![Photo: I ♥ Christmas, my friends, cookies and presents!!!! Thank you guys, you all made me feel at home!!!!!](https://fbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/486914_10200255113846206_1479925408_n.jpg)
I can never ever get enough of the Christmas season. As soon as a speck of snow hits the ground, my radio is immediately turned to the Christmas station, I whip out my dorky, Christmas socks, and, being the shopaholic that I am, I start looking for gifts for my family and friends. Some would say it's a little bit over the top. I say, to heck with them! There is only one time of year that you can wear ugly sweaters and obnoxious holiday themed earrings and get away with it! We've gotta milk it for all it's worth! It's all about the reindeer nail polish, the red and green eyeshadow, and the excessive santa-hat wearing :) Oh, and singing Christmas carols whenever humanly possible. Hmm I think I may have a little bit of a Christmas problem here... oh well!! Maybe someday a long time from now, an over-educated shrink will tell me the root of my holiday obsession. Until then, I'm sticking to my very exaggerated holiday spirit :)
This year, my Christmas came a little bit early. First of all, I live with some of the nicest and most generous girls on the planet :) and boy am I thankful for that!! We all decided that Christmas could not wait another week, so we all planned a mini gift exchange for our little group of 5 for the Monday before we all left for home. You should've seen us the Friday before our Trainee House Christmas; all frantically running through the mall, searching through every store and secretly asking our other roommates if they had any idea what each of us wanted for Christmas. It was a hot mess. Not only is it hard to shop for people you've only known for 4 months, but it makes it massive amounts worse when you're on a very short time limit and a super tight money budget. Thank goodness we were all at the mall at the same time! I ran into a few of my girls while figuring out what to buy and they were a great deal of help!! At one point, we were all in Forever 21, coincidentally enough. So I had to hide in the corner until they were all gone and I could check out with all my cute little trinkets for each of them :) And of course, I double bagged everything! You can never trust one bag to conceal the surprises inside. I've learned that lesson first hand... thank for ruining Christmas, Kaitlan.
After a somewhat stressful, but way fun weekend of shopping and running around the mall like a crazy, Monday night finally came, which meant only one thing: CHRISTMAS!! haha :) My Italian roommate was so cute; she went to the store in the morning to buy all sorts of cookies and hot chocolate mix. And my roommate, Haley, also whipped up a batch of her favorite whtie macadamia nut cookies. um yum. We boiled 5 cups of milk and made our hot chocolate while a few of us created a crepe paper Christmas tree on our wall. That was quite the sight! haha Green crepe paper in the shape of a tree with a yellow paper star on top, white, twinkle lights stranded across the wall and bows stuck on for the ornaments. I must say, it was the most creative tree I've ever seen! I guess when you're too poor and lazy to haul a real tree home from the grocery store, you've got to learn to use your resources :) We all sat around our little coffee table, drinking our hot chocolate and stuffing our faces with cookies. I don't think we even hardly talked! We were too busy filling up with empty calories as fast as we could; we all knew that once we had finished eating, we could open our presents all sitting under the homemade tree.
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This is Laura, the tree artist, with our homemade tree :) Isn't it awesome??! |
When our mugs were empty and we had made a pretty good dent in the plates of cookies, we started the gift exchange :) Laura started by closing her eyes and waving her hand over the big pile of gifts until we told her to stop and grab the one under her hand. haha I don't know who came up with that present-picking method, but it actually proved to be quite efficient :) Before opening each gift, we got a picture with our unopened present, then we ripped off the paper and screamed for a little bit, then ran over to the roommate who gave us the awesome present, giving them a huge hug, then you got a picture with the OPENED present. hahaha!! This seriously happened.. like the entire time. haha it was awesome :) Opening presents takes alot longer when you have to pose for two pictures and give a great big hug to your awesome roommates! And they really are the best roommates ever!! They all spent way too much money on me. I ended up with new pajama pants, a cute scarf, a new cookbook (thank goodness for that!) and cute Christmas cupcake liners. I think they were trying to send me some sort of message to cook and bake more?? And I sure got the point! The next day, I whipped up some red velvet cupcakes for my dear Laura, whose birthday was on the 21st (HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, LAURA!!). And maybe with this awesome new cookbook, I'll start eating something other than sandwiches and cans of soup for dinner ;).
It really was the best Christmas ever!! Thanks, guys, for everything and for creating such an unforgettable night :) Love you all!!
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Us with all of our presents :) Just a little bit crazy ;) |