 Life's kind of boring, but I'll go Christmas day. Oh my God, please never let me do that again. Hello everybody, welcome to Vlogmas number five. It is about noon. My fridge is going through some stuff. I don't know, she's breaking I think. It is about noon and Drew is like, he doesn't want to be on camera. He goes, don't look at me. It's going downhill for him for sure. But I think he'll be feeling better in a couple of days. He is like a typical man in which he is sick for 1.5 days and I'm sick for 1.5 months. That's like, and we get the same virus. That's just how it goes. But we did, upon his request, order some Shake Shack for lunch. We got some chicken bites. A burger. A burger, some fries, and a SOTY pop. And then we also ordered something very special to try together in a bit. I am so excited about this. I did this last year on Vlogmas and I think that's the last time I had crumble cookies, but they do like holiday flavors and you know how it is. If you watch me, I am like a sucker for anything holiday related or like special edition flavors, whatever it may be. So anyways, we're gonna have a nice little lunch feast and then we're gonna try some cookies together and have a fun festive day. Just what I love to see a plate of beige food and I couldn't be happier about it, although they did forget my freaking barbecue sauce. But that's okay. Go work, Caleb. How's that feel, buddy? All right, we're finished with lunch and it's cookie time. It's cookie time indeed. If you can hear, Bob's burger is in the background. That is just Drew entertaining himself. So okay. All right. Okay, that's rude. Trying to find a nice place to put you so that things aren't too blocked. I love trying holiday themed things. I love a special edition flavor, like I mentioned. I loved like trying pumpkin things back in the day on YouTube, even when I used to hate the taste of pumpkin. Like I looked forward to fall because I just enjoy trying things like that. So I used to have a crumble cookie cutter from last year and that thing didn't cut cookies for shit. Let me just say. So I'm just gonna use a knife. I'm pretty sure I donated it. So yeah, I guess I'll show you what the cookies look like first and then go over the flavors and then we can taste test them. Okay, moment of truth. Oh wow. So okay, the flavors we have are milk chocolate chip, lemon poppy seed, chocolate raspberry truffle. I think this is called chocolate crumb cake. Okay, and then that means this one is gingerbread cake and then this one is caramel shortbread featuring Twix. I'm gonna cut all these little bits up and then we're gonna try them. They're so big. They're huge. Here I go. I'm gonna do the, I don't really need to taste the chocolate chip one because I've had it before. It's very like, if you like milk chocolate, like very milky flavored milk chocolate, you'll probably like that. But I'm gonna start with the lemon poppy seed because that's the one I'm most interested in. I just noticed it has like a lemon, almost like a lemon curd in the middle. Interesting and it has like an icing on top. That's really, really good. I wanna eat that whole thing so bad. Hold on, I need my water. Next, we're gonna try this chocolate raspberry truffle. This is a work of art. Like it's actually very beautiful. I'm not a big fan of like chocolate and fruit to be fully honest. Like I don't hate it, but I don't know. We're just gonna find out together. Cheers. Like, it's phenomenal. It's like brownie level richness, but. You look really dense. Really good. Okay, this one's chocolate crumb cake. Has some chocolate crumb cake crumbs on the top. But it looks just like a normal chocolate chip cookie. So we'll see. It's delicious. I mean, I don't really know what I taste other than like just a delicious chocolate chip cake cookie, but that is amazing. Okay, this one is gingerbread cake, I think it said. And it even has, it has like a frosting. Then it even has these little sprinkles on the top that are in the shape of gingerbread men, which I think is so cute. It smells so good. I smell like, oh, goodbye. I can't wait. Okay, cheers. Wowie, zowie. If you like cream cheese frosting, that's right up your alley. I'm not like, I'm not anti-cream cheese frosting, but I'm definitely not like obsessed with it, but that is still really, really tasty. I'm a little nervous about this last one, so I'm not the biggest shortbread cookie fan, but we're gonna try it anyway. And like, yeah, just this type of thing. It's got like a shortbread cookie. It looks like it maybe has like nuts in it. I'm not sure. Like a layer of caramel, a layer of chocolate, and then like some twix on the top. This just, this type of cookie isn't really up my alley, but you never know until you try it. So here we go. The texture of the cookie is way chewier than I thought it was gonna be. Usually, you know, shortbreads are like, it's a short type of dough, so it's really crumbly and like, not my favorite texture, but this is really, it's very chewy. And like, so is the caramel and the chocolate on top. It's delicious. I love them all. Honestly, and yeah, the chocolate chip cookie is good, but that's just, you know, it was just part of it. So I would probably rank these exactly in order of how I tried them. So lemon poppy seed first, then this raspberry, or maybe this one, then the raspberry, then gingerbread, then the shortbread, but like, they're all delicious. I can't eat too many of them, or I'm gonna be sick to my stomach, but these are so, so good. If you're near a crumble, I would definitely try it, because these were amazing. And definitely I'm gonna eat more of this lemon poppy seed one though. So good. I'm so happy. Also for the record, I did just take a bite of this chocolate chip one, and it's still delicious. I thought about that after the fact. I was like, maybe some people wouldn't like that I didn't try the chocolate chip one, but I've had it so many times before. It's really, really good. I'm like, actually trying to get myself to not eat more of it because I don't, these are rich, rich, rich, rich. And I don't want to feel sick. But two thumbs up from me. My office, because I'm like in a really crafty kind of mood today. I really want to craft some things. And there's like a couple of things that I've been wanting to do that I've just been waiting until I have some time to do it. So why not do it today? The first thing I want to do is I want to recreate or DIY this like super popular, very expensive, like bow sweater for Christmas. It's by Hope McCauley and McCauley. And it's a like Northern Irish designer, incredible quality, I'm sure. It's made of real wool. So number one, that's a no for me because it's just so itchy, I can't. Number two, it's like three to five weeks to ship. And number three, it's like $550. Like I just, I'm sorry, I can't, I can't. I have nothing but respect for designers. I just simply will not be spending that much, especially something that's like more of a, I don't know, like seasonal thing. You won't really wear it that frequently or maybe you'll get tired of it. So I decided I wanted to create my own version of that by thrifting a sweater on Poshmark. This was literally $10. It was a $10 old Navy sweatshirt that was new with tags. I did wash it and it kind of like, I don't know, the texture isn't the best. But that's okay, we have like a little sweater pillar thing. This really, really helps a lot. So I'm just gonna like go in with that. And then I found some soft and chunky yarn on Amazon. I think I'm gonna like braid some pieces together and make little bows and then attach them to the sweater. I feel relatively confident that I would be able to make the bows themselves because really what I'm probably gonna do, I probably won't make like crochet bows. I'll likely just braid and then tie those braids into a bow. But I'm not 100% sure how I'm gonna attach the bows themselves to the sweater. So if you have any tips in the comments, it might be too late. You might watch later on in this video and be like, oh, what has she done? I feel like at least I wanna get a head start on this and then figure out because this sweater is, you know, the knit isn't as chunky obviously as that like big handmade wool sweater, but it is like relatively chunky and I feel like it's chunky enough to where I could like fit either like a needle or I don't know if there's a crochet needle in this kit. Drew has like a little sewing kit. Or is that what this is? I wish I was livestreaming. I wish someone could tell me. But either way, we will figure it out. I'll probably look some things up. I will leave it to the expert. Also, I have ADHD number one. I feel the need to disclaim that because I may do things in a chaotic way that you wouldn't do and that may make you angry. So if it does, maybe watch a different video but I'm gonna try to be as like non-chaotic as possible but I can't make any promises. Okay, first things first, this thing is freaking full. Ew, in case you didn't know, it's this tool that has like these blades right here but you don't like, it doesn't cut you but it cuts the little fibers. I don't know. And it's just battery powered and you just turn it on and you get to going. So let me show you a little bit of how it works and then we'll see what it ends up doing. Took some stuff out of it, I think. Yeah, sure. Did it do that much? No, absolutely not, but it's okay. Okay, now onto the yarn. I think what I'm gonna do first is before I figure out like how many I want and where I want them, I just wanna see like what one of them is gonna look like before I like invest a bunch of time into it because like, what if it doesn't work out? Let me find my scissors here. I wanna like see sort of what size I would want this bow to be like how long and then maybe I would just take that piece and sort of multiply it in like, I don't know, a few different strands and then braid it. Does that make sense? I don't know if this is the right way to do it so don't come for me. Let's see how this goes. There we go, we have one little bow. I don't know if I'm doing this right. No, I need to stop saying that. Who cares? I just, I know how people get in the comments. But this is just for funsies for me. I probably will wear this like over Christmas break or something when we go home to Arizona maybe. So I think I'm gonna start with like, how thick do I want it? Let's cut. I'll start with three cause you need three for a braid but maybe like nine of these because I don't think two of them will be thick enough. So we're gonna go, I think I'm gonna do three per strand so three strands of a braid is nine. We're just experimenting so let's see how this goes. Okay, so I stopped at six because I feel like this is already getting really thick and so I'm gonna braid it and see how I feel about it. I'm gonna do like a old elementary school trick which is like tape this up here and then braid it down. Is this going to work? Nobody knows, but we will find out. Okay, you know what? I actually am pretty proud of how this first little bow turned out. Like, this is really cute and it doesn't look that different than, I mean, it does look different than the ones on like the actual sweater but I actually think that this is gonna be really similar. Like keyword being similar. But like, look at that. That is so cute. Like I'm so, so pleased with that. I love the contrast. I feel like I picked like the perfect color sweater and the perfect color yarn to go with this. And sure, like is the bow absolutely perfect? No, the way I tied this thing off at the ends here is questionable at best. And then I kind of just like have been finagling around with it playing with the bow. I think I'm actually really happy with the thickness of this. I just have been like zoning out, watching vlogmuses, braiding, like doing something crafty with your hands really is such a good distraction. Especially, I mean, just in general in life if you're stressed out or you have a lot on your mind or whatever but especially if you have ADHD, like hyper-focusing on something, at least for me is just so calming and relaxing for my brain. Like I'm so zoned out. I totally forgot that I was vlogging. I like made this entire thing. So I'm gonna repeat this five more times, I think. And then we're gonna see if we can find a way to attach them to the sweater. I don't know about that. That may be a part two, but we'll see. You can't see this because it's behind me but my feet are up on the ledge. I've got my feet up, I've got my vlogmuses on and I am truly living my best life. I've kind of discovered that when I'm tying these things off, basically what I did was I took one of these strings, wrapped it all the way around and tied it and now I'm just taking like two random strings, tying it to random strings, like a diagonal from each other, tying it so that there's actually like 10 knots in this thing so that it won't come unwound. I'm just trimming off the excess and there you go. And I'll probably like fray these out a little bit just to make it cuter and like I'll end up probably cutting some of them shorter. But yeah, it's looking so great. I am so like pleasantly surprised that this is working out in my favor so far. For any future projects, if anyone has any suggestions for things that are easier, let me know. But yeah, I'm just taking like one of these strands basically, tying it, like wrapping it all the way around and then like tying it on itself, if that makes sense, like looping underneath the strap that I just wrapped all the way around, tying it very tight. It has like a little knot there to keep it secure and like I'm just really going overboard when it comes to tying it because I'm just scared of something bad happening. So then I'm taking like two more, two random strands and I'm tying them like that and then I'm taking like two more in a different section, crossing them over, tying them like that because I just don't want this to come undone and I don't know another way to secure it. And I feel like tying might just be the best option. So I'm just gonna keep tying until it feels right. I've also decided that in the meantime, until I can figure out a way to secure these, I'm gonna take the back of each of these bows so like where the kind of tie shows the most or where I think it's gonna lay the most flat or whatever and I'm gonna put a safety pin through it because I may end up having to safety pin them in the meantime and then I can just pin them from the back of the sweater and they're gonna be so cute. Okay, two down, four more to go, three to four more to go. Okay, so it has actually been like an hour and a half but I did finally get all six of my bows finished and basically I like tied them all off and then I kind of like fluffed the ends a little bit and trimmed them just so they're like cute and poofy and not like individual strings sticking out everywhere. So I just took the seam ripper and like very lightly kind of went over all of the ends so they're like a little bit more poofy and then I cut them down smaller. So now what I'm gonna do is I think I'm gonna put the sweater on and then like kind of map out where I want the actual bows to sit on the sweater. There are a couple of like snags on the front of the sweater so I'm gonna try to position the bows to like cover those but if not, it's no big deal. We'll see how it goes. Let's try it on. I feel like this time of day, like the lighting is just terrible in this room but anyways, this is how much yarn I used FYI. So this is like one untouched roll and then this was the other roll. So I only used like less than half of one of these rolls like a third of it even. So I'm very satisfied with how this is going. The bows have turned out way better than I anticipated but let's put this sweater on and then we can kind of like see where to go from there because I've got no idea what I'm doing. Okay, so here is what the sweater looks like. I'm gonna wear it with like a cute little black skirt like in the photo and then like either some nude tights or some black sheer tights and then some cute black boots. So I mean, this look with the sweats and the socks isn't exactly what I would go for but like whenever you get the point. Okay, got all my bows with the safety pins on them. I'm gonna look on my photo. Tired in me. We're gonna look for reference and just sort of see. So it's kind of like all over the place. So there's no rhyme or reason. There's like one on kind of either arm section and then four on the body. So okay, actually also wanna make sure that I'm not just like putting them over by nipples like this. Although that, that would be a cute Christmas sweater. Dare I say, like that would be kind of adorable but I'm thinking more like boom, boom and then the other two and then the two. Okay, that's fine. I think I'm gonna switch to laying it on the ground and I'll kind of map out where I want it. I think I'll probably turn it inside out and then do it from there. Guys, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. Please help in the comments. Hello, that is freaking precious. Is it perfect? God no, but we're gonna try it on and see. Okay, moment of truth. Now that I'm looking at these, I'm like, wait, is this ugly? I don't know, we'll see. Okay, I don't really know how I feel. I think it's because I'm not like fully dressed up and styling it the way that I would. I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. And if I decide that this is just simply not my thing, I can use these bows for other things. These bows can go on little bags or totes or other sweaters or whatever. So it's not like a complete waste but I mean, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about it. I just know that I don't love it with my pajamas, obviously. But I think I kind of did it. Maybe? Let me know what you think. But be nice to me. Okay, I've got it hanging up and it looks really cute on the hanger like that. So what I think I need to do is just style it properly, which I will do. And instead of probably wearing it home to Arizona for Christmas, where no one's gonna get it, they're not gonna understand. They're gonna be like, what are you wearing? I'm gonna wear it to Alexa's house next week because Alexa Karina and I are having a fun little girl's day next week which you guys will see, I'll vlog it. I think I'm just gonna save it for that. I think I'm gonna wait and the girlies get it. You know what I mean? It's kind of like when I wore my camo to coffee yesterday, like Drew was like, interesting shirt choice. And I was like, thanks, I love it. And then when I got to coffee, Macy was like, oh my God, I'm dying over your outfit. It's so good. And I was like, see, it's like, it's for the girlies. You know what I mean? I do have another little craft that I wanna do. And it's very holiday themed as well. This is just like so festive and fun. So let's keep the vibes going. Okay, next up, we are gonna do a fun little craft. I actually started this yesterday. I started this because it takes a really long time but I'm making a garland out of dehydrated oranges, which is so cool. And they didn't have any burnt oranges, like the actual, what is it called? Blood orange. But I did actually end up managing to like burn some of these a little bit so that they had just like a variation of different colors and stuff like that. They smell phenomenal, by the way. I'm super excited about it. So I'm going to like lay out all of these. These were three oranges, which seemed like a hell of a lot at the time. And now it feels like there's like not any that I can use. I really wanted to make like two or three garlands out of this. Maybe I can do two. So I'm either thinking like the windows in the kitchen would look really cute with a garland or the windows in the living room that like go, like it would go over the real garlands that we have. I'm leaning more towards that. And those are smaller windows as well. So like how many are even here we have? We have like 26 or 27. Like separated in half-ish, but I did get some twine at Target when I went for vlogmas day one. If you watched that you would have seen. It's just like a green twine, which I actually, I was like, at first I was like, oh, I just want like a natural colored twine, but then I was like, this will go way better with the actual like garland that we already have on the windows. So I'm actually kind of excited about it. So okay, I don't actually know how long this needs to be, but it would definitely need to like cover the window. So I'm going to guess, I'm just going to guess. How's that look? Oh, that's fine. I'm going to tie like a little knot at the end here. I have this like, I don't know if this is what this is for. I showed it before, but it's this sort of big plastic needle looking thing. And I don't have another needle that would actually work with this. We're just going to go for it. Okay, let's see what happens. I'm leaning more towards like poking a hole like that and then poking it back through like that, like two holes. I think that's going to be better because it'll hang more nicely. It'll hang flat like this instead of like dangling kind of to an angle if you only do one hook or one hole. There's some drama happening on the street. I just heard someone say I called the police. So I'm going to have to bring this outside and start working on it so I can see what's going on. If this were Drew, that's 100% what he would do. The other day we heard like a minor car accident outside and Drew ran out there. He was like, I'm going to go sweep this sidewalk. He didn't actually, but it was just so funny. He is so nosy and I love him for it. He lives for the drama. When we were back in Arizona for Thanksgiving break, him and his mom one night, we were all sitting on the couch and I think I was like doing something on my phone. Him and his mom were like gossiping about real housewives. I think it was Beverly Hills. And he wanted to know all about, he was like, who is that? Why did they do that? And she was giving him all the tea and it was so adorable and so funny. Fricking cute. I'm obsessed with that. This clip was three minutes and 27 seconds. So that's how long it took me to do this entire thing, start to finish, including threading the needle, tying knots, cutting the string, et cetera. So pretty quick and easy craft. I need to wash my hands though because they are very sticky. Also for those of you who have been asking about the garland from Trader Joe's, it is falling off in chunks. Like it definitely sheds and you just have to be careful, does that look cute? I think it looks really cute. It's just hard to tell on camera right there. Let's try the other window. Okay, listen, it's not gonna be perfect. It's going to be from the heart. This is just like so rustic and nostalgic to me and it makes me so happy. Like I genuinely love this. I'm so glad I did it. See, I'm trying to decide if I should leave it low like that or if I should put it up. Like is that cuter? Maybe, maybe a little bit. I don't know though, like it is kind of cute like that too. Just adds a little something extra. I don't know, it's adorable. It's also getting dark. I picked a bad time of the day to do this but I'm so happy with that. It just makes it like so much more cozy. I'll try it a little close up. Okay, the last thing I want to do before I do the ad for the calendars is I want to wrap this present that I got for Sweet Little Grace which is Sierra's daughter in case you didn't know. And I'm so glad I didn't want to see them tomorrow. I can't wait. It actually ended up working out perfectly that I got sick and wasn't able to go to San Diego last weekend because Sierra ended up getting sick too. So now we're both on the mend. And I asked her if I could get Grace, like just, this guy's dirty just from sitting on the counter. If I could get her just like a tiny little Christmas present and she said yes and that she's really into Disney princesses and Jack Skellington. So I decided to get her this cute little doll. This is called a Disney Nui-Mos and I got a few of these for Drew's niece a couple of years ago and they have interchangeable outfits. So they have like the doll and then all of the clothes that you buy for all of the dolls you can interchange. So like Jack Skellington can wear like a cheerleader costume or a Minnie Mouse outfit or whatever. Or you can take his outfit off and put it on another one. I hope she doesn't have this. I know she's like really into Disney stuff so we'll see. But I don't really know exactly how to wrap this. I just remember like when my mom's friends would come over or family or whoever and they would bring presents. It was the best thing in the world. So I was like, I gotta bring that small Christmas present. I have this leftover scrap of candy cane wrapping paper. I don't know if this is gonna be enough paper but we're gonna go for it. I'm gonna try to wrap it like a piece of actual candy. You know, like this. Like where it folks out on the edges but I don't know. I have this twine from last year that I didn't even know I had which I could have used today but it's like a candy cane twine. So it's perfect. Stop, that is so cute. I love that. Soup's cute. Okay, let's do the other side. Put like a little bow I think. Haven't decided. Yeah, this one's good. This is adorable. Like look how cute that is. All right, it's just me tonight testing this stuff out but we're gonna make it fun. I actually don't have that much time because my camera battery's gonna die so okay. We're doing nine and 10. Holy moly, we're gonna start with our bone mammal jam advent calendar which is the cleanest thing ever. Number nine. Drew's gonna be sad about this one. Drew, it's honey. He goes aww. Ooh, yeah, it's really good. I'll save it for you. Huh? Yeah, I'll come bring it to you. You can have it in your tea. That is so good. Drew's like favorite thing in the entire world is honey. Like that boy eats honey. Like it's his freaking job. Also, it's just the two of us eating this one. So it's fine. Okay, number 10 is nice. Lemon yuzu, love that. Drew is missing the good ones. This has been like the most fun advent calendar because there haven't been any repeats yet. And I love that there's like one pink and it like alternates between pink and red and then sometimes blue. Like it's just so cute. So let's try this lemon yuzu spread. Let's do like a little spoon or something. Drew come from? He said there's honey. You heard honey and you came running? That's really good. Whoa, delicious. There he goes. Just brought me a little bumblebee. He just poured like a full tablespoon of honey. It's really good, huh? Yeah, it is good. Yeah, okay. And then I'm gonna do my sea's candy. So we're gonna do nine and 10. I'm trying to make a run for it. It's fine. It wasn't open, I promise. It's a nutcracker. I think it's solid chocolate. Okay, number 10. Let's finish this off strong. I'm actually sure what this is. I'm really hoping it's one of those like truffle thingies. I don't know what this is, but I remember this from childhood. It's like a nougat. Almost like a nougat type of thing, but it's like, mm. This is the best one, yeah. Does anyone know what this is called? It's not like a nougat, but I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of buttery and it's delicious. Okay, I'm happy with that. It's just opening his, cute. Is it a key chain? I think it's an Anya from Spy Family. That's cute. It's like a little bean bag key chain. Fresh. Anyway, that's gonna do it for us today. Thanks for watching this vlog. I hope you enjoyed just like a nice wholesome day at home crafting with me. I just like needed that. I really needed that. So hopefully this isn't too long or too boring, but tomorrow is gonna be really fun cause I'm heading to San Diego to see Sierra and Grace. The next vlog you see will be a fun little like girls weekend. We're gonna have a blast. We're gonna miss you though. He goes, sure. We will eventually do a trip where we go down there, the two of us for sure. That'll be really fun. But in the meantime, thank you so, so much for watching. Make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. If you're enjoying these vlogmas videos and if you have anything that you wanna see in future vlogmas, definitely let me know in the comments below and I'll see you very soon. Bye. Drew says bye.