Merry Christmas to all of you who are celebrating! Since there were fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I think this holiday snuck up on a lot of us.
We’ve already gotten together with one side of our family for the holiday, and we’ll be finishing the celebrations this weekend with another mini-trip. Today, we’re excited to be doing absolutely nothing. Basically just: making a delicious brunch, exchanging stockings (we’ve been doing this in place of gifts for a few years because meh), and just hanging out together with absolutely not obligations.
If you want to see some of my favorites from the past month, check out the list below! And don’t forget to visit my top 19 posts of 2019 if you haven’t already. Enjoy the rest of your week and year and…decade?!
December 2019 Favorites
1-Year Anniversary of Moving – This time last year, we had just arrived in the city, coming from St. Louis. It’s now been a year since we made our final trip from San Diego to Chicago. It’s pretty bittersweet considering how much we miss San Diego and the friends we made there, but so far we’ve been enjoying being Chicagoans (again, ish) and embracing all it has to offer (like ice skating when it’s actually cold outside). If you want to see what all we did on our roadtrip, I wrote about it in my post about our move from San Diego to Chicago.
Wrapping Gifts – I’ll admit this is a pretty weird favorite to highlight, but it’s seriously so refreshing to me. We’ve been flying home to see family for the holidays for 6+ years, and since you’re not supposed to wrap gifts when you travel (because TSA may need to search your bag), I’ve had to wrap presents SUPER last minute…at people’s houses…minutes before we exchanged gifts…and often using their wrapping. To be able to wrap my gifts ahead of time? It’s a surprisingly nice freedom to have.
DIY Snow Candle Holder – I don’t do arts and crafts that often anymore, but I got inspired after a trip to Michaels recently and made a couple fun things. This little “snow” (Epsom salt)-covered candle jar was one of those things! I need to redo the ribbon part, but overall I was happy with how it turned out. There are tutorials all over Pinterest/the internet if you’re interested. I just put a fake tealight in mine, because I hate going through real ones so fast. It’s been a nice little addition to my [lack of] holiday decor.
Books of 2019 – Every year that I’ve done this (AKA, last year and this year), seeing the stack of books I successfully completed is so rewarding. While I don’t want my motivation to read to be about quantity, it’s exciting to see how far I’ve come in just the past couple years with making reading a habit. Check out my 12 books I read in 2019 post to see my reviews of these!
Spotify Decade Wrapped – This was both creepy and fascinating AF. Spotify takes all your data from each year, as well as the last 10 years as a whole, and tells you your trends. So yes, clearly it’s keeping mucho data on your listening habits, but it’s really cool to see what your top songs were each year, what you artist of the decade was, etc. Incubus ended up being my artist of the decade, which made sense to me. If you’re in the U.S. and use Spotify regularly, just find it in the app or go to spotify.com/us/wrapped/ and log in.
Holiday Scenes on Hulu – If you like having a digital fireplace on the TV in the background, then you might want to check out a bunch of Hulu’s “scenes.” We’ve looked at a couple and thought they were hilarious, like the roast cooking, the snowman melting, and Terry Crews painting. Worth noting, these aren’t exactly to “watch;” because it’s just a super slow progression of whatever the theme is. I still thought it was a funny option, though. The scenes with puppies and kittens are especially sweet.
Finishing Bread Baking for Beginners – It’s taken 12 months, but I’ve officially finished Bonnie Ohara’s bread cookbook…as of this morning (finally made the chocolate babka)! I’ve learned a LOT about bread making, and I’ll definitely be using a lot of these recipes and techniques again in the future. Whether it’s this cookbook or another, it’s fun to go on a little journey through it to make every recipe (or type of recipe). I technically made 28 recipes out of the 31 (?) in the book, because I skipped some duplicate recipes that were only slight alterations of the originals.
NORAD Santa Tracker – The NORAD Santa Tracker (from the North American Aerospace Defense Command) provides an up-to-date look at where Santa is in the world on Christmas Eve. It shows how many presents he’s delivered and where he’s been so far. The history of why this Santa tracker exists is really cute. Back in 1955, a child was trying to call Santa (based on a newspaper promotion) but accidentally called the organization’s number, and the commander on duty went along with it. Ever since, it’s offered the famous Santa Tracker, which is obviously available online now, as well. You can read more about the story in their article here.
Rectangular Measuring Spoons – I’m becoming one of those people who buys themselves gifts during the holidays. I hate when other people do that because it can be worrisome knowing they might buy what you already bought them. It’s just difficult. But I’ve been doing this over the past month as I’ve seen exciting deals and ideas while looking for other people. These measuring spoons, for instance, I’m really excited about. My round ones don’t fit all our spice jars, which is such a pain. So when I saw these were under $12 (and still are on Amazon here), I was like YUP.
