It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year!

I LOVE Christmas! I love everything involving Christmas: the Christmas movies that start coming on after Thanksgiving, putting up all your decorations, Family Get -Togethers, Holiday parties, Christmas TV commercials, shopping in a congested mall, Old Christmas reruns of your favorite shows, Christmas music 24/7, searching for presents my friends and family will love, Christmas dates with Matt, baking Christmas goodies, wrapping presents, Holiday Cards, seeing decorated cities, houses, neighborhoods etc. I love it ALL!

So naturally my life has been consumed with lots of Christmas things lately. I am also a very lucky girl because Matt loves Christmas probably as much as I do. He is all about doing Christmas things with me and he will start searching for the first radio stations to play Christmas music immediately after Halloween. He told me a couple of weeks ago that he had planned not one but TWO Christmas things for us to do this past week. So of course I was very excited! I have sort of been neglecting my blog over the past couple of weeks because I have been pretty busy. But some fun stuff has gone on since then so I will try to fill you in on what has been going on recently.

Friday, 12/10 Matt and I had our annual Christmas date to Hollywild. We had dinner at FATZ first then headed to Wellford, SC (where Hollywild is). If you have never been to Hollywild at Christmas and you live in thea rea I would definitely recommend it! It is so much fun you get to see a ton of Christmas lights and ride through the “Enchanted Deer Forrest” where you get to feed the animals. You would think you would be feeding deer but the deer pretty much refuse to eat anything so you end up feeding cows, Zebras, Zonkeys (mix of zebra and donkeys) etc. Here are some pictures of our night there, we had such a good time! Shout out to Lane Inc. for providing the tasty crackers this guy just couldn’t get enough of:

It took very little coaxing...

This is just a sneak peek...his toungue was like 3 feet long!



large cows...





Saturday, 12/11 My parents had their neighborhood Christmas party which we kind of crashed. It was a lot of fun with good food, great company and A LOT of drinks! Maybe too many considering I don’t think I snapped one photo the whole night!

Wednesday, 12/15 We went to get dinner and drinks at Dandelions. Then Matt surprised me with tickets to see an interpretation of It’s a Wonderful Life in Charlotte. I didn’t know what to expect since it was an interpretation but it was really good and definitely got both of us in the Christmas spirit!

Thursday, 12/16 My boss and his wife took us out for our ‘ITS Christmas Dinner’ at Ruths Chris. I LOVE Ruths Chris and dinner was delicious, as always. My boss usually pulls out all the stops for stuff like this so our night was complete with a car and driver and some post dinner drinks and Shuffleboard at the Gin Mill haha! It was a great time.

Saturday, 12/18 we went to Lincolnton GA for Christmas with my moms side of the family. There are so many of us we are never able to get together as often as we would like so I always love seeing everyone at Christmas! It was a day full of good food, presents and most important, a wonderful time with family!



Sunday, 12/18 We had a yummy lunch at Happy Pie with Matts Dad and Katie! Then we headed back to Charlotte because Matt had also planned one other Christmas surprise….tickets to the Nutcracker!!! I had actually never seen the Nutcracker before so I was obviously in love! The music was awesome and I pretty much knew all the songs. It was such a great show and I am so lucky to have such a sweet husband who loves Christmas as much as I do! Then we went and drove around Dilworth looking at the Christmas lights.
This week we have even more great Christmas plans in store! Monday night Flandry was in town for an interview and he stayed with us. It was great to see and catch up with him! Last night we had dinner at one of my absolute favorite restaurants, the Melting Pot! It was sooooo good! I was so excited that I skipped lunch in preparation. I only eat there like 2-3 times a year so I had to take advantage. :)

Thursday we will go to Greenville and start the Kern/Kingsmore family Christmas rotations! Until then I will be making my list, checking it twice, cooking/baking some holiday treats and finishing wrapping our presents…


Sweetest little girl ever!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

Shutterfly Christmas Spirit!

Yay!!! Thank you Shutterfly!

I love Christmas cards! However, I was not planning to do any this year just because I still had not finished my wedding thank you notes. BUT with only 30 thank you notes left to do, (I am determined to finish by Sunday!) and with the great deal that Shutterfly is offering, how could I pass it up?! I started to see on a few other blogs that Shutterfly was offering 50 free Christmas cards if you advertised on your blog and they always do the cutest cards so I decided to look into it. I thought it would be a process but all I did was fill out this form: and write this blog- it’s that simple! Now all we need to do is take some cute Christmas photos! (hopefully I can talk Matt into this! :) )

Here are some options they have that I love!





Check out more of their Christmas Cards options:

http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards
http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/holiday-cards
http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards

I've used shutterfly to print invitations for parties, wedding showers etc. they always have the cutest designs! Plus I finally got my wedding photos yesterday and I am going to upload all those photos to Shutterfly to print out my favorites. They deliver right to your door, what could be easier?

Thank you Shutterfly for this awesome promotion and for putting me even more in the holiday spirit! Merry Christmas!

~*~ Christmas Traditions ~*~

I love Christmas Traditions! I love the ones that we have been doing since I was little, newer ones we have continued to do year after year and I love creating new ones!

With this year being our first married Christmas I definitely wanted to add a new tradition or two. I saw this idea in a magzine and I thought it was really cute so I wanted to pass it on:

Buy a bottle of champagne (or sparkling cidar) to enjoy while decorating your tree. No twist-offs (sorry Andre!)

Save the Champagne cage and top (we saved the Champagne cork as well-just because)

Write the year on the bottom of the champagne top

Use the cage to hang it on your tree

Do this every year and add more and more champagne cages to your tree! (Next year I will probably try to find a bottle with a colorful top.)

Another tradition Matt and I always enjoy is going to Hollywild in Inman, SC to see the lights and feed the animals in the "Enchanted Dear Forrest." We went in December 2003 on one of our first dates and have gone every year since. So this year will be our 8th visit (I had to count that in my head a few times because I thought it would be the 7th time but it's actually the 8th!) We usually blare our own Christmis music, bring our own food for the animals (they get tired of the same old stuff but they love chexmix) and bring some hot chocolate- I cannot wait to go again this year!

Everyone reading, please post about what Christmas traditions you do-I would love to hear them! I always love adding new traditions or at least trying out a new Christmas activity I didnt know about.

Aloha Hawaii

Matt and I just returned from Hawaii on Monday. It was a great way to spend Thanksgiving and I am sure we will always remember our first married Thanksgiving there.

We really lucked out getting to go on this trip, I won it at a work event. Several months ago Marriott was having an Aloha Tour visiting a lot of different cities. I got an invitation to an event they were having in Charlotte. I really like going to these work events because they are a great way to network, learn about different destinations and properties, they are a lot of fun (this one had hula dancers and ukulele players) and best of all, they usually give away free trips! When I got the invitation I saw it was a breakfast at 9:00 AM on a Saturday and I actually remember saying to Matt if we were in town we should try to go and if they were giving aways trips we might have a good chance of winning since there probably would not be a huge turn out on a Saturday morning. Well we were in town that weekend and on the Saturday it happened to be really bad weather but the event was at the Marriott in uptown, which is less than 2 miles from our house so we decided to go. Which was lucky for us because there were only 4 people from the industry there and they had about 7 trips to give away! We actually got to pick the hotel we wanted. We won a 5 night stay at the JW Ihilani Marriott in Oahu.

We thought about using our free trip on our Honeymoon but we already had put deposits down for both of our hotels in St Lucia and booked our flights. This trip was only valid through the end of the year and being that we got married in August and used quite a bit of vacation days (I think Matt only had 1 left to spare!) Thanksgiving was pretty much our only option to cash in on this trip. This was the first Thanksgiving Matt or I spent away from our families and of course we definitely missed everyone. Being that it was our first married Thanksgiving we really did not know how we were going to do it (Whose family would we spend Thursday, Friday, Saturday etc.) So while it was bittersweet not watching the parade and being surrounded by family at a big table with a delicious feast of Thanksgiving favorites; it was nice to spend our first Thanksgiving in paradise doing a lot of cool things and creating great memories for our first Thanksgiving together. Here's a little peak into what our trip went like...

We arrived in Hawaii on Wednesday afternoon. As soon as we got off the plane and stepped out into the open-air airport we saw this rainbow!



We picked up our jeep rental and were on our way to the hotel. We got there and relaxed and enjoyed the view on our balcony for a little while.

We went to the hotel bar and had our some tropical cocktails (or at least I did, I think Matt had Longboard beers.) Then we went to dinner at Roys, a popular restaurant with a couple locations in Hawaii.

Thursday we woke up really early like 6:30 AM (bc it was 11:30 EST). We went strait to the beach where we stayed and relaxed all day.

Thursday night we went to a luau. A luau is something that's a given that you have to do in Hawaii and although the entertainment was just a LITTLE cheesy, the food was AMAZING. The bbq was literally the best I have ever had. We definitely had seconds and were so full after dinner (hey-it was Thanksgiving so that's allowed!)

Friday we went to Waikiki beach (about a 35 minute drive from our hotel) and went on a snorkel sail. We saw lots of Hawaiian sea turtles- it was awesome!

THREE Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles!

After that we went and explored Waikiki. We went shopping at the International Marketplace and got a few trinkets, I am a sucker for those. Then went to Leonards Bakery. They are famous for their Malasadas (aka Hawaiian doughnuts). Delicious!

Next we headed to Wailoa for our first Hawaiian Shave Ice! I did some research and this Shave Ice place was supposed to be very good, it was in a convenience store in the middle of a neighborhood in Honolulu and it was great! We definitely sprung for ice cream at the bottom...

Friday night we went back to Waikiki Beach for a Sunset Cruise which was really more like a booze cruise with unlimited beer and Mai Tais...yum! The Hilton does a fireworks show every Friday night so we had the best seats for the show.

After the Show we went to Dukes for dinner and drinks at the bar. Then we walked around Waikiki- they had all their Christmas decorations out!

Saturday we headed up to the North Shore. We wanted to drive around beach hop there. We stopped for a Shave Ice at Matsumoto, another place known for its Shave Ice.

Then we headed to Waimea Bay Beach and relaxed there for awhile. It was beautiful!

The next stop was Haleiwa for lunch. Haleiwa was a really cute town with great shops, restaurants and bars.

After lunch we went to Sunset Beach. We stayed there until the sun set and it started getting cold.

We were close to Turtle Bay Resort (where Forgetting Sarah Marshall was filmed) and walked around the property fro a little while. For dinner we went to Haleiwa Eats, a Thai Food restaurant. It was really good and pretty authentic (I had to request a fork and soy sauce- I think they were slightly annoyed haha).

Sunday we started off the morning with a surfing lesson in Ala Moana Beach. Matt got up on his second wave. I sort of got up (it was more of a squat-I was too scared I would lose my balance if I stood strait up but I was definitely off of the board.) After surfing we were both absolutely exhausted and my arms felt like they were going to fall off!

After surfing, our instructor told us about a great lookout point in Hawaii on Roundtop Drive. It had a great view.

We had lunch at Zippys (like a Hawaiian Dennys) then went back to the hotel to relax for a little. When we got back we headed to the spa. This is one of my favorite perks of my job. Hotels love to give away free spa treatments to clients/potential clients. Matt got a massage and I got a facial. Matt made the better call, if I would have known how sore surfing would have made me I would have picked a massage too! That night we went and had cocktails and pupus at the hotel restaurant with my sales contact at the JW and her husband. They were a great couple and have been absolutely everywhere, I loved hearing their stories and about all of their travels. It was a great night. That night our flight left Hawaii at 11:40 PM.

Somehow I was able to sleep pretty much the whole way home (and that was a long flight!) We got back around 3:00 PM on Monday. We had no food so we headed to the grocery store. We decided we should cook a very mini Thanksgiving dinner with some of our favorites we missed out on. So it was a great end to a great Thanksgiving Break.

Hamsteak, macaroni and cheese, green beans, mashed potatoes and oreo pie-yum!!!

Until next time...