 Life's kinda boring, but I'll have a Christmas day. Oh my God, please never let me do that again. Hello everyone and welcome to vlog list number 11. This is crazy, it's our last vlog at home in LA before we go back to Arizona for Christmas and I have a lot to do. It has been a really, really busy work day and full of transparency. I'm feeling a little burnout coming on so this is just gonna be like a nice chill vlog although we do have to run a couple of errands. We have to mail my dad's Christmas present because my dad was actually supposed to come here, I think the second weekend in December and it didn't end up working out with his travel plans and he had some other conflicting things and it honestly worked out for the best because then I got sick and Drew got sick so I was gonna give him the Harrod's mug that I got him when I was in London because when my dad used to go to England all the time when I was a little girl for work and stuff he would always bring me back Harrod's stuff so he would bring me back like t-shirts and he has this Harrod's mug that has the little Westie on it that he's literally had since probably the early 90s and so I thought I would get him another one so that's wrapped up and ready to go and then also, I don't think else I need to mail. I think that's actually it but I also need to get my oil changed because we will be driving five to six hours. God willing, God willing it'll take five to six hours to get home in like two days so we need to make sure that that's done, ready to go and we need to wrap our presents I'm gonna show like a cute little TikTok thing that we saw that I've been talking about but just haven't shown yet. We might open up our little mulled wine that we got from Trader Joe's that we heard people say is pretty good so we'll see what we get up to but definitely some chill time, Christians movies, et cetera at first we gotta get the pouring stuff out of the way so let's do it. Also here is my outfit of the day, very fancy. So dressy, you know what? You just do what you gotta do sometimes you throw on your leggings and you go. I feel like I have been dressing up in really cute outfits but honestly, I'm done. I'm done for the Christmas season. Drew and I today, we were hitting one of those moments in the holidays where we were like, I'm actually ready for the holidays to be over. I'm actually ready for it to be January 1st but we're still really excited so anyway. Okay, let's go. Time to turn it all off. We just got a couple of presents that we had ordered like yesterday, two days ago, something like that and we decided that like one of the things is we were just like kind of unsure with what to get some people in house just like you never know what to get some people. Some people maybe you don't know them that well or just like you don't know what they like, you know, stuff like that. So we decided to go with something that's like local to California or local to LA and so we got quite a few of these compartes chocolate bars and oh my God, they look so good. It's gonna be actually very, very difficult to not eat these all for ourselves. Well we bought some for ourselves. Well, we'll see. So we have a milk chocolate peanut butter cup. We have cookies and cream. That one looks insane. That one does. You had this strawberry shortcake. It has freeze-dried strawberries in it. So it's white chocolate, right? With freeze-dried strawberries. We have a cookie butter flavor. That one's mine. Stop. It is though. This one's called cereal bowl which it's white chocolate with lucky charms. We have salted caramel which is dark chocolate. We have potato chip crisp. So it's milk chocolate with potato chips in it and this packaging is just so cute and also it's good for people who aren't from here. You know, it's like, oh, we brought something back from California, whatever. This one's called the everything bar and it has everything literally. It has cake, potato chips, pretzels, brownies, sprinkles, marshmallows and I think it's all the chocolates as well. Dark milk and white chocolate with all of that stuff. So it's quite literally everything. We got rainbow crunch. I think this one is white chocolate with fruity pebbles. Oh, that one's mine. Yeah. And then cake and sprinkles. This is white chocolate with sprinkles. So it's kind of like birthday cake vibe. And it says Drew's. Oh, it does. It says this one's for Drew. Got it. But like they all just have the cutest packaging and they're so adorable. So we thought that that would make like a good gift in addition to some other things that we got. Food is always the good way to go. I don't, as far as I know, no one has any kind of like dairy allergy. No one's definitely like vegan or vegetarian or anything like that. So we should be good there. And if not, we will just eat them. So anyway, we ordered food for dinner. I didn't want to talk about it. I do. I ordered. So my order was, it's, listen, we're tired, okay? We did cook last night, but we're just tired, okay? And we have a lot to do. So I think the next thing we're gonna do is probably put on a movie. Actually, we're gonna finish our show because we didn't the other night. Then we'll put on a Christmas movie. Raps and presents. It's like a Christmasy show. Our serial killer show. Raps and Christmas presents. Maybe clean this place up. I'm not sure, but definitely like, try to get things done. So wish us luck. All right, we finished our serial killer show. And it was good. That'll get you right in the festive holiday spirit. We did have to turn on the big light, which I am not a big fan of, but we got some wrapping to do. So we need all the light we can get. I hope we have enough paper. I don't think we do. So we'll see. We have extra paper. So in the meantime, we are gonna, you know, we're gonna get some Christmas wrapping done and we're gonna put on, has to be home alone, doesn't it? We haven't washed home alone yet. You can tell by how I say home alone, like how nasal I am still. These sinuses are no joke. Drew has it too. Like it's three weeks since I was sick. It's crazy. All right, here we go. First we gotta turn on our little twinkly lights. We gotta turn on these twinkly lights. We gotta put on our red light. Cute. Yes. This is already bringing me comfort. So the first thing I need to do is, actually this will be okay, but there's a couple of these that I have taped up. And I think it's because it's postal paper and I used Scotch tape when I was like filming my little Q&A. I need to remove some of this Scotch tape because I think it's just the texture of the paper. Like the Scotch tape just isn't strong enough to hold it. So I need to like patch some of these up. We're basically just mostly wrapping the presents for Drew's nieces. And it's gonna be so hard not to just like watch this and not wrap. This is such an iconic movie. Also, the inside of this house is immaculate. Like all the wallpaper and just like how it was decorated. And I've seen pictures of what it looks like now and it's like so like millennial gray and sad. Yeah. As much as I don't wanna be using packing tape for this. It's kind of my only option. Although you can't really tell when you use a small piece. And it's a lot more clear, which is nice. Come on. I get like a visceral reaction to these parents. I hate them so much. Kevin deserved better. So yeah, I think I talked about this before but I saw this thing on Jocelyn Davis's Instagram as well as like on TikTok where instead of using a gift tag for someone's present you just take like a silly picture of yourself or a cute picture or whatever and then write it on the Polaroid. Yeah. Maybe we should take our photos. Change our outfits every... Change costumes every time. Okay, ready? Yeah. I don't know if this is in frame, but we'll see. We'll find out. Next, oh dear God. They're just gonna progressively get more millennial. The passport. Oh, there goes Kevin's. Bye. Oh, that was the end. I need more films. Jerk. Uh-uh. Uh-uh, Uncle Frank. You can get in the **** out of my house if you call my kid a little jerk. Yeah, you call my kid a little jerk. Even if he was me a little jerk. Absolutely not. Kevin needed more support from his family. They're awful. Okay, we're about halfway through and Drew is now creative directing. You lay that way. Okay. You lay. Okay, we'll be together. Okay. Here, I'll scoot down more. I don't know your face. Okay, like that. I gotta make sure it's up over there. What are you doing with your face? I don't know. Okay. We should do one or both laying down like on our stomachs like this. Okay. Here's our photo shoot. We're already starting to write people's names on them. It's just like progressively more unhinged, but just very cringy and very fun, which is like what we're all about. It's gonna be nice and wholesome rapping this year. We have definitely made quite the mess over here. It's actually causing me a bit of stress, but that's okay. We have home alone. I loved the idea of this postal paper in theory because it's just like nice and simple, but it's really difficult to work with and I could understand why it was so much cheaper than like just a brown wrapping paper or something. But I do love the look of it. I think it's really cute and kind of rustic looking. And you know, we tried something else. We tried something different, why not? But don't know a hundred percent if I would recommend it for the future, but it is cute. Okay. So we put the presents away already because we need to pack them, but they turned out really cute. Just very minimal. I probably next year would do some sort of like holly or something else to decorate it a little bit more. It looks really, really cute. So we're happy with that. We're in an absolutely iconic point in the movie. Both of our backs are absolutely crying right now. We're both in genuine pain at the moment. So I think this calls for some mulled wine. Why not? Why not, if you will? I got a little toasty in my sweatshirt. I think we're gonna start off by lighting. Well, I wouldn't like this Santa Claus 26 because it smells so, so, so good. But I also feel like we should light like a holiday candle, you know? What is it? Yeah, can you? I can hear it in the background, but it's currently raining. Happily. We're gonna do our holiday spruce candle because we can only light this for so much longer. I actually think this would be an interesting topic. Like, are you a take your Christmas decorations down like mid-January type of person, or are you like immediate? Because for me, I'm gonna be so honest. I take all of my stuff down on December like 26th. Like, it's immediate. I don't wanna see it. I want nothing to do with it. But it's over. It's just like over for me. I don't know. But I also think it's because my birthday is December 27th. And so like, to me, I just need like a separation. So, okay, we got our holiday candle burning and Drew saw on TikTok that this hark and holy, I think blue wine, I don't know how to pronounce it, but it is German. And you just heat it up and you serve it. It smells like wine. All right, so like. Let's do. Two shots of vodka, lady. Let's heat this up and see what it's all about. So far, it's looking just like wine. I mean, I guess we could spice it up a little extra. We have like new cinnamon sticks and cloves and all that kind of stuff. I do not believe we have any oranges left because I made them all into garlic. So that's kind of sad because like it'd be cute to put some orange slices in there, but we do have like an apple. It's kind of sweet. Is it? I don't really get it's spice. Okay. Very sweet. Not exactly up my alley, but we'll try it. We're going to get our little mold wine glasses. We specifically got these last Christmas or the one before that so that we could drink mold wine in them. So we'll get these ready. Ignore the dirty counter please. Mind your business. Okay, so we will put a couple of cinnamon sticks in here just for funsies, why not? And then maybe I'll just do like we have a couple of dehydrated limes that I'm making. I'm going to make my orange garland because I want to use these for little cocktails. I mean, a little lime in there won't hurt. It's fine. I don't think there will be that much flavor. I'm like, look how cute they look in there. Adorable. Okay. I mean, it looks really cute. I mean, that is really, really cute. Look at that. That's fricking adorable. I'm happy with that honestly. Okay, should we taste it? I know I'm nervous. So sorry if you like this and enjoy it. Drew and I are just like those annoying people that think everything is too sweet. And I used to low key judge people like that when I was younger. Like I'd be like, how do you not like things sweet? I don't understand. And like now. It smells really good. Oh doesn't it? Oh, cheers. It's hot. All right. Yeah, it's very hot. We're both. It's like you were hurting my throat. It's like the spice and the gout. Oh, it's like going in your throat. Okay, still haven't tried it yet. It's very hot, be careful. Okay, good. It's better heated up. Very sweet, but it is tasty. Like I can see how if you were like walking around a Christmas market, like this would just really hit the spot. But we're like in our apartment and they're like, although it is a rainy night, very cozy night for it. If you need another look at what the bottle looks like, in case you want to get something from Trader Joe's and you're like a sweet drink early, go like that a lot. My glasses keep fogging up. Pretty good though. All right, next up on the list of things that we honestly just haven't gotten around to yet for Vlogmas is the gingerbread house I bought. I think I bought this like before December, even started. So it's been sitting there for a while, ready for us to go for it. I'm a little nervous about how long it needs to sit. Range house pieces. Yeah, allowed to drive for 15 minutes. So we'll get it started and then we'll decorate it. The one the Trader Joe's are cuter. I know I do wish I got the Trader Joe's one. It's not after the product. I like the color of these kids. Oh, and they also, they look like lights. Yeah, the Trader Joe's ones were like very pastel. They had doxing cats. And like foxes or something, that was really cute. You know what? I don't think I like warm wine. Okay, that's your prerogative. You know? You know. Do you know what would be really good? Is if we tried our Potswolds gin. Should we do that instead? Yeah, because this is disgusting. I was just trying to be nice. You were being nice. We're actually just gonna build this, let it sit for 15 minutes while we make our drink and then come back and decorate it. Cause you don't wanna see all this, it's boring. All right, we got our gingerbread house right under here. She's drying. She's got her little roof assistance, which actually did nothing. Very confusing. I'm actually finally getting cool enough to put my jacket back on. This thing is so warm. Like maybe a little too warm for a living in Southern California, but that's okay. So yeah, maybe we'll just do like a cute little gin and tonic. Do we have any more of the festive ice cubes? I think there's only like two more, man. That's gonna be cute. Yeah, we're just gonna do like a nice little gin and tonic with our fancy cute gins that we got in the Potswolds. This is literally called Potswolds gin. We got a hedgerow gin, a dry gin, and then we also have Old Tom. This is the classic sweet wood tea. This one's a berry. Made from the finest fruit and berries, blended with our award-winning Potswolds dry gin. So, that's so exciting. Okay, we got our favorite tree. It's one of the best tonics. Definitely the best ginger beer. It smells delicious. Let's do some tonic. Did you wanna do anything else? Like a squeeze of lime juice, maybe? Hopefully we get that lime in there, that'd be good. Squeeze some lime in there. Fancy, fancy schmancy. Cheers. Cheers. That's so good. I feel like if you don't like gin, you wouldn't like it though. No? No, because it has that bitter- It does have like a very medicinal, it has a very medicinal, like herb- Like a really unique, yeah, like herb-y taste. It's really good. It is a little weak, probably because, you know, I use like not even a whole ounce in both of these, but it's really good. But I do wanna try this hedgerow, because it's like fruity. So I guess we'll have to drink these fast. Mom and Dad are wild and crazy. It's eight o'clock on a weeknight. Who are we? All right, while we're sitting here with our drinks waiting, cheers, by the way. These are really good, actually. Do you like it? Mm, that's good. So we figured this is a good opportunity to do the last of the advent calendar. We're doing this like kind of in the middle of the vlog instead of at the end of it, because to be honest with you, we just wanted to be over. And so we're not gonna be here. Yeah, we're leaving, so we're not gonna be able to do it in the next vlog. So we figured we'll do just one big extravaganza. So we have six left in each advent calendar. So we're doing a great big unboxing, but this will be really fun, especially for the jams, because it's like trying so many different flavors at once. So we got all our little crackers here. We didn't get a quince one yet. No. When we finally got like bread to do toast, then we did toast. We honestly liked the crackers better. So we're just going with the cracker. And it's just so much easier. So for our Bon Bon Bon jam calendar, I could not recommend this enough. It was seriously so much fun. There's a new flavor jam every day. Like that's so rare. I'm like some. We'll get to her. We're doing 19 through 24, I think. Yeah. 19. What do we have? Strawberry guava. Oh yeah, I'll like that a lot. What do you want? He wanted to try a quince jelly like so, so badly. And he was like, I swear to God. The first time I ever had it was when we were in the UK. 21 rhubarb strawberry. That's right up your alley for sure. I wonder if this is going to be like, like pie, like a pie filling. You'll be happy about that. 22 orange mandarin passion fruit. Okay, interesting. You will like that one. It's delicious. I will like that one. You're not as happy as it is. I think it's chunks of orange. There's chunky bits. Okay, 23. This is mango raspberry lime. There's like a lot of tropical ones in this. Nice. Mango raspberry lime. Nice. Okay, last one. 24. Here we, Christmas spice. Okay. Lovely. Nice. First up, strawberry guava spread. Definitely smell the guava. Yes, I think. Cheers. Cheers. Hmm. It like goes back and forth between the flavors. Good. There's not going to be much of a review left. Also, sorry this vlog is kind of just like us chilling at home. This is all I have left in me. I'm so sorry. Quince, quince, quince. This is a very important one. Oh yeah. It's like jelly, proper jelly. The one that we had in the UK was like, almost like it was thick, a harder, harder jelly. Cheers. Really good. Mm-hmm. Would be really good on a cheese board. Delicious. It's good. Mm-hmm. Fucking good. Fucking good. Fucking good. Yeah? It's good? Fucking good. Next, we have rhubarb strawberry. Cheers. Cheers. Mm-hmm. Go. Mm-hmm. Yes, ma'am. That's my favorite one. It tastes like a pie. Mm-hmm. Mm-mm-mm. Next, we have orange mandarin passion fruit. I love passion fruit, but I don't know like how I feel about tropical flavored jams. Cheers. Cheers. I don't know. I can't smell it. It's good. It's definitely a citrus. Yeah. I can't like go out of my way to buy it, but it's good. And then this one is mango raspberry lime. Cheers. Mm. Surprisingly very good. Yeah, they have all been good. Mm-hmm. I didn't like the guava one, but I don't, I'm not a tropical, pretty. Really all of them, pretty much. I was like, they're all good. Everyone has been good. Mm-hmm. Last but not least, cherry Christmas spice spread. This one definitely has like chunks of cherry in it. It's a cherry skin. Finale. It tastes a spice. Mm-hmm. Kind of like a little wine. I'm excited like the morning. It's all right. Way to go. So my final, thank God, my finest these can be in your final 30 days in Japan. There we go. Okay, for 19. What's this? Oh, it's Pokemon. Oh, no, oh, that's plants. It's in a Pokeball. Oh, that's so cute. A Parmol. It's Gipple up with, you know, Pokemon. He's in a Pokeball. Ooh. Cute. 20 is? More solid chocolate. Milk chocolate, baby, 21? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, this is from Simukko Garasi. I don't, oh, it's the dinosaur. Cute. Cute. That is so cute. 22. 22. Oh, it's more of the, it's the milk chocolate toffees. That's good. Those are delicious. 23. Milk chocolate, everybody. I have a surplus of milk chocolate. I'll probably use something like cookies or something like that, but what you got? It's a Kirby key chain. Oh, cute. Open it. Open it. 24. I'm just genuinely shocked because seas have so many candies. Oh, that's really cute. Look at it. That is so cute. It's a little bit like a key chain. Yeah, that's it all. Seas have so many good candies and they put like a total of maybe six spools in this and they repeated it a total of four times. That's crazy. It's a coin purse. It's a puppy. So for the next time when we're there, for all your coins. Oh, yeah. Because you need a coin purse when you're in Japan. Yes, that's true. I'll use a lot of, a lot of cash. Cute. 29 is matcha Kit Kats. Yes, matcha. I think they're all matcha. Yeah, they are. The strawberry ones are the best. Yeah, strawberry ones are the best, but matcha is a close second for sure. Yeah, and there's so many. And then 30, 30 is the big one. Look at that. That's huge. I mean, this thing is very expensive, like insanely overpriced in my opinion, but you do get a lot of really quick cash. Oh, it's a Pokemon. It's Fuyuko. I'm gonna put it on the neck. Hell yeah. Look at him. He's the fire starter in the news generation. He looks like he's about to breathe fire out of his mouth. Okay. Nice. That's the end of Advent. It was fun. This was the first year I think that we like dedicated. I mean, I think I did it in almost every single vlog during Vlogmas this year. So I'm actually pretty proud of myself for that. It was fun. The C's one, definitely won't be doing that again, but we totally recommend Balmaman and the 30 days of Japan. All right, we're gonna take a moment, maybe make our second drink and then build our gingerbread house. Also, in case you were wondering what our fridge has looked like throughout the month of December, it's this. We've seen lots of really good recommendations, like thumbprint cookies, cocktails, cheeseboards, et cetera. So we definitely will make our way through these. They're all so cute. For those of you who have been kind of like low key roasting Drew for how mad he was getting about the C's advent calendar is because he like bought it for me and he was all excited because he knows I love chocolate. And we like looked at the back of the box finally and with everything. So it says that there are nine different things on the back of the box. However, a lot of those things, they're like milk balls, milk stars, milk Santa, milk snowflakes. So they repeat it. So we deducted everything that was the same. So they have like milk chocolate toffee chips, dark chocolate toffee chips, et cetera. There are four things. There were literally four things in that entire advent calendar that they repeated six times. That's insane. I just thought that was funny. So, you know, not the best value. They have so many hundreds. Anyway, okay, I'm done. Like I really don't care that much but it's just upsetting. All right, time to have my other 0.5 of a drink because apparently I've had half and I'm already popping off at the mouth. But it's nice because we just make like little half drinks with these baby gin bottles. So it's perfect. Okay, for our next drink, I'm gonna do, I forgot that I had two left of these little ice cubes that I made. That just made, that made the worst. You know what I'm talking about? Is that like a neurodivergent thing? I don't think so. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me. But I froze cranberries and rosemary. So this is a very icy cocktail. And then I'm gonna do half of this hydrogen. I'm gonna make the other half for Drew, but I wanted to show you what mine looks like. Ooh, it smells nice. Let's pour her over the top. Wow. It's more of like a amber color than I thought it would be. Look at that. Very festive. Very festive. All right. Yeah. I'm gonna do way less tonic this time because it was just a little bit diluted. I'm just gonna do like a little splishy splash on top. Cheers. Cheers. To Christmas. Really good. It almost sounds like... It's like spiced. Yeah. Almost like a cranberry-ish. Yeah, it's just like really tart and really good. I like this one even better. Ooh, it's strong. It is good. You go Cotswolds. I want to go back to the Cotswolds so bad. That girl on TikTok. It was a surprise. We're in the same spot. So now it's time to do the decorating of the house. The roof or the chimney is sort of about to collapse. I think what I want to do first is some Christmas lights. Right? We got to do like a little... Don't you feel like that's... Finding the best place to start again. Yeah. Cute. All right, lovely. Now we can put on some lights. Do some like little like little icicles and things. Yeah. It's not going great for me in the icicle department. But I'm doing my best. I mean... I've definitely done worse. And I've done better. How's the frosting? I was just making sure it was safe for you. It smells good. You want some? No, I'm done. You're not really a frosting guy. Big frosting guy over here. Me. We can do gumdrops like lining the walkway. A little path? Yeah. Love that idea. Christmas treat on this side. All right, here we have it. Here is the finished 2023 gingerbread house. It's definitely not our best work, but it's also not bad. So we have a little lighting feature on the side here. We have the very droopy peppermint candies that really want to fall off at any given moment. We got some icicles. We have a little wreath. We have a front door with a snowy path, with a gumdrop path, really. And then a tree forest. So I think it looks adorable. It's gonna sit here the entire time we're in Arizona and just celebrate Christmas alone. But thank you so much for hanging out with us today for vlogmas number 11. It's crazy. Like it went by so quickly, but at the same time it feels like I've been doing vlogmas for three months. So I appreciate you. I know you don't care if there are like slow days or chill days or whatever. And actually some people prefer days like that. But yeah, I just felt like resting and recharging a little bit. We have one more vlogmas to go and we will be leaving very, very early in the morning to drive back to Arizona. So you'll come along on that journey with us, I think, hopefully. And then we will spend Christmas with our family. I can't believe it. It's going by so fast. So we will see you very soon for vlogmas number 12. Literally nuts. Bye.