We Passed Through The Seven Levels of the Candy Cane Forest!

One of my favorite all time parties of the year were always the ugly Christmas sweater parties.  Since becoming Momo, I haven't been invited to a Momo ugly Christmas sweater party so when Andy and I started dating, I was so pleased that he eagerly agreed to wear some ugly Christmas sweaters to the Singles' Ward Christmas party.  And so our lil tradition began...

2009: our first Christmas together, we had just begun dating and after failing at the Goodwill stores and not wanting to buy anything expensive, we decided to make our own sweaters ugly with the aid of glue, ribbons, glitter, bells, and foam.  Success was ours!

2010: was a repeat of 2009... cuz nobody saw our outfits from the family ward so why waste a good thing.  Haha.  We recycle whenever we can!

2011: we went bowtie crazy with shirts we didn't care too much about.  This was an old work sweater that I didn't plan on ever wearing again, the candy cane stripes were from an old polo Andy had that was too big, and the red poms were from a stash of craft stuff I had.  

2012: "Can't we just buy Wal Mart stuff that's ugly?" I asked Andy.  "No," he said, very determined, "then it won't be as tacky and original as if we made it ourselves."  Okay.. so here we went.  Red t-shirts, green felt, black felt, some bells, and gold glitter puffy paint.  Pretty easy.   I wanted to be green elves like Buddy the Elf, but there were no perfect green colored shirts.  

Jordan was by far the cutest in the shirt.  He looked absolutely ADORABLE in it!  He kept picking at the bells and eventually, successfully detached the middle one.  A kid commented, "you guys look like strawberries!"  Oh yeah... maybe I should have made the collars the same sized triangles, but that I had to improvise with the amount of green felt we had so ....

Can you see baby #2?  I'm starting to show.  But really I just look fat and not pregnant yet.  This stage is the worst.  ..!