25 Days of Christmas: Day 24

I cannot believe it's CHRISTMAS EVE!! Yes, it's exciting, but I have no idea how it came so quickly!! It's insane. And I have been moving non-stop today with so much to do!
Woke Up.
Had presents to wrap.
Went to buy Christmas cards.
Matt's house for Brunch.
Came home.
Had to repaint my nails (yes, this was a must for the day, because they looked really bad. haha).
More presents to wrap!
Matt came over for our gift exchange :) (I have a hard time waiting til Christmas with him! ha).
Christmas pics.
Candlelight service at church.
Dinner at Memaw and Papa's.
Home for Dad's annual reading of his made up "Twas the Night Before Christmas" (trust me. it's way better than the original!)
And here I am now! Finally getting the pics uploaded!

Here are some of mine and Matt's Christmas pics this year. Photo cred-Abby!


Ok, so in this next picture are our two bears: Daniel and Loraine. We made these bears my first weekend home from school my freshman year at LU. (He made Daniel; I made Loraine). Since then, I've kept Daniel with me, and Matt's kept Loraine with him. You can tell I sleep with Daniel all the time because he's not as soft as Loraine anymore. haha. We bought them these elf outfits this year :)

25 Days of Christmas: Day 23

10 years ago, we got my dog, Chestnut, for Christmas. What I didn't find out until recently (when my Aunt Diane was posting her 25 Days of Christmas!) is that Chestnut is 1 of 4 dogs that came into the entire Pendleton family that Christmas! Great gifts!

And I just found it extremely funny this morning. Chestnut was laying in the floor in the dinner, with his head turned and pointed towards all the presents under the tree..as if he were guarding them! haha

Hope Santa will bring Chestnut another great big bone this year!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 22

Well, for those of you who don't know, my dad is in a gospel bluegrass group-Churchyard Grass (CYG). They've been together for what feels like forever! Every year, we always have a CYG Christmas party and I just LOVE IT!!!! So much great food, music, and friends! I can't believe it, but I forgot to take a picture of all the yummy food!!

Anyway, here are some fun pictures from the evening :)

the girls :)

what every Christmas gathering should include: ELF!

Tradition...

Other tradition...

CYG

CYG family


He was concentrating so hard on Rockband!

yay!!

I rocked at the drums, but like the guitar more!


We're the next generation....look out. (With Abs on vocals and Matt on drums ;) )

25 Days of Christmas: Day 21

So I officially have 25,000 favorite things about Christmas, or about that many at least.

I love every year when my dad sets up the Christmas village. This year, it's moved from upstairs on the air hockey table, to downstairs in our (sofa-less) living room, on a huge table. It's so awesome looking! I took a few pics yesterday, but I don't think he has everything out yet, so hopefully more to come! :)

25 Days of Christmas: Day 20

This snow has made me so happy these past few days! Even though that means you may not be able to go out driving much, I don't care. There aren't many occasions when all 4 members of my family are home at the same time, but for a lot of this weekend, we all have been. Last night, we were all home, dad put lights on our real tree, we decorated it while watching The Wizard of Oz, then we all fell asleep watching it! I cannot tell you the last time that has happened! We're hardly ever all home! So, that's just one reason why I'm thankful for this great weather :)

Here are some pics of outside decorations and the house at night.

We have two of these trees on our porch.


We have these wreaths on all of our windows, as well as swags at the bottom of the windows. I'm not sure why I didn't take a picture of them? I love the sparkly ribbon and bows mom now uses!


I'm just a fan of sparkles and glitter in general. Which is why I love the gold sparkly wreaths on the two front doors.


Finally, here's our house in the snow. It's a bit blurry (boo). We weren't able to put garland and lights on the front porch railings this year because, well, we don't have any. Dad started replacing all the railings, then we basically had non-stop rainy weather whenever he was home to do it, so they have not been finished yet. We also haven't had a chance to put our icicle lights on either!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 19

Since it was sooo cold and snowy yesterday, I spent the afternoon making some of my favorite goodies...chocolate covered pretzels! But this time, since mom bought so much chocolate :), I tried to have some fun with them this time! See what you think...

25 Days of Christmas: Day 18

I will say, I was a little bit skeptic about whether or not all this snow talk would come through, but I am SOO glad it did!!! :)
I love seeing snow fall!! I kept telling mom I could tell by the sound of the snow falling that it would be good crunchy snow! haha

Matt came over tonight before things got too bad. We had lots of fun playing out in the falling snow with Chestnut. That dog just loves snow and he looks so funny with it covering his face!

Dad and I didn't want my camera to get too messed up from the snow blowing up on the porch while he was taking pictures, so we didn't get many tonight. But trust me, I'll have lots more later!!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 17

I LOVE riding around looking at Christmas lights. Every year, mom prints out a list of addresses from the Tacky Light tour and we'll ride around one night looking at all the craziness! I never get tired of it! While we haven't gone on that ride yet, Matt and I went looking at Christmas lights on our own tonight.
There was one house in particular I wanted to make sure we saw. A boy I taught in dance, his entire family loves Disney! If I'm not mistaken, they go about three times every year! Holy cow! Anyway, they decorate their house in Disney, and I love it! I love seeing all the mickey ears everywhere :) Here are just some pictures I took of their house. I promise I'm not really a stalker. haha.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 16

Crazy to see that after this post, there's only 9 more left to write for the 25 Days of Christmas! Holy cow where has this month gone so far? It's getting so close to Christmas and I'm not even ready!
I have only finished shopping for Matt and Abby, and I FINALLY figured out what to buy today for the Pendleton gift exchange. Still need to finish for both Mom and Dad though. I have the ideas....just need to find them! And I have to finish making one of Mom's gifts, which is why she has strict instructions not to look under the chair in my room (and I have books leaning between all of the legs of the chair! haha). I don't care who I am buying gifts for, I just love the joy of going out, finding gifts and great wrapping paper, wrapping the gifts, adding bows and ribbons and whatnot, and finally adding a name tag to the top!

Here is a picture of all but one of Abby's gifts from me. Each item has to do with the same thing..but that's all I can really say for now :-P

Also, you may be able to tell by looking at the side of it, but on the bottom rectangle box, I wrapped it in two scraps of wrapping paper. Abby and I have this crazy tradition of always wrapping at least one of each Mom and Dad's gifts in just all of the scraps we collect over the holidays. Well, I through some scraps on Abby's this year! haha. Okay, that kinda sounds bad saying "scraps" but, still funny to us! lol

25 Days of Christmas: Day 15

At Christmastime, I love to make cookies. I don't care what kind, whether it's mom's chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies with Hershey kisses on top, or sugar cookies, but ginger bread cookies could very well be my favorite!! I just find it fun to make a face and buttons and all on a flippin cookie! haha

I babysit 2 of my favorite kids this evening: Bailey and Cady. I told them Sunday at church that I had a surprise for them. The first thing they asked when I walked into their house: "Mallory, what's the surprise?!?!" But I made them wait until after dinner, so naturally, the whole time they were eating pizza, they continued to guess. They never guessed it, until I gave the last clue, saying they could it eat afterwards! I found this cute little kit at Target:12 pre-baked ginger bread cookies, 4 packs of icing, sprinkles, and gumdrops. I noticed the package was a little skimpy on the candy toppings so I bought M&Ms to go along. Here are the final products:

Mine:

Bailey's:

Cady's:

25 Days of Christmas: Day 14

So how about, I finally go to update and for real catch up on the blog last night, and Blogger stops working for me. Something about the cookies....the type I totally don't get. Figures.

Anyway, here I am, and can finally update.

I wrote about Christmas specials on TV a few days ago, but now I'm going to write about Christmas movies. Well, I watch them all year long.
Some of my favorites are Elf, Christmas with the Kranks, and the Santa Clause movies. I watch all of them year round. It's kinda funny...my family quotes Elf on a daily basis, it's so funny. For instance, if we don't believe what someone says, we say, "you sit on a throne of lies!" haha. It just never gets old!
I also love the Santa Clause series, even though mom and I agree that we both get mad watching the 3rd one. lol.
Christmas with the Kranks is also another favorite. No reason in particular, I just love it.
I wouldn't be American if I didn't say that I love the claymation Christmas movies as well: Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, etc.
And it just makes me soooo excited after Halloween, when ABC Family starts advertising for the countdown til the 25 days of Christmas, then for the actual 25 days of Christmas!!!!