Baby, it's Cold Outside

Keep on voting for my photo scavenger hunt winner in the upper right hand corner of my page! The poll will be up until Thursday morning. And just so the links are at the top of my page, here they are again:

Laura @ Shoddy Cursive

Larissa @ You Make my Life so Beautiful

Callie @ Through Clouded Glass

Brittney@ Far More than Rubies

Okay, now on to today's post :-)

It has been officially freezing this week. Here in Ohio you can definitely tell that we are now in the last half of fall. Luke is putting plastic around our windows at this very moment. Oh, the joys of living in an old, drafty house :-P I've been pretty good about not listening to Christmas music yet (although I did slip once!) But I might have to crack soon. Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year...it's even better than fall! So I like to celebrate it and make it last as long as I can. And today I think I saw at LEAST 5 Christmasy commercials. Crazy! It's only November 3!

Side note: Has anyone seen the commercial for the IHOP Holiday Hotcakes that are already out? Oh my, I've never even been to IHOP, but I MUST try them! All of them! They have pumpkin, gingerbread, pecan pie, and eggnog pancakes. OH MY. Let me wipe up the drool ;-)

So needless to say, even though it's only November 3, I am totally feeling ready for Christmas. I'm trying to hold off as long as I can, but I really want to jump right into the season RIGHT NOW.

However, I think it's important to remember Thanksgiving...a time of praising God for our blessings and spending time with family. So I'm NOT going to pretend like it's already December. I will try to keep the Christmas cookbooks, decorations, and excitement away for awhile.

My rule about Christmas music, though, is that I am allowed to secretly break it out in my car after my birthday. Which is this Friday. Like I said, I have only cracked and listened to my Josh Groban Noel CD once. Which is better than I've ever done before. Usually sometime around the middle of October I just can't wait anymore, and start listening to it. Seriously. So I'm doing pretty well this year!

As far as Christmas shopping goes, I've already started! Never too early for that, right? I'm so thankful that I discovered etsy.com this year! I bet a lot of the gifts I give will come from there. Homemade things are just more special :-)

I know some people are sad to see the warmer fall days and the beautiful leaves go. As much as I love those things, I love the next season of Thanksgiving and Christmas even more! So tonight I decided that I'd celebrate this colder weather.

First of all, I made my own homemade hot cocoa(The recipe was good, but it's even better if you add a little cinnamon. Or a lot ;-)) I've never made my own before. It turned out to be delicious, but I will probably feel like I'm about to die in an hour or so since I'm slightly lactose intolerant. Some things are just so delicious they are worth the suffering. Those things are milkshakes, potato soup, and homemade hot cocoa :-)See all the cinnamon on the side of the mug? Yeah, I like it a lot :-)(This miserable mug was painted and decorated by yours truly at Hot Pots about 5 years ago. I hope I would do a better job if I tried today!)

Next I'm going to take a hot bubble bath since our house is FREEZING! And then I'll curl up with a nice book beneath our warm, cozy, knitted blanket that Luke's mom made us for a wedding present. Seriously, that thing is such a necessity in the winter. It's so warm, and it makes me excited to think that we will have it and use it every winter from now until forever :-)

So this post was totally all over the place. But all that to say that I am absolutely not sad to see the warm weather go. This time of year for me is associated with fun, family, friends, good food, and a little time off from work ;-) (Oh, and 17 days left until The New Moon premiere. Could not BE more excited!)

Ask me on January 2, though, and I will be BEGGING for the warm weather to come back!!