'Tis the Season

After putting up the Christmas tree and decorations, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, making a gingerbread house, ice skating, burning my tongue on hot chocolate and watching my favorite Christmas movie... I can officially say I'm ready for Christmas!

On Sunday night I hosted my first-ever Christmas wrapping party with my girlfriends and we had a blast! We made pizza, cookies and wrapped our hearts away for a good 3+ hours. In the end my sister and I wrapped more than 30 presents!

Before: The Christmas Explosion

After: The results of a successful Christmas wrapping party!

I don't care what people say about the stress of the holiday season and having to find that perfect gift for everyone... I LOVE IT ALL. While I know presents aren't everything, picking out something you know the person you're giving it to is going to love and appreciate... that's one of the best feelings of all.

I don't find shopping for other people stressful. Shopping for myself? Yes. But I also feel guilty shopping for myself sometimes. There's nothing guilty about spending a little money on those you love the most. And seeing their faces when you got them exactly what they wanted, even if they didn't have to tell you... AMAZING.

My boyfriend and I also put up our first Christmas tree together a couple weeks ago, and he is supposed to put up the Christmas lights on the outside of the house soon...

Almost all of my shopping is done, except for a few things, which is probably the earliest I've ever had my Christmas shopping done. The only thing left to do is mail out Christmas cards!

Even my office is all decked out for the holidays, with the new stockings I made for everyone:

And Santa Scooter! :) Made by the lovely Miss Kelly Thebeau (she's very talented).

Kelly was also the brains behind this masterful creation:

In case you can't tell, that's the Marketing and Communications Department's gingerbread house! SCC hosts a holiday contest every year among the departments, and this year's contest involved building our own gingerbread houses. Ours was based on the movie "Nightmare Before Christmas," which I fully intend on watching soon, and the scene was from when Jack Skellington was pretending to be Santa Claus in Christmas Town.

Source: layoutsparks.com

If you haven't seen this movie yet, like a few people in our office, you better put this on your to-do list before Christmas, it's a must-see classic!

As you can see, Jack, his dog Zero, and the snowman were molded by hand from clay by Kelly. I told you she's talented! Everything else except for the "Christmas Town" paper sign and the "snow" was made out of candy. This was my first time attempting to make a gingerbread house, and I have to say although it was time consuming it was really fun!

Speaking of my favorite Christmas movies, I watched my all-time favorite, "It's a Wonderful Life" last week (also a must-see).

Source: bptop100movies.blogspot.com

The SCC Young People's Theatre just so happens to be performing the musical version live this weekend at SCC, but unfortunately I cannot make it to any of the shows. You should though, and let me know how it is! Buy your tickets at stchastickets.com. Meet the cast and check out the photos before you go!

I am, however, going to see The Nutcracker performed by the St. Louis Ballet at the Touhill this weekend!

Source: Touhill.org

I'm so excited! I've always been a big fan of The Nutcracker, and I saw it performed up at Truman once, but never professionally. I've heard it was amazing, and I can't wait to experience it myself!

Other than see The Nutcracker, I have three other St. Louis winter activities on my list, including:

1. Try snowboarding (I've never been) at Hidden Valley Ski Resort.
2. Take my little brother and sisters ice skating at Steinberg Ice Rink.
3. Take my little brother and sisters to see Christmas lights.

I took my little brother and sisters ice skating for their first time at the SCC on Ice event last week at the college and they had a blast, even if it wasn't real ice. They were scared at first, but once they were on the "ice," they were skating machines!

They had holiday music playing, free hot chocolate (which I burned my tongue on) and there was a giant walk-in snow globe for the kids to play in and get their picture taken in. Of course afterwards our clothes and hair were shedding that fake snow stuff all night, but it was all in fun!

Now that my little brother and sister have gotten a taste of ice skating, I'd love to take them to a real outdoor ice rink! I've been on the ice rink at Steinberg, but oddly enough not to skate on it. I play broomball there every Tuesday night. If you don't know what broomball is, check out this video from my team's championship game earlier this year at intermission during a Blues game!

My team, Pump Up the Jam

Basically, it's hockey on ice, with a few exceptions, like tennis shoes instead of skates, a ball instead of a puck and broom sticks instead of hockey sticks. It's super fun, and playing on the same ice the Blues play on was so much fun! Our last regular season game is tonight, and we're hoping to get a chance to compete for the championship again! So wish us luck!

Well I think I've gone on enough about the holidays. Only seven days left of work until the winter break... so I hope everyone has a great holiday! See ya next year!

Update (2:56 p.m. 12/13/11): Now that the SCC holiday e-greeting has been officially released by the SCC President, Dr. Ron Chesbrough, I just wanted to share the video that I spent most of last week working on. I think it turned out great, thanks in large part to the hard work of my co-workers Ben Munson and Kelly Thebeau!