Day 23:Plans

I can't believe there are only 2 days until Christmas. For this Christmas, I'm spending it with my boyfriend Brian and his family and friends. I arrived yesterday afternoon to a very white New York State. The train was running late so I spent about 16 hours on the train, as I predicted because it usually falls an hour behind at least.
Once I was finally off the train, I couldn't wait to go to Tim Horton's. It's my favorite bagel, donut, iced tea place. Brian and I went to Tim Horton's and our friend Marc met up with us there. I had been trying to get a hold of Marc for the last month and he disappeared...finally he responded when I was on the train yesterday morning and I was so happy to see him. It was a perfect addition to my Christmas weekend to catch up with him and hang out for a bit.
The roads cleared up and the snow slowed down, so as me and Brian drove to his friend's house it was much faster than his long drive to come pick me up. We had a nice night with some family friends and then cuddling on the couch watching some tv before finally going to bed. Sleeping in a bed was soooo much nicer than sleeping on the train the other night with people snoring everywhere around me.

Day 20: Favorite Christmas Meal

My favorite Chirstmas meal would be Christmas day dinner. Usually my family gets together with my cousins and aunt and uncle in Wisconsin and we have a nice dinner together, including turkey, corn, bread, salad, and more. I find the meal to be pretty much like Thanksgiving, the only difference is that it's December and we open presents as well. It is still pretty tasty though.

So today would be day 291 of days without measurable snow. Chicago broke the record this year.  I don't know for sure if Chicago got measurable snow where they take the measurements, but outside my window, there is no snow on the ground. We were dismissed an hour early from work to get home safely due to the storm coming. It was quite rainy as I drove home and stopped at a couple stores. By the time I was finally leaving the last store, it had started snowing, but I don't think that lasted very long. We were supposed to have an inch on the ground by midnight...there is just over an hour left till midnight and no snow on the ground that I see. I know other places were hit quiet hard though.

Tonight I made gingerbread cookies and they turned out really good. My cat enjoyed watching me make them and licked some of the flour from my hands when I was done cutting them out.

Day 19: Favorite Stocking Stuffer

My favorite stocking stuffer would be Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in the shape of Christmas trees. Oh and peppermint bark!! Love that!

I also wanted to share another picture from last week. Did a bridge at the office with the Christmas decorations.

Day 18: When do you open gifts?

When do I open gifts on Christmas? Well (when I have gifts), usually first thing in the morning, might eat a bowl of cereal or maybe just grab a piece of candy from my stocking to munch on and then open gifts as soon as my parents get up and ready. When I was younger we used to open gifts at around 7am, because I just couldn't wait.
This year, I got tires for my car for Christmas and I just got them this Sunday since I got a flat tire last Thursday and was driving on my little donut spare tire for a couple days. I wanted to get winter tires, but apparently no one stocks those in Chicago...weird. So then since I knew my 2 front tires were good, as I have replaced both of them rather recently (this recent flat was my second flat and third tire that needed replacing in 3 years), I was going to just replace the 2 back tires, but I got to Pepboys and they no longer had the same tires that I had previously purchased at Pepboys when replacing my front tires. Then they also had that buy 3 get one free deal, but you had to get at least 3 tires installed for that deal. So we went with that and the guy gave us a discount since they didn't have the other tires which would have been cheaper. So I got better tires for the same price. Now with this deal, I told them to keep the front tires (knowing they were still good), but when my dad went to pick up my car, they had forgotten to put my old front tires in my trunk. They threw them into a huge tire pile and there was no chance in finding my tires, so instead we got another 2 brand new tires. So rather than 4 tires for Christmas, I got 6 and for the price of 3!! Now in case I get another flat, I have 2 spares. Let's hope these tires last their 50,000 mile warranty though and I won't have to replace them for a couple years.

Real or Fake?

No question about it, I choose real. Why? Because I just love the scent of the real tree. I know it's more environmentally friendly to have a fake tree and also saves you money over the years, but I just love real trees! Ever since we got a fake tree at our house 5 years or so ago, I miss the real tree, the smell of Christmas and even the poky needles of the tree when putting on ornaments. I will definitely have a real tree in my future home!

In other news, I had my normal Friday yoga class today and we dedicated our practice tonight to the people in Connecticut. My co workers and I just couldn't believe it when we were reading about it online. It's so sad what is happening in our world. My thoughts and prayers go out to those families in Connecticut and the innocent children. 

Wrapping paper or Gift Bag

Oops I missed yesterday, Christmas tradition...well I can't really think of any other than going to my cousin's house for Christmas day each year, but sometimes they come to our house too.

Moving onto day 12, wrapping paper or gift bag. I prefer wrapping paper, for both opening presents and giving presents, though sometimes things are tricky to wrap. I love wrapping presents in wrapping paper though!
Also Happy 12/12/12 day!! Hope everyone had a great day!!

The smell of Christmas!!

My favorite Christmas scent is the smell of a Christmas tree. That is why I prefer real trees, but we have a fake tree for our house since real trees can be pricey, but I just love the smell of them. I love how at the mall they decorate and put up a giant Christmas tree, it is just the smell of Christmas to me as I walk by them and makes me so happy.

my kind of winter scene

Easiest person to buy for

Making this post short and sweet since I was so busy today. I went to the movies for the first time in months and saw Playing for Keeps. It was pretty good, probably would give it 4 out of 5 stars. Afterwards I went shopping and got some Christmas cards to go with gifts I have bought already.

I would say the easiest person to buy for is my sister, there is always some sort of make up thing she wants or something which I can easily find.

Day 8: Christmas Decor

So I would post a pic of our own Christmas tree in our house, but we haven't gotten it decorated yet. The plan is to decorate it tomorrow night, then maybe I'll get a picture with it. So instead, I decided to get a picture off google of a lovely Christmas decorated room that I hope resembles my future house decorated for Christmas.

Day 7: Most memorable Christmas

So I'm not really sure what my most memorable Christmas was, but Christmas 2010 was fun with my best friend, Mercedes and (at the time) her soon to be husband. There was tons of snow and we had a blast. I have enjoyed the unusual warmth of this December so far, but it is a bit weird that it's raining in December instead of snowing. So let's take a trip back to December 2010:

I can't take credit for this awesome snowman, it belonged to the neighbors, I just had to take a pic with it

Day 6: Favorite Ornament

I almost thought I wouldn't be able to blog today because this morning I got up and the internet wasn't working. My dad was on the phone with the company and it was 6:30 in the morning. They said they wouldn't be able to come out until tomorrow, but luckily the internet has returned on its own...for now. I just hope it stays, because last time the internet stopped working out of no where, it took 2-3 weeks for them to fix it.
Anyway onto today's Christmas Blog post. Day 6 is favorite ornament. I'm not really sure I have just one favorite, but seeing as we haven't opened our Christmas tree ornament boxes, the one that comes to my mind as my favorite is my Tweety bird Hallmark ornament. It lights up green and says "I've been weally, weally good this year" and you can turn it and it lights up red and says "I've been a writtle bit bad this year."

Also, today at work we finished up our decorating for Christmas. Yesterday we hung lights and today we put up the garland and decorated the little tree we have. I didn't get a very good photo from my phone, but here it is. 

we are so festive!

Day 5: Best Gift

My best Christmas gift was my car 3 years ago, it was a Christmas/birthday gift and I also traded my meal plan at school for it, in other words, I decided to pay for my own food and my dad paid for my car, because if you were to add up the high cost of the meal plan for the rest of my semesters at the time when I got my car, it almost covered the entire cost of my car. To me, that was a good trade. It meant I could pick what I wanted to eat at the store and then make myself food.

Favorite Song

Day 4, favorite Christmas song. I'd have to say my favorite song is Rockin Around the Christmas Tree.

No Santa...

Day 3:When/Where did you learn Santa wasn't real?

I honestly have no idea when I realized Santa wasn't real. Maybe it was somewhere around 6th grade or so, probably later than most, but my parents (my mom) was sooo good at being Santa and acting surprise. My parents got gifts from Santa too, so how could I not believe he was real?!? My mom would buy gifts, my dad would buy gifts and they would wrap them and say from Santa. I don't know what happens in other houses, but I don't think parents usually get gifts from Santa. I guess it was a great way for me to keep believing. I also had separate presents that said "from mom and dad." So if I had those presents from mom and dad, I didn't suspect that Santa wasn't real.

Day 2: 2012 Wishlist

December 2nd of the blogging challenge is your 2012 Wishlist. My wishlist is short, but they are expensive items. For this Christmas, I want 4 new winter tires for my car. With having to drive 20 miles to work each day, I am adding miles to my car faster than ever before and in the past 2 years I have replaced 1 tire a year, 1 due to a flat and the other due to it being worn out. It's time to replace all 4 at once.

Item 2: I want a tablet, an android tablet and I've been looking at different tablets for a while, but I want to really make sure I love the tablet I'm getting so that I don't want to replace it after a year or two with something better. Lately I've been looking at the Asus Transformer tablets, since I was able to play with my cousin's during Thanksgiving. Hopefully I'll be able to make a decision soon and make that purchase.

Lastly, this Christmas I get to spend with my boyfriend, Brian. I'm looking forward to it as his family seems to have more traditions than mine and hopefully it will be a lot of fun. Plus I haven't seen him since the beginning of October.

That's pretty much it for my wishlist this year. I've become more practical and think about each purchase I make these days about things I really need versus just buying a bunch of things I want. I'm trying to sell/get rid of a lot of the toys in my closet, because when I do eventually get my own place, it will be small and I just don't need all the stuff I have at home.

Taking the Challenge...

I've decided to participate in the 25 days of Blogging Christmas Challenge from Peanut Butter Jenny. You can check out her blog at PBJenny! I highly recommend her blog! She's a great designer too! Here is the challenge:

So today is December 1st, my favorite Christmas movie is The Polar Express. I remember when it came out in theaters and I went with my family to see it in 3D, definitely one of the best 3D movies I've seen as well.