How I Spent the Holidays - Part 1

Hi Everyone!!! Happy New Year! 

I hope you all had an amazing Holiday and got to spend tons of time with family and friends! That’s really the best part, isn’t it? :) 

Now that the Holidays are over I’m getting back into the swing of things here at The Creative Glow. After this coming week things should get back to normal with my usual posts and my usual schedule! For now, though, I’ve gotten this post together for you guys to share some of the fun I had over the Holidays! :)  

Oh, and I want to remind you guys that there is still 4 DAYS LEFT to enter my GiveAway! If you haven’t entered and want to just follow this link to the Entry Page: ENTER TO WIN! Just want to remind you to make sure to follow the directions. You can earn up to 5 entries by completing certain tasks which are explained on the widget included on the Entry Page. Make sure to complete a task before clicking “Enter”, “I’m a Fan!”, “I Follow on Twitter!”, or “I Commented!” because entries ARE moderated. Ones that are received without having done so will be thrown out…I mean, because, obviously, I’m not just giving stuff away to people who don’t even like The Creative Glow. It’s for all of you amazing likers and lovers of my blog and videos! J Also, you’ll have to make sure to have your YouTube privacy settings set so that your subscriptions aren’t kept private because if I can’t see you’ve subscribed to my channel, then I don’t know you’ve actually done so. I AM trying to find out a better way to do this so that my fans can have their subscriptions private and still enter my giveaways while also allowing me to be certain that they have subscribed, but I’m not there yet, and it could be because Rafflecopter is that there yet. 

Anyway, now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s move on to some Christmas and Holiday fun photos! :) I’m gonna go in order in which these things happened, so first I’m gonna show you my beautiful new weekend bag/carry-on bag.

I got this bag just before flying home because I needed something that was big enough to hold my laptop and all my other carry-on entertainment and necessities. This is a Betsey Johnson bag and I got it for about half off the original price since it was on sale PLUS 30% OFF! I LOVE IT so much! :) 

Before we flew home for Christmas we had to open all of our gifts to one another because it would be too difficult to bring them all with us and probably cost us a bunch of money unnecessarily. I got a bunch of awesome gifts that evening but one of the most exciting things I got was a lighting kit for lighting my videos! Yay! As you can see below, I was/am quite pleased! :D (click to enlarge)

My videos are about to look a whole lot more amazing! :D I can’t wait to use this stuff. Maybe I’ll show you guys my lighting in more detail at some point. Here we are after opening our gifts, we had a lot of fun but then had to finish packing.

Once I was home my Mom and I decided to get some baking done starting with meat pies. These are very easy to make and make great easy dinners for over the Holidays (or any time, really) since all you have to do is freeze them and then pop one in the oven to heat up.

The main ingredient is (obviously) meat; Beef, Pork, and Chicken. You need to cut up all your meat and put it in a BIG pot with a little water, onions, and seasoning to taste then cook for MANY hours until all the meat is easy to pull apart (similar to preparing pulled pork). Some people like to add a little gravy for flavor and moisture. For our pie crust we used the Crisco recipe that is right on the box of Crisco Shortening. Then just fill the bottom crust with the meat mixture, cover with rolled out top shell, and cook for about half an hour at 400 F. Potatoes, Carrots, and Peas mixed with the meat are optional, but we like them best with just meat.

And then came Christmas Eve. Oh how I LOVE Christmas Eve! We always have delicious food like honey garlic ribs, seafood chowder, meatballs, shrimp, shrimp dip with chips and bacon wrapped scallops! I don’t even have any pictures of it all because I was so preoccupied by enjoying it that I forgot. Tsk, tsk, tsk! Believe me, it was good and it’s all homemade! We had a lot of fun playing Taboo and just spending time together. Once everyone else had gone to bed, I had to finish up all my wrapping…I had more unwrapped gifts than wrapped ones so I ended up being awake until 4:30am wrapping presents, he he, things had been busy in the days leading up to Christmas Eve.
Here is my Mom’s beautiful tree. She decorates her tree different almost every year. I get my creativity from her…and my perfectionism. Her tree is never actually finished; we can be sitting watching TV and she’ll get up and move some decorations around because it’s not quite right to her, she’s funny! But as I say about my own perfectionism: that’s part of what makes her so good at the things she does.

And now just a couple of photos from Christmas morning before I end this half of my Holiday post. Part 2 will consist of showing some of the gifts I received since there are a few in there that I’d like to do reviews on and then a couple other small things I did over the Holidays.  

This first one is my sister being covered in wrapping paper by my nephew (her son) as he unwrapped his gifts and my niece in the background laughing at their silliness! :)

 

Here on the left is my nephew unwrapping his gifts and you can see that he was also covered in wrapping paper and packaging. On the right is my Mom's little dog, Milo, trying to hide is bone for safe keeping in the Christmas tree skirt. He's pretty silly! :D

So that’s it for my Holiday post part 1. I should have part 2 up for you guys tomorrow or Thursday, so keep an eye out for a notification on facebook and/or twitter. I’ll be back with a new video on my YouTube channel, I’m hoping for, next week. :D And don’t forget to enter my GiveAway; time is running out! ;) 

Until Part 2, Love and Hugs,
Sam ♡