Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of my lovely readers! I'm writing this post on Christmas Eve. Every Christmas Eve my family goes to Mass at 4, eats homemade lasagna, and then the rest of the night is filled with relaxing, opening one gift, and preparing the cookies for Santa and the turkey stuffing for tomorrow. It's our first christmas in our new home. I'm super excited to wake up to Christmas Day in a new home and to have all of the family over to celebrate!

Now, for my outfit.

Watch my video on this.

However my dress, socks, and tights are from Forever 21. My shoes are from TJ Maxx. My necklace is from a boutique in Hawaii. 

Now for my makeup. I used a Revlon bb cream, BH Cosmetics eyeliner, Benefit eyeshadow, Bare Essentuals lipstick, and Physicians Formula concealer. My eyeshadow and blush are from Studio Gear Cosmetics. If you're interested in buying their Holiday Palette or any other products from http://studiogearcosmetics.com/, use my discount code "DOLLAR13" for an extra 10% off!

Now for the yummiest part of the day, the fooood! First, I made white chocolate peppermint popcorn. The only "clean" part of this was that I used "Skinny Pop."

here's where I got the recipe.

The second sweet treat I successfully made was crinkle cookies. I always wondered how Panera got their red velvet ones to look just like that. Now I do! (Psst, the secret is powdered sugar.) They came out absolutely lovely. Check out the recipe here!

I also roasted up some green beans and sweet potatoes with goat cheese!

Lastly, I'll share a bit of what I got. I got a crosley record player, a wireless printer, an "up" activity tracker, a jacket, a cardigan, some trail mix, a pilates DVD and a pilates ball, and a Cape Cod alex and ani bracelet. I'm so incredibly happy and blessed!

Aaaannd one last note: post-christmas shopping! I scored some amazing deals. I've never been so content with my purchases and how I budgeted my money. I suggest going in with a plan, know what you want and how much you want to spend on it. That's just what I did at lush and I got the price I wanted. I'd like to highlight the amazing fringe and floral cardigan I scored at Forever 21. It was on sale for $20.99! It seems like velvet and fringe and going to be huge trends coming up. Here's a preview - however watch out for a huge haul of this on my youtube coming up!
However we all know that besides the gift of giving and getting, Christmas is about being renewed. Whether your are religious or not, take this time of year to renew yourself in your heart and your head. Reflect on the past year, take a deep breath, and think about how you can better yourself in 2014. A gift is not all about how much you spent on it, but whether it came from your heart to their heart. Have a great day, holiday season, and year everyone!

As far as blogging goes, I'm a gift guide virgin. I've never done a gift guide post because I feel like my advice wasn't good enough. However, I thought of an interesting angle to attack this post at. I used some inspiration from how I shop for myself and others.

When shopping, the two things I look for are a good price and it's functional. My philosophy on gift giving is to make sure the recipient will actually use it, otherwise it's useless. I always take things that I'm using that someone gave to me as a gift with special care. Hopefully your friends and family will do the same thing, with the help of this guide. To ensure this, I'm going to give suggestions based on personality types. If you want to give your bff who wear denim cut offs and listen to underground music something that's her cup of tea but you have no idea what, here's where I come in!

1. The Musical Type

This can mean anyone who either plays an instrument, sings, goes to countless shows and concerts (me), or has over 3000 iTunes songs (sadly, also me). These are general suggestions however you can customize it to their own favorite bands and artists!

1. Vinyls 2. Headphones 3. iHome  4. Band Tees

2. The Sporty Type

There's always your friends that are very athletic or like sports. They're always trying to blend athletic wear with street clothes. They're the ones that drag you to the gym. Show them you care about their interests!

1. Cold Compression Shirts 2. FitBit Activity Trackers 3. Team Gnomes 4. Team Jerseys 

3. The Techy Type

We all have those friends who know exactly what's new and next when it comes to tech. If they have the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 5c just came out, they're trading it in right away. Here's some ideas for them!

 1. Big-sized Memory Cards 2. Best Buy Gift Card 3. USB Adapters 4. Flash Drives

4. The Adventurous Type

Some of our loved ones just want an experience, simple materials things just won't cut it. So if it's an experience they want, give it to them!

1. Travel Guides 2. Concert Tickets 3. Plane Tickets  4. Luggage

5. The Fashionable Type
This is where I satisfy all you readers who wanted a typical "gifts for him/her" section. These are all under 100$ and 100 % stylish to satisfy your friends who are aways on trend!

1. Kendall and Kylie Clothes 2. Killer Shades 3. Neff Headgear 4. Button-Ups

6. The Funny/ Random Type

We all know that there are a lot of useless but hilarious gifts out there. They always amuse me as they line the que in a store or catch my attention at the check-out. When it comes to online shopping, websites like Urban Outfitters have a 5$ section dedicated to these types. I found some gems!

1. Sriracha To-Go Water Bottle 2. Cat Ornament 3. Gemstone Flask 4. Finn Wallet

Wow, that was tiring to make. However I did it to hopefully make your holiday shopping a little bit easier. I hope this helped. Happy shopping!