Christmas Goodies and Good Friends!

This year for Christmas Gifts I decided to do something home-made for our friends, since we have a lot of expenses from the office and school to pay for. I came up with the idea to bake goodies, put in a box, and then attach the recipe to the top. Sounds easy, but leave it to me to make it complicated! I found these cool red envelopments to slide the recipe cards in, but they were $3.00 each - which was too much on the Leah scale. SO I made my own :)

And they slip inside:

I bought one sheet of thick red paper and cut to make my own... Which came out to be about 15 cents each! I then went to work and made & printed my own recipe cards and Merry Christmas stickers to put on the envelope. I tied some brown raffia around the card and held it with the stickers I printed!
Kyle and I made peanut butter haystacks for everyone, and put some shredded paper around to help them not bounce around. I found these cute boxes at a local art store, which came out to be a little less than $1.00 a box (that was the most expensive part). Decorate the outside of the box with raffia strands and you get a home made gift for around $2.50 each! I really enjoyed doing this and getting to be creative in this way, so I thought I would share!
Usually Kyle and I never get to visit that many friends when we travel to Raleigh or Charlotte on trips. This break we actually had time to see a handful of friends, which was a nice change! One night we were able to go over for dinner at Bobby and Lara's new townhouse. They just got married about a month ago, so we got to hear all about their honeymoon and funny memories of the wedding. We also got together with some of Kyle's good girl friends from high school. Katie Sayre, and fellow ASU grad, is actually in the Peace Corps now volunteering in Albania. She has some crazy stories and it was great to see her for her short time home over break. We also got to visit with Michi, during her break from PA school at Wake Forest University, which is always a blast! We all went out for some coldstone icecream!

Katie's sister, Laura, Katie, Michi, and Kyle:

We also got to finally visit with Sara, my best friend since age 6 and her husband Joe. They hadn't seen Kyle since our wedding, which is completely nuts. We went over to their house for dinner, and had a ball as usual. While Sara and I talked the guys played guitar hero 3 which Kyle and I don't have yet. Needless to say it was very entertaining watching Joe dance to each song and Kyle only talk when he wasn't strumming. The night went by way too fast, and hopefully we will all spend a weekend together soon. We miss you guys more than you know!

On the 31st we drove over to Charlotte to spend the day there with friends. I dropped some goodies off to my old co-workers at Sports Business Journal. When I walked in the security guard screamed "You're back! You're back!!" ha which was very sweet. We then headed over to Molly & Marshal's place to visit with them and eat lunch that they had picked up. Marshal and Kyle leave to go on a snowboarding trip together to Colorado in a little over 2 weeks (MLK weekend). They are both so excited, that's all they can talk about! Next, we headed over to my friend Tiffin's townhouse and visited with her and her boyfriend Matt. Tiffin just moved into her beautiful townhouse a couple months ago and she already has all of her boxes unpacked! Her scrapbooking/craft room is unbelievable with all of her stuff, looks right out of a magazine!
Our last stop was to Cory's townhouse in Huntersville. Cory was Kyle's boss at Irwin, and they became good friends. We finally got the chance to meet Cory's girlfriend, Mada, who is super sweet, and hang out with both of them for the night. Cory bought HUGE steaks and HUGE baked potatoes for us for dinner, and then Mada baked a cake for us for dessert. Since they didn't see Kyle and I on our wedding anniversary, they decorated the cake with the exact number of days that Kyle and I have been married. It was very thoughtful of them!

Cory & Mada:

We woke up the next morning and headed home to Marietta. We are very glad to be home now and sleep in our own bed with all of our animals! Happy New Years Everybody!