Cheers to the holidays!

via

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, whatever they mean to you, I hope they are all you wish for.

See you all in the new year <3

Love,

C

P.S. I forgot to snap a picture of the lit up tree last night! Dagnabbit. 

Not to worry, I'll be snapping plenty tonight .

Here comes Christmas Eve!

My parents are currently residing in a small 2 bedroom condo by the beach until they find a house to live in permanently. The condo is already furnished so most of their things are in storage. Including our Christmas decorations.

Since the condo is pretty tiny, we weren't even sure if we'd be able to get a Christmas tree this year.

Yeah,  like I would have let that happen.

So this past weekend, my parents and sister went on a business trip and I went on a mission.

 I stopped by Home Depot in hopes that they might have a little tree that would fit my budget and this one was so perfect I almost squealed at the sight of it. It was only $15 dollars and was already set up in it's Christmas tree stand! I was sold.

I made another little pit stop at Target and bought a $2.00 pack of candy canes and two 8 packs of Ornaments for just a dollar each! I threw in a small pack of clear lights for about $5.00 and that was that. I found some extra ribbon left over from wrapping Christmas gifts to top the tree, and I wrapped a blue blanket around the bottom  a la Charlie Brown.

All in all, it was $24.00 and totally worth it.

It was so much fun to see how excited and happy it made the rest of my family upon their arrival home.

Who says Christmas has to be expensive? :)

I'll post another picture of the little guy all lit up tonight.

Happy Holidays everyone!

-C

I want to go on an adventure...

(source)

However, I'm spending this Sunday evening drinking red wine 

and watching Eat Pray Love with my sweet little pup.

Which is still pretty nice.

I think this is my new favorite part:

"A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. 

It's called the Augusteum. Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. 

When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. 

The great Augustus, Rome's first true great emperor. 

How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. 

It's one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. 

The city has grown up around it over the centuries. 

It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. 

We all want things to stay the same. 

Settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. 

Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured - the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. 

And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic,

 it's just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. 

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation."

-Eat Pray Love

Beauty-full.

I love the internet.

One night over the summer I ordered take out and rented the rom-com It's Complicated 
with Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.
The movie was pretty cute, but not as cute as the house Meryl Streep's character lived in.
I remember drooling over the kitchen and wishing I had a picture of it to post.
Wellll ding dang, guess what I found?!
There is this nifty blog/site called Hooked On Houses that posts pictures of houses featured on movies, as well as celebrity houses. 

It's pretty awesome and I'm pretty obsessed.

Anyways, I hopefully scoured the TV/Movie House section for the It's Complicated house
and there it was!

(all photos from Hooked on Houses)

Sa-wooon. That kitchen island. Those pendant lights. The dining table.

I. a.dore.

This interior was actually designed by the same person who designed the house from 

"Something's Gotta Give" with Diane Keaton and and Jack Nicholson. 

I remember that house being a beaut, too.

Wellll, enough daydreaming for me. I'm off to the grocery store.
Happy weekend!

-C

One blow from caving in.

I've been trying to write this blog post probably as much as I've been trying NOT to write it.

Most of what's been going on in my life, as I've mentioned, is not really for the blogosphere.

So I won't be specific in any way, but shoot, sometimes a girl has just gotta blog it out ya know?

I think that if you read this blog or know me at all, you are aware that I love Christmas.

Love probably isn't even the right word.

I adore Christmas.

It can do no wrong in my eyes.

I don't care that it crowds the mall or that people get annoyed with Christmas songs.

It's perfect in every way and you can't change my mind about it.

Which is why this Christmas is really hard for me.

Because right now, I don't feel very spirited.

I feel sad.

I don't feel very hopeful.

I feel like sailing away to a desert island so I don't have to think about anything at all.

I feel more bogged down in GOO that I've ever felt in my entire life.

And my gosh, I hope this is as much "goo" as I will ever come across at one time.

I don't know why the world "goo" seems appropriate, but it does.

I guess because when I think of goo I think of something disgusting and slimy that is all over you and it won't come off no matter how much you scrub at it.

That's what this feels like.

No matter how many solutions I think I've found or how many right turns I think I make,

it feels like I keep coming to the exact same spot.

The holidays are so important to me because of what they represent.

When I was growing up, I just always remember being happy at Christmas.

There were plenty of other hard times, but Christmas time always felt magical.

And that's what I want to believe in more than anything in the world right now.

Magic. Hope. Faith.

So tonight, I'm sad.

and I don't feel in the Christmas spirit.

In fact, it doesn't feel like Christmas time at all to me.

But things change every single day.

As quickly as something bad happens, something good can happen just as fast.

And I know that after everything my family has been through this past year,

we are due for many, many good days down the road.

I know Katy Perry isn't the most talented singer, but I'm living for her song "Firework" right now.

It makes me smile (and/or cry) every dang time I hear it.

"If you only knew what the future holds,

After a hurricane comes a rainbow"

Til next time...

-C

Take this into the new year with you.

(source)

Hope you're all enjoying the holidays.

 Time for wishes and hope.

-C

Dream Homes.

I had to stop in again and share...

If I could paint in a picture in my head of what the house I live in when I get older would look like, it would be pretty darn close to this:

I love the walkway and the trees and the darling picket fence.

I want to jump through the picture and live there riiiight now.

I wish you could do that.

Just like in Mary Poppins.

The inside is just as lovely. Take a tour here.
(oops! I had the wrong link, try again if it didn't work before)

See you next time!

-C