christmas is our favorite time of the year. we would normally spend all of december doing our favorite christmas activities. (so many activities!) unfortunately this year due to both a wedding at disney and a funeral, we were out of town for 2 of the 3 weekends between thanksgiving and christmas. so we did what anyone else would do. fit everything christmas into one weekend. right?
we… baked christmas cookies, rang bells for the salvation army, went to the christmas display on the 8th floor of macys, did all of our christmas shopping, and went to the holidazzle market. it was truly a christmas marathon and we loved every second.
after cramming all of that into just a few days, tony and i agreed that (if possble) we want to spend every december in minnesota. it’s a time when a lot of people go on vacation and head somewhere warm, but we love minnesota at christmas so much that we don’t want to miss a minute. obviously things happen and we know that this won’t always work out. but if we have it our way minnesota, we want to go on a date with you every december for forever. sound good? it’s a date!
we spent 2 hours on saturday bell ringing for the salvation army. neither of us had done this before, and we thought it would be fun to try. this year we have been so so blessed, and we wanted to give back even if it was in a small way. i think this will be something we do in the future, because we had such a good time! i’m not going to lie, when i was searching through the list of locations, i was looking for anywhere indoor. we ended up doing the south skyway entrance of the downtown macy’s. this was ideal. see prime macy’s entrance location below.
i could not get over these tiny bells. they were just the cutest things.
we then did my absolute favorite christmas thing. the macy’s 8th floor display! the display used to change themes every year, and it was so fun to go and see what they had dreamt up. unfortunately for the last several years, the display has remained “a day in the life of an elf.” it is very cute though and i still love going every year.
we finished off our day at the holidazzle market. we went last year and thought it was just okay. this year they made some amazing improvements so we thought we would give it another go. they moved it to loring park (more space!), made it free (score!), and added more activities! they definitely won us over and we will be returning!
the food there is amaze. the highlights include pierogis, mini donuts, and potato pancakes. i also had a hot sociable cider works cider. to die. lipstick on the cup. always lipstick.
just an extra cute shot of my husband. 🙂