Welcome back guys!!! Did you enjoy your holidays? Mine were quite different this year. Mr. Marcus, Davin and I, actually, celebrated Christmas and New Years all by ourselves, here in Poplar Bluff, sans any family members. This was our first time 1. not spending Christmas with either sides of our family and 2. not bringing in the New Year as a couple minus Davin. Now, this is not to say that we didn't have an amazing holiday season. I promise you, it was great. Just a little different is all. And since things were so different, we decided to go ahead and keep the different theme going.

We didn't want to have the traditional Christmas dinner, so I whipped up the following:

• a nice salad (I like to use the Dole Spring Mix lettuces, dried apricots, chopped walnuts, Havarti cheese, and a homemade dressing of extra virgin olive oil, honey & balsamic vinegar...this is really really really good with strawberries and grilled chicken if you want to make it a meal all on its own)
• Cod & Crab cioppino (I got the recipe for this seafood soup here), a couple of Cornish rock game hens with rosemary & garlic roasted potatoes (recipes for those are here and here)
• and then I finished this meal off with a delicious hummingbird cake (OMG...this cake was so good. Get the recipe here).

This food was so good, even Mr. Marcus couldn't help but tell me that he was impressed with my skills. Boom! Best Christmas gift ever! I mean, almost.

Anyway, we spent most of our off days lounging around. Davin got some major outdoors time with his daddy. We did find our way to a big high school basketball tournament that was going on in town. I took some time out of my busy lounging schedule to clean, take down Christmas decorations, tackle a couple projects (more on that soon) and even cut my hair!
BEFORE:
I know you guys are just loving my stank/FIERCE face. I'm really giving it to you in this one. : ) Well, I'm loving my new cut. And in my usual fashion as an adamant DIYer, I did it all by myself...hence the curls you see above (tip: its a great way to hide any imperfections!). I was a little nervous, though, when I thought about wearing my hair in it's "natural" state. Trust me when I tell you, blunt bangs + rotini pasta sized curls = a recipe for disaster. But, I decided to at least give it a test run. So, after a good wash and a set of twists later, here's what I got:


Not bad right!?! I kinda just let the curls fall where they wanted to and then pinned the right side up above my ear. What's even better is that this style lasted me about tree days with little modification needed; meaning, it took me less than three minutes to do my hair for those three days! Loved it!

So what did you guys do over the holidays? Did you spend it with family? Go anywhere fun? Update your look? Tell me all about it!

Xoxo,
Coco