Christmas at the Brandywine River Museum

Merry Christmas! While the fam and I finish opening presents and eating cookies for breakfast, enjoy a few pictures from the Brandywine River Museum's annual Christmas display. My little brother, my friend Katie, and I went yesterday for a little Christmas-Eve-festivity. I never get tired of all their beautiful, natural-material ornaments. This is only a small selection. They've got everything from a Cookie Monster ornament to corn husk angels, a Cheshire Cat ornament to a barber shop quartet! If you are ever in Chadds Ford, PA, don't overlook this little museum. It gets over shadowed by Longwood Gardens, but it is a perfect way to spend a few daylight hours before your check out the Longwood lights at night!

 

Kitty Nest

This is the sight that greeted me when I went in the garage to turn on the Christmas lights. Our 2 cats (Ron and Hermoine) had made a nest out of some left over hay from the chicken coop. They were too cute and more than obliging when I began to snap their photos!

DIY Jeweled Heels

A friend alerted me to the wonderfully simple but surprisingly adorable heel-bedazzling project posted over at Honestly WTF. The part of me that is easily distracted by shiny things couldn't resist making my own version immediately! So the next day I picked up some cheap heels at Forever 21 and some plastic jewels at Michael's and got started. E6000 glue, toothpicks (for applying the glue), tweezers for the small jewels, and a plate to put the glue on are also useful. I highly recommend this project. It only took me about $60 for the heels and supplies and an hour to do each pair, and I think the results are perfect for holiday parties and nights out on the town!

Happy 21 Little Bro!

My little brother officially joined the ranks of legally drinking adults today! Congrats and happy birthday Ry! He got a NASA book about the history of the space shuttle program (he's going to be an astronaut one day), an ironic hipster flask (everyone needs 1 silly birthday gift), and a 21 year old bottle of wine (I also got one when I turned 21). Since his birthday dinner tonight will be sans familia, I made him a pancake-cake for breakfast. It had cinnamon, vanilla, and chocolate chip pancakes with layers of homemade cinnamon whipped cream in between!

Macaron Fail

Bottega Louie has raised the prices on their macarons, to $2 per cookie. Considering how small they are, that just seemed unjustified. So I decided I would try to make my own over break. If all went well, I would have learned a new skill and save myself from paying $10 for a box of just 5 cookies. I guess you probably guessed from the title of the post that I will still be splurging to BL's macarons. Out of the 40+ cookie shells I baked, 16 were salvageable and could be made into 8 cookies. Sigh. If anyone has tips on why the insides of my cookies didn't bake even though I left them in the oven a super long time, let me know!

LA Sun Sets on Downtown

The view from Perch as the sun went down. Sunsets seem kind of symbolic around the end of the year. You know, like the sun 'setting' on the past year. I'm headed home today for the holidays. Get excited for some Pennsylvania and Delaware-centric posts over the next two weeks! I'll be back in LA just in time for the New Years Eve and for the sun to 'rise' on next year.

Christmas Shopping at Unique LA

 Get ready for picture overload. There was so many great venders at Unique LA this year that I just had to share as many of their amazing goods as possible!

For those not in the know, Unique LA is a craft show that happens a few times a year. All the vendors are relatively local, so everything is truly "made in America" (which is naturally Unique's slogan). This was only a small, small sliver of the selection, if you can believe it. I walked around for hours in order to take everything in. And I didn't even show you some of the best things I found because certain somebodies may find them under the Christmas tree this year! Be sure to follow their website for their next show. You never know what you are going to find there, but its guaranteed to be something great!