Six Weeks To Christmas Giveaway #1

Can you believe there are only six weeks until Christmas? Aah!! I'm sure I'm not the only one freaking about Christmas shopping....I haven't even begun! Nevermind...it will all get done eventually, right? :)

Well to relieve some of the holiday stress and countdown to the holidays, I'm excited to start a Six Weeks To Christmas Weekly Giveaway. I'll be giving away at least one item per week and there will be multiple ways to enter. Sound like fun?? If so, let the fun begin!

Six Weeks To Christmas Giveaway #1

2010 StyleMark Designs Christmas Ornament

I love these ornaments! They come in multiple initials and even year numbers as well. The 2010 ornament has been a big hit so far! These ornaments look great in stockings, on your Christmas tree and even add the special wrapping touch to a gift. I know I'll be giving some as hostess gifts this holiday season.

How to Enter

To win this fabulous Christmas ornament, all you have to do is follow the StyleMark Designs Blog and comment on this post!

Extra Entry Opportunities

- Follow the StyleMark Designs Fan Page and leave a comment on the wall for entry 2
- Blog about this giveaway with a link back to my blog for entry 3
- Tweet about this giveaway with a link back to my blog for entry 4

For the additional entry opportunities, be sure to come back and comment again to make sure you get credit for the additional opportunities.

I'll announce the winner at random via random.org on Tuesday, November 16 at 9:00 p.m./CST.

In the meantime, all StyleMark Designs blog readers and Facebook fans can receive 10% off the Christmas ornaments today and tomorrow. If you're interested, visit our store or e-mail me at nicky@stylemarkdesigns.com.

Good luck, everyone!

-N

It's All Over For Another Year

Andrew and I have just finished taking down the Christmas decorations. In a matter of an hour and a half, all of the inside and outside decorations have been taken down and stored in the attic. It's amazing because it takes several hours to decorate the house and then it's all down in a fraction of the time. So, here is my farewell message to the Christmas decorations of 2008. Thank you for a great season. We will see you in 2009.

Let's bring on the new year!

-N

Hump Day Dinner #38: North Pole

On Christmas Eve, the Wednesday night dinner crew celebrated Christmas at the North Pole...AKA: Eric's Apartment. Eric was a great host and he did a great job with dinner. We had chicken alfredo, salad, several different kinds of bread and christmas cookies for dessert. After dinner, we were going to go ice skating downtown, but it closed earlier than expected, so we played rock band instead. Here are some photos for you to enjoy. 

Nick, Andrew and Mark:

Jenn, Nick, Andrew, Mark and Eric:

Eric and Nick: 

Abby and Jenn:

The girls:

-N

Gingerbread House Decorating Party

Over the past few days, Andrew and I have been busy with Christmas festivities. The festivities began on Tuesday night when we were invited to a Gingerbread House Decorating Party by our friends, Abby and Mark. Wow, Andrew and I didn't realize what we were getting ourselves into that night. We were thinking we were just going to make a house pretty by decorating it with gumdrops, icing, etc. Boy, were we wrong though! Everyone at the party were professional gingerbread house decorators. There were about five couples and their creations were masterpieces! We had everything from Tony Hawk's house to a swim up bar and tropical cabana. Needless to say, Andrew and I had a lot of fun. It was funny because Andrew was the "builder" and I was the "decorator." He did a great job making sure that our house's infrastructure was strong. Here are some pictures from the evening. 

Here are all of our supplies. We had 45 minutes to create a masterpiece from scratch. 

Andrew and I created "The North Pole." Do you see Santa and the actual north pole?

You can't forget about the reindeers. Can you spot Rudolph and his eight tiny reindeer? FYI: The chocolate chips are "reindeer poop" and structure is the stable.

Tony Hawk's Summer House.

The Skate Park at Tony's House.

Nick and Jenn's Tropical Cabana and Swim Up Bar - The roof is thatched, so you can sleep under the stars.

Here is a closer look at the swim up bar.

Here is a close up on the cabana.

Lindsay and Eugene's Creation.

The Ski Lodge.

And the ski slopes. 

And the winner of the 2nd Annual Gingerbread Decorating Contest was... Nick and Jenn!

The passing of the trophy from the 2007 winners to the 2008 winners. 

Here are some other pictures from the evening. 

Samson, Abby and Mark's dog, in his santa hat. 

Close up of Samson. 

Jenn and I.

-N

Christmas Baking

I should change my name to "Baking Fool"....just kidding! Over the past two weeks, I've been doing a lot of baking for Christmas... mainly cookies (sugar, chocolate chip and oatmeal) and cupcakes. I'm still working on my cupcake recipes, but I think I have my cookie recipes to where I like them. My goal for next Christmas is to master decorating and to make my cupcakes and cookies look "pretty." Anyway, here are some pictures of the cupcakes I made for a bake sale at work, as well as my Christmas cutout cookies. 

Snowmen and Snowballs - Here is a funny story about these cupcakes. My goal with these cupcakes was to have them sell first at the bake sale. Don't ask me why I wanted that, but I was really hoping that they would sell like hot cakes. I was in OKC for the day of the bake sale, so I came back into the office to pick up my containers before going home. When I got to my desk, I saw that I still had six cupcakes left (I had given them 18 cupcakes to sell) :(. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed. The next morning, I heard that my cupcakes were too "cute" that no one wanted to buy them. So, the moral of this story is, don't make cute cupcakes for a bake sale. LOL. 

Snowmen and Snowballs:

All ready for hungry tummies:

Here are the cookies we are taking to Wednesday night dinner tonight. They are pretty tasty, in my opinion. 

-N

Christmas in St. Louis

Tomorrow, Andrew and I are off to St. Louis for the weekend, where we will celebrate Christmas with Andrew's family.  We are both ready to be there, but not looking forward to the drive. The weather isn't supposed to be good in either Tulsa or St. Louis, so we are keeping our fingers crossed that the drive goes well. I'm taking a half day, so we are hoping we can make it before nightfall. I'm off to pack, but I will write more over the weekend and I will include lots of pictures. 

-N

Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

The 2008 Christmas cards are complete and in the mail. This past weekend, Andrew and I tackled our Christmas cards. We took a picture on Saturday, wrote the letter on Sunday and addressed and stuffed the cards on Monday night. Andrew was a HUGE help. I thought I was going to have to address and stuff over 60 Christmas cards, but he addressed all of the envelopes, helped me stuff the envelopes and went to the post office to buy stamps. Thanks for you help, babe! I really appreciate it. 

Anyway, here is our Christmas photo from 2008. It's a long story, but we have learned our lesson. The lesson is take a photograph on vacation or hire a photographer in the fall to take pictures. 

Enjoy!

-N

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

For the past week or so, Andrew and I have been trying to get the house ready for Christmas. I have been taking care of the inside of the house, while he has been taking care of the outside of the house (with my assistance). I worked all last week to get the decorations up and we worked all day Sunday to get the lights up on the house. Here are some pictures of our hard work. Needless to say, it's being to look at a lot like Christmas at our house. 

Inside:

Our Christmas Tree:

The Mantle:

More decorations:

The Kitchen:

Our New Stockings:

Every time that we are on vacation, we always try to bring back a Christmas ornament. Here are the new additions to our tree this year. 

From our honeymoon/anniversary trip to Las Vegas:

This one is from our trip to London this past summer:

We picked this one up from Paris, Las Vegas. I thought it was too cute to pass up:

Outside:

Andrew probably isn't going to love this picture of outside, but it gives you an idea. I will post some better pictures this weekend. 

Can you see the glow from the LED lights? It's crazy on how bright they are. 

I hope everyone is getting into the Christmas spirit. Enjoy the pictures. 

-N

My Favorite Time of Year

Christmas is my favorite time of year! Here are a few of my favorite things that always tell me that the holiday season has arrived.  

1. Advent Calendars - I have this one on my desk at work. 

2. Fresh Cut Christmas Trees

3. Starbuck's Holiday Cups

4. Santa at the Mall

5. Christmas Decorations - particularly Christmas trees

6. Coca Cola Santa Advertisements

7. Wrapped gifts

This weekend, Andrew and I put up all of our christmas decorations - inside and outside. I still need to take some photographs, but I will be sure to add them by the end of the week. 

Merry Christmas!

-N

Christmas is in the Air

This weekend, I was able to wrap most of our christmas gifts. I bought this wrapping paper from Crate and Barrel last Christmas and it was the best paper to wrap with. I'm going to have to pick up some more when I'm in St. Louis. Here are some photos of the finished product. What do you think? 

We are working to finish off four more gifts, but after I have wrapped those, then it's onto baking. Yeah! I love the holidays!

Don't Neglect the Turkeys!

My favorite holiday of the year is Christmas. I love it! I think this year, I have been obsessing a little bit too much about this holiday. Every holiday though has it's time and place. It seems that each year Christmas gets earlier and earlier. Macy's had all of their decorations up before Halloween! Then on November 1, it looked like Christmas threw up in Wal-Mart. At that point, Christmas was still more than 50 days away. I guess people are getting into the spirit earlier this year. On my way to work, there are even several houses with christmas lights and nativity scenes up and on. It's crazy. I bet you anything that we have valentine decorations in the store before the end of Christmas day. 

I think more people need to remember that we still have Thanksgiving Day to celebrate next week. After all, this is the holiday that we celebrate the things that we are most grateful for. Anyway, if you start to get picked up in the holiday spirit, remember don't neglect the turkeys. They have feelings too!

-N