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.