Knitting Christmas Stocking for Baby and Preparations for Christmas

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I have been getting ready for Christmas by buying gifts, knitting a stocking, and we took our family photo for our Christmas cards last week. I received them in the mail now and I will be mailing them out this week.

I have been knitting a Christmas stocking for my son Evan. I am following the pattern Classic Christmas Stocking by Betty Lai on Ravelry. I knitted one of these stockings for Millie a couple of years ago. I liked the pattern. The cuff was a bit tight and didn't stretch as well but I have an idea to see if it will be more stretchy.

This time I am knitting the letters onto the stocking using the duplicate stitch. I am using a knitting letter chart and going to be doing all capital letters.

Millie has been really busy lately she was climbing the tree and biting the branches again this year. She isn't doing it as much as time goes on. Evan was so interested in the tree too and he liked pulling some soft ornaments down at the beginning mid-November. He isn't pulling them as much now and he still likes to look at the tree.

I have been enjoying Silk peppermint mocha creamer in my coffee in the morning. I love using the holiday mugs I got last year from work Ellen DeGeneres brand. I have been reading It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover. I stopped for awhile but I picked it up again recently to hopefully finish it before the New Year. 

Thank you for visiting my blog today! I can't believe we are only 15 days away from Christmas now. I really want to make the most of it and watch Christmas movies and enjoy all of the Christmas traditions. How are your knitting and reading going?

Have a great day!

Blogmas Day 1! Decorating the Christmas Tree

 Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I am so excited to announce that today is the first day of Blogmas! I love doing Blogmas and it is my third year participating. Blogmas is when bloggers post daily for a certain amount of days leading up to December 25th. I have seen more 12 days of Blogmas on Instagram lately, so they would post a few times each week until Christmas. I like to do daily posts for 25 days. Last year I did until the 25th of December and then a few days after to share Christmas gifts and resolutions. Please see previous year's posts here. I love participating in Blogmas because It is such a great opportunity to get creative with my posts, talk about this wonderful holiday, and visit new blogs.  I am so excited to spend our first Christmas in our new home and looking forward to sharing our experience with you. I will also be sharing some fun posts and stories on my Instagram account here if you would like to follow me there as well. Let's get started!

We put up our Christmas tree this past weekend and I decorated while watching Miracle on 34th Street. Which is one of my favourite childhood Christmas movies I would watch every year with my sister. I am glad to have welcomed the Christmas season watching it this year right away, so I actually made sure to watch it. It was so fun putting up all of the ornaments and there are still more to put up! because we just moved, ornaments are in different boxes. The ornaments bring back memories of years passed and many of them are so special to me.

I set out a tray of Walker's shortbread cookies, After Eight mint chocolates, and Little Debbie Christmas cakes for our decorating. They were all delicious treats to have while decorated. Liam and I really enjoyed eating the tree cake, it was so good. 

I also had some eggnog and added some rum as well... because Tis' the season. I really enjoyed it!

I opened the first day of the Lindor Advent calendar this morning. I get these advent calendars every year. They are so fun to open each day and there is always a delicious chocolate inside to enjoy. I bought this cartoon one for myself and the Toronto Maple Leafs theme one for Liam because he loves his Maple Leafs hockey team.

I am continuing to knit Liam's scarf  for Christmas, and I am excited for him to wear it. I used the pattern Men's Rib Ridge Scarf by Purl Avenue on Ravelry. It is a simple pattern that I have been really enjoying knitting while watching shows. 

I started reading One Christmas Star by Mandy Baggot last night for the Christmas season. I have it for seven days so I will be reading it quickly. A lot of the Christmas books are being offered only for a week due to their popularity right now. I saw this one was popular on goodreads, so I decided to give it a try. I might try to read more Christmas books throughout Blogmas to share with you. I am also reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and Beach Read by Emily Henry.

Photo source

Thank you so much for visiting my blog today! I will be posting daily for Blogmas all the way up to December 25th. I am so excited that it is the Christmas season now and we can start celebrating. This year definitely needs some Christmas spirit. Please let me know in the comments below if you are also taking part in Blogmas this year!

 Have a great day!

Blogmas Day 13: Decorated the Christmas Tree

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. Tonight I decorated our Christmas tree. We decided to buy an artificial tree after a couple of years of buying real trees. We thought it would be easier not to have to water it and lug it into the apartment and sweep up the needles. I do miss the real pine tree smell though. So far it has been a lot easier and I really like how it looks. It is not fully decorated yet, but I got a lot of the decorating done tonight. I noticed I have a rustic theme going on with my decor which I am enjoying.

The tree is a 6 1/2" Kawartha lighted tree we bought it at Canadian Tire. There are some great sales on trees there right now if you are also looking. 

The tree we we bought 

 I bought some more things from Michaels last night. I wanted to go there to buy a gift and then I got busy browsing the Christmas decor and gift wrapping section. It is okay right now since everything is half off in price. I might make another trip closer to Christmas to see if there are more sales. I picked up these two bags below that came as a set of two. I will use one for gift I got for the secret Santa gift exchange at work. I also bought a cookie tin to bring cookies to work soon. I will share a photo of the tin in a later post.

I bought the sign below it was only $7 pretty hard to not buy it. I like the style with the rope and tin. It is a bit hard to read but you can make out it says "Have yourself a merry little Christmas".

Have you put up your Christmas tree yet? How early do you put it up? Now that we have an artificial tree, I will have it up and decorated before December from now on! haha

Thank you for stopping by for the 13th day of blogmas. Please join me again tomorrow for another blogmas post. Please post a link to your blog if you are also participating in blogmas and I will visit.

Have a great day!

Blogmas: Decorating Our Christmas Tree

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing well. I finally got my Christmas tree yesterday and my boyfriend and I decorated it today. It is a bit smaller and lighter than our tree last year which was good because it was easier bringing it in the apartment and will be easier to clean up when Christmas is done. We used the same garland as last year and we bought some new lights. They are Noma lights and are in the colors white, red, and green. I am very happy with how the tree looks in our living room now, it definitely feels a lot more like Christmas now.

My boyfriend and  in front of the tree

Take two

My boyfriend decorating the tree

All finished!

Below are a few of my favorite ornaments I have been putting up for the past few years. The first ornament is a knitted red car with a Christmas tree on top that my mom bought me for my tree last year from Ten Thousand Villages.

The next ornament is the two marshmallows wearing Christmas hats and holding a heart that says "Our First Christmas" that my mom bought for my boyfriend and I because it was our first Christmas last year living together. The knitted mouse was a purchase I made while at the Christmas market in the Distillery District a few years ago. It is so cute and I love that it is knitted most of all!

 We also put up some Christmas lights in the window this year. They are up on the inside of the window held up by using command sticker hooks. I am happy to have some lights on the front window now to spread a bit more Christmas cheer along with others in our building who all have lights up in their windows too. We are looking like a very festive apartment building now.

Thank you for visiting my blog! This week I will be working on finishing knitting the second stocking, Knitting the Wool and the Gang top, and working more on knitting some Christmas gifts. I will also be working on finishing course work and finishing up this semester. If you would like to keep updated on when I post, please follow my blog through Bloglovin', Google Followers, or you can subscribe by email at the top right corner of the blog.

Have a great day!