Blogmas Day 26 - Christmas Day 2020

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Our Christmas was spent just the two of us at our condo townhome this year. It was nice to spend the whole day here, and take it easy. It was a white Christmas this year in Toronto. It hasn't been for many years now, so it made for such a nice day to stay inside and not have to drive. At times we could watch the fluffy flakes falling outside our window. Liam and I opened gifts to each other first and had our coffee and Baileys. We opened cards and stockings, and then we opened gifts. Liam got me a lot of tea and chocolates. He also got me a lovely snowman Pandora charm. I am also excited for the subscription he got me for Psychology today magazines, which I will be receiving every couple of months this year. Liam opened the ridge rib men's scarf I knitted him. I was so happy that he liked the scarf and the length. He looks cute wearing it below.

Pictured below is our tree on Christmas morning. My favourite sight to see! The gifts all wrapped, and it looks like Santa even added a few toys under there and the cushion to add more Christmas cheer. He filled our stockings too. Christmas is always so magical and wonderful. 

We had Pillsbury cinnamon rolls for breakfast along with some fruit. They were so delicious, we both had a few. They were so quick and easy to make and turned out well. I was happy to be able to have one leftover this morning as well they are such a treat.

Then we had a zoom chat with Liam's Mom, Sister, and her boyfriend. We opened gifts which we had exchanged a couple of days earlier. It was nice to see them. Then we chatted with Liam's Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. After our calls with family, we took a walk outside and I loved seeing the snow covered houses and streets. We went to check the mailbox and got some mail. I finally received the ornament I ordered in the mail from SamanthaAnnAndCo on Etsy. It was larger than I realized, but so cute and I am loving it. It was perfect that we received it on Christmas Day and such a nice surprise. It has been a wonderful first Christmas in our new home.

After we got back, I made some tea. Then we got on zoom call with my Mom, Dad, Sister, and Brother-in-Law. We opened gifts and chatted for a bit. Then Liam and I had our lasagna and garlic bread for dinner and finished watching It's a Wonderful Life that I started last night. I was happy we still got to see our families through Zoom on Christmas, it was still special. We chatted with Liam's dad and step mom on zoom today, and now we have seen all the family for the holidays. I look forward to next year, when hopefully we can meet again in person, and spend the holidays together as usual. Hope your Christmas was also enjoyable and you made some special memories even with the pandemic going on. I hope you also enjoyed your boxing day. Take care and be safe.

Have a great day!

Merry Christmas - Blogmas Day 25

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Merry Christmas and happy holidays. I know many of you will be busy today and I will be too. I am visiting Liam's family and my family today. This Blogmas has been wonderful, because I really enjoyed working on my blog and thinking of developing content that will be engaging and interesting. I always think about what I would like to read about when I am posting these Blogmas posts. I loved posting every day and some days I found it a bit tiring to be honest, but that is the good thing about it, that you have to come up with something and it can be a challenge sometimes. We only grow from challenges in our lives, and some you bring on yourself. I try to post more regularly throughout the year, but life gets busy and I let a week go by without blogging here and there. So I enjoy when I can do Blogmas and be more present here.

What Blogmas does for me, is it really gets me to be more organized in my plans for the posts and motivates me to plan ahead. When I don't have a plan I feel more anxious and when I do have a plan, I feel calm and focused. That goes for a lot of things in life, when we have a goal or idea of what we want to achieve, it is so much easier to get things done because we have a direction. I want to keep on doing Blogmas every year and I hope that you have enjoyed my posts this holiday season.

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I will not be posting for a bit now that Blogmas is done and will be celebrating with family the next while. I will be back to share some posts about my Christmas and the gifts I got as well and how it all went. It feels good that now the shopping, wrapping, and baking are all done and we can just enjoy Christmas finally. I love December and all the build up and excitement, but it does sometimes feel like I am focused on a million things at once. I do look forward to Christmas day surrounded by loved ones and having everything done. I hope that today you feel the same and thank you so much for joining me today or whenever you can get a moment to read this post, I really appreciate you visiting. 

Merry Christmas! x

Blogmas Day 25: Merry Christmas!

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. It is finally Christmas day! The best day of the year is here! Today I will be visiting Liam's mom and sister and boyfriend and having lunch with them first, then we will be spending time with my parents and sister and brother-in-law at my parent's home and having dinner. I am so looking forward to going to visit family and share in the special feeling of Christmas. I love our gift opening tradition of giving each other lots of gifts to open and taking turns opening and seeing what we each received.

Our tree on Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. You have made Christmas more special with your comments, kind words, and visits. I also have had fun visiting your blogs and seeing what you have  been up to this holiday season.

Have a wonderful day!

Blogmas: Christmas Eve and Christmas

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well and hope you enjoyed your Christmas and holidays. Today was the last of the Christmas celebrations for me for this year. It has been busy and now I can have some time to reflect,blog, knit, and read. On Christmas Eve I drove to my parent's place and we went to church, then drove around to look at lights in a neighborhood close by. Then we had dinner, I had a vegetable lasagna which was delicious. After dinner we open crackers and we ate treats and opened pajamas. I got a waffle pajama set from Joe Fresh and some pajama bottoms with cats on them from Old Navy below. I love the cats, they are so cute playing with the lights and stockings.

Love these Pj bottoms!

My dad and I wearing our crowns from the crackers

Christmas day was fun, we each opened our stockings and gifts. We do a lot of rounds of opening gifts. It was probably a few hours of gift opening to go through five of us each opening tons of gifts. My sister's Fiance joined us again this year which was nice to have him with us.

I gave our cats a couple rubber balls with bells on the inside and they did not really play with them too much. They picked up the balls in their mouths and batted them a bit, but then moved on to the next gift.

Moo and Roo investigating my gift bag

Which they loved! My parents bought them a new enclosed pet bed from IKEA. They enjoyed sitting inside the enclosure and getting cozy. Moo (the black and white one) first jumped right on top of it from the coffee table. Then we propped it back up and he went inside. He was the first one to explore it and then got out and then Roo (the ginger cat) got his turn to sit inside.

New gifts for the cats, the ball I got for them and the cat bed

Moo in the cat bed

Roo's turn in the cat bed

On Christmas evening, I went for dinner at my boyfriend's dad and step mom's home and celebrated there with their family and her children. It was very nice to spend time with them. I received a project bag from Fringe Supply Co. from them for Christmas. I love this bag and I am so excited to use it! It will make bringing projects with me travelling a lot easier and I will enjoy knitting with this bag.

Waxed canvas field bag - Fringe Supply Co.

I finished knitting a hat as a gift for my boyfriend on boxing day. I was really trying to finish it to give it to him on Christmas day but did not finish in time. I used the pattern "Man Hat" by Haven Ashley that I found on Ravelry. I enjoyed the repetition of the two rows K1,P1 and knit the second row. Knitting that pattern for 7" then decreasing makes it a simple and quick hat to knit up.

Finished "man hat"

"Man hat" finished

I received a lot of wonderful reading material from my family and boyfriend for Christmas and thought it would be fun to share what they got for me. I got the book Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman and a book of poetry called The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur. Both of these books won best books in their categories of fiction and poetry for the year 2017 on Goodreads. I also got books on vegetarian living and cooking which I am excited to read. I got Stuff Every Vegetarian Should Know by Katherine McGuire from my sister which looks so fun to read. My boyfriend got me a cookbook called Vegetarian Any Day: Over 100 Simple, Healthy, Satisfying Meatless Recipes by Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming which offer more great recipes to try out in the new year. I had asked for the Q&A a day notebook from Indigo and so excited I got it from my family. I am looking forward to answering questions every day and seeing how my answers change from year to year over a period of five years. I love reading the magazine Psychology Today, there are always interesting articles in there on self-help, relationships, and the mind. I am looking forward to flipping through it.

All the gifted books/magazines/notebooks that will keep me busy

I have still been reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed and I am really enjoying reading about her journey on the Pacific Crest Trail. I have also started reading the sun and her flowers by Rupi Kaur. I am really enjoying it so far. The poems have been about break ups and the heartbreak of ending relationships. They are so well written and beautiful.

This Christmas was so busy and went by really fast. I am looking forward to the next few days being somewhat relaxing and hopefully having more time to look over my gifts, read my books, knit, and do some much needed tidying. I will also be catching up on reading what you all did for Christmas and the holidays.

Joining along with As Kat Knits for Unraveled Wednesdays.

What gifts did you receive this Christmas, I would love to know!

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Have a great day!