Tuesday

Merry Christmas!

Happy holidays everyone! I can't believe Christmas is here! It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating Thanksgiving. At the beginning of December the mister and I hosted a tree trimming party that put just the right amount of festive spirit into our flat. My favorite ornament on our tree this year is the little door with the number 2012 over it. A sweet gift from a friend reminding us of our first flat purchase.







I hope you all have an amazing holiday!

Saturday

Christmas day boozing

It's not a big tradition to have cocktails on Christmas day in my family, but the mister's family brings out the champagne promptly at 11am (which I love!). Do you have a special festive cocktail? 

via 

Thursday

UP

I sort of love this story.

Ballard, a neighborhood in Seattle, has boomed with development over the last 10 years; new flats and shops everywhere. One of the developments, Ballad Blocks, tried to buy Edith Macfield's house back in the early 2000's but she wasn't selling out to developers. They offered her a staggering $1 million for it too! (Go Edith!) So they built around her (see below)




After Edith's passing she apparently left her house to one of the construction workers who checked up on her a lot and looked after her during all the construction. For a while the property lay dormant but back in October I read an article that said the property had been purchased and they were in the process of renovating it so they could rent it out as a vacation rental. They are even talking about elevating the house off the ground (in my opinion, to give it a bit of an UP feel to it) and putting in a garden underneath.

I'm not sure Edith would have wanted it to be a vacation rental but hopefully she's chuffed that her house is still standing.

Wednesday

Mr & Mrs Travel

The year is winding down and I'm literally counting the days until we board our plane to the US for Christmas and I'm finally on holiday. The mister and I are notoriously poor at planning our travel ahead of time but I'm trying to break that cycle for 2013. We've been throwing around a lot of ideas of places we'd like to go, Russia being at the top of our list. 

Are you travelling anywhere next year? Any places that you would recommend? Especially if it's a bit off the beaten path.


[via]