Christmas in Davisburg

This year we celebrated Christmas early with my family because my brother was spending Christmas with his mom.  The plan was to get together, have a nice meal and exchange gifts.  

This year we had fillet, mashed potatoes, salad, corn and rolls and it was very delicious! Justin and I do not get to eat steak too often, so it is always a treat when we can get our hands on a delicious steak meal.  

After dinner we ate some leftover birthday cake from celebrating my brother's birthday the weekend before.  If you remember, we always have Red Velvet Cake for my brother and step-dads birthdays and there is hardly ever any leftovers so this was another special treat for that day!

After dinner we spent time exchanging gifts and it was so fun to watch everyone open their gifts.  We have a tradition that my step-dad, Jason, guesses what he is opening and he is usually 90% correct.  We even tried to throw him off by wrapping his gift in a bigger boxes and filling them with fillers so that he cannot guess what is in them, but this year he guessed correctly.

My family was so generous with their gift giving and I am feeling so unbelievably blessed by them this year.  I know Justin was excited for his gifts too because he got a gift card to his favorite golf shop that he will be using for some more fun golf items as he prepares for the upcoming golf season.

The evening ended with us playing a round of Russian Rummy with the new card shuffler, card holders and a new deck of cards.  We always play Russian Rummy and it has quickly become one of my favorite games to play with them.  Plus, I run this last round! It is not often that I win at cards and the last few weeks I have had quite the luck with card games {maybe I should play the lottery?}.  

Our evening ended with our car full of gifts and a snowy drive home.  Such a fun Christmas celebration with my family! 

Braun Family Christmas - Repeating Traditions

Hello Again! This post is dedicated entirely to the Braun Family Christmas and the 20th (or so) annual cousin sleepover!

This year we continued our Christmas Tradition of spending the night at Grandma's house and our theme for pajamas was elves.  I came across these super cute pajamas on Pinterest and just had to share them with the world! They are a full one-piece set made of fleece and besides the belt being ironically too low on the waist, they are rather comfortable.  

 This year we ended up having our Braun family Christmas the Monday before Christmas because there was conflicts with scheduling which was hectic but also very fun.  We all got together (all 30+ of us) and had dinner and spent quality time together.  

After dinner, everyone made their way home except us girls and we spent the night playing a few games of our own and watching Elf.  I seriously love Elf so much! I ended up watching it a total of three times the week before Christmas and I would gladly watch it again given the opportunity.  

After the movie, we all passed out for the night all cuddled on the floor of my grandmas living room.  The next morning we spent time picking up my grandma's condo and had pancakes with bacon/sausage for breakfast {which is also tradition}. 

After breakfast, we all made our way to our home to get ready to celebrate Christmas Eve!

It's 2014 and I Disappeared for 3 Weeks.

Hello Everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Holiday and a Happy New Years! Things have been quite a whirlwind for Justin and I, and I am excited to share all of the fun things with you! I decided a few weeks back that it would be best for me to just focus on the time that I had with my family and have no distractions during Christmas, so I do apologize for my lack of posting.  But I'm back and ready to hit the ground running! 

For the past few years, my girlfriends and I have gotten together to celebrate as a group but with the new tradition of Friendsgiving, we figured it would be appropriate to celebrate Friendsmas.  The plan was for all of the girls to get together but with some bad weather that came in, only three of us got together, but it was still a ton of fun.

We made some homemade crock pot hot chocolate which was delicious! I had a recipe from Pinterest that I wanted to try, but it only made two cups so we ended up improvising and it turned out delicious {especially since we added some Bailey's and Marshmallows to our drinks}.  We also made some delicious Reindeer Chow! If you have had puppy chow before, then you know what Reindeer Chow is! It's just puppy chow with M&Ms.

While our hot chocolate was cooking in the crock pot, we exchanged gifts with each other and I am excited about everything that I got!

Sarah got me a cute pair of flats and a homemade bracelet! The shoes are a beautiful royal blue and I cannot wait to generate a whole outfit around them! Danielle made me some boot socks, wrist warmers and a beautiful infinity scarf.  All of which you can see in the picture below.  She also got me a Smash Book.

I have never heard of Smash Book before, but it seems to be pretty fun.  It is essentially a scrap book for a busy person! You can get tons of stickers and other fun inserts and you just smash them into your book.  I'm really looking forward to working on my SMASHbook in 2014 and filling it with tons of fun knickknacks throughout the year.  Plus, it's something we will be doing together! 

Check out this video to get a better idea on what it is! 

Overall, Friendsmas was a blast and I cannot wait to have many more Friendsmases to come!

Question:

What traditions do you celebrate with your friends around the Holidays?

**This post is not sponsored by SMASHbook in any way.  The views are my own.**