Erin Jane: A weekend of holiday goodness

Oh, where do I start?! Our adventure cutting our own pesticide-free tree down at Miss Becky's? Vanilla extract making with my sister? We did it all this weekend! Tree decorating. Wreath finding. Dog bathing. Christmas baking. Recipe testing for Christmas dinner. I'll just share a couple moments...

It was our first time cutting our own tree and I have to say I might never buy a pre-cut one again...so much fun. It felt so much more Christmas-y to go out in this farm and pick your tree and cut if yourself. Plus, it was a simply gorgeous day. The sun was shining, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was cold! I know! Seattle?! Sunny and cold? Weird.

The woman who owned the farm - Miss Becky - was hilarious! It took us at least 40 minutes to give her our money for the tree. It's a long story, but we basically chased her around to try and get her to take our money and we finally just laid our cash on a table and said, "Well, we'll just leave this here for you..." and left without getting change. It's not that she didn't want it, she was just like a little puppy - so distracted by anything. She would just disappear in mid sentence.

We didn't quite finish decorating the tree last night. OK, fine...we barely started. Anyway, I hope to finish tonight and take some photos of our lovely little tree. But, it's up and ready for some love!

Sunday my sister and I made vanilla extract for some Christmas gifts. Sorry to ruin the surprise for some of you :). I got the idea and recipe from Bethany Actually - you can see the process and directions there.

But, basically you just cut a couple vanilla beans in half for each bottle you are making, stick the beans in the bottle, fill with vodka and let them sit for a month or so. They turned out adorably! It was such a fun project. I made our labels in Word and even though I am certainly not a graphic designer (hence creating them in Word), the labels are super cute.