most expensive item at $25.00 but I made 7 of these babies and I still have half a bottle left !

All you need is
*glass to etch on
*exacto knife
*contact paper
*etching cream
*Old paintbrush

I found the more you "clump on" the cream the better the end product.
How to Etch Glass Step by Step instructions

My Kinder Team with their presents! They all loved them :)

This year, I went extremely simple with my wrapping. I only spend 3 dollars on some green raffia for my ribbon and a few dollars on the plain brown bags. My mom had a HUGE roll of butcher paper in her garage that I stole to be my main wrapping paper.  I printed pictures from people face books so I did not have to purchase labels.  Everyone seemed to love this twist on gift wrapping! I plan to do this again next year.

My cousin PP and her husband visited for a week for Christmas. My days with her were limited since Holland and I spend Christmas out east with his family so we made it worthwhile and got to open presents a week before Christmas!

Although Billy looks very serious, he and PP loved their I Tx TX shirts and were very excited to get to wear them back in Chicago!

For my birthday a few years ago, one of my best friends, Allison gave me a necklace like this. Except it had a map of Amsterdam because that was one of the cities we traveled to together in Europe!  It is called a "Where The Heart is Necklace".  The jeweler uses recycled materials to create these beautiful necklaces.  I contacted her about making a San Antonio one for PP and she was very excited to! Check out her shop!
 Bowie And Franchesca Shop

For my sister, I used a shadow box and decorated it with paper and stickers and Holland drilled a slit at the top so she can drop all her movie and concert tickets in there. Thought it was a great way to show off all the tickets. She is crazy about movies, popcorn and country music. 

 Last but not least, I spend a good chunk of fortune on Hollands present this year. I got him a Go Pro camera.  He had already figured out what it was because I told him how much I had spent and he already had his suspicions.  This is a camera that you can strap to yourself to do crazy stuff- PERFECT FOR HOLLAND RIGHT?!  We used this camera on our ski trip and boy did he capture some amazing stuff. I have just finished a video of the pictures from our trip to Vermont, but there is going to be an entire separate video for the skiing part!

I hope that you all had an extremely great Holiday! We are heading up the Lake House to bring in 2013! I will post the ski videos soon!