Christmas Sewing Project

I was looking through a magazine a few weeks ago and saw a really cute tree skirt that I liked, but that also happened to cost about $90. It was all white, with white cutout poinsettia flowers sewn on all around the edges. I decided I could probably make it fairly easily, for a lot less money, so I decided to give it a try. Willy and I were close to a fabric store a few days later, so we waited in the forever long line (seriously, it was like 45 minutes) to get the felt cut that I wanted to make the skirt, got a few other supplies, including a cutting wheel (?), and went home to get started. Willy helped me mark off where I needed to cut the circles for the main shape and the inner part; I was having a hard time keeping my string tight to make the lines right! Haha I then started cutting out about half of the 500 or so leaves I would need for the poinsettias.

It’s taking A LOT longer than I realized it would to sew each individual leaf, and then to sew the little design I’m doing in the middle of each flower.

I don’t know if I’ll even be done with it in time for Christmas, but I don’t mind too much. I’m trying to be patient and not rush to finish it; I want it to be really nice and something I can keep/use for a long time. It’s coming along pretty well, but I’m really only about ¼ finished.

I have a lot more to go, but I’m happy with the progress I’ve made so far. I’ll post more pictures when I have it completely finished; whenever that is! J

Decorating for Christmas

I have been super excited to get our house decorated for Christmas this year. It’s just a lot more fun to decorate and do all the Christmas stuff when you have someone to enjoy it with. Since we were pretty wiped out from our Black Friday experience, we waited until later on Saturday afternoon to get started. Willy thought we should start with the outside lights, so we got out all the lights and decided how we were going to put them up. I already had a bunch of white lights, so we went with those and went along the roof line, and outlined some of the lines on the front of the garage. We were about 10 feet short of lights, so we ran to Wal-Mart and bought another box. While we were there, I decided we also needed something to put at the peak of the garage. I couldn’t find a big star or anything that lights up, so we settled for a big red bow. Willy went along with my crazy ideas and agreed to climb up on the roof to hang the bow that night! Here’s our finished work:

On Sunday afternoon we went to work on the inside of the house. It was so fun to put up our tree together (sorry, we have a fake), pull out all of my old ornaments (I have gotten 2-3 every year since I was born, from my great-grandma, maternal, and paternal grandparents, so I have A LOT!) and tell Willy the stories about who they came from and when I got them.  I have a few from my very first Christmas…

This one was made for me by my great-grandma Nana Lane for my 1st Christmas in 1983.

Of course we had to get an ornament for our first Christmas together as the Cuy Castellanos’!

 Willy putting the star on top.

The finished tree! I am thinking about adding some ribbon or something else to it, but it’s good for now. J

We have a few nativity scenes that belonged to my grandparents. I put one on a corner shelf in the living room and one on the fireplace bench.

The coffee table center piece.



It has been really fun decorating our house together this year.

One last picture of my goofy husband playing around with the ornaments; he’s such a kid!

Black Friday

Last year my “twin” Rosa and I decided to brave the Black Friday crowds and went to Target about 2 hours before it opened to wait in the line. We were big dorks and had matching outfits and walkie-talkie radios, all just for fun. We were quite surprised when we got there that the line was already wrapped half way around the building. So this year we decided we needed to be there MUCH earlier. Since Rosa has an almost 6 month old baby to take care of, I volunteered Willy and I to go campout for the night to save our places in line. Willy’s brother Erik had to come with us by default since he was staying with us for Thanksgiving! Hahaha Sorry Erik! At Thanksgiving dinner, my cousin Scott and his wife Jeanny decided they wanted to come also, so we got enough chairs to save places for us, Scott, Jeanny, Rosa, and my sister Alison. After dinner, we came back to our house and loaded the car with the chairs, TONS of blankets, and a thermos of hot coffee. We arrived at Target at about 10pm, a little surprised with how long the line already was, but it wasn’t TOO long, so we stayed. We got our little camp set up with the chairs, wrapped up tight in our blankets, and settled in for a long night.

Erik had a pretty good spot; a lounge chair that laid out flat, with a camping mattress pad on top, and several blankets. He had no trouble sleeping that night!

At about 3am the rest of our group arrived, just in time to help us pack up the chairs and blankets as everyone in line got up and started packing in tighter preparing to go in the store. We got a quick group picture right before the line started moving in.

We were all pretty well prepared with our lists of exactly what we were looking for. It was pretty funny as we all compared lists and made a plan for how many of each item we should grab if we happened to see it before someone else in our group. It was pretty chaotic as we ran in the store, and I thought we were all separated, but we ended up finding each other again as we were all finishing up and getting in line. The line was moving pretty fast, but we took turns pushing each other’s carts along in the line to get a chance to go take a last look around the store for anything we had missed. It was pretty funny, and made for a fun experience since none of us were crazy about finding all of the stuff on our lists.

After we all finally made it out of the store about an hour and 20 minutes later, all of us except Scott and Jeanny (they went on to do some more shopping) went to Coco’s for some breakfast before we went home to sleep. We got home at about 8am, and I slept until about 2:30pm, trying to recover from the long night.

I haven’t decided yet if I will do this again next year, but it made for a good memory, and another ‘first’ for Willy here in the crazy USA!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was pretty normal this year; those of us that live around here went to Uncle Ron and Aunt Janet’s house to eat dinner. In the morning some of the guys went out to the range to shoot targets for awhile. This was Willy’s first time shooting a gun. He was a little nervous, but had a lot of fun! Willy’s brother Erik made it out from Anaheim just in time to join them for shooting. It was also his first time shooting a real gun.

While the guys were out shooting, I was at home getting our dinner contribution ready to take to Aunt Janet’s house. This year I was supposed to make an apple pie, and then of course my traditional cranberry sauce ‘therapy.’  My making the cranberry sauce is kind of a family joke.  Ten years ago I was in a really serious car accident that landed me in the hospital for a month.  The last few weeks I was there included a lot of different types of therapy, including occupational therapy- a.k.a. cooking. Thanksgiving came around shortly after I was released from the hospital, and my grandma made me come help her cook the cranberry sauce because she said I needed to continue my therapy. So now it is a tradition that I do my ‘therapy’ every Thanksgiving and make the cranberry sauce. It’s actually quite easy…

Step 1: Heat one cup of sugar with two cups of water. Add the whole cranberries when water begins to boil.



Step 2: When water returns to a boil, set timer for ten minutes and continue stirring constantly. 

Step 3: Pour liquid into a bowl, cover loosely to cool on the counter for two hours, then refrigerate until serving.

Enjoy!

We all got to the house to eat by about 3:30, and we were not disappointed with the yummy food everyone made!

We thoroughly stuffed ourselves and then enjoyed our time together looking through the Black Friday advertisements and playing a game of ‘Square Nine’. It was a great Thanksgiving!

Turkey Bowl

For the past few years, a group of guys from our church have gotten together to play football on Thanksgiving morning. This year, more players showed up than ever before; so many that they had to rotate people in and out as there were too many on the field at once. They played a few games, and had quite an audience (of wifes, children, and friends) to cheer them on and take pictures. I'm trying to get better about taking pictures, and learn to take better quality pictures, so I got all bundled up and went along to watch Willy play his first game of American Football and took quite a few shots. There weren't too many good ones (I'm just learning!), but here are a few of them...

 One of the cute little spectators... Kayla and Bryce's dog, Pippen.

Lanaya all bundled up... let me tell you, it was COLD (for California)!

Cooking for Two

Those that know me well know that I have always said I have no interest in cooking. It’s not that I can’t cook I just had no desire to do it. I remember praying that whoever I married would be a chef, or at least like to cook a lot so that I wouldn’t have to.  God answered my prayer on that one; Willy was a cook for a year for his family business back in Guatemala! However, he is not interested in doing all the cooking, so I have had to concede and start cooking a bit. It hasn’t been all that bad, and it’s been fun to cook together, especially when Willy is teaching me his Guatemalan recipes. We usually have to make 1-2 calls to our sister-in-law Vicky in Guatemala as we prepare each meal to ask questions about what spices to use and how much, but so far all of our attempts have been successful!

Caldo de res

 

Willy cooking chile-quiles (not sure that’s spelled right?).

 Made from scratch corn chowder soup; delicious if I do say so myself!

 

French apple pie… we bought one up in Oak Glen the month before and it was so good we decided to try to make one ourselves, even the crust! It was soooo good!

Overall, cooking has not been that bad of an experience!

Viva Las Vegas

About one month after our wedding, one of my good friends from work was getting married out in Vegas, so we decided to join the party there for the weekend and celebrate with her.  She was a beautiful bride and I was so happy to be there to be a part of her special day!

While we were there, we had the opportunity to go see Phantom at the Pantages Theatre, thanks to my cousin Elsa (Elsa’s sister-in-law is one of the cast members, so she reserved some VERY good seats at a VERY cheap price for us). After the show, we were surprised to find out that we were going on a backstage tour with Elsa’s sister-in-law. It was so cool to tour the backstage, see the costume rooms, wig room, and even meet the Phantom himself! That totally made the weekend for us. Thanks again Elsa and her brother Richie for getting the tickets and tour set up for us! Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera to the show, so the only pictures we were able to take were with our phones, so they aren’t the greatest quality.

On the Pantages stage after the show.

Honeymoon

We spent the first night of our honeymoon at the Resort in Lake Arrowhead. It was sooooo nice; we were glad we didn’t change before we left the wedding, because the hotel gave us a room upgrade since we came in our wedding clothes. We lounged around our room for awhile the next morning and then treated ourselves to a delicious room service breakfast before getting ready and heading back down the mountain to open wedding presents at my parents house.

We stayed at our house the 2^nd night, then headed down to San Diego for the remainder of the week. We spent a lot of time just relaxing and recovering from all of the pre-wedding and wedding activities. Mostly we just relaxed around the hotel pool, walked around the gas lamp district where our hotel was, and explored different parts of San Diego. We also ended up going to SeaWorld one day and had a great time watching the Shamu shows and checking out all of the cute animals.

Engagement Pictures

My friend Jessica Hekman is an AWESOME photographer; I’m so sad that she didn’t start her business until after I had already chosen a wedding photographer! We were so excited she was available a few weeks before our wedding to take some engagement pictures for us, and we were not disappointed.

 

Thank you Jess for capturing these pictures for us! We will treasure them forever!

Our Wedding

One month after Willy arrived in California, we were married, on August 15, 2010. It was wonderful day, mostly thanks to my wedding planner, a.k.a. my sister Alison.

She is a GREAT planner and took care of the majority of the details for us. If anyone is looking for a great party planner, she’ll come highly recommended by me! We wouldn’t have had such a beautiful wedding day without her help. Thank you again Alison.

Thank you to all of our friends and family for coming and showing your love and support for us by coming to help us celebrate the beginning of our new life together!