a horstlee holiday

a few years ago my mister and i, my bestie (and former business partner at dear darling) melissa and her husby aaron, and their kids (well this is the first year with multiple kids) began a tradition of celebrating holidays together. though not usually on the actual holiday, we dubbed our celebrations 'horstlee holidays', and each time we gather we put our own unique stamp on holiday celebrations.

this year our christmas celebration ended up happening in mid january (darn those busy holiday schedules!) and we had a wonderful time together in the lee's home town of yakima.

usually, i'm so distracted by all the fun i forget about pictures, but i made a goal to take lots of them this year, so here's our day in photos...

we kicked things off with some delicious tacos and horchata from a local taco stand.

yum!

the mister, aka bill, enjoying tasty horchata

snuggles with one of favorite girls!

after lunch we got started on presents.

zula had lots of fun opening things this year!

what's inside?

helping daddy open his present...

and bill...

and mommy too! what a good helper!

this had to be staged since i had the camera when i opened it for real! 

cool

cuddles with mommy

reading her new book 

effi- what a darling

best pic ever! (taken by the mister, on accident)!

cute vintage card from the lee's to us

the inside- how awesome is that? 

vintage napkins that match my brushe dishes perfectly! melissa made them from a table cloth- she's so talented. 

biggest vintage lightbulb i've ever seen! (shown near a normal sized bulb so you can see just how big)!

zula made us a card this year- she's getting so big

of course, i couldn't resist taking some shots of the lee's always amazing home. they have such fun things and melissa changes things up frequently so it always looks fresh! you can follow all the happenings around the lee house on melissa's blog- re stock.

i realized after the fact that the ball jar was probably a water glass- not part of the decor!

melissa and i even had a chance to do a little vintage hunting together! thanks fellas for hanging out with the little ones!

melissa's finds

some of my goodies

and a few more (some of this will be in the shop soon)

after a few hours on the hunt, we returned home and made fancy drinks and a traditional horstlee dish- nachos! (our favorite).

fun drink supplies

nachos are an artform with us! so good!

the table was loaded with lots of vintage dishes, of course

zula even got her own fancy drink (sans the hard stuff)

before bill and i headed home, for the first time ever, we managed to take a group photo with everyone in it!! we had a little trouble with the timer, and i forgot a tripod, but we did it! i love these photos- so classically horstlee!

can't hardly wait for our next horstlee holiday!