A Little Bit of Tree-Less Holiday Cheer

It may not be a marshmallow world in this foggy, drippy Pacific Northwest wonderland, but we've managed to scrounge up enough holiday trimmings to deck our tiny little halls and dress up our apartment in holiday style. Our plans for a one-of-a-kind Crown land tree fell through when we discovered the nearest public forest with a healthy crop of trees was five hours into the mountains. But we decided to make the most of it, and spruced up the rest of the place instead. Here's a mini tour:

I actually put these up right after Halloween... it may have been a bit early, but it's always nice to have a reminder :)

They say "It's almost Christmas!"

A food themed garland mad out of popcorn, wooden cranberries, candy-canes and cookie and candy ornaments for the kitchen window

Our red fiestaware wasn't so great for the Halloween season, but it really hit its prime this Christmas!

Pay no attention to that green grass outside the window

Our cozy living room... we're taking full advantage of the Holiday Fireplace show on channel 14. It creates the illusion of warmth--even making fake crackling sounds! :)

Some borrowed garlands over the bookcase and windows with ornaments from my sister

And a quick makeshift ornament mobile to brighten up the walls. We just painted them a couple weeks ago, so they're still a bit bare!

 

Pinecones from Kelowna!

The bathroom got a little bit of holiday cheer too. I'm tempted to keep this up all year though, so cheerful!

Hope you are all enjoying your Christmas season! Jared and I are counting down the days till we come home for Christmas! And sorry everyone in Michigan, but we're keeping our fingers crossed for lots of snow (but not on our traveling days). :)

An American Thanksgiving in Canada

Well I may be a bit late on the Thanksgiving update, but late is better than never. :)  And I have to say first off that none of the photos in this post are mine--most of them are the work of the talented Jared Smith. But my camera skills are a bit lax. So anyway...

When it comes to holidays, I am a gal of traditions. My holidays are pretty inflexible--each little part of them is wrapped in some sort of sentimentality, even if I'm the only one who really feels it. So here's my standard thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving Day:

• Awake to the sounds of mom and dad starting the turkey
• Fall back asleep
• Awake for a second time to the smells of cooking turkey
• Watch the Macy's Thanksigiving Day Parade in my pj's
• Thanksgiving meal

Day after Thanskgiving:

• Early morning sister day
• Christmas tree hunt
• Christmas tree decoration
• Dinner with our family friends the Rotmans

From there, the rest of the weekend was pretty flexible. But most of the activities had one thing in common: family. 

That wasn't so much of an option here, however. So instead, with the help of our friends Jared and Elise, we abandoned all the traditions and did it our own way. It was a different sort of holiday, but it was still a wonderful one.

On Thursday morning, we piled into our little car and headed due northeast. We drove through some beautiful, snowy woods and mountains, and eventually ended up in Kelowna to meet up with Jared and Elise. From there, we headed a bit further on into Vernon to a lakeside resort community called The Outback

We stayed in the vacation home of one of Jared Smith's relatives, and it was a beautiful place to spend the weekend. We played games, watched holiday movies, explored the area, and cooked up a storm. That Friday, we learned that a lot of work and time goes into a full turkey dinner. But we managed to put together a delicious--and pretty good looking--dinner.

Jared inspecting his creation

 To get away from the turkey smell for a while, we explored a bit and enjoyed the last couple minutes of blue skies before the sun disappeared over the mountains.

And maybe the best holiday amendment was taking a dip in the hot-tub after dinner. The boys also took a quick dip in the lake too--it was a tad chilly (as I can attest to, having put my big toe in at least one centimeter).

Here are a couple other photos from the weekend:

We enjoyed poking around at on the rocks of the next door provincial park!

You can probably guess who that is on top of the cliff.

Elise and I breaking the wishbone!

Is it possible to fail in the wishbone game? It split flat down the middle! Guess we both got half a wish :)

Thanks to some wonderful friends for a great Thanksgiving!

Boo!

There's something about Halloween that makes me grow a little bit younger. I find myself drawn to smiley-faced ghosts, mini pumpkins, and tootsie rolls. In fact, I even found myself making tiny happy ghosts out of tootsie pops. Call it childish, but I still think they're pretty darn cute. Plus, Halloween results in tons of cute pictures of babies in costumes. Loved all the little giraffes, pumpkins, puppies and monsters out there :)

This year, I had a blast decorating for Halloween. Jared and I also discovered my major weakness: craft store decorations. I first  splurged on some cute Halloween paper from the scrapbook store on the way back from getting some groceries. Then, I stumbled over a half-off sale at Jo-Anne fabrics, which resulted in a tiny fabric witches hat, a wooden table-top pumpkin cutout, and some sort of candy corn garland. The next week, I succombed to temptation again upon finding giant, twig acorns in a home decor store near my work. Some girls buy shoes, others buy purses...apparently I buy novelty oversized woodland decorations :) Three of them. But perhaps my greatest shame was the mini-pumpkins. In my lust to gain these cute little guys, I broke Canadian import regulation laws, sneaking five of them across the border. 

Altogether, though, these little sins and weaknesses make a pretty cute table-top display :)

 A couple weekends ago, Jared and I decided to have a lovely fall day wandering around a pumpkin patch. We drove to the most popular one in town, only to discover that admission to the patch would cost us 7 bucks each. Now, back home in Kalamazoo, Gene the pumpkin man would sell us two pumpkins for under 5 dollars total--plus we'd get the pleasure of walking around his little orange, over-the-top farm. I almost don't need to even say that Jared and I turned right around, empty handed. Instead, we made a lovely-fall-day stop to the local produce market, and spent $2.50 for two pumpkins. We're pretty good with bargains :)

Then, we got ready to carve. And much to our pleasure, we discovered that, somehow, our pumpkin-carving tools had followed us all the way out here. How they were deemed essential enough to make the trip, I have no idea, but we were thrilled they'd decided to join us.

 Here's how our creations turned out: 

Mine's the one on the left. Jared's is a pirate!

My love for Halloween may be influenced a teeny, tiny amount by the fact that my birthday comes right before it. This year, I turned the good solid age of 24, a number that I like. My work surprised me with doughnuts and cider in the second floor kitchen on Friday---somehow, my coworker Brittany had an inkling she'd be able to lure me down there with the promise of a free treat. It worked!

On Sunday, Jared made me bacon for breakfast, which is always a treat :) He also strategically placed my birthday gifts in the living room to see if I'd notice. It took a couple minutes, but eventually I spotted a new addition to my bike:

Such a pretty basket from my parents!

I'd received a couple gifts in the mail at work on Friday, and proved myself to be the epitome of self control by not opening them. In fact, this may have also been a border violation, but I was pretty confident none of my family members would be sending me anything illegal. I'm so excited for all my gifts!

Take note as well that Jared decided to feed my holiday decoration weakness by buying me a book specifically devoted to holiday crafts. It's a thing of beauty. In fact, I'm holding myself back from starting on Christmas decorations this week. There are just so many neat things to make--stockings, a tree skirt, popcorn and cranberry tree garlands. Let's just say, it's going to be a fun two months :)

Jared had two potential plans for Sunday afternoon: If the weather was nice, we'd celebrate with a picnic in Mt. Baker area's Heather Meadows. If the weather was crappy, we'd explore the museum of anthropology at University of British Columbia, followed by dinner in Vancouver. Grey skies and rain made our decision pretty obvious. So Jared and I enjoyed a lovely afternoon pretending to be college students again, exploring the museum and frolicking around the rain-soaked campus before eating delicious Greek food. All and all, it was a perfect day :)

Happy November everyone!