Life Lately.... Christmas & My birthday

Continuing on the life update via pictures....

Here are some pictures from Christmas & my birthday

Again, I'll try to keep my commentary to a minimum. I've decided that when you're this far behind on life updates, you have lost the privilege of good commentary and must let the pictures speak for themselves. Or something like that.

ANYWAY....

Christmas in public was amusing again this year.... 

{just like last year}

This hair salon sure knew how to do things real classy.... at least it's all spelled right. 

These littles were selling apples for PingAnYe (Christmas Eve here).

We hosted a little get together for all of Adam's classmates....

Where I won this fun little Muff in a friendly game of White Elephant. 

This little one LOVES her GeGe MingYu {older brother Adam's East Asian name}

And was really excited to see what he got her (Christmas window clings as she tried to convince us to give her all of ours a week earlier). 

For Christmas Eve we celebrated a little differently than last year. We got together with a lot of the foreigners here for a big potluck dinner...

and another stingy game of white elephant. Hannah won this sweet like emo girl piggy bank. 

And we all won with lots of time with this chubby little snuggly boy. 

Then we sang some carols by the fire....

with folks dressed up like eskimos. 

I made a quick stop by the fish restaurant to wish my little buddy "Little Fish" a Merry Christmas. 

Then it was to the roof for fireworks. Someone is frequently looking for any opportunity to shoot them off, and Christmas clearly makes the cut. 

While we were up there, we saw these lanterns floating off in the distance. 

I also took this from the roof- it is our friend's building where they live, but it kind of gives a good idea of what our apartment building looks like. 

Christmas Morning

Grady got a new super cool parking garage

We had a delicious lunch with imported Ham. So delicious. 

Nicole made this incredibly divine peppermint chocolate cake. 

I can't begin to tell you how delicious it was. I'll try to get the recipe and share it with you. 

So stinkin good. 

And finally, Santa stopped by. 

This kid couldn't get much cuter! 

You can see how we celebrated last year here. 

Then a few weeks later, we celebrated my 27th birthday before heading to Thailand. 

Hannah made some awesome posters for me. I love a "Tender Tennessee" anything... not just Christmas. So she created a Tender Tennessee Birthday for me. 

I requested that my birthday party be a "sweatpants" party.  

Ash made me her delicious glazed brownies, and as usual we used the exploding singing candles that we always do. 

Our friends went in together to get me this oh so handy camera lens cap clip. 

It slides on your camera strap and you just click your lens cap right on. So convenient. 

I felt very loved! 

So there's another little recent update for you. 

Joyfully Celebrated, 

Other Christmas Decor

In addition to my mantle and it's coordinating accessories, we had a few other Christmas decorations around our little Asian apartment. 

We still have our little fake Ikea purchased and inherited Christmas Tree, with a random assortment of lights and ornaments. 

Including some that I made last year, 

like these....

And some new ones, like this froofy one that I bought at Wal-Mart here....

and this CUTE bird that Hannah brought back from America for me. Isn't it cute? 

Last year, our tree was topper-less. 

Not this year! 

I bought this plain red star tree topper at Ikea. 

source

Cute, but a little too plain for my happy little eclectic tree.

SO I got a little creative with some glitter, rhinestones, and sequins AND....

Ta-Da! 

My happy little tree topper! 

The perfect finishing touch. 

I've loved all of the ornament wreaths floating around out there, and we really have TONS of extra ornaments around here. Four years of different foreigners living in our apartment buying their Christmas decorations at Ikea has supplied LOTS of red, silver, and gold ornaments- way more than would ever fit on our tree. So I set aside some of the balls to make an ornament wreath. 

It was SO much easier than I thought it would be! I highly recommend using the hanger method instead of a wreath form. It's really simple, and looks quite nice! 

Our little plant stand needed something festive. I have this bottle wrapped in yarn, and wanted to add something different to it, so I made these pinwheels out of Christmas scrapbook paper. They're pretty cute. For the frame, I used the corner of a sheet of Christmas scrapbook paper with a fun little whimsical scene. 

Perhaps my favorite part of our decorations is this fun "Happy Holidays Y'all" Banner! 

My friend who sent the supplies for the cupcake liner tree, also sent me a pre-made Paula Dean banner. 

It comes looking like this:

source

Super cute, but I wanted to spruce it up a bit. 

So I backed each letter with alternating red paper and brown wrapping paper. 

I added a little something different to each letter to give it a little pizzazz. 

Like sequins...

Beads...

and lots and lots of glitter!

It is quite festive. 

And we aren't trying to be PC with the "Happy Holidays".... 

It just came that way. 

Plus EA has LOTS of holidays all year round... not that this will stay up for that long.... but don't worry, Christmas is always of upmost importance. 

My favorite part is most definitely the "Y'all"

Makes me feel right at home. 

So happy and festive. 

Finally, we used a few locally purchased decorations. 

While we would never use these in the states, these foam cutouts bring lots of festiveness to our apt. here. 

Our "KongTiao" {free standing heater/ac} is adorned with Santa's head.... not creepy at all. 

And as Adam says....

"If they wondered if the foreigners lived there before, 

now they know for sure." 

When you come up the stairs to our door...

This cute bear and snowman are here to greet you! 

To make them even fancier, I added glitter to the stocking's stars...

and to the snow man's hat, mittens, and buttons. 

They might just stay up all winter. 

And that's about all for our Christmas decorations! 

We do what we can to make our home a long way from home feel a little more homey. 

Joyfully Homey & Decorated,