jason and i were taking photos with my iphone all night, because the novelty hadn’t quite worn off yet (i had only had it for three days then). trying out the disposable hipstamatic and vintage camera apps, and being impressed by the quality of the default camera app in general.

maybe i should have tried the flash, too? oh, well.

found this cute dress for a very decent price at primp in the shops at west end in st. louis park. have owned the shoes since forever (from delia*s — and it’s been quite some time since it’s been okay for me to buy from delia*s). i felt vintage-cute all night. can’t wait to see the photos that melissa took while we were dancing!

the next morning is when the christmas fun began. the boys were pretty excited for their gifts, so after lunch they got to work on sorting out all of the gifts from under the tree.

where’s my harry potter lego game?! (oh, right, it’s waiting for me to load it into my wii at home… i am not so good at finishing video games.)

of course, that’s not really a ps3.

it’s just a bunch of air pockets… and brown sugar…

and a few gift cards, too.

it looks pretty…

but it’s just toilet paper. (this family has a lot of fun messing with each other.)

jason is goofy and cute.

nicholas was so excited about his new mario kart jammmies, that he ran off and put them on right away. (you’ll notice them in photos to come.)

alex got a kindle, which involved a drive into town to find a wi-fi hotspot (dairy queen) to get set up.

i wrapped missy’s gift with a lot of tinsel and tissue paper. a lot.

renee found some neat earrings for me — made from the glass of a wine bottle!

nikki has been studying acupuncture lately, to accompany her mad chiropractic skillz. (she fixed me a bit before we left for home the next day.)

already putting the toilet paper gift to good use!

i think i meant to be taking a photo of renee, but this capture is pretty hilarious. i was giggling as i sorted through these photos.

i thought the bow fell off of my head right away, actually.

jason and i got logan a beer-making kit. logan loved it, but it made missy cry.

jaxon has a tinsel butt.

wine charms made from scrabble tiles — enough to spell out “laughter” (which would be an excellent play).

i wrapped nikki’s gift with a simple paper bag. which she was afraid to open.

but the inside was full of chocolate and minnesota wine.

this is a photo of jason and me opening a gift together.

yarn! hand-spun and hand-dyed, renee found it from a local business in des moines.

nicholas loves being in front of the camera.

and, of course, this was the first christmas without uncle fred. renee had some of his clothing sewn to make clothing for “papa” bears, which each of the boys received. (jaxon was not into having a photo taken, unfortunately.)

i think that’s a pretty sweet idea.

after opening all of our gifts and cleaning up, we celebrated jaxon’s second birthday. that kids sure likes applause!

and his laughter was infectious.

but then it was time to try the cake!

the detail of this capture is awesome. (photo credit goes to jason.)

yes, it was a very good birthday cake.

after jaxon opened his gifts, we had some fun with balloons and static.

some of us unwillingly (at first).

we rounded out the night with a game of apples to apples. always fun!

the next morning we took it pretty easy. renee always arranges a yankee christmas gift game, and i went home with a tray to make a wine cork trivet. some of us (me) were still in our jammies, though, so the camera didn’t make it out for that fun.

then it was back home to minneapolis, and now? christmas is really over.

(this is chocolate-covered bacon, courtesy of aunt kim.)

during the actual christmas weekend, jason and i went to south dakota to celebrate with my family. we hung out with a bunch of my hometown friends on friday night (and mostly had the karaoke stage to ourselves), celebrated with my mom’s family on saturday (christmas eve), and celebrated with my dad’s family on sunday (christmas day).

other long-overdue posts on the way: the monday after christmas was for celebrating bertine and zach’s wedding. last weekend, we drove down to des moines to celebrate christmas (and nephew jaxon’s second birthday) with jason’s family.

that’s a lot of celebrating!

this is the face that hannie makes when she is excited but shy. she’s a pretty adorable kid!

have i mentioned the four shih tzus that accompany my mom’s side of the family?

we have been doing a white elephant-style gift exchange for quite a few years now. the premise is that you roll the dice and if you get a pair (or two pair), you can pick a gift (or two gifts) from either the pile in the middle or you can steal from someone who has two or more gifts. this year, dad tried to steal a gift from hannie and you know what she did?

she cried. of course. don’t steal gifts from the baby of the family!

jeremy got a jar of preserved lemons. what would you do with that?

pretty much all of jason’s gifts were for me (zebra-print snuggie, bubble bath, fondue set for two — i suppose maybe i’ll share that one with him).

i like this sequence of photos. dog in box — kid petting dog in box — kid in box.

these desserts may look the same but one was pistachio and the other was chocolate. i tried both, both were awesome.

later on christmas eve, after returning to my parents’ house, we had our own little christmas. hannie is very good at opening presents!

i gave bryan coffee and sausage for christmas. he claimed it was exactly what he wanted.

dad got a giant box of chocolate and a donut maker.

jason got a domo calendar and many home depot gift cards (and we got a joint home depot gift card) — time to get crackin’ on those home projects!

this face is for ryan, the sender of the “unicorn meat” for bryan.

actual bits of “meat” inside! too funny.

a couple of my christmas gifts. (have i mentioned i’m in love with my iphone? last night it kept me up 30 minutes after i meant to go to bed — this happens too often now.)

hannie would later tell me not to mess up her piggies.

can you guess what this gift from pop-pop is?

hannie’s first fishing pole! we all had to make sure she didn’t swing it into our heads for the rest of the night. and the next morning.

(playing with the bokeh kit, which has all kinds of fun shapes.)

i wish i looked less tired in this photo, but as joyful and exciting as it had been, it had also been a long christmas eve day.

bryan and jason helped mom frost christmas cookies before we all wound down and went to bed. (visions of sugar-plums dancing in our heads…)

we went to grandma d’s house for christmas day. bryan and dad made homemade ice cream, yum!

three kinds of soup for lunch: zuppe toscana, chili, and chicken noodle.

homemade vanilla ice cream and jason’s egg nog cookies for dessert. yum x 2!

we all watched with excitement as hannie opened her gifts from “owl grandma.”

this is the view from grandma’s house, so we also watched the sheep graze all day.

hannie and i played with my iphone. she wanted me to try on aunt deb’s glasses, too.

jason and i drove home to minneapolis from grandma d’s house. on the way, i introduced him to the jolly green giant in blue earth, minnesota.

and when we got home, the kitties got to enjoy their christmas gift from hannie:

i’m finding that my iphone isn’t quick enough to properly capture playful cats!

Although I make my living as a web developer now, I still can’t resist dabbling in print design (which is where my career in design and development started). I’m feeling a bit rusty with creating initial design concepts, but with the right inspiration and a little time to shift to that other side of my brain I can come up with some pretty fun things!

I had the pleasure of creating save the date postcards, an RSVP postcard, and an invitation for Bertine and Zach’s wedding. They provided a few links to other designs around the internet that they liked, told me their desired color scheme, and let me loose! We probably went through three or four “do you like this or that?” rounds of concepts, but I very much enjoy where we landed!

There is just no greater feeling than holding my design work in my hands — something that is not so easy to do with the web! There is just something about the texture of a nice paper and the smell of fresh ink… I think I will hold onto my print design knowledge as much as I can, though I always have knitting (and now sewing) for other tangible evidence of my creativity and craftiness.

Bertine and Zach were very easy-going “clients,” so I thank them for entrusting me with this project! And it seems that doing this work has opened the possibility of more freelance print design work — tonight I’ve been working on my friend, Mary’s, save the date postcard for her wedding (to Jonathan) in June.

I’m very happy to be able to help my friends as they go through such an important part of their lives!

And, oh —

Bertine had a few invitations left over, so she was able to get crafty with a hole-puncher and use the smaller details of the invitation to wrap around the favors (hand warmers for winter in Minnesota). Love it!

I don’t have any spectacular plans for ringing in the new year tonight – a quiet Caturday night with my felines will do just fine after all of the driving I did for Christmas last weekend.

Have a safe and happy New Year’s Eve! I’m wishing the best for all of us in 2012.