Holiday Mix

The Christmas spirit continues in the Team Squeen household.

We mailed out our Christmas cards this week. I have been mailing out Christmas cards since I was 12 years old, so I am pretty hardcore about the whole thing. However, now with Dan involved--we getting married and all--I don't think Christmas card send-outs have ever reached these levels of awesome.

We decided over two years ago that we would make a mix CD for our first joint holiday card. You read that right: OVER. TWO. YEARS. AGO. We had the discussion right about the time we got engaged in October 2008 and decided we will do it in 2009 when we got married. But we ended up not getting married until 2010, so the mix was postponed another year.  All this means is that Dan has been tinkering with this thing for ages. Yes, sometimes I would find ourselves in the middle of July listening to every single version of "Little Drummer Boy" available on iTunes for just the right version.

That said, I saw all the heart and soul and hard work that Dan put into this mix, and I wanted you all to know about it. He has a true talent. If there is a such thing as a job where you make mixes, he would be a star employee.


Here I am doing some card stuffing a few weeks ago. Based on my ideas, my talented work friend Liz helped me create the look of the album, and I was in charge of packaging it all together.

We're super excited about the positive response we received, which makes a second holiday mix...feasible. Don't get Dan started. Oh wait. He already did.

Some other fun Christmas things that happened over the weekend. My friend Meagan's mom was in town, and Meagan invited Julie and me over for dinner and to trim her tree.



Here's Meagan.


And Julie (Mom didn't want to be pictured). The tree was so lovely that it was quite a surprise when Meagan told me after wards that after we had left and they had gone to bed, the tree toppled over!

This weekend, Dan and I accomplished a long-time dream of mine and made gingerbread houses. Initially, I planned to make them from scratch, but that seemed like too much work, so I ended up buying us kits with ready-baked gingerbread and frosting.


On Saturday, we built the houses and then let them set overnight.


The following morning, still clad in pajamas, we decorated our houses while cold rain pounded the windows. Here's me with our little gingerbread village.


Dan's house is on the left and mine is on the right. I asked Dan why he has a dead gingerbread man on his lawn, and Dan said that he is not dead, he's making a snow angel. Just in case you were wondering, too.