1. holiday planning

2. gift buying

3. baking (or in some instances, total baking success and/or not-so great baking success)

4. work. work. and more work.

5. holiday planning turned into minor-holiday-panic

6. holiday outfit planning

7. muncie trip planning

8. minor holiday panic turned into total-holiday-panic-where-i-was-willing-to-spend-whatever-to-have-someone-crossed-off-my-list

9. feeling like a total hero to both my son and my husband (translation: gift victory!)

10. some much needed relaxation which for us means “let’s rip out our master bedroom closet, make two trips to ikea and spend four days with all of our clothes spread all over our house”. in the end, we have a rockin’ new closet system. pure organization and love. (note: each time my husband walks into the closet he says the same thing: “it looks like a department store in here.” can you hear my tiny angels singing?)

in lieu of a pre-holiday post, i do hope everyone had an amazing, cheerful, relaxing, and joyous holiday season and i wish everyone the absolute best for an incredible 2012. i can say for me, i see some good things for this year. keep reading because i have some pretty cool crafty plans in the works for this year. and i can’t wait to share them all with you.

until then, i just had to share some of my favorite things (do i sound like oprah?) from christmas 2011. some are mine, some are my little guy’s…but all are total faves of mine that i just had to share:

fave thing #1: the tiny tower chair from little nest. we’re big fans of mid-century modern furniture, and especially the designs of ray and charles eames. love this chair that was inspired by the eames dsr chair. a wonderful uncle insisted that our little guy have this in his collection and we are so, so crazy about having this in our house!

fave thing #2: paper source 2012 date book. my first one of these was my 2011 version. (see previous post about my absolute love for this date book here.) i’m loving my new one in this great persimmon color. i’m definitely thinking it will make going back to work tomorrow a bit happier.

fave thing #3: design*sponge at home by grace bonney. available from west elm. i first learned of grace bonney via twitter and am a total fan. she has a great blog (available here) and finally published this amazing “bible” of many of her faves and best-of’s with home decor. it’s hundreds of pages of pure loveliness.

fave thing #4: a new owl for my collection. i’ve gone into my growing fondness for owls in previous posts, and how exchanging them is becoming one of those special gifts between my mom, my sis and me. to get sentimental, it feels that with each giving or receiving of one, there’s a piece of my grandma that is with us. i miss her so much.

fave thing #5: a second cute chair for my son. a tiny version of the eames molded plywood chair. (this was all my husband’s doing. he found it. ordered it. all to make sure our little guy has the mini version of his chair.) once again, from little nest.

i hope you all have some favorites from your holidays that you can hold onto each day with special memories. here’s to the start to a great 2012 and many, many more creative things to come!

happy new year!

ash