I wish I could come on here and show you all the lovely decorations and moments of my Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, but I was too caught up in the moment to really document much of the weekend. I did get my sister to take some quick shots of my Christmas Eve dress, which kind of turned out horribly since she and I didn’t notice that my belt was all twisted up. I suppose these few shots are all I can ask for when I rely on the goodwill of my family members to take time to snap a few photos.

I wore my Alex + Ava dress that I purchased on Black Friday, which ended up making me way over dressed compared to my jeans and sweater clad family. This happens to me all of the time. All that we did for Christmas Eve was go out to dinner together and then come back home to play a few games, but I like to take the opportunity when it comes to wear a dress.

Out of all the pictures we took, this was the best, which is really, really sad.  I was kind of looking like a hot mess, but big holidays are always kind of a balance between the warm fuzzies and complete and utter madness, so I’m going to pretend it works. I had worn the dress before with black heels and decided I wanted to try it with gray. I also added the red purse because the pattern was busy enough that I didn’t want to add another color or pattern to the look. Since the other pictures were awful, I dug back out the pictures I took earlier this month that I neglected to post since I didn’t do much with the outfit.

 FYI: Often times my facial expressions in pictures make me die a little inside. This picture was no exception.

Overall I like the dress, but it’s definitely only to be worn when you’re willing to mess with it all night. It’s a real wrap dress, meaning parts can become unfolded when you wish them to remain folded. I also think that sometimes I need to give up on having wavy hair, haha :).

As for the rest of my Christmas weekend, I had a lot of fun being a bad blogger. I got my Kindle Fire which is already nestled safely in a Kate Spade case and I spent a couple hours playing Harry Potter Clue with my cousins. I watched Christmas movies under the glow of my family’s fake Christmas tree and witnessed Lola bouncing on every guest and trying to bop them on the nose (lovely, eh?).

My sights are already set on the new year. 2012 holds lots of exciting opportunities for me, and for the first time in my life, I’ll be leaving academia without set plans to return as a student. I’ll be traveling to Boston to participate in a Fat Studies conference, and I’ll hopefully be able to meet lots of you at FFFWeek in NYC. This girl is growing up! (even if I can’t manage to wear a dress without a belt twisting in every which way)

I want to hear about your New Years Eve plans. How will you bring in the new year? And, of course, what will you be wearing when you do?!