"I just like to smile; smiling's my favorite!"

Kevin McAllister would be proud

I couldn't resist a blog party without sharing some of the funny things I've come across in the past few weeks with Christmas humor. I love a hilarious take on Christmas-- like a lousy but awesome 90s movie. :) Here's a few of my faves.

My sister sent me this and I about died.

"I know him! ...I know him!"

Holiday Tattoo Man

SO. SO. Funny.

I just... I can't. HA!
For 2013, we're planning to do an "awkward family photo" for our Christmas card. It's going to be epic.

Hope that brightened your day!
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Comment Chat: Favorite Holiday Traditions!

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This post is going to be a little different. I wanted to have a space for everyone to share their favorite Holiday traditions that go on in your families! Everyone has at least one and it's fun to hear how everyone celebrates the holidays differently. I know this sounds so cheesy but after I married my husband, I realized how different familes are in the ways they get in the spirit and get their "festive" on! I wanted to share a few of my own and hear from you all!

My family is huge on traditions and togetherness in everything we do, so we have several:

*Every year when we put up the tree, we would listen to the Alabama Christmas album. Now any time I hear the song "Thistlehair" around the holidays, I get a really nostalgic feeling. :)

*Santa always brough mine and my sister presents of our own, but there was always one gift for us to share and it was always a board game. We LOVED family game night and the gift game from Santa every year was a huge deal. These days, Santa still visits us at ages 22 and 25 respectively, but now he brings us a Cricut Cartridge for scrapping to share instead. HA!

*My Nana has this VERY vintage paper reindeer mobile that she hangs each year and I love it so much. It's got Santa's sleigh and all the reindeer that are pinned together with thread and brads and they cascade down into this paper mobile shape. Beautiful. Such a neat piece of family history! I secretly hope I'll inherit someday.

*For about a period of 5 years, my Mom lost our traditional Christmas stockings that we always used. It was slightly tragic and the strangest thing. We couldn't find them anywhere! She didn't want to buy more because those were THE STOCKINGS and it would be a travesty to replace them. So instead, she instituted a replacement solution: everyone go throughout the house and find a reasonably sized "container" to serve as your surrogate stocking for the year. We came back to her with everything from galvanized buckets to easter baskets. So much fun. We finally DID find them, weirdly enough, but those few years were hilarious!

So... what are some of your traditions!? Use the comment section as a chat space to share!
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Colors of Fall

I've had a distinct color palette this fall! Do you find this happening to yourself too? I'm talking about in my wardrobe, crafting, decor choices, all of it. It was funny because when my friend Tori and I went shopping recently, we each had an arm-load of clothes to try on and they were all from a very specific palette without even meaning to do it:

The brights in this palette I've been using for pops of color in an otherwise neutral palette. I might wear some big coral colored earrings with a white and brown outfit. Something like that.

But yes! These are the colors I've been pining over! It's fun to document the colors that make you tick for the seasons of your life. I can't wait to see what my brain picks out for the next season!
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Volume 1

As I've been cleaning out my computer and transferring old photos over to my external hard drive, I've realized how very many INSTAGRAM photos I have and I needed a way to document them! I used the new Pictogram style photo book from Shutterfly to create Vol. 1 of the Davis Instagram Collection!

This review, my friends, is a rave! I got our photo book in the mail last week and I LOVE it! I must have looked through it 100 times since we got it.

The quality is amazing and the resolution of the images is great! I got the 8x8 hardback with glossy pages-- great choice.

I went really simple with this photo book. I took my best-of-the-best Instagrams from the pst birthday year (since Oct. 31 2011) and arranged them by theme. I started to go straight chronological, but I thought it would be better to group them by event/activity.

For text, I kept it really simple with easy captions about each photo basically describing the photo and where/why it was taken.

The photo book designer allows you to choose a style and then customize all the layouts, backgrounds and embellishments.

I just wanted to share the way the book turned out and encourage everyone to check them out! They're super affordable, incredible quality, and totally worth it! I'm so excited to collect enough photos to get volume 2 made. I love that someday we're going to have a little library of our real life in photos: unedited and amazing. :)

<3 E **Note: I wanted to clarify that I'm not being paid to write this review, I got this photo book from Shutterfly.com on my own and loved it! (plus I obviously intend to get many more!

GITDS gets Social

It's finally happened: Glow-in-the-Dark Soul (GITDS) has hit Facbeook!

I decided due to our expanding readership, it might be fun to create a Facebook page for this blog. Since it has been active, it's been a great opportunity to update readers on new posts and an easy forum for submitted requests. Here's what you can expect from the new Facebook page:

*alerts about new posts
(*for those without a Reader app, it will be easier to see when I posted)
*unique companion photos to published posts
*an easy way for readers to submit ideas and requests for the blog
*extra snippets of things I love shared on the page
*better communication with ME!
*polls and reader surveys
*a way to share and recommend good posts with friends
*a forum to get to know fellow readers and see what other blogs they're following
*other fun and exclusive content for my facebook followers!

So to get the Glow-in-the-Dark Soul scoop on YOUR Facebook feed, just log in and CLICK HERE to "LIKE" us!

 Thank you to all my readers, old and new, for all the support and creativity you've provided here on this page since 2007! It's been such a great experience and I'm ready to crank it up a notch! Can I get a "Wooot!?"

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Kilt Klash

Here's a treat for you-- my husband in his kilt. His family is VERY Irish and they celebrate to the max every year. They go to Irish festivals throughout the year as well. This is only one of Ian's kilts! His boss told him he could wear it to work yesterday, so he wore it with his tennis shoes and work polo! HA!

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Urgent: Project Hard Copy.

I was at home a few days ago for an eye appointment which gave me time to take another pass at the randomness that is my teenage bedroom. I'm trying to slowly go through everything and get it cleared out. Well I found a box of my old journals from high school and started looking through them. I started keeping a daily journal the FIRST day of freshman year of high school. When I went off to college, I put most of my journals in a box, duct taped it closed, and put it in storage. Then at college I discovered blogging.

Seriously-- every moment of my high school life is documented. I wrote EVERY SINGLE DAY without fail. It makes me sad to think that from 2007 to 2012, I don't have any journals to show for myself. Then I got the idea that I should create a hard copy of my blogs. You never know what's going to happen to the internet (it could be obsolete in 50 years-- who knows) or to certain blogging sites (like Blogger or Typepad). WHO KNOWS WHAT COULD HAPPEN!

Suddenly it felt very URGENT for me to print out all my blog posts and put them in a binder. Those blogs document my life from age 18 to 24! *vital* so much has happened in those years! I met my HUSBAND for crying out loud.


Have you ever felt something SO strongly that it feels like INCREDIBLY urgent that you complete it? That's how I felt about this insurmountable project. So I went and bought a few hundred archival safe page protectors, a new binder, a ream of copy paper, and new ink cartridge. It may seem like an incredible waste of paper, ink, and time to do this.... but is it really a waste to preserve your life? I started blogging August of 2007. So I started printing last night and made it through January 2008. I HAVE PRINTED OVER 200 PAGES JUST FOR THOSE 6 MONTHS. That's when I realized that this is going to be a bigger project than I thought. But I WILL accomplish it. Just... little by little. Over time.

What are your thoughts on this project? It makes me sick knowing how much paper I'm using, but I just don't know what will happen in the years to come... I want my great-grandchildren to be able to read through it like a book. I'm going to back them up onto my external harddrive too eventually. But I want a hard copy to go along with my huge box of journals. Is it conceited to want to preserve your life? Maybe no one will ever care about it. But then again maybe they will? I have no idea.

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Working when I'm not working

Hello all! Been working up a storm in my little apartment. I had a lot of time off work this week, so I've been working at home on all the other things I do. Mostly been working on my new online class and taking pretty pictures for a Valentine update of Red Door Vintage! I get so excited over new projects and updates.

Also, as you can see above, I've been surrounding myself with good ideas for projects, blog posts, and more. Lots going on in this little brain of mine!

What I'm planning for the days to come:
*getting the Valentine update of Red Door up and going
*editing a few senior portrait sessions
*calling the Anderson Community School system to get my name on a list to tutor Spanish
*cleaning out closets in my house
*burying myself in home decor magazines
*eating yummy Valentine cupcakes

What have you all been up to?
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messy

Today I don't have to work until 4:30 which means that I am free to do whatever I want for approximately 4 more hours. I'm choosing to use those hours art journaling pages for my upcoming class. Yep. I've been inspiring lately amidst all the stupid financial trouble we're going through. So there's a HUGE mess in my living room right now of paper and stickers and scraps. It's WONDERFUL. I'm sorry I don't have a better post for you today. Maybe tomorrow?

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The Bee-Themed Wedding

Here's a mood board I made recently for a friend's wedding. One of Ian's groomsmen (Steve) and one of my college floormates (Season) are getting married!!!!! Their last name is (/will be) "Travelbee." Steve's family is obsessed with all things bee-related and I thought that would be an amazing thread for their wedding! I'm kind of a loser and tend to collect creative ideas for friends' future weddings. haha So I sent this off to Season like a creeper friend and she actually loved some of the images in it! I thought it would be fun to share on here since I love weddings. :) Enjoy!

*note: all the links can be found here!

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remember that time?

Remember that time I didn't blog for a whole MONTH!? yeah... that time was the month of November. I've had some pretty serious stuff going on in my life recently, and blogging just didn't seem like the way to go. I had a lot of stuff to deal with in the ole noggin... and I'm sure I lost lots of readers during my off-time, which makes me sad. As important as my readers are to me, i know that they will understand the need to just step away and get some perspective. I really hate taking leaves of absence on here, but it was just something I needed to do for awhile to address some stuff in my own life.

The important point to all this is that I'm here now and despite the confusing and busy parts of reality, I'm going to try to get back in the groove. Lots to do, lots to share, especially for the upcoming holidays. :) I hope you all are well!

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Tweet-a-lee-dee

This is kind of a random post, but I was looking through my twitter favorites and some of them are just SO funny. haha You might see some of your favorite bloggers in here too. :)
























Any favorites?
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