Southland Avenue: Christmas

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Around Here | Scenes from Christmas

Happy Monday guys! Hope everyone had an amazing holiday break! In some ways it felt nice and long and relaxing, and on the other hand, it flew by and I'm super sad that it's over - not quite ready to get back into the daily grind. (I'm speaking just for myself here. Heath sadly has been working her little tushy off non-stop and we'll be glad when her work deadline is over this week!!)

We had a really wonderful Christmas. Lots of time with family, and lots of time spent with Virginia. J.D., Virginia and I spent Christmas in Nashville and other than a cancelled flight home (typical holiday travel!) it was a perfect little visit. We had a yummy lunch in downtown Franklin, stopped for delicious ice cream, and ate and ate and ate our way through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. J.D. fixed us Christmas Eve Manhattans and Christmas Day White Whale Tiny Tims, and both we're delicious. I think taking one extra minute to mix a proper cocktail like these needs to be included on my resolution list. :)

Once we got back to Charlotte, we really just relaxed. I did lots of cooking, my favorite when I have plenty of time, and this weekend we've been doing the usual post-holiday purging (more on that later), thinking about a few resolutions/future plans (more on that later too) and just generally getting ready to get back to work and back to our norm. I know it will feel good to get back on schedule, but right now I'm not quite convinced that I want the holidays to end! :)

~Mary Keller

Merry Christmas

We're signing off a little early to go enjoy the Christmas holiday with family! J.D., Virginia and I have headed out and we flew to Nashville yesterday to celebrate Christmas with J.D.'s family. He has a big family so we're excited to spend Christmas with a crowd and lots of nieces and nephews for Virginia to enjoy. Should be a whole lot of fun in a loud, kids running around, eating & drinking too much, watching Christmas Vacation on repeat kind of way, just the way Christmas should be!

Heath and Andy talked Andy's family into coming to them this year. (Heath's work is incredibly busy around Christmas so it's tough for her to get away.) Andy's cooking a feast for them of course so I know they'll all enjoy their first Christmas in Charlotte.

Whatever you have planned, we hope you all enjoy! Thank you for reading along with us this year, and we look forward to a wonderful 2015! Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

xoxo,
Mary Keller & Heath

Image via Camille Styles, included in a great post on having a stress free holiday. :)

Ornament Traditions

So many people I know have the tradition of giving or receiving a new ornament every year for Christmas, and I love this idea because you can never have too many ornaments. We give our nieces and nephews a small ornament every year even when their family isn't the name we drew for the holidays. (J.D.'s one of four so we draw names and only buy big gifts for one sibling's family.) The ornaments are usually from Crate and Barrel and are reasonable and fun. Growing up there was almost always a ornament tied to one of my bags as the "tag" for the present, and these ornaments are still some of my favorites. J.D. and I are still establishing traditions with Virginia, but I think an annual ornament is something simple we want to include. Some people gift Radko's (we did this last year for Virginia's first Christmas), some people gift Needlpoint ornaments (see below!) and others prefer vintage glass or whimsical things from Anthropologie. I gave Virginia a "V" from Anthropologie last year, and I'm kinda wishing I did this year too. Do you give annual ornaments?

~Mary Keller

P.S. my resolutions including needlepointing Virginia an ornament for the year. Two things, first, I had no idea how $$ this idea would be. Holy cow why is it so expensive!? Second thing, I had no idea how time consuming it would be. I did start Virginia's ornament. I even bought the pattern in July (at the big Christmas in July sale!) but in the 6 months I've been working on it, it's still only half done! :) ha, fortunately my grandmother took over and gifted her one instead. :)

Southern Stocking Stuffers | North Carolina Made

Andy and I have never exchanged Christmas gifts so when we got married we started doing stockings. For us, it's a fun way to exchange gifts but keeps things within reason. Occasionally each of us throws in something fun, for me a cute coffee mug, for Andy a fancy bourbon but otherwise most of our stuffers come from the grocery store and are super simple and cheap. This year I thought it would be fun to change things a bit and keep Andy's entire stocking locally made. I found all Charlotte and North Carolina made products that I'm so excited about!

We've teamed up with a few other bloggers to bring you all Southern Stocking Stuffers made locally in a handful of Southern states. I'm sharing details of my locally sourced stocking, plus be sure to check out more ideas from these bloggers below..

Julia of Pawleys Island Posh - Virginia

Natasha of Hello Happiness - Tennessee

Jess of The Love List - Georgia

MK & Heath of Southland Avenue - North Carolina

North Carolina Made -

ONE: I try to include a small bottle of nice bourbon in Andy's stocking every year. Mostly because we're frugal and don't buy nice things for ourselves but also because it's fun to try new brands, Lewis Redmond bourbon is currently on the list! If you're a rum drinker I hear good things about Queen Charlotte and this sweet potato vodka sounds so cool! And if you're into gin I can personally vouch for Cardinal gin.

TWO: We include an ornament in our stockings each year and this beautiful tree from Caroline's Ceramics would be so pretty! And if you're not doing a stocking her vases are gorgeous!

THREE: We're big coffee drinkers in our household (more me but still...) so a lot stocking stuffers revolve around this. We can always count on a new brand of beans and maybe even a new mug if we're lucky! So many different roasters in and around Charlotte but Central, Not Just Coffee and Dilworth are my favorites.

FOUR: We've talked about White Whale before but no stocking would be complete without the perfect little cocktail mixer. Tiny Tim is the perfect holiday mixer or any of your favorites would be delicious!

FIVE: Charlotte's beer scene has completely taken off lately! We haven't been to every local brewery just yet but we sure love tasting our way through them all. Our current favorite is actually nothing new but I know Andy would love opening this Jam Session on Christmas!

SIX: I love the addition of this leather key fob. Practical but pretty, anyone would be pleased to have this in their stocking and on their keychain! Colsen and Keane were a finalist in the Garden and Gun Made in the South Awards so be sure to check out their other items.

SEVEN: I just recently learned that Moravian cookies were produced in NC. As a big sweets fan this made me so happy! I remember how fancy the thin Moravian cookies felt when I was little, I made a mental note to pick some up this holiday season after seeing that. Is there anything more festive than a sleeve of spiced cookies?!

EIGHT: I usually include a bag of dark chocolates in Andy's stocking. It's kind of an ongoing joke because one small bag of individually wrapped dark chocolates will last him almost an entire year in his desk drawer and well that's just crazy to me! I'm thinking this peppermint bark may not last quite as long this year though!

NINE: These earrings obviously won't be in Andy's stocking but if it were reversed I'd certainly love to see them in mine! Geoflora is a local Charlotte based sister duo I just discovered and their stuff is really really cool.

TEN: I'm going to sound like a total nerd here but we have lots of honey in our pantry, like a weird amount! We have truffle honey, NC Mountain honey and so many others. We use them all the time so this local Cloister whipped honey with cinnamon sounds so good!

Any other locally made favorites I should know about and include? Be sure to visit Julia from Virginia, Jess from Georgia, and Natasha from Tennessee to check out their local stockings and get ideas too!

- Heath

Mexican Hot Chocolate (& Christmas Cards)

Sticking to my schedule, I got to work on my Christmas cards last Thursday night. I swung by the grocery store after picking up Virginia from school that night and picked up a few things to try homemade hot chocolate. Have you guys ever tried homemade? Guys, it's sooo good. It's very rich, very different from the powered kind and surprisingly it was super easy to make. Homemade hot chocolate is much more like a full dessert rather than just a cup of hot cocoa. I tweaked the recipe a bit, making it even less rich, but it was still delicious. I highly recommend giving it a try if you want an homemade chocolaty treat with a little kick....

Mexican Hot Chocolate

a variation of Ina Garten's (who else?) recipe

Serves 2-3

2 cups of 1% milk

1 tablespoon light brown sugar

4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

small pinch cayenne pepper

Bring milk and sugar to a simmer in a saucepan. Remove from the heat and mix in chocolate, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and vanilla. Allow to steep for a few minutes, then place back on the heat on low to warm to a simmer. Pour in mugs, top with cinnamon sticks and marshmallows, and extra cayenne if you really like heat!

We liked ours with a little heat, but if you don't like much spice start off with just a tiny bit of cayenne and add from there. We really loved it, but I'll warn you, this is VERY rich. J.D. couldn't finish his (I happily could :) so I think you could even cut down on the amount of chocolate used.

I think this may be a new fun little tradition. Also, side note, for the first time I had Minted address my Christmas cards. You may know they were offering this for free this year. Holy cow guys, that was a game changer for me. I'm never going back. Seriously, it made the evening so much more pleasant - hot chocolate (and wine), plus just jotting fun notes to my friends on their cards instead of writing a million addresses. So much better!! I don't know why I waited this long to let them handle that part. :)

~Mary Keller

Around Here

Happy Monday guys! Did you have a good weekend? It was a really good weekend around here. Really relaxing and lots of just hanging out. J.D. and I spent a little time (re)decorating our tree on Friday night, and it's sparkly and bright now so I'm pleased. Saturday we went shopping for our Angel Tree child, grabbed a little bbq lunch, and then had big plans to meet Santa except I had my dates wrong and Santa wasn't there. (I'm avoiding going to the mall at all costs! We're waiting on Santa to visit a shop right near us.) Later that day, Heath and Andy came by to watch the SEC Championship and Virginia thought she was in heaven. Heath surely is her best friend.

Heath and Andy also had a weekend of decorating and Angel Tree shopping. They have a fun little tradition of going shopping for their Angel Tree child + having Pasta & Provisions every year. Andy actually proposed on the evening of their angel tree shopping + pasta date a few years ago. So cute!

Hope everyone has a good week! It's going to be busy but everything is so much fun this time of year!!

~Mary Keller

Scenes from Christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We sure did and I can hardly believe that it's actually already come and gone. We spent Christmas at my parents in South Carolina this year, and it was really a special year. Virginia was spoiled with love and attention all week. She spent the entire holiday staring at my parent's fire. (Our fireplace in Charlotte sadly doesn't work!) Christmas Eve we enjoyed beef tenderloin and too many old fashioneds. On Christmas day we enjoyed stockings, presents, brunch with my grandparents and drinks with family friends that evening. The day after Christmas we packed up the car and headed to Charleston to celebrate with our extended family. It was really so fun and of course made me wish I lived in Charleston! My foodie cousin and uncle made a delicious prime rib roast (we obviously love beef!) and bloody mary's for lunch. It was definitely a good Christmas, and it makes returning to Charlotte and the real world not so fun! Hope everyone has a great week and enjoys these last few days of the holidays!!

~Mary Keller

Time to Wrap!

I've spent the past few nights after Virginia's gone to sleeping wrapping away gifts for next week! None of my gifts look like the beautiful packages that I'm seeing all over Pinterest and Instagram, or even the packages above, but it's fun for me to think that one year I'll make my gifts look this good! This year I actually didn't buy a single ribbon or roll of wrapping paper (I'm using up leftovers, Virginia will never know the difference!) but there are some beautiful options out there. The tags, bags and ribbons above all come from Paper Source. I like to buy inexpensive paper from Target for most of my large gifts, and then get a few rolls of special paper for the small gifts from a place like Paper Source. The online shop Waiting on Martha and even Crate and Barrel have some gorgeous options this year too. Do you guys care about how you wrap your presents, do you do a particular wrapping theme, or just use leftover paper like me!?

~Mary Keller

Top image via Hello Happiness; Bottom image via Peonies and Brass

Last Minute Stocking Stuffers

Have you guys finished your shopping yet? I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't. I'm usually really on top of things but the holidays just came too fast for me this year. Andy and I do an Angel Tree child every year and otherwise just exchange stockings to keep gifts under control. I've learned you can actually fit a good bit in a stocking but to keep things practical we do a good mix of drugstore items with small gifts. That's the best part of a stocking to me! You can have a goodie bag full of those small items that you always forget to buy and maybe one small item that's a little bit of a treat.

For her: a mini bottle of wine or champagne, dark chocolate, her favorite magazine, a clementine, fun nail polish and a bright lip gloss with a coffee mug with her new last initial (my favorite part of my stocking last year).

For him: holiday beer, a lint roller, razers, chapstick, his favorite magazine, shave cream, an orange, his favorite candy and a new kitchen tool he's been eyeing all year.

The perfect stocking (to me) is a good mix of random items mixed with a meaning gift. The best part about these stocking stuffers is you can grab them last minute at any grocery or drugstore. Then save your time and energy for the one little special gift you're including. What's in your stocking?

- Heath

PS growing up we had friends who always woke up to a stocking full of candy and fireworks for New Years. I think that's a fun idea too!

Christmas PJs

Did you guys grow up with the tradition of getting new Christmas pajamas every year on Christmas Eve? We didn't but I really feel like just about everyone did! I'm considering starting that tradition with Virginia, but this year we gave Virginia her Christmas jammies on Thanksgiving night so she could wear them all season. My mom, Heath and J.D. were sweet and surprised me with a handful of beautiful pajamas and robes when I was in the hospital on Virginia's birthday. They knew I'd be spending a lot of time over the next few months in pajamas, and I've loved having fresh options so I feel a little more pretty when I'm basically lounging around the house.

We've picked out a few options that are comfy but still a little put together. Perfect for waking up on Christmas morning with company at your house. Also perfect because you know you'll be taking lots of pictures. For the most part, we picked options that don't scream Christmas. I'd rather buy something a little more wintery and a little less Christmasy.

Side note - you can order the JCrew Flannel Plaid and Swiss Dot with a monogram - perfect gift for just about anyone! A little monogram would make the gift feel special and JCrew is always offering sales.

Clockwise from top left: Boden Pajama Bottoms (on sale now!) that they pair with a cute cami; JCrew End-on-end Pajama Set with Swiss Dot; Old Navy Polkadot pajama top; JCrew Silk Nightshirt in Colorblock Dot; Hanna Anderson Long John Pajama pants; Madewell Leggings in Heart Flip Print; Lands End Canvas Mistletoe Merino shorts; JCrew Pajama Set in Bright Cerise Plaid Flannel

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday everyone! I'm so excited for the weekend! J.D.'s been working late this week and I cannot wait to have him home to spend a weekend just relaxing, enjoying the Christmas season, and of course mainly just staring at our baby Virginia. She's entered the most fun stage, smiling and trying so hard to babble and talk to us, and as cliché as it sounds I really cannot believe how quickly she's growing. As quickly as the Christmas decorations have gone up, I know they will also quickly come down and when that happens, it means back to the real working world for this girl. For that reason, I'm trying to savor every sweet minute with my family this weekend and the rest of the month of December as well!

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend! If you're in the Christmas decorating mood, I love this festive mantle from Better Homes and Gardens. They have a full how-to on their website here. I love Christmas decorations like this that don't take themselves too seriously! :)

Enjoy your weekend!

~Mary Keller

Wreath Round Up

Probably my favorite Christmas decorations (other than the tree of course!) are just simple wreaths. I wish I could get my act together to actually try making a wreath sometime, but so far my wreaths just come from the local Christmas tree stand. (If you're in Charlotte, King's Drive farmers market has a really nice selection.) Here's a round up of our favorite looks!

Top left: Love this Olive Branch Wreath from Terrain. It's not something you see all the time, and it's natural and earthy. I love Bay Leaf wreaths too, and this Bay Leaf wreath from Emma Makes Blog looks simple enough to make sometime.

Top Right: Nothing more classic or simple than a red bow on a Frasier Fur wreath. I'll never get tired of this look, or the beautiful blue and white ceramics that they've paired with it!

Middle Left: I love this look with all of the ribbons for something different than your standard bow. It looks casual and unfussy, and it's a great way to tie in lots of different colors.

Middle Right: Loving this little square boxwood wreath from West Elm. It's modern and chic and really doesn't need a bow. If you're interested, grab one of these soon because last year they sold out when I went to grab one. West Elm also has round boxwood wreaths if you want something more traditional. (Also, check Trader Joes for really inexpensive boxwoods!)

Bottom Left: If you want something that's not so plain Jane, this Silver Bells Wreath from Terrain is really elegant. If you're using it inside, you could even add a few silver, gold or mercury glass ornaments to the wreath.

Bottom Right: Love this earthy look with wreaths that are a little less kept, a little more wild. This cranberry wreath from Etsy, and group of simple wreaths also have a really earthy feel if that's the look your aiming for.

~Mary Keller

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