Friday, December 30, 2016

Life & Blog Recap | December 2016


Blog Recap;

Posts;

Monthly Page Views:  1,418 | Most Popular Blog Post:  10 Wise Gifts For Your Ravenclaw

I'll be honest in saying that those Harry Potter themed gift guides were a bit of a challenge for me.  I also was worried that they wouldn't get a ton of traction since not everyone is looking for Harry Potter gifts for Christmas, but I was happy with how they came together and they seemed to do well enough.  I'll certainly be re-promoting them in the future since I'm sure most Harry Potter fans won't mind getting Harry Potter gifts all year!  I also am going to try to not do a Harry Potter post for a bit... at least a week or two... because I may or may not have something Harry Potter to talk about!  But since I did so much I don't want to overdo it.

I'm also not too bummed about the page views going down.  Last year there was one day where I checked my stats and I was at one number and then I checked a couple hours later and I was hundreds above where I was before, so I'm not shocked that they dipped back down.  But I'm grown over my October stats, which are more true to the day-to-day stats I was having that month.  Either way, I'll take it!


 Life Recap; 

Life was crazy this month, as I feel most Decembers are anyway, right?  The first weekend we hosted our annual Friendsgiving festivities, which is always a good time.  We had a bit of a turkey situation but we were able to get everything resolved and we had a nice night.  The next weekend I did all of my last minute shopping.  John was busy all weekend long so I was able to get a lot of wrapping and other secret stuff done.

That next week I woke up one day with a swollen spot on my cheek, which was literally just a little spot.  I didn't think much of it, but woke up with a more swollen cheek the next day, and the following day had an even more swollen face.  I went to a Minute Clinic and found out I had cellulitis in my face.  It sucked.  I woke up with the most swollen face ever the morning of my work holiday party and I just wanted to cry forever.  I got some medicine for it that I was taking and while the swelling started to go down, my skin just freaked out like crazy.  I had dry patches all over and my skin was breaking out everywhere.  It was not a fun time at all.  I'm still dealing with a couple dry patches so we're still getting there but it is leaps and bounds better than it was.

That same weekend we went down to Virginia to do John's family's Christmas celebration.  Unfortunately he wasn't able to get off on Sunday so we went down on Friday night and left late Saturday afternoon, but we enjoyed the time that we had down there!

And then, of course, the next weekend was Christmas!  Christmas Eve is always the big night out for our family, so we go out to dinner and this year, did some gifts afterward since my brother and his girlfriend were going home on Christmas morning to spend the day with her family since they spent Christmas day with us last year.  Christmas morning John and I exchanged gifts before heading back up to my family's house to do gifts up there and some food.  We have been doing just easy foods on Christmas day.  We eat such a big meal on Christmas Eve and then we head up to Buffalo after Christmas day and eat all sorts of delicious junk so we just do lighter food on Christmas.

The day after Christmas we headed up to Buffalo.  I grew up there for I think 13 or 14 years and most of my extended family still lives up there so we go up there to have more Christmas festivities.  As I've mentioned before, my Aunt Ginny is the one who convinced me to read Harry Potter a couple years ago, so obviously we just talk about Harry Potter the whole time I'm up there (or as my Mom puts it:  "Harry Potter blah blah blah Butterbeer blah blah blah").  It's always nice to see my Grammy and my Aunt and Uncles and cousins.  We always have a great time filled with amazing food.  My Dad and I finally tried 716, which is a sports bar/restaurant in downtown Buffalo that we've been wanting to try.  It was a super fun trip, as always!


Favorites;

I'll be honest, I haven't touched this Hourglass palette yet because it's too pretty, but I'm including it anyway.  I just love it!  I'm going to start using it soon though.  Since my skin was having its moments throughout the month, I wasn't using a ton of products because I didn't know how they would react to my skin in the first place.  I didn't want to aggravate anything more than it already was.  I will say though that I'm pretty much in love with the L'Oreal Infallible Pro-Glow Foundation.  I wore this the day of my holiday party and it covered up everything I needed to cover up.  My face was super red and blotchy and this stuff evened out my skin perfectly while making it look really healthy and not so dried out.  I put this on around 8am and it didn't start settling into my dry patches until around 3pm.  I don't know how typical that is of foundations on dry skin since that isn't something that I deal with often, but I would think that's pretty good!

I also forgot how much I adored the L'Oreal Age Perfect Cell Renewal Serum.  It has this gorgeous finish that gives your skin that lit-from-within look all day long.  This is perfect for when you don't want to wear a lot of makeup but you still want a glow.

As I mentioned, I died my hair this month.  I went with a burgundy type color so I definitely needed to do something with my brows since my natural color is quite light in contrast.  I picked up the NYX Micro Brow Pencil in Chocolate and the Eyelur Brow Amplifier in 20 - Mid Brown.  This gives me a complimentary color without being too matchy-matchy.  I also gave my Maybelline The Falsies Pushup Angel mascara another try and I have really been enjoying it!  I didn't initially but maybe it just needed to try out for a bit before it got good. 

 
On The Needles;

The past couple months have been all about working on Christmas gifts for people.  The scarf pictured up above was made using this pattern, which I absolutely loved.  I haven't worked with bulky or super bulky yarn in so long, and now I'm obsessed with it.  All I want to do is work up this type of yarn now.  I had a 40% off total purchase coupon for Michaels and bought a ton of bulky yarn for future projects.  

I also learned the valuable lesson of time management while working on gifts.  I really stressed myself out as I was working on a blanket (that I will be showcasing in a later post), and then I realized I never made this scarf that I would be gifting before the blanket.  I was having a mild panic attack about it but everything worked out.  As crazy as it is, I will be sitting down in the next couple weeks to plan out my Christmas projects for 2017 and working on them much earlier than I started working on them this year.


 And that's that for December!  Let me know how your holidays were and what some of your favorites were.  I hope you have a happy, safe and healthy new year!
 

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