random photo dump, 2020 holidays-style

the days leading up to christmas came fast and furious.  even though we'd put up our tree literally the day after halloween in an effort to make our favorite season last as long as possible, it still flew by in a flash.  the old lady and i spent some time out of almost every weekday holed up in the guest room with the multitude of packages that arrived on a daily basis.  unlike previous years, we managed to mostly keep up with wrapping them as they came in.  and in no time, the mountain of presents bordered on obnoxious.  stevie's face here kind of says it all (and will never fail to make me laugh):

brother wan had made a comment months ago that'd had me make a mental note to make him a beanie for christmas.  i found some great yarn in my stash that i thought he'd like, and i followed a free pattern i found online.  i tried it on when it was done, and i wasn't totally satisfied.  it seemed HUGE.

i found another couple of skeins of blue yarn and tried another pattern, and this time it went the other way.

i tried the next size up and it still wasn't quite right.

i made one more beanie in the largest size the pattern offered, and i figured i'd just package them together - one for brother wan, one for mini brother wan and the third for mini brother wan #2 - coming in february.

my streak of fails continued with this sweater i made for stevie.  waaaaay too big.  even too big for teddy, who looked at me with utter disdain when i tried it on him.

i worked on a stack of microfiber towels for a friend who wanted to give them to loyal customers.  luckily, i didn't screw these up.

and for another friend, a batch of snickerdoodle cookies.

the old lady came with me to deliver them, and on our way home we stopped at lavender & honey, a cute little coffee shop in pasadena.

speaking of cookies, i got to make some fun ones for a kindergarten class and for a friend to hand out to co-workers.

the bean made some espresso crinkle cookies and peanut butter blossoms that we packaged up to make a couple of porch drop-offs for her best friends.

she stitched these up as gifts for her friends.  one is a sloth and the other is a character from a book series that they love.

and for their parents, we added some sustenance.

we also put together little gift packages for her teachers, with gift cards to their favorite local places and their favorite candy.  for the one teacher who can't have sugar, i dropped in this reusable cup sleeve.

on her last day of school before the two-week break, she gathered with the rest of the 7th grade class for a zoom party.  they were encouraged to dress up in the most christmas-y gear they had, and this crazy getup won her a target gift card:

and in the midst of the christmas craziness, the old lady's special friend celebrated a milestone birthday.  not one for traditional birthday cake, he requested a coffee cake that i somehow managed to totally screw up.  it tasted good, but it looked a hot mess.  he seemed to appreciate the effort anyway.

and to "wrap" the weighted vest we'd bought him as a gift, i stitched this out onto a blanket for him.

oh - and these served as my breakfast for probably a solid week.  i love homemade gingerbread cookies.

so much randomness, right?  getting ready for the holidays is always such a good time - 2020 or not.

little drops of random happiness

southern california is back in a stay-at-home order because the covid numbers keep climbing higher and higher and people apparently just can't do what they're asked to.  it's super frustrating, especially when no one is enforcing the order so they just don't care.  ugh.

let's just do a random photos dump because that's kind of where my head is right now anyway.  and we can start with this - the best toaster strudel ever made.  it came at the perfect time too, because the old lady and i had tickets to a "mean girls"-themed boozy brunch that was, of course, postponed due to covid.

oh!  and look what's back...just in time to help save 2020.

the advent calendar that i'd ordered for the bean that i was most excited to give her arrived just in time.  and when she realized what it was she was just as excited as me:

it contains all sorts of fun little BTS trinkets, like photo cards and an "army" necklace and a lanyard and some sort of light-up something or other.  in any case, she's super stoked with everything she's gotten from it.  

as am i, with my own two advent calendars.  the "friends" themed one has yielded silly little things, like ornaments and a cute mini-block of post-its and a little button with a picture of marcel the monkey on it.  i was really excited to find a little card with the recipe for monica's "little drops of heaven" printed on it, but it's so not the right recipe.  on the show she says at one point that she's waiting for the chocolate to cool, and this recipe contains no chocolate.  IMPOSTOR.  hmph.  

the cookie making advent calendar has come through with some great stuff, though.  you get a handful of ingredients and then every 5th day is a recipe that uses those ingredients.  the first day was this little packet of cocoa powder, followed by espresso powder and white chocolate chips.  and then the recipe was for peppermint mocha cookies - which we promptly made that very afternoon.

they're super delicious, by the way, and the recipe is definitely a keeper.

speaking of cookies, i've actually had a couple of orders from friends.  gingerbread men were a little challenging because the link i've saved for years to the foolproof recipe i love is broken.  i found what i thought was a similar one, but it's not the same at all.  no worries though, because they still turned out super delicious.

and i was really excited at how these turned out.  they're for one of the bean's dance friends, and her mom tells me that she loved the colors and the sparkle.

the bean captured this comical photo of stevie that makes me laugh every time i look at it:

oh!  and after over a year of trying, we finally got teddy to "shake!"

of course, his reluctance to learning new tricks probably stems from his disgust at me doing stuff like this to him:

cocoa gets it too.  she runs to the bean for comfort, which she happily provides.

although these dogs really are loved.  and spoiled, like with these freshly baked treats i ordered from a local high school senior trying to make a few bucks.  

and lastly, i love these bracelets from my barre instructor friend.  i've been wearing bracelets from her practically every day.

and now i'm off to wrap more presents.  i gotta say, it's pretty awesome to be ahead of the game this year - we're 99% done with shopping and the old lady has helped me tremendously with getting almost all of it wrapped and ready to put under the tree.  we're usually up till midnight on christmas eve with the wrapping paper, so this year we can just relax in our christmas pajamas and sip on some hot cocoa.

10 days!  i can't wait!

shrinking down to elf size

so while we've not had an elf on our shelf for a good three years now, when we saw the advertisements for a drive-thru EOTS experience at the nearby fairplex i knew we'd probably end up going.  

until i saw the pricing for it...instead of charging per car, they charged for each individual person in the car.  that's kind of crappy, no?  and so we brushed it aside and didn't think about it again until one day when i got an email from goldstar offering heavily discounted tickets.  and when i put three tickets in my cart for a thursday evening, it ended up totaling pretty much what i would have expected to pay for an event like this.  so we picked a date and bought the tickets.

aaaaaand then covid hit our house - the very week we were scheduled to go.  man.  we were pretty bummed, but there was definitely no way around it.  i offered them to one of our friends, and they were all set until they realized that one of the kids had practice at the very same time as the event.  and so i turned to another friend who has two kids and luckily, they were available and excited to go.  she texted me later on and raved about how much fun they'd had and how it'd lifted the girls' spirits after being on lockdown for most of the year, and i was so glad they'd been able to use the tickets.

after we received our second negative covid tests, i decided to try again.  and happily, we were able to find tickets again at the same discounted prices.  so on a thursday evening after cheer practice, the girls and i made our way to pomona and started our elf on the shelf adventure.

they have an app that you download before going through the gate, and it plays music and tells you the story of what you're seeing as you drive through.  it's divided into 16 chapters, with signage to show you when to move on to the next one.

we checked in with one of the staffers, who then handed us the light-up necklace that came with the bean's ticket and showed us a sneak peek of the merchandise we'd be able to buy at the end of the line.

we also each received a little "letter to santa" packet, and were instructed to have them all written out as soon as we could because someone would be collecting them about ten minutes into the experience.

next, we had the chance to order some snacks and hot cocoa to enjoy in the car together.  the girls went for the cocoa and the "reindeer bites," which were just little bite-sized churros.

then it was time to wait in line to enter the fairgrounds and actually get the show on the road.  at the very beginning, each car stopped at the "spirit escalation station," where elf helpers would scan the car and measure our level of christmas spirit.

apparently, santa's sleigh crash-landed here.

this is where we entered the "shrinkin' tunnel," and when we emerged we were shrunken down to elf size.

right afterwards, elves were on hand to collect our letters to santa.

from there, we were treated to a lot of cute light displays and elf antics.

and every so often, we'd come up to another spirit escalation system to see if our level of christmas spirit had improved.  of course, we moved up a notch or two every time.

it really was very cute, and lots of fun to drive through and see what was coming up next.  the elves were all very animated and full of enthusiasm - although i suppose it helped that our visit was really early in the season still.

and because we were all still shrunken down to the size of an elf, this EOTS kit looked gigantic.  heh.

one last check of our christmas spirit before going through the UN-shrinkin' tunnel:

and look who was waiting around the bend for us!

this was pretty much the end of the experience.  as we drove towards the exit, we looked out at the fairplex where we usually go for funnel cake, bacon wrapped deep-fried stuff, ice cream, cotton candy...and where i usually see my cookies displayed - assuming i've actually placed.  sigh.

turns out that we were waiting in line because there was a quick photo op.

you can't even really see us, but it's still pretty funny.

right after that was where we got the most fun surprise of all - those letters to santa that we'd dropped off had been shrunken down to elf size, perfect for hanging from the christmas tree.  so cute!

and of course, the last stop was the merchandise station.  we picked up an ornament and a couple of little things to take home.

all in all, it had taken about an hour from start to finish.  super cute, and a fun way to kick off the holiday season.  i'm not sure it would be worth full price, nor would i suggest the $75 VIP upgrade (which got you a shorter wait to check in plus a goody bag of some sort and a socially distanced photo op with santa).  but if you can still get your hands on the off-peak pricing...do it.  it'll get you into the christmas spirit for sure.