Merry Christmas! + Blogger Secret Santa

Merry Christmas Y'all!

I am wishing you a wonderful holiday filled with family, yummy food, and lots of love. Christmas is my favorite holiday and I cannot believe how quickly it has come this year. It's one of the few times a year my whole family is under the same roof for an extended amount of time. It can get hard to be away from home for the majority of the year, but being back in Texas has been exactly the recharge I've needed after this long semester. 

Once again, I cannot believe how quickly this year has flown. It has been a long, hard year for me and so many people I know. Today, I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw someone captioned a picture with the lyrics to O Holy Night, "the trill of hope, the weary world rejoices." How perfect of a perspective is that for the holiday season this year? No matter what your year has looked like, I feel like everyone is just worn out and weary by the time December rolls around. But rejoice, there is hope! There is always hope in God, Jesus, and the new year. So rejoice in the hope and happiness of the holidays and enjoy the time with loved ones. 

One of the things that helped add some happiness to my Christmas was the Blogger Secret Santa gift exchange hosted by Abigail and Cathleen. These sweet girls (and fellow SC residents) had the fun idea to host a gift exchange between bloggers all across the country. Funnily enough, even though there were girls from all across the country who participated, I sent a gift to and received gifts two other Texas girls! What are the odds?!

I received a secret santa gift from Alison from Beauty & Blazers. Check out all of her links here:

blog // instagram // twitter // pinterest // facebook

Alison is super adorable and crazy talented! Seriously, her photography and hand lettering skills are killer. And her insta theme is perfection. She announced on her blog in November that she will be going through a rebrand in the new year. I wish her the best of luck with it! Here are a couple shots of my gift from her. She did a great job of picking out things for me: I love mugs (too much), the stocking matches my room perfectly, I'm a total sucker for the pretty packaging of the tea box and who doesn't love chocolate? Thank you so much Alison!

Once again, have a wonderful and blessed Christmas!