End of year excuses

Hey, remember Christmas letters that most people send out? To tell you of all the great things that have been happening in their lives that year? And you know how some people have good intentions and then it never gets done? So they throw up their hands and say "uh, maybe I'll write one next year."We're those people. Sorry folks, we really thought about writing a Christmas letter. Especially since our letter last year was so much fun to write. This year we got caught up in all the Christmas cheer and completely put off writing a Christmas letter.

You'll forgive us though, right?

2010 Highlights for Blonde

Ice climbing for the first time. The Icicle in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

A few races this year: Canyonlands Half-Marathon, Teton Dam Half-Marathon,

and The Dirty Dash 1oK

And a little jaunt across the pond.

Red's Top Happenings for 2010

First time ice climbing

I started the year off in the best way I know how, outdoor adventure. I learned to ice climbing and took a couple weekend trips because I have "keeping up with the blonde" syndrome.

First time mountain biking

Purchased a mountain bike and spent the spring and summer on the trails, until...

First ER visit for myself

I took a nasty little tumble in Moab and spent an hour or two in the Moab hospital getting ex-rays and finding out my knees were banged, but not broken.

Check Out Other Stuff I did in 2010

• Second trip to Germany—Us Reds got together for a little family reunion in Germany. Read more here.
• A myriad of concerts—From Brandi Carlile at my favorite venue, Ingrid Michaelson and Dave Matthews Band, I really love the stack of ticket stubs I collected this year.

Brunette: Um, Brunette didn't write anything here. Not that she didn't do anything—she just didn't write about it.


2010 Altogether Now:

Our first yurt adventure. Loved it.

Watched Lord of the Rings on a cardboard TV.

Our fondness for Goblin Valley, Utah.

Have a great 2011. Love, the Blonde, Brunette, and Redhead

Etsy Find Just for All the Reds

How about a little something different for this week's Etsy find, something just for all the redheads out there.

Check out the red hair on this plate from Betty Raspberry.

(First saw this here)

Love this print from Peggy Wolf Design

And this one from Multiple Personality

Second Annual Holiday Craft Party

What do girls like to do besides talk about boys?  Craft.  We unknowingly started a little holiday tradition last year.  What started out as an excuse to have our friends make their own Christmas gifts, has turned into one of my favorite holiday party ideas.
Brunette is our craft goddess around our apartment.  When she is stressed and needs a little detox, she pulls out her craft supplies.  I'm being completely honest here.  I came home one day and found her gluing strips of paper to decorate a box that she uses to store random tools in her room.  Talk about someone who oozes creativity.  Last year she came up with the idea of craft night and we enjoyed it so much we had to do it again this year.
The craft...well I can't say we had an exact plan, because you could really do whatever you wanted.  The plan was to create flower belts and shoe clips.  But what we saw our crafty friends create were headbands, garland, hair bows and pins.
Here are a few of the end results.

Naomi's beautiful purple shoe clips with feather and button embellishments

Erika's clips she can use for either her hair or a belt

Red's over sized flower belt and feathery clips

Brunette's blue shoe clips

I'll share more photos as we get them.

Love, Love, Love: Snow Tires

I love, love, love my new snow tires. All $535 of them. My car is an excellent city car. It gets good gas mileage and handles famously on dry pavement, which is perfect in Salt Lake City about 70% of the time (I made that number up—no research was involved). The other 30% of the time, my car freaks out. It’s light and front-wheel driven. This makes for much sliding all over the road. Yes, before the snow tires, I was the person driving on the road that you thought was ridiculous for how overly paranoid and cautious she was in the snow, but it was out of necessity—my car in all-weather tires would slide half way across the road if I ran over a snowball. This winter, I went all out and purchased the full set of snow tires. Yes, watching all that money come out of my account was painful, but the peace of mind is worth it. This recent snowstorm (as I write this, road crews are still cleaning up after it) was a breeze. The only thing I had to worry about were my fellow commuters who do not have snow tires. Like the Toyota 4-Runner directly in front of me that was slipping all over the place—I kept my distance.

Highlights of snow tire bliss:
· I changed snowy lanes where it’s usually safest to stay in the grooves of the car in front of you.
· I turned corners without the back end overly sliding the other direction (which is a teensy bit disappointing, because sometimes that’s fun)
· I made it up the huge hill to my house (previously I’ve had to leave my car at the bottom overnight while it thought about what it did)
· And this morning I made it out of the drifts created by the wind and uncleaned by the non-existence of snowplows on my road.

Indeed, I am quite pleased. Snow Tires, I could kiss you.

Pillow Talk

Hope you all had a fabulous Christmas. What did Santa bring you? I got a rice cooker. It is pretty sweet and it makes delicious rice...yum.

So today I wanted to share some pillow talk. No, I'm not talking about the classic Rock Hudson, Doris Day movie (but I do love that movie). I'm talking pillows. Beautiful, fun, decorative pillows.
I don't make my bed very often. I'm not one of those "I'm just going to get back into it" types of people, it is simply that I am always running late in the morning. Making my bed falls somewhere down the list below eating breakfast and folding my towel which almost never happens. Even if it my bed is not made very often, I do enjoy a crisp freshly made bed with all the pillows to put me in girly heaven.
Check out these lovelys which will hopefully put you in a similar heaven (maybe not girly if you are a gentleman).

Find your state at Always Fits via Design Mom

Shop Dirtsa has the cutest pillows.
Check out the color blindness and scrabble pillows

Loves these pillows from Third Drawer Down Which you can see if you stay here

The "i" is my favorite part of this pillow from Pillow Factory

Throw away boring white pillow cases and get these Urban Outfitters pillows

Ornament Swapping and Calendar Exchange

What better way to get into the holiday cheer.  Give a gift.

Calendar Exchange
First I signed up for an annual calendar swap sponsored by Design Crush.  They pair you up and you send a calendar to your exchange buddy.  My calendar buddy was Amy, a art director in NY.  How cool is that?  I was super excited about getting to know her especially because she has one of my dream jobs.  We exchanged some emails, then came the difficult task to pick the perfect calendar perfect for Amy.  Well, who knows if I found the perfect one, because honestly I fell in love with every other calendar.

The calendar I picked for Amy - found here

Amy picked a great one for me.  I really enjoy the illustration.  As soon as I got it, I put it right up in my room.

Amy picked out this calendar for me...
she knows I love the great outdoors

Ornament Swap
At first I wasn't going to sign up for the ornament swap from Freshly Blended, but after exchanging emails with Amy for the calendar swap I decided it would be a lot of fun to get to know more people.  This time I would be put into a group of 9 other fabulously crafty women from all over the country.  We would each have to create a ornament and send one to each person in the group.  At the end of the experience we would all have 10 (including our own) unique homemade ornaments for our Christmas tree.
What my swapping buddies didn't know is that ornament they got I didn't make, nor was it the ornament I intended to send.  I came up with this really cute ornament that looks like a snowball add a carrot nose and coal eyes and mouth (not a real carrot and coal, but clay) and now you have an awesome snowman.  My example was so cute, but when I took it into production things got ugly.  What I thought would take an evening to complete turned into a week.  As I neared completion my ornaments started to fall apart.  I had to abandon the snowman ornament entirely.  I was now over committed with no time to come up with a new idea and get them finished before I needed to mail them.  Luckily, I have great family who came to my rescue.  My mom and sister came up with a snowflake ornament and mass produced them for me.  I hope this wasn't cheating, but there was no way I could have finished the ornaments without losing a little sanity.
I forgot to take a photo of my ornament before it went out, but I took photos of everyone beautiful ornaments.  See for yourself.

Ornaments from my crafty new friends.

Sadly, this one did not survive the trip

I look forward to participating in the swaps again.

Santa please bring me

Dear Santa
It is Christmas week and I have been a good girl this year (mostly).  Can you please look pass how I burned up my brother's brakes in the German Alps and for calling my fellow students at community college "misfits".  If you can find it in your heart to bring me these things I will be better next year, promise.
Sincerely your loving,
Red

He would be nice.
 Bearded and wearing a Cardigan

He could take me here

We could curl up under this blanket,

Nibble on chocolate designed with all our favorites flavors from Chocomize,

And if he wanted to give me this

or this I wouldn't be sad.

Spreading Christmas Cheer

Christmas is a time for cheer. I suggest you watch these Christmas Music Video Gems* for a little Christmas cheer on this snowy day.

As an impressionable teen growing up in the 90s, I too was enamored with N'Sync. Reminisce here at how much you wanted to snuggle with Justin Timberlake in that amazing sweater (I know you did).



But the 90s were not the only decade to produce amazing quality Christmas Music Videos, No! I submit that the 80s were far better at it. The 80s gave us Wham! and "Last Christmas."



And if you were an impressionable teen growing up in the 90s in Russia (which I was not) you would have enjoyed this pretty little number. Thank you internet for bringing this American the joys that your country produced.



Merry Christmas!

*All this Christmas cheer comes from nostalgia. Ah the memories of my youth. I looked for more recent Christmas cheer, but I couldn't find anything that didn't make me cringe. Yep, I'ma gettin' old. The young whipper-snappers can't turn out anything Christmasey that pleases me.

Matisyahu Hanukkah Song

I first heard of Matisyahu this year when he was on the Twilight Concert Series schedule. His show was awesome and his unusual style for a Reggae artist carved a little space out in my heart just for him. Seriously, just look at him. Those aren't dreads.

photo found here

My favorite song is by far, Jerusalem. I might be a week late for Hanukkah, but I didn't think anyone would mind if I was sharing good tunes. Check out Matisyahu's Hanukkah song, Miracle. It is no Adam Sandler, but we all need a little holiday variety and it is a really funny video.

Want to know more about Matisyahu, check out Wikipedia or his website.

Etsy Christmas Printables

Are you BBR lonely? I am sincerely sorry there has been no posts this week.  I have had finals this week and we have all been very busy with Christmas plans.  Can you believe it, Christmas is next week.  Exciting and scary.  Exciting because yeah it is Christmas (duh).  Scary because OMG I am not done with shopping, decorating, baking, crafting, adventuring and/or general holiday cheer stuff.  So if you, like me, are in need of some last minute gifts, cards or decoration ideas, don't worry Etsy has instant gratification for you.  Don't wait 5-7 business days for your fun homemade gifts to be mailed, get holiday goodness in only a few hours direct to your email.  I discovered a few months ago that there are some Etsy shops that sell PDFs.  Now you can get an email with your printable holiday cards or a new knitting pattern purchase.  What a great idea.  And the prices are really great.  Here are a few Etsy PDFs for your holiday whatevers.

1. I wish I could crochet these Christmas Ornament pattern are so cute
2. I have a cute idea for a wreath with these Poinsettia Felt flowers 
3. If you loved the slippers featured in our Etsy Shoes, here is a pattern to make your own slippers
4. Add this fun Nativity cut out to your Nativity collection (you know you have one)
5. And after decorating make a cute clutch for yourself and/or a friend 
6. I wasn't a fan of Santa hats until I saw this cute Santa knit hat pattern 
7. It is never to late to get a 2011 Calendar if you can simply print this one at home 
8. Find a huge selection of printable holiday cards on Etsy including this cute polar bear card 
9. These stocking patterns remind me of the one my grandma made for me

WEAR: I Love Grey - Women

If you know me, I really love color. But more than anything I love color combinations. Steel blue, baby blue with Rust, or Campagne Pink with Gold and touches of Plum or Black, or Teal with Bright Red, or Soft Greens with Tans and Creamy Whites--the list goes on and on and on. With all the color I surround myself with all day you would assume that Grey would be a sorry color to want to embrace but I am officially obsessed. I just want to enrobe my body constantly in it. It has become my go-to wardrobe staple and it is a extremely versatile neutral.

Check out what the latest cinereal clothes I am lusting over:

Merino Cowlneck Sweater - J.Crew

Dream Open-Shawl Cardigan - J.Crew

Merino Necklace Sweater - J.Crew

The Heidi Dress - J.Crew

Timber Tweed Pencil Skirt - J.Crew

Ruffle-trim Cardi - Old Navy

Fair Isle Tie Cardi - Old Navy

Metallic Argyle Cardi - Old Navy

Double Time Cardigan - Anthropologie

Arbor Vines Sweater Jacket - Anthropologie

Twisted Birch Shell - Anthropologie

Volante Tee - Anthropologie

Daughters of the Liberation Jean - Anthropologie

Style Guide Skirt - Anthropologie

Basket Weave Beret - Boden

Slouchy Leather Handbag - Boden

Velvet Blazer - Boden

Bloomsbury T-Bars - Boden

French Connection Lark Coat - Nordstrom

Tahari Woven Sheath Dress - Nordstrom

Minnetonka Cally Slipper - Nordstrom

Miz Mooz Cabot Pump - Nordstrom

Kate Spade Haley Skirt - Nordstrom