Xapa to the World

Tag: Cincinnati

  • Getting Married: 26 Weeks – O Christmas Tree

    I am fiercely possessive of my holidays. This might be because I was born on Flag Day (June 14th), but I really don’t like my holidays to mix. So when Christmas decorations start coming out before Halloween, my hackles start to go up. I will not abide Christmas music before Thanksgiving. When I lived in Japan, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, naturally, so Christmas season was just about two months long there. That was kind of hard for me to handle. I love Thanksgiving and want it to stand on its own. But that country has its own plethora of holidays that took some getting used to.

    The day after Thanksgiving, no bars are held. It’s time for Christmas! Which means, putting up Christmas trees, lights, decorations, making Christmas candy, listening to Christmas music, watching Christmas movies – yes, mayhaps all at once. I had to work on Black Friday, which was a cake-walk at the bank, but Saturday, I drove up to Matt’s and convinced him that we needed to put up his Christmas tree.

    I decided not to take my decorations up this year. I want to save that special Christmas for our first year married. But I definitely wanted to help Matt get The House ready for the holiday.

    First, mood smell and lighting. Yum!
    Matt’s accumulation of decorations…I brought the candy canes.
    So many branches…
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    I enjoy colored lights, but there’s something crisp and pure about white lights on a tree. 🙂
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    I should probably dress up as a Christmas tree for Halloween one year…but I don’t like my holidays to mix.
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    Can you find Matt? Warning, it’s kind of disturbing.
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    His tree turned out lovely, albeit tame. I hope it can handle my decorations next year.

    Sunday started off with a headache. The Christmas elves made it down to add some cheer to our sugar bowl, per norm. They always seem to be able to find us, even when we’ve moved houses. So fun.

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    I felt better in the evening by the time Matt came down to my home and helped us put our decorations up. Mom and I get pretty into it. We put on Scrooge with Albert Finney to love and enjoy. It’s a musical, naturally. We know every line, naturally. So do my sisters and their kids. It’s a family tradition.

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    I always feel like it’s not really The Christmas Carol without music and dancing…

    Matt was gracious enough to help us bring boxes up from the basement, which has been one of my primary tasks. I was more than happy to let him take over that.

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    We have quite a few boxes…
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    I got the picture pre-skirt/pre-ornaments…but it’s so packed with stuff. I don’t think Matt knew what to expect when I told him I had a lot of decorations. Indeed, most of them are mine.

    A lot of my decorations center around the Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. It’s one of my favorite Christmas movies (along with It’s a Wonderful Life, Scrooge, Prancer, The Bishop’s Wife, White Christmas, Elf, and more).

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    Most things in our house make noise at Christmas. Most things, therefore, have a funny story attached to them about how someone was frightened by it going off. This one is light sensitive and the story takes place in a bathroom, late at night. I’ll let you come up with the rest.
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    I think this is Mom’s favorite. My nieces gave it to her for Christmas one year and it quacks and dances to the Nutcracker Suite. Talk about Duck Dynasty!

    The festivities moved on to work for Monday. Mom and I have put garland and lights up on the little fence out front in the past, but we decided not to mess with it this year. My bank branch opened early this year, so we have no decorations just yet, and Mom let me borrow the garlands and lights to put up at work for this year until we can get some of our own. I had a lot of fun doing it.

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    I bought this tree at TJ Maxx a few years ago and love it. It’s so fun and bright! I added the ribbon at the bottom.
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    With a little finagling and some command hooks, we have a sweet holiday complement to our teller windows. We’ve since replaced a broken strand of lights and now it glows as well.

    The assistant manager also went out and picked up some little trees and poinsettia to decorate. Our regional manager came in yesterday and told us that she absolutely loved what we’ve done. I was so pleased.

    Have you finished your decorating? Do you have a family tradition, like toasting the tree? We’ve not had many resources in the past, so we’ve come up with our own traditions a little off the norm, but just as meaningful.

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

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  • Getting Married: 28 Weeks – Cake: Not the Band, But They’re Cool Too

    The last big, sorta expensive, thing we’ve needed to get booked is the wedding cake. I was able to go to the Bridalrama in Cincinnati (find more here about that) and sampled quite a few cakes. That is, by far, the most enjoyable part of the wedding planning we’ve had. Together, Matt and I scheduled tastings at two places in the area. We wanted something really nice where we could get a wide variety of flavors and make it unique to our style (well, probably more my style, but Matt was super-excited about the tasting part). For us, the emphasis is on taste, not so much on appearance, although I would love to have a pretty cake too. We also wanted something that wouldn’t cost double what my dress did. Yikes, there are some pricey places out there!

    As mentioned in the Bridalrama post, we had quite a lot of praise for J Annette’s Cheesecakes, out of West Chester. We had tasted the traditional cake in cupcake form at a birthday party and I had tried the cheesecake at Bridalrama. I recently had some more cake from there at our friend Dannie’s baby shower. So incredibly good!

    We were pretty excited about having a wedding cake with cheesecake, and the cost per slice was the same for traditional cake or cheesecake. We felt that the price for a cheesecake wedding cake was very reasonable. I loved that they do not opt for using fondant, and that with the cheesecake, they only use white frosting, which is perfect for what I have been wanting. I love my wedding colors, but I don’t want everything to be completely overwhelmed by them. We left that tasting knowing that we loved the taste, presentation and service. (Facebook)

    We decided that regardless of whether we had found OUR cake place or not, we wanted to do more tastings! So, a dear friend, Kim, recommended we check out “L&L’s Simply Sweet” out of Franklin, OH. It’s right on my path to The House in Carlisle, so I thought it would be a pretty good idea. I called them up and scheduled a tasting. They also have a plethora of flavors and boasted of being committed to coming up with new flavors on request – I was just glad that they had something with mocha in it. All Matt really cared about was the chocolate stuff. 🙂

    We tried out a few of the flavors and talked about design. The pricing is VERY reasonable and despite not having cheesecake to offer for wedding cake, I was very happy with the tasting. We love cheesecake, but if we really want to have cheesecake for our wedding, we’ll buy a small one and enjoy it ourselves. Goodness knows we probably won’t get to taste much of our own at the reception! I emailed them pictures of the cakes I wanted to pull elements from and of our topper and Lisa and Lori were both real excited about the cake! So, on Monday, Veteran’s Day, I stopped by and made the deposit for it. I can not be more thrilled! (Facebook)

    While I don’t want to show you ALL of my plans for the cake, I will share with you some of the designs and such that I have seen and liked for inspiration. Here you go:

    I’m just including this picture so you can see what a lovely combo red and yellow make. I do not like fondant and we will not be having it on our cake, but you can get an idea of the colors.
    I like square cakes, mostly because I like clean edges and I also like how much more cake can be got out of square than round. I also like the staggered effect.
    I’ve loved the spackled/rough frosting effect so much. It looks how I love to paint and gives it such great texture.
    I saw this picture in a “30 Best Wedding Cakes” or some such website and I love the ruffled icing effect. I put this up on my Pinterest right away for inspiration.

    I keep thinking that I can’t really remember what my friends’ cakes have looked like at their weddings. But I remember what they tasted like. I can remember my friends Audrey and Erik’s cake, but I think that was just because it was so super unique, and also the last wedding I’ve been to. I want people to remember our cake as being tasty and being exactly what they would have wanted. That taste is specific to each person, so I hope that what we’ve ordered will appeal to enough people. And if not, we definitely made the effort, so go buy your own. 😀

    I kid, I kid…but if you do, would you mind going to one of these two lovely places?

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

    Related articles

  • Insta-post: Paint By the Glass

    Friday night, I indulged in a fun evening of painting at Paint By the Glass. I’ve gone three other times, the last one being to paint a vibrant color rendition of Union Terminal in downtown Cincinnati. This time, my mom joined me to paint Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

    We have been so excited to do this one. In case you don’t know about Paint by the Glass, here’s the gist. A “class” is held and people can sign up to come to a specific painting class. The painting is sketched out on the canvas and the artist instructs and demonstrates for those in the class. They serve wine and such as well as hors d’oeuvres. You can read about my first visit here. I’ve gone with friends and also by myself and enjoyed myself in both settings. I’m not usually intimidated by flying solo for an evening.

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    Sampling of the paintings they do in the class.

    Some of these I hadn’t seen before; I would love to do the butterfly and flower one at the bottom!

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    Nothing like well-loved brushes.
    This is probably my new favorite thing! If only it didn’t come in a plastic bottle!

    They always start you off with a blank canvas and the picture sketched onto it. This is the first time I’ve ever seen them give any guide to the colors and such on the canvas, but it was very helpful since there was a lot going on with this painting.

    Blues are fun. This painting took a lot of blue. I mean, A LOT of blue. And yellow, but that comes later. You always start from the furthest thing back and come forward in the picture. We were supposed to do it all in flat colors, but I wanted to make mine with a little more texture before putting on the etch strokes. I like how it turned out.

    Cloud etches, purple mountains and swirls in the sky
    Yellow!

    I wish I had paid closer attention to how big the yellow circles were and actually closed them in a bit with the blue, but it turned out alright having really large moon and stars. Making the swirls within the stars was probably my favorite part.

    My final product! ‘Twill look great in The House!

    I love how my tree and village turned out on the bottom. I had so much fun painting this! I think I do a lot better with more abstract painting. There aren’t as many rules, but I love coming to these classes and learning little tricks here and there to be a better painter. Kat and Ashley were the instructors that night and they were so helpful. We had such a large class that both were painting a canvas and walking around to help.

    Well, you already know that I’m a pretty big nerd, but I do get it honestly! My mom loves to watch the show Doctor Who and got me hooked on it as well. One episode, I think last season, had The Doctor and companion Amy go back to visit Vincent Van Gogh. Afterwards, when they were in a modern art gallery, they looked closely and found a Tardis (his space ship) tucked into the painting. Mom was really keen on duplicating that into her painting. She got the basic shape down and then Kat (a fellow Whovian) helped fill in the details. Mom is so excited for her painting now.

    Check out my previous review of Paint by the Glass here!