Merry Christmas

Our little Christmas card this year :)

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas! We're looking forward to spending some more time with family tonight and tomorrow. We have an annual Polish feast every Christmas Eve, and I'm pretty sure it's the best tradition ever! (pierogies & other yummy Polish foods, drinks, peppermint ice cream pie, singing Christmas carols...eeee!).

Oh and before it's too late to share these, we went to an ugly Christmas sweater party a few weeks ago and I wanted to share some photos!

Cheeseballs in front of the fake tv fire.

Fun props.

Yummy dessert table. I made those eggnog shortbread puddings in the mason jars...so good!

Chris and I - you love my vest? Sears special! Hah!

Crafty Christmas: Goodies & Cards

I haven't been able to get enought of Christmas lately! Our house is all decorated, and it makes me happy :) Maybe later this week I'll share some more decor around (and outside!) our house. I've been doing a bit of baking for a few Christmas parties I went to recently. One was a cookie swap, where each girl had to bring 5-dozen cookies. It was also a contest to see who made the prettiest and yummiest cookie. Although I didn't win (I totally should have!!! bitter much?), I wanted to share what I baked because they are sooooooooooo delish!

I made Salted Caramel Chocolate Cookies, recipe found here. I've been obsessed with salted caramel goodies for a while, sipping on salted caramel hot chocolate, and I've even made cupcakes.

This was my little cookie setup at the cookie swap party:

I totally forgot to take a photo of the inside of the cookies, but if you check out the recipe you can see it's filled with a carmely suprise in the middle :) They were awesome, and pretty, if I do say so myself. Which I do.

I also wanted to share how I am hanging our Christmas cards this year:

I just took some green and red yan and twisted them together, and used some push pins to secure them to the wall. Cards are being held to the yarn with the cutest mini clothes pins (from Michaels). Last year I just taped the cards to the wall, and I like this a whole lot better!

toasty

I havent written a random blog post in quite a while! I'm currently sitting on my couch next to a warm fire that smells absolutely amazing, while making some Christmas gifts and watching Brew Masters. have you seen the show? its pretty interesting how the whole process works and how scientific brewing beer is. anyways...i had a long, tedious day at work and my brain is fried so it feels amazing right now to relax. im looking forward to this weekend and a weather forecast of RAIN for the next 5 days :)

On Portland Being Awesome

I can't remember if I had mentioned it here or not (I probably did, who am I kidding..because Portland is awesome!), but after we got married we went on a little trip up to the beautiful Northwest. Our first stop was Portland. Chris and I have been dying to go to Oregon and Washington for the past few years because we both see it as somewhere we just NEED to live (asap). So our "mini-moon" was a perfect time to go! We flew from Bakersfield to Portland (which was awesome..not a fan of having to fly out of LA) the Tuesday after our wedding - and spent the first 3 days of our trip in Portland.

We stayed in downtown Portland in a super adorable hotel called Hotel Modera. This was our view from the 5th floor room:

That was our room! It was super cute and stylish!

Best part? There were outdoor firepits on the patio. And since the hotel has a fabulous restaurant as part of it, we were able to eat and drink out by the fire (luckily for us, it wasn't raining!). It was just perfect.

This was our rental car, I felt so gangster driving it!

One day we drove about 30 minutes (or more?) west of Portland, along the river, and stopped at a bunch of different waterfalls, a fish hatchery, some parks, and a dam.

Multnomah falls.

Chris was kind enough to pose next to a gigantic fish :)

Spawning salmon.

Bonneville dam.

We spent the rest of the time trying to find the best restaurants, breweries, bakeries, coffee shops, stores, etc. to go to! Luckily we have friends in Portland who were able to hang out with us for a bit and take us to some neat place. Here are a few of my favorite places we went:

Deschutes was rad, from the decor to the beer. Their food was AMAZING - I wanted to try so many things, but alas, we could not. We had some beer samples and I got a large glass of the Black Butte XXI. Oh and their sweet potato fries are a must!

We also did some shopping, hit up Powell's bookstore, Pearl Bakery (where we saw this lady), VooDoo Doughnut, and this adorable Anthro store!

Another place we had breakfast that I just cannot forget, Slappy Cakes. All you need to know is from the picture below. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Awww, this post made me really miss our trip! Portland/Oregon was pretty amazing and I was SO sad when we had to leave! I cannot wait to go back and explore more (and have more Stumptown coffee)

Next up, Seattle!

Christmas Cheer

I can't get enough of this time of year...

My niece during some family photos, she's so CUTE! I love being an aunt.

Some cute deer; at a local zoo that put Christmas lights all over the park for the holidays.

I love this little penguin! I think we got it last year.

Oh, and Tundra wishes you a Merry Christmas. She's very amused, as you can tell!

Wedding Wednesday: S'more Bar

It didn't show up in most of our wedding pictures because it was dark & late once we all got to it, but we actually had a s'mores bar at our wedding! Our venue had a GIGANTIC fire pit, and so we took advantage of it.

Our bar included baskets of:
-Marshmallows (regular, strawberry & chocolate/white swirl)
-Graham crackers (regular, cinnamon & chocolate)
-Chocolate (milk chocolate, dark chocolate & cookies 'n cream bars)

We also purchased some actual smore's sticks so our guests didn't have to forage in the woods for sticks, hah ;)

Here's some photos I found around the web for a little wedding s'mores inspiration. It can actually be really fun and even look super cute!

Love the various homemade mallows!

Don't have a fire pit? Look at those little burners! So cute!

I also found a great tutorial for making s'mores kit as a wedding favor here, super adorable!

Gettin' Pretty

I'm not too huge of a makeup person, generally I've used the same products for a while and don't really change it up too much. Ever since I was around 17 or 18 I used Bare Escentuals foundation, because liquid foundations always made me break out and it just didn't work for my oily skin. I've tried a few different foundations in those years, not because the BE doesn't work well..it's pretty good, but it is soooo messy! So when it came time to find some wedding makeup, I knew I needed to amp up my makeup bag a bit. A friend of mine suggested Make Up For Ever, so I went down to Sephora and asked about it. I bought their foundation as well as their primer. Generally I'm not a big fan of spending a ton of money on makeup either (I love you Sephora, but my bank account does not!). But, I I have also purchased a few other things that I am currently in love with.

So here is my current makeup regimen, and I am loving it!

Make Up For Ever HD Primer. Bought this for wedding makeup and am still using it every day! It works fantastically.

Make Up Forever HD Foundation. Again, bought to use as wedding makeup and I think I have officially made the swap from Bare Escentuals to this liquid makeup. I don't have to use that much, it feels light, doesn't make my face all greasy, and lasts all day. Since it's pricey, I'll probably try to find some better deals on Ebay maybe?

BE Mineral Veil. Used after foundation application, I've always used this and I love it.

I've purchased Benefit's Bad Gal mascara a few times in the past, but I don' usually spend the money on it (I usually buy the regular old pink & green Maybelline mascara at Target). I'm currently using the waterproof version this mascara, which I like because it actually lasts ALL day.

Plixi Endless Silky Eye Pen in Black Cocoa. I am SO glad I picked up this eyeliner, it's AMAZING. As the name suggests, it's silky and goes on easily & is also easy to fix if you mess up - AND it lasts all day. My normal cheap eyeliner tends to melt off towards the end of the day. Plixi is sold at Target, and I was just looking for something different (I've always used black pencil eyeliner for my everyday look), so I am glad I tried this beauty.

Benefit Coralista blush. Although I did purchase this as part of my wedding makeup, I'm using it every day and I think the color is perfect for a lot of skin tones.