December 2016 Favorites

I tend to post my monthly favorites on the last day of a month or the very beginning of a new month, but seeing as how December is the last month of the year and tomorrow I’ll be looking back on 2016 as a whole I figured today I should talk about just December.

My monthly favorites for December revolves heavily around all things Christmas, because naturally a lot of the things I did, ate, etc. this month dealt with the holiday.

First up, I have 2 candle favorites this month. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the 3-wick candles from Bath & Body Works and when they have their sales I definitely take advantage. The deal is too good to pass up! This month I burned Vanilla Bean Noel and Dashing Through the Snow. Vanilla Bean Noel is a seasonal staple at the store, but I’m not sure about Dashing Through the Snow. I picked up multiples of that last winter because I loved the scent so much so this one is from last year. Described as a mix of “green balsam, wintry musk, and the jingle of sparkling citrus” is there any wonder why I would love it so much?

Next up, Christmas Cookies! I have been making Christmas cookies from scratch since I was a little girl. I used to go to my aunt’s house every year and spend the day there making cookies. As I got older I would make some at my aunt’s and some at home with my mom. Then, as I got older and after my aunt moved to Florida, my mom and I do all the Christmas baking and we really go all out making over a dozen types of cookies from scratch over the course of a few days. Usually, we try out a new one every year sometimes as an addition to our cookie list and sometimes to replace something that didn’t quite work out the previous year. I wrote about some of the cookies last year in a post here.

This plate shows a majority of the types of cookies we made this year. There were one or two more that we made after I took this picture. And if you look at the photo above with all the sugar cookies laid out you’ll notice large containers in the background. Those are all filled with cookies too! Today I have just a few left since we give so many away to friends and family during the holidays. We even mail a package of cookies down to my aunt in Florida!

To continue with the Christmas theme of this favorites post, I listened to the Pentatonix Christmas Album quite a bit this month to get me in the holiday spirit. I mentioned it sometime last year, but their version of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” is still one of my all time favorites!

Next, I saw a lot of good movies this month – mostly on Netflix – like Anthropoid and The Imitation Game, as well as some good series such as The Crown which I wrote about yesterday. And while I loved all of those the one to make it into my monthly favorites is Rogue One which I absolutely loved and raved about here.

Lastly, my favorite song of the month has been OneRepublic – “Let’s Hurt Tonight”. It’s such a powerful song and so catchy. I’ve loved OneRepublic for a long time but this is the first song in a while that I haven’t been able to stop listening to from them and subsequently their whole album. I truly believe Ryan Tedder and the rest of the band are musical geniuses.

That concludes my December 2016 favorites! Tomorrow I will take a look back at 2016 on the blog.