Adding some Christmas, a little bit at a time....and a Jackson & Perkins giveaway! (GIVEAWAY CLOSED)

*Giveaway CLOSED. Thank you SO SO much to all that entered!! We LOVED reading about your favorite decorations and traditions! 

The Winner is Laurie Duncan! Please email us. xo

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It seems everyone is ready for Christmas earlier than ever before. On my Facebook, and Instagram feeds I'm seeing so many friends putting up trees, hanging stockings, creating vignettes, and just totally getting a running start on the holidays. 

I get where the traditionalists are coming from when they say "too soon." But life is short and the holiday season usually passes in a blink, so why not stretch it out. Start making hot cocoa all the time, hit some holiday craft shows, and definitely make some crafts of your own. 

We don't plan on putting our tree up yet, but we do have a few favorite Christmas pieces on display. We often start with our kitchen table which normally has cakes stands full of faux cakes and pastries all year round. And just recently we had some vintage jack o' lanterns, and a faux cherry pie. 

Above you can see our latest seasonal table vignette. That adorable little live tree was a gift from Jackson & Perkins. I remember looking at the Jackson & Perkins catalog when I was little. In fact, I can remember using it when I played "office." They were one of "my office's" many "commercial suppliers." ha!

Ok so this isn't just a show & tell, it's also a GIVEAWAY!

You have a chance to win a $75.00 Jackson & Perkins gift card! Which will totally get you a fully decorated little tree like you see above. 

Find the giveaway details at the end of this post.

Being that we go with a neutral and pastel palette for Christmas we received the Merry Christmas decorated tree.  It's a Dwarf Alberta Spruce and it came with these pretty, festive beaded gold ball ornaments.

And gold glittered pinecones! Which work perfectly with our decor! 

And a sweet gold star topper!

My favorite part might be the tiny strand of lights on copper wire. I have a similar strand around a mirror in our living room. They run on batteries that you just tuck inside the pot. They also offer these lights separately. 

And they offer those gold pinecone candles in a set of three.

I really like the gold Merry Christmas repeat on the cache pot. Just a clean, cheerful, and classic design. 

This is how this particular tree arrives. We simply opted to not use the burgundy glass balls, and added our own pale pink balls and pastel ball garland to make it our own. It took about 8 minutes to set the whole thing up! and it really really is so cheerful! 

Seeing it glowing in the next room while we work on orders, and build up a stock of ornaments for the holiday rush definitely adds some cheer to our long days and nights. 

There are so many cute styles to choose from! If you're not doing a big tree, a little one like this is a great alternative. These are also perfect to send to a family member or friend that could use a burst of holiday cheer. 

And it's a live tree. So you can plant it after the holidays! It comes with care instructions and there's a guide on the Jackson & Perkins site that'll tell you which geographical regions the specific trees will thrive best in.

Ok...so here's how to enter the GIVEAWAY:

Just leave a comment on this post...possibly about the Christmas decoration you're most looking forward to displaying this year. Maybe it's an old classic that you've had forever, maybe it's something you plan on making, or maybe it's something you've got your heart set on buying this year.

That's it! We'll pick a winner on Sunday the 29th!

Good Luck!!

xoxo, Jenny & Aaron

Dear Boardwalk Snow, you're pretty to look at, but we'll be happy to see you go. Love, The Jersey Shore

I know, I know…for a girl that says she HATES the cold, and a guy who dreams of living in San Diego, we sure seem to play in the snow a whole lot. Over the past few weeks it seems like we have spent a lot of time up to our knees in snow, on the coldest days, and in foolhardy locations such as the icy beach. There we are trudging through snow drifts and slipping on ice, always with a camera in hand. And as I said before…it's not as if we actually like being outdoors in these conditions…we just figure if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We have been locked away in the house with the heat pumping (to insufficient result) for months, and our daily walks to the post office to ship out packages act as a sort of short term cure for our cabin fever. These small doses of the season at hand are good for the soul. 

Today happened to be sunny and almost all of the snow has melted. During this period what happens here on the shore is flooding. Lots of clogged catch basins and interminably soggy lawns. But heralding signs of Spring are upon us. We're waking up to birds we haven't heard in months. 

So I want to share these pics from a few days ago as a sort of farewell to the Winter. Hopefully these will be the last snowy pics you will see this season! 

Again, this little excursion occurred after we had shipped a bunch of boxes at the post office. It was super sunny and bright, but still very cold. As per usual, we had our camera and figured we'd walk up to the beach and boardwalk to capture a uniquely Jersey Shore experience on film. I love that the above pic of Scooters, which is the bumper cars, can appear to be white sand or snow, depending on how you look at it. 

The "Haunted Manor" is even more creepy all covered in snow. We were hoping for more icicles though.

To be honest, as I was taking this shot I was thinking about how I'm a grown woman sneaking up onto the closed boardwalk for pics. I mean, it's not like anyone would truly care that we were up there. But let's say there was some wayward overzealous security guard that I had to run from in my Napoleon Dynamite moon boots…I could only picture myself falling face first in Aaron's tracks. 

A typical Jersey Shore boardwalk mural, in that the sandcastle looks like its constructed of graffiti style letters that either spell out "Jersey" or "Sexy"…words that are somehow interchangeable in Jersey. It's hard to explain, but if you know what I mean…then you know what I mean. 

It was so clear up on the beach. Such a great view of New York from here…which never shows in photographs. This was further down the beach than our usual spot. I believe the fencing was put in to help protect the newly formed dunes that were installed after Hurricane Sandy. 

We had to stop to take a pic of these candy colored chippy pillars. So perfect!

Most boardwalks up and down the Jersey Shore open up for the year on Easter Sunday. We are hoping for some great weather this Easter (which rarely happens). I can almost smell the cotton candy and boardwalk fries! 

Hope you are seeing some signs of Spring wherever you are! 

Thanks bunches for popping in!

Love from the Jersey Shore.

xo Jenny…and Aaron says hi! 

Arctic adventures and sweet rewards at the Jersey Shore.

 We walk to the post office pretty much every day. It's a great way to break up the day, and it's also necessary being that we're packing and shipping orders all the time. Luckily, since it's fairly close we can endure the walk despite the frigid temps we've had all winter. And it feels like we get some kind of snow or slush falling from the sky every three days or so. You maybe wouldn't think so, but this is one of our favorite times to take a walk up onto our nearby beach. Actually, for both of us, our least favorite time of year to hit the beach would be during the red hot summer. We're burners, not tanners…I prefer long skirts to bikinis…Aaron likes jeans, not shorts. A snow covered beach is a treat for us. So right after our trip to the post office we took the short walk up to the beach to check it out and get some air. You might remember we did this another time not too long ago, and blogged about it here. 

The last time we were up on the beach it was way more cold and windy…like in the negative digits. Sure, this time was still cold and windy, but it was much more pleasant. It's peacefully desolate. We're always the only two living souls up there. The last time we went it was super windblown, and the wave were so cold that they were forming into slush balls when they hit the sand. This time we barely even got a glimpse of the sand. The snow covers the entire beach, from the dunes right down to the surf. And the snow is all encased in a thin layer of ice, making the entire surface just one giant glazed sculpture.

But being that the water temp was slightly warmer this time, the tide was coming in and grabbing huge chunks of the ice, pulling them off shore one by one. Aaron played up here as a little kid, and said he and his brothers and friends would try to hop rides on the ice chunks. My gosh I would kill my little boy for trying that!

Just to let you know…these are the true colors we saw up there. I didn't apply any post production tricks to the photos. Everything had a magical blue glow, unlike the eery grey tint from our previous visit.

It was just a little while before sunset, so there were lots of great shadows and highlights.

Greetings from three blocks from home! Do you think I can pass this off as a pic from an adventure in the great white north?

This was the extent of exposed sand, which is now probably getting covered again in the current snow/sleet storm that's passing through Jersey.

Here you can see that the snow isn't powdery at all. It's glazed with ice. And if you step very lightly you won't even break the surface.

Ok, so this is how Everyday is a Holiday finishes off an Arctic expedition. You'd think that the photos above of the icy tundra couldn't possibly have occurred within minutes of these bakery pics…but that's exactly how we roll. For us, these eclairs, and cream puffs, and strawberry shortcakes fit right in with a trip to the frozen seashore. You NEED a sweet reward!

These are just a few shots from our local bakery…just blocks from us and the beach. We marvel at classic bakeries like this. It's the whole reason why we paint cakes and cupcakes and other bakery inspired things. A real deal bakery embodies the whole spirit of Everyday is a Holiday. Because every single day these sweets are offered up. Countless varieties…amazing selection. And it isn't a holiday…it's simply Tuesday. But a bakery treats every day like a holiday…putting out displays of fantastical sweets and treats to brighten your day. 

We love St. Joseph Pastries! If you live in the NY/NJ area you grow up with Italian pastries. We actually never even considered that these pastries weren't available everywhere. You just grow up thinking that this is the way everyone does sweets. But if you travel the country you'll soon learn that this is not the case. And New York and Jersey are the homes of the Italian street festival…where you'll find even better stuff than this!

And yeah…there are Cookies. And cookies, and cookies, and cookies! Again, these are here every single day for you. You walk in there and you feel like it's almost sacrilege not to get an assorted dozen or two.

Can you guess what we chose? It was actually really really hard to decide. I'm never any good with food decisions. I'd almost rather you just surprise me. I take way way too long to decide. Aaron will keep turning to me saying "pick whatever."…and I just say it right back to him. But in the end we chose...

A couple of these mini strawberry tarts, which are amazing!

And these mini chocolate frosted eclairs! They're soooo cute!

We mainly eat healthy…but every once in a while we like to reboot the system. ha!

Ok, just wanted to give a little insight into our daily life over here. Hope you enjoyed!

xo, Jenny…and Aaron says hi!

Crazy cold beach day

I know that I'm always talking about how crummy the cold weather is here in Jersey, so the fact that me and Aaron walked up to the beach today and touched the toes of our boots to the freezing cold breakers either makes me look like lunatic or masochist. I guess both are slightly true.

We had just walked a load of packages to the post office, where we also picked up some packages. So we walked back home, unloaded our boxes, and we were just about to plan dinner. But then I said "hey, you wanna walk up to the beach?" And Aar immediately said yes. 

It was a chore getting there. There isn't one stretch of consistently shoveled sidewalk, so you're constantly having to step out into the street where cars are driving way too fast on the icy, slushy roads. 

But when we got up there it was so worth it. All of the trees and bushes were encased in ice. The pics really don't do it justice. It was magical and barren, and the lighting was sorta eerie. Earlier in the day it was snowing, so the sky was still overcast. We were up there right before sunset but like I said, it was overcast, so instead of a sunset there was just a warmer glow to the grey sky in the west. 

We had quite a bit of snowfall over the past week but the snow didn't really accumulate on the beach. It looks like the wind whisked most of it away. Oh boy it was windy up there!

Our view across the bay is of Staten Island, some of lower Manhattan, the Verrazano Bridge, a little bit of Brooklyn, and Coney Island. In the pics the horizon looks a million miles off, but in person we can make out the shapes of houses in Staten Island. The visibility was excellent today. 

The water was super choppy and sand colored from the bottom getting churned up. We saw a boat out there, because ya know, fishermen are crazy like that.

So yeah, the whole top layer of the sand is frozen. When you walk on it it cracks into pieces like this.

And check out these slush balls that the waves make!

Pretty cool.

All of the dune grass was coated in ice.

Just as we were leaving it was past sunset and the street lights had gone on. With light shining through it this ice coated dune grass looked like it was made of copper. In the background you can see some other branches glowing in the light.

Ok, so yes…we hate the cold. But this outing was one of those "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" moments. And it was worth it. First off, when we arrived back home our house felt kinda warm for about an hour. Of course this was merely a mind trick, because now we're totally freezing!

We're about to take our work upstairs where it's warmer, and work until quittin' time (whenever that is). And then since we forgot that yesterday was Sunday, we get to watch a couple of our current favorite shows tonight instead…Girls of course, and Togetherness, which is the great new show from the Duplass brothers.

Ok, that's it for now. Maybe I blogged this just so that I could provide a visual example of how cold it is here. ha!

Hope you're staying warm!

xo, Jenny…and Aaron says hi!