Gingerbread Houses & Christmas Lights

Another yearly tradition that Sal and I have been doing these past five years is making gingerbread houses when Christmas approaches. While our houses had come out less than perfect in the past - okay they fell apart and were unworthy of any gingerbread house contest, this year, we tried making it differently. Instead of putting it together first and then decorating, we decorated first and then put the pieces together. Don't follow the directions on the box - it's like they want you to fail! We split the pieces up and worked on it together, asking each other how things looked and laughing when we couldn't get the chimney on. So while our house looked great, the chimney may have ended up halfway down the roof. I have to admit though, this has been our best house - so far!

We also love to grab a cup of hot chocolate and drive around looking at Christmas lights. The amount of lights we see, however, has drastically declined. I'm not sure if families are trying to save money by not putting Christmas lights up, or if they're just not in the spirit, but the towns that we thought for sure would have them up, were dark and deserted. Luckily enough for us I came up with an idea the week before - come up with a playlist of 10 songs that reminded us of one another. Sal thought it'd be perfect to share our playlists with each other during the ride, and that's exactly what we did. So instead of being annoyed at how many lights there weren't, we held hands and smiled at each other, while we listened to our playlists. It was fun trying to guess how many of the same songs we had on our playlists, and it was interesting to listen to the lyrics and really understand why we chose each song. Gingerbread houses, Christmas lights, and romantic playlists - Talk about a perfect night?!