Best of 17 Apart in 2013

With each year end, we find ourselves wondering how the time flew by and love the chance to look back through each of the adventures, accomplishments and life changes that took place — realizing we really have come a long way over the past 12 months. In keeping with our end of year tradition, we're taking a stroll down memory lane to share a roundup of the most popular posts we published over the past year.

Christmas 2013: Gifts, New & Old

Amidst all the holiday festivities Tim and I made a deal with each-other not to go crazy with gifts this year. We've been gifted with many blessings this year — good health, being surrounded by family and friends, a new career path for Tim and finally being able to call it our first Christmas as a married couple. In an effort to have something to unwrap on Christmas morning, I think we both came up with meaningful ideas for one another we thought would be fun to share here on the blog.

Merry & Bright: Our 2013 Christmas Decorations

It feels like the holidays came in and are almost over like a whirlwind this year! We've been spending lots of time with family and friends — even getting a chance to see lots of folks from out of town along with eating all of our favorite holiday foods and taking in the sights and sounds of the season. Since we haven't had much time to stop and share all the details of what's been going on around here, we wanted to share a few bits and snaps we took over the past few weeks while getting everything out and decorated.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and happy holiday season this year from our family to yours. Basil is very excited to open his stocking later today — we're making him wait until all the kids are here.

Peace,
Mary & Tim

Behind The Scenes: Christmas Dinner with Relay Foods

Since it's Christmas week, we couldn't think of a better time to share the final shots from the holiday meal I had the opportunity to plan and cook with Relay Foods. We already shared the table decorations and place settings we came up with to set the scene, so I'm excited to finally share all the recipes.

How To: DIY Hanging Holiday Card Display

We've been decorating away since picking up our Christmas tree last weekend and still have some finishing touches to tackle this weekend. We're looking forward to sharing how we set everything up this year, but first wanted to share the DIY idea we came up with for displaying our holiday cards this year.

Printstagram Gifts & Giveaway: Personalized Memory Game for Kids

Today we've been looking forward to sharing the creative gift idea we came up with for our smaller nieces and nephews, plus we have an exciting giveaway for you so you can do the same!

Weekend Basics

It was another jam-packed weekend full of festivities for us — I'm sure you can relate this time of year! We were both glad to get back home from our week up in NYC and get a chance to snuggle with this guy (who is still recovering from his extended stay in doggie daycare):

It was our last trip up to the city for the remainder of this year and it was such a beautiful, albeit cold, time of year to take in all the sights and holiday decorations. We did get a chance to get all gussied up for the Etsy holiday party, so will look forward to sharing a few pics on the blog soon.

How To: Holly Holiday Place Settings

Yesterday we left off with some of the decorating preparations we made for the holiday meal recipe photo-shoot Tim worked with Relay Foods to create. Just as we did with the Thanksgiving meal details, today we wanted to share how we changed things up a little to create festive holiday place settings.

Decorating with Holly for Christmas Dinner

Last week we had the team behind Relay Foods come back to the house to shoot the Holiday meal I'd been planning recipes and cooking for. We had such a good time setting up the table for the Thanksgiving shoot, we wanted to do it again, but with more of a Christmas feel to change things up. One note as you read this post — I am the cook and chief bottle washer. Mary, on the other hand, has the creative vision for table settings and design. I do the heavy lifting and photographing all the while letting her know, that looks really good hunny as the setting is created. We like the idea that our different strengths complement each-other so well, especially when it comes to things like this.

Weekend Basics

Whew, it was truly a weekend filled with holiday festivities for us! As you know, we started the weekend off with a visit to the Richmond Christmas Parade...

Rudolph in the House...Almost

Hope everyone is having a wonderful start to this December weekend! It's really chilly here in RVA, but not cold enough to stop us from donning our winter coats and taking in 2 exciting local holiday events going on today.

We already popped across the street over to Broad Street to catch a glimpse of the Dominion Richmond Christmas Parade. We saw Rudolph peeking at us from between the houses across the street, telling us we needed to come pay him a visit. Can you spot him above?

How To: Portable DIY Natural Home Scents

Tim's been in the kitchen and dining room the better part of today (and week) prepping, cooking and staging food for the Relay Foods holiday meal spread — it's looking and smelling so good around here! You might remember, he'd worked with them on the Thanksgiving meal and was eager to create something totally different for the holiday meal, so stay tuned for more on that front!  Knowing we'd have some foot traffic in the house today for the meal photo-shoot, I wanted to make sure the house was smelling like the holidays (not that it really needed anything further than the leg of lamb Tim had roasting in the oven)...

Find 17 Apart on Instagram — Finally!

That's right, we finally got with the program and set up a 17Apart Instagram account! If you haven't had enough of us already, we hope to share even more snaps from our little world. Who knows, Basil might even post from time to time. For our first post, we pieced together a bunch of mismatched antique typeface letters we'd found at an antique shop going out of business on our last trip up to Harrisonburg.

And while we're in the picture-following spirit, you can find and follow Tim's or my own Instagram accounts if you fancy! Are you on Instagram? Let us know so we can follow along with your world as well.

Long Weekend Basics: Thanksgiving 2013

Wow, is anyone else feeling like December has crept up on us out of nowhere? We hope everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday — we both took a little extra time off to make for an extended weekend break and are feeling relaxed and re-energized to tackle the busy festivities ahead. Today we wanted to share a little recap of our Thanksgiving day and some of the other happenings from our long weekend!