After Christmas sales

As you might remember, after Christmas sales are my favorite. And while I didn't go as crazy as I normally do – I'm still super excited about my ornament purchases.

Some of my favorite ornaments are the paper mache ones from Crate & Barrel (the 12 Days of Christmas and Nutcracker series to be specific). These ornaments are beautiful and not made of glass. While Crate & Barrel isn't offering any new ones, their sister store, Land of Nod, is.

I ordered their herringbone ornaments:

And their lace stencil ornaments:

I am so excited about these! And they were both 50% off.

And to keep with tradition, I bought a Le Bien ornament at Pier 1 for also 50% off. Not sure when I'll feel brave enough to put glass ornaments back on the family tree, but it will be waiting for me when that day comes.

Happy shopping!

Christmas

I hope everyone had a fabulous holiday! I'm now back at work and in denial that it is all over. Le sigh.

Over the weekend, we went to Manhattan to visit Brent's parents. This was Audrey and my nephew's 1st Christmas, so it was an extra special one. My mother-in-law had lots of fun decorations out for the kiddos.

And of course, the grandkids were spoiled.

Audrey modeling her new jacket vest:

We hosted Christmas morning at our house, so all the grandparents could watch Audrey open her presents. I had no idea how difficult it is to host a Christmas gathering and have a new-found respect for my parents who host 3 Christmas events each year.

The Christmas morning loot:

Audrey received an Anywhere Chair from Santa, which she used as a step ladder to get ornaments off the tree.

And the graphic designer in me couldn't pass up this board book:

And then it was time for Christmas for my parents:

Yep, not spoiled at all.

Santa

Yesterday, we visited Santa. It went as expected.

It's beginning to look...like a giant mess

I'd love to report that my house is clean and all decked out. While a lot of the holiday decor is out, my house is a mess. A major mess. Well, really Santa's present shop.

This year I'm buying pretty much all presents online, and they are arriving faster than I can wrap them. Think I'm embellishing?

Yeah. And that's after I removed certain presents from the photo.

ebates

I found out about this gem last week, and I'm now obsessed. As you all know, I'm a sucker for a deal – and well, getting paid to shop on top of a bargain is just the cherry on the top. And it's free.

So seriously, join right now – here's my referral link: http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=iCEBp6t4OT9dMMvL7sevIg%3D%3D

Here's some of the goodies I've gotten cash back on this week with my holiday shopping...
- Snapfish – 20% cash back
- Lands End – 8% cash back
- Land of Nod – 4% cash back
- Overstock – 5% cash back
- Vera Bradley – 6% cash back
- Kohls – 8% cash back

I will warn you though, ebates is going to make you mad for awhile. Once I learned of all the cash back I had passed up (such as the $50 Groupon I bought about 30 minutes earlier), you'll feel a little sick to your stomach.

Join now...and happy shopping!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Sadly, Audrey was getting over the stomach flu, so a lot of her Thanksgiving was more like this:

Versus this:

But today she's doing much better, and she even got some playtime in with her cousin Marcos:

Rainbow baby shower

I co-hosted a baby shower for my friend Sarah last weekend. A twins baby shower. Because a baby shower isn't cute enough.

We did a rainbow theme, because she saw a rainbow before her IVF success.... success after round 4. Yep, this was the most deserving baby shower ever.

Now, on to the details...

The food:

The cake (yep, a rainbow cake):

And most importantly, on to the decorations. We wanted to make the decor practical, so we did rainbow-themed banners with onesies, socks and bibs.

For the guest book, we used the super cute book "What Makes a Rainbow?"

And a shower wouldn't be complete without a diaper cake (or two):

The hostesses + mom to be:

The shower was a blast. And I can't wait to meet the twins!

*Photos by Brooke German Photography*