Sweet Silver Bells

Yummy nuts to crack and our homemade coffee scented candle arrangement. I suggest you try it! Just buy coffee beans and stick a votive in the middle! Coffee smell anytime, without having to brew a cup!

A cheery way to display our candy canes - and makes them obvious so we dont have any leftovers this year!

Our enormous pine cones from Lake Tahoe - I cannot believe we got away with bringing these back on the airplane!

Since this years tree is super made of thrifty creative ideas I figured why not make the tree-topper out of one of our little ornaments I already had. It didnt have a photo in it so I decided a pretty monogram would make a nice focal point.

We used the pine cones from last year to decorate the tree. They shimmer because I doused them in glitter so the tree really sparkles!

Our sweet new Eco-Travel calendar from the old-fashioned magazine shop a few blocks away downtown.

And...since we already had "Jack" from A Nightmare Before Christmas, Daniel thought it was appropriate that we just carry him on through holidays from Halloween to Christmas and give him his Santa hat!
Except, my Jack is creepy - like his angry face.

HAPPY 25TH BIRTH-WEEK DANIEL :)

I think birthdays and holidays a really BIG DEAL and should be approached with tons of enthusiasm so this year Daniel and I came up with the idea of celebrating Birth-WEEKS instead of Birth-DAYS. It's completely appropriate because I know our parents were counting down the days and dancing around with excitement the week of our impending due date 20-some years ago. :)

I highly recommend this approach to birthdays because we really enjoyed drawing out the celebration and having one big excuse to do a lot of things we enjoy :)

Dan's wish list was:
1. Peanut Butter Fingers
2. Thai Food
3. Time together
4. Presents ON his birthday

Ok, so I have to admit that we started a little earlier than the week of his birthday because I wanted to give him one of his gifts to have for the 3+ hour trip we made up north to Gaylord for Thanksgiving. He opened one of the car magazines (0-60 Mag) which gave him lots of fun articles to look at while we had lazy time on vacation! :)

On Monday Daniel asked me to meet at his work for lunch together. My original plan was to attempt to make the Thai food he had asked for but then I changed my mind I thought it would be fun to bring him the real thing (skip the possibility of a big cooking disaster/disappointment).

Unfortunately, the plan backfired and this food was not very good at all. We were bummed, but we had a great time sharing our mid-day with each other!
Last month was Novem-BEARD so D has been working on his fuzz. Looks good, huh?! This is the post-gross-thai-food-feast face. :( Not feeling very good....
In an effort to make up for the icky take-out we had I made up some homemade Pad Thai with a recipe I'd never tried before. It got raving reviews from Daniel and his friend Jason - the coworker that also benefits from my cooking experiments :)
Wednesday we went to the animal shelter and helped out. I dont think there were any adoptions but we felt like we did good by giving lots of puppies and kitties snuggle time and running around time. Then we came home and D got to open another one of his gifts - an EVO car magazine with lots of good new articles on sweet cars. :)

Thursday night we have our Dale Carnegie class together so we just shared class time together that night. But I made sure to surprise him with a little pre-BIG DAY decore and hung a sign on the fridge that said HAPPY ALMOST 25TH BIRTHDAY DANIEL!!!

DECEMBER 3RD 2010 - DANIEL'S 25!!!!


Daniel woke up to a new sign and lots of balloons and wrapping paper in the kitchen :) We were going to start our morning off with something freshly baked from the bakery downstairs but we skipped that in favor of a little extra snuggle time.


D decided he didnt want his gifts until after work so I had to wait patiently (very difficult) all day to see him open the rest of his gifts....
When he came home we lit the peanut butter finger ablaze and sang "happy birthday" and opened presents!

I decided to make him a special album of the moments we shared experiencing a little bit of his dream out on our NY vacation. It holds a special message from me inside it too and a little love on the cover from one of our most dear adventurists and dreamers - Dr. Y "Make life an adventure." It helps us to remember what we can do with our lives. Of course, I had to include a little sugar in there for D because he just smiles so big at the sight of such things - see his smile - all for the box of yummy gummies! His other gifts were two framed photos - in cool brushed black and chrome metal. They remind us of the Lamboghini driving tour we went on - living out dreams. :)