Christmas in January

After much poking and prodding at each other to get an update onto the blog, I have finally settled into a wanting-to-hide-from-schoolwork mood sufficient enough to allow me to forsake organic chemistry in favor of a winter festivities update. Indeed, as we crawled out of the haze of finals and flew past the fabulous wedding of two of our closest friends (including the man who introduced the two of us- Thanks Steven!) we realized that  there existed a  mass of Christmasey things to be crammed into a one week pre-Christmas period.

First- a trip through an hour of henious LA traffic to the most beautifully decorated building in the city.

{Our friends Sean and Amanda. I hope I don't jinx it by saying we think they're next.}

We then decided to take a stab and building a gingerbread house. In an attempt to kick it old school we bought a box of Gingi-mix (Joseph saved the day by finding some at our local Albertsons after our search together turned up cold) and built our house to massive scale:

{Gingi-us!}

Unfortunately warmish giant gingerbread houses aren't quite so structurally stable as one might imagine.

{When we fail, we fail good}

The next day, however, we redeemed ourselves at our friend's Christmas party with what I've got to say is the first place I'd choose to live were I a gingi-person :

{Took second place in the contest, but we were beat out by a giant castle. I can live with that.}

The next day we headed over to the Mission Inn in Riverside with our friends Monika and John. The lighting was spectacular. It was worth braving the frigid temps.

 

And we found the greatest vintage store I've ever seen. Three stories of well-priced random goodness.

Monika and I found our wedding veils:

And the boys channeled their inner Humphrey Bogart:

And finally, to cap it all off, Christmas came! Joseph and I were on the same wavelength and both bought games for eachother (in addition to a few other things). We will never be bored at home, that's for certain! It was amazing to be able to spend this first Christmas together, and are both ecstatic for holiday season- round two. Only eleven months now!

And now I'll tip my hat and close with a picture of Ethne and Joseph- because really, you can't see that girl and not smile:

Cheers!