Merry Christmas from the Bradleys

Ryan and I aren't sending out a holiday card, but we would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!!! I love the holiday season. We have been so blessed to get to celebrate in many fun ways with lots of people. The above picture was taken when we went Tacky Bowling. What is Tacky Bowling? Its like regular bowling, but you wear tacky clothing :) We went to celebrate my friend Ashley's 25th birthday and we got all decked out! Note: dressing up did NOT improve my bowling score!

Saturday, my mom came over for a day of cookie making. I was so excited to get to spend a whole afternoon baking in the kitchen with my mom! Here are the cookies we made!

Ha ha, oh I wish! The cookies actually turned out a little less than extraordinary. I always have dreams of making perfectly decorated cookies and then reality interferes. The icing isn't thick enough, it drips all over the kitchen, it doesn't pipe out smoothly. I tried, but the result was several crazed looking gingerbread and snowmen. I know they will still taste good, but I really want to learn to decorate them better. I still have a bunch of sugar cookie dough in the fridge so I'm hoping that later this week I can tackle decorating again and use the picture above for inspiration. These are my actual cookies below.

We usually host a Christmas party for all our friends, but since we had so many other things going on this season we don't think we'll have time for that. So instead of having everyone over, I wanted to post a few pics of our Christmas decorations. We will be hosting my parents and grandparents for Christmas morning brunch.



Our festive Bradley Christmas tree! I love our cute ornaments. One day I want a beautiful tree with ribbon and matching ornaments, but I still enjoy this tree. I guess our tree matches my cookies!

Our Christmas table setting. Everything is actually silver, but the picture looks slightly gold. I saw these candle holders and the tree at Target way back in October but waited until Black Friday to get them. Ryan gave me the chargers for my birthday.

Our Santa advent calendar. Only 13 days 'til Christmas! Each morning we open the box for the day and hang a little ornament on Santa.

I made this wreath to hang in the kitchen. I had several of the miniature Lolita hand painted martini ornaments (that match my collection of real martini glasses) and I wired them onto the wreath. This was my mom's idea and I was happy with how it turned out!

Our stocking our hung on the bar top with care... instead of the chimney. Sorry Santa, I guess you'll have to climb in through the patio door. My kitchen is decorated with a gingerbread theme so I put up a small tree with gingerbread ornaments to go with our gingerbread house stocking hangers and my new gingerbread Scentsy jar! Most years we make a real gingerbread house, but I'm not sure yet where to put one, so that hasn't happened yet.

Since the best part of Christmas is spending time with people you love, that is what I'm going to do right now. Spend time watching a movie with my 2 favorite boys!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!