Christmas Eve Dinner

 This year, Kevin and I made a leg of lamb, latkes, champagne risotto, garden peas, and peanut butter strawberry brownies for Christmas Eve Dinner.We enjoyed going to the 5pm Christmas service at our church where we sang in choir.  We also went to the 11pm Christmas service in Ark City to hear our good friend, Ben, preach at St. Paul UMC.  We had a lovely evening!

Hello, Kate

Kevin spoiled me this Christmas with a Kate Spade Stevie purse!

Merry Christmas from The Reynolds Family

Thanks again to our great friend, Britt Bradley, who is an awesome photographer!

Second Annual PVUMC Young Adult Progressive Dinner

Kevin and I hosted the entree of the Young Adult Progressive Dinner this year.  Kevin made short ribs, glazed green beans and mashed potatoes.  I had a ball getting the house all ready for our party of 10!

Cookie Tree

As an engineer's wife, specifically a structural engineer's wife, I'm ashamed of how my cookie tree turned out. 

Yes, that is my doting husband helping the crumbling cookie tree stay upright long enough to get a picture taken.  He had no part in the assembly of the tree, however. 

In my defense, gluten-free cookies are quite different than their gluten counterparts.  I think this would work well about half the size.  Gluten is like the "glue" that holds most bread-like treats together.  Still, I hang my head in shame. :(  It has been a delicious treat all the same, though.

The gift of reading

Kevin and I are participating in the Youthville Christmas ornament program again at our church this year.  We saw an ornament that we just couldn't pass up!  The 15 year-old girl wanted a kindle and the Twilight Series on her kindle.  Kevin and I are both passionate about the importance of reading, especially for youth, so we chose the ornament.  We hope it brings many hours of reading enjoyment!

Decorating, Outside Edition

Young Adult Progressive Dinner

Friday night, our young adult group at church had a progressive dinner.  We had delicious appetizers at Britt's house, followed  by a great chicken entree at the Shiedler's house, and had desserts and did a white elephant gift exchange at our house.  We had a great time!

We love having our fireplace on during the holidays!

The torte, whipped cream, gingerbread, and egg nog

Ready for our guests!

Youthville

This year, Kevin and I decided to participate in the Youthville Christmas ornament program.  Children in foster homes make lists of things they would like for Christmas, and the lists are put on ornaments.  We chose an 11 year old girl (almost the same age as Kevin's sisters).  We had such a wonderful time picking out the gifts from her list!

They included:

A bike

photo courtesy of Target.com

Build-a-Bear clothes    

photos courtesy of buildabear.com

We hope she has a wonderful Christmas!

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

 This Saturday, Kevin and I picked out our Christmas tree!  We ventured to Prairie Pines, and we had a great time finding our tree!

 The horses took everyone out to the different fields. 

 We found the perfect tree!  Instead of waiting for the wagons to come back, my dad (who came with his truck to help us bring our tree home since we both have cars) and Kevin decided to just walk it back to the store.

 I loved the horses! So pretty

 This chandelier was really fun!

All in all, we really enjoyed Prairie Pines.  We will likely make this a tradition every year, especially once we have children. And, we LOVE our tree! It's a Virginian pine, and our entire house smells so wonderful!

A Very Merry Christmas and A Winter Wonderland

This past week has gone by so quickly! I have several quick things to catch up on. First, holiday baking continued to include a flan for our Christmas Eve party and cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. Somehow all pictures except for two were deleted from our Christmas happenings before transferring to the computer, so I don't have any pictures to share of the yummy food. :(

Our Christmas Eve party was a blast (figuratively and literally as the winds were insane Thursday evening). We were very happy everyone was able to make it despite the winter weather. Kevin and I stayed up to go to the midnight service at our church, and it was a moderate size group considering the weather was really getting bad outside.

Our table just waiting for guests to arrive (one of the two pictures that didn't end up deleted).

We stayed at our house Christmas Eve, and we opened presents together (just the two of us) after eating cinnamon rolls Christmas morning. Kevin got me a flatware chest to hold our formal flatware, a new rain shower head, the new Dan Brown book, the rest of our placemats that coordinate with our china, and a new wallet. I got him a pasta insert for our stockpot, new super cozy slippers he can wear outside, and Spanish wine.

Our original plan was to head out immediately after cleaning up Christmas morning to my parents' house in Council Grove. Unfortunately, they received significant snow accumulation, and the roads were considered impassable at the time I called. Thankfully, a few hours later we were able to make it up to see them.

Benton is LOVING all the ice and snow! His sweet little nose looks cold, though.

Saturday, we headed back to Wichita to spend time with Kevin's maternal grandparents and extended family, and we had the Reynolds' Christmas on Sunday. It was so wonderful to see everyone, and we truly had a Merry Christmas!

A Charlie Brown Christmas Tree

We FINALLY were able to put our Christmas tree in our living room last night! Kevin and I decided to do a living Christmas tree this year that we could then plant in our yard after Christmas because we currently have no trees in our yard. We discovered that they are only good in houses for a little less than a week. So, it was super exciting last night when we finally brought the tree in to decorate.


Ok, I realize this tree does NOT look like a traditional Christmas tree. While we were at the nursery, we were pricing living evergreens (starting in the mid 150's). We knew that we would be putting an evergreen in our backyard, and the salesperson we were working with suggested a deciduous tree that we would put in our front yard. We rolled our eyes for a minute, and then the idea started sounding better. If we were to spend that amount of money, we might as well get a tree that we REALLY wanted for our yard. We decided that a memory of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree might be fun for our first Christmas as a married couple. So, here is our Autumn Blaze maple in all of its glory!

The stockings were hung on the chimney with care...

I had to get a bit creative with some of my favorite ornaments (they match some of our china accent plates!) since our tree was obviously not able to handle them all.
Our bear family watching for snoops!
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Fun to prep

A few days ago, I had fun figuring out which pieces of china, serveware, crystal, etc., to use for our Christmas Eve party. Kevin is making his famous paella, and I'm helping with the flan and side dishes. I really enjoyed getting our Snowflake Wilton Armetale pieces out for the first time! The platter we are planning to use also for cookies for santa.


The winning combination of china pieces and linens.We are mixing our wedding china with Kate Spade Library Lane Aqua china I had previously to make it whimsical, and we also didn't have enough to use just our wedding china. The Kate Spade I received as presents when it was being discontinued, and I really liked it. My Grandmother Murphy was a huge fan of china and crystal, and I'm not even sure how many sets she had! I'm pretty sure I got my love of fine dinnerware from her, although even my Mom has 24 place settings of china!

Christmas is getting so close! Kevin and I are so excited to share our first very married Christmas!