This weekend was full of two things: studying and a ton of holiday-themed activities.


Christmas has come to my apartment

My finals are coming up this week, and I'm more than a little nervous about them. It's been a long time since I've done the cram for finals thing, and this weekend has been a not-so-nice reminder of how much it still sucks six years post-college.


Studying...

But, I've tried to balance the suck of studying with lots of fun holiday activities -- including decorating gingerbread houses and running two holiday 5Ks.

Friday I got a last-minute invite to attend a blogger gingerbread house decorating event at Make Meaning in downtown Bethesda. Emily and I had originally been planning a low-key Friday night of movie watching since we had a race the next day, but we threw those plans out the window and opted for some crafty fun.

I don't know the best way to explain Make Meaning other than to say it's a giant place where you can let your creative side run wild. You can walk in by yourself or with a small group of friends and tackle any number of fun projects, like making soap or candles or ceramics, or you can rent out space for a group for a special project, as was our gingerbread decorating situation.

When Emily and I got there on Friday night there were about six long tables lined with gingerbread houses just begging to be decorated.



There was also a table overflowing with every kind of candy or gingerbread house decoration you could ever imagine.



We each grabbed our bowls and filled them to the brim with candy and got to work decorating. I wasn't sure exactly what direction I wanted to go with my house, so I grabbed a little bit of everything.



We had about two and half hours to decorate, which seems like a ton of time, but I couldn't believe how fast it flew by! Decorating gingerbread houses is apparently hard work!


Photo credit: jhphotography

At the end of the night, I was really happy with the way mine turned out!





Emily wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her house either, so she mixed and matched a little bit of everything.


Yes those are trees growing out of the roof!

And when we were all finished, the staff at Make Meaning nicely wrapped them up for us so we could attempt to transport them home without making a mess!



Luckily we decided to drive to Bethesda so we didn't have to attempt taking our works of art on the Metro. I can only imagine that would have been a disaster.

We got back to my house with our houses still mostly intact, and we got everything ready for the Ugly Sweater 5K the next morning. This was my outfit:



Since this post is already plenty long, I'll go ahead and save the recaps of the two 5Ks Emily and I ran this weekend for another day.