Christmas Eve Eve Through Christmas Day

Hi friends! Hope you are recovering from your Christmas celebrations- we had a great time with our families and now I'm ready to rest- unfortunately going back to work was in the cards for me yesterday but have another three day weekend coming up so I'm looking forward to some quality time in our apartment! Here is a recap of our Christmas:

On Christmas Eve Eve we celebrated with my family as our "Christmas Eve" at my parents house.  We had a great time catching up with my family and of course playing with Kai.

He's such a sweetie!

We did a girls picture and with the addition of my uncles girlfriend our numbers are growing! We need to outnumber those boys someday!

Everyone loves Kai! My cousin Annabel enjoyed playing with him, he has so much energy!

Tim and Zach decorating ornaments. My mom never got the teacher arts and crafts bug out of her!

Little sweetheart!

Kai sat like this on Tim for awhile and eventually fell asleep- he loves to cuddle!

Liz and Annabel doing ornament decorating.

Dan hating on my picture taking per usual.

Kai and Tim again.

Even Uncle Dave got into the ornament decorating!

On Christmas Eve we went to Tim's sisters house to celebrate with his family- I didn't take any pictures there and haven't seen any that anyone else took yet so I unfortunately don't have any to share. We had fun doing Yankee Swap and trying to unwrap a present wearing oven mitts!

I did take these two pictures on the way there in the car! We didn't wear ugly sweaters- I wore my Patriots ugly sweater t-shirt and Tim wore a t-shirt with a cat eating pizza. 

 On Christmas morning we opened gifts with Tim's family at Brit's house again. We had done a secret santa with everyone which was a ton of fun.

Then we headed to my parents house to open gifts with my family. I remembered my new camera this time!

It was such a nice morning! Kai was hilarious looking at his new gifts and playing with everything that was not a gift- wrapping paper, gift bags, ribbon, etc. My mom went overboard as usual and we left with a carload of gifts and full bellies from the delicious roast she made us for lunch!

We were so excited and overwhelmed that we ended up going to our apartment and taking naps for part of the afternoon and then went back to Brit's for Christmas dinner.

Here we are before leaving our apartment for Christmas dinner.

Kason and Callan seemed to like the Pokemon guys we gave them!

 We had a good prime rib dinner and then hurried home so Tim could watch the Eagles game and I could get ready for work the next day.

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas as well!

Life Lately: Christmas Week Celebrations!

Today I'm going to share a little photo dump for everything leading up to Christmas. I'll share Christmas and some things I gave and received in a separate post :)

We started our Christmas celebrations with Rachel, Ant and Tilly. This is the only picture I took but this serious little girl would laugh the minute I put the camera down! We had a great time catching up and seeing her- she's growing so fast! We had dinner at Olive Garden and loved spending time with one of our favorite families!

After seeing Tilly we had to see Emma and Parker as well (and their parents of course!) we picked up some Chinese food and had a take in night to watch Emma open her gifts (and Parkers too) which was fun since she understands unwrapping gifts now.

We gave her an Elsa doll and a tutu which she calls a "pretty" she seemed to like our gifts!

Parker was less interested in opening gifts and more interested in sleeping. We were just fine with her loving on us!

At work we all wore ugly sweaters last Thursday which was fun. I wore my Patriots ugly sweater t-shirt since I wasn't willing to spend more then $20 on a sweater I would only wear once a year. 

On Friday night Ally and Derek invited us to drive around a look at Christmas lights. We had a great time and discovered a few new places to check out each year. There was an awesome light display in Coventry which we were actually able to get out and walk around so I did snap a few pictures.

We definitely had a great set up to Christmas! I'll be back to share our Christmas Eve/Day and some presents that I received and gave which I loved!

Do you have any special things you do leading up to Christmas??

Reorganizing My Alex 9 Drawer Unit

My "desk area" currently lives in the "middle room" which was initially labeled as a dining room but really doesn't have enough room to have a real dining room table so we made it an office area/extra storage. 

I will admit that I kind of took it over. Whoops.

So anyways, my desk area was looking a little crazy and I blame that partially on my Alex 9 Drawer Unit. Everything was organized inside but I had all my "every day" stuff on the top meaning I wasn't actually going inside the drawers all the time. The top was always looking messy and I wanted to make the top drawer of the unit as my "every day drawer"

Not a TON of stuff lived on top, but I was regularly dumping things on top.

So what do we do when things get messy? Take everything out of course!

That is a lot of stuff living in those drawers! Now you may be looking at that and thinking I'm a hoarder and well, yes. Maybe a little.... However this is ALL my beauty products minus full size lotions, full size perfumes, full size shower gels and anything that lives in my shower. While I certainly have more then I need I store lots of back ups here including any free products I get from couponing.

Once sorting and organizing here is what I came up with for my current Alex 9 Drawer Unit Organization.

The top of the unit now only holds current hair products, two hair brushes, and my makeup brushes.

Of course my mirror too which wouldn't be mine if it wasn't dirty.

The top drawer has been turned into my daily drawer. This is where I house my glasses and contacts (instead of on my desk where they had been living) and my daily face products.

The next drawer houses face products. Primers, foundations and concealers on the left. Blushes, highlighters, bronzers and setting sprays on the right. In the back I have extra face products including masks and tweezers and an eyelash curler.

The third drawer is my favorite! I love all my eyeshadows and have so much fun poking around this drawer. I have palettes on the left, and single eyeshadows on the right. Towards the back I have eyeliners and mascaras.

My lip product and perfume sample drawer is not too overflowing right now but all my chapstick lives inside this blue jewelry box which I absolutely love to have full.

My nailpolish has moved into this smaller drawer and I try to keep it contained to this big plastic organizer. I also keep my older polish in the front and newer polish towards the back so I know what I want to focus on using up first.

I have two drawers full of hair products. So excessive. (Picture that emoji with the monkey covering his eyes right here)

The top hair product drawer has larger items like flat iron sprays, hair sprays, etc...

My second hair product drawer holds my smaller products and any shampoos and conditioners. This is why I only coupon and don't pay for these types of products.

The next drawer is full of backups. I have mini shower gels and lotions which I'm not currently using. I also have my backup antics from Bath and Body Works. In the back I have backup razors. I'm not picky with razors at all so I never pay for them!

The bottom drawer also holds some backup and off season items. I have backup toothbrushes which I got for free or cheap couponing. I also have some white strips in here. I have all my free soaps in the back and also some lint rollers, sunscreen and bug repellant.

I took all my clean brushes and put those away and realized I wanted to take my every day eye makeup and put that in the top every day drawer instead of in the containers on top of the unit.

Tucked nicely in the top drawer so I know what's in use!

With my nice clean brushes I'm ready to actually get ready for the day in a hassle free way! No more searching for items I need quickly I can enjoy my nicely organized area!

Are you ready for organization and cleaning in the new year?! I do stuff like this all year long but can't wait for everyone else to start chatting about it as well!