Our tree was up before Thanksgiving and I've been playing Christmas music since November 1st, but after Thanksgiving the Christmas season really started to take off. I spent Thanksgiving weekend finishing up a knitting project I started back in February. This is the first thing I have ever knitted and I knew it would take me forever so I planned accordingly and used Christmas colors. It isn't quite was I was going for... but my technique has improved and now I'm on a roll.
All around Seattle, signs of Christmas have started to appear...
Thanks to a crazy cold front last week we even got a few glimpses of snow! Apparently it never snows out here and when it does it never lasts. Most people would hardly even consider this dusting "snow" but because I'm a Floridian at heart this small amount on the roof tops made my day. A really cool aspect of living on the coast is the mild climate year round with the ability to drive only 30 minutes East for some real snow. This past weekend we went to Leavenworth, WA, to experience the Christmas Lighting Festival.
Leavenworth is a small town in the Cascade Mountains about 2 and a half hours from Seattle. The whole "village" has Bavarian themed architecture which gives it a bit of a kitschy feel but also makes it a perfect destination for a quick weekend trip. They do a huge Oktoberfest in the fall but I think the Christmas festival is an even bigger deal so we had to check it out. The drive up was beautiful and covered in snow, but driving back down the mountain in the dark was a bit more treacherous.
In true form, most of the food is German themed and we enjoyed some amazing Brats. I was expecting the whole Christmas festival to be mostly families with children so we were surprised that the most popular form of transportation to the festival seemed to be party buses coming from Seattle and Olympia with hoards of drunk adults. It was literally almost uncomfortable seeing grown women in the 50's wasted taking Facebook pictures and Instagram selfies while yelling at the top of their lungs about not wearing underwear....
The lights are lit all at once at 4:30 and literally every surface of the town is covered. It really becomes quite magical, at the risk of sounding cheesy. But even an entire adorable town covered in lights complete with Christmas carolers can't keep me happy when it's only 6 degrees outside.
Tuesday night Mason and I walked up the street to the Woodland Park Zoo which is conveniently located in our neighborhood for their "Wildlights" Christmas lights. I've been looking forward to these lights since we moved here and they started advertising it. I'm not a huge zoo fan in general because I think they're kind of depressing. But living so close, Mason and I both wanted to check it out at least once, if only to see the penguins. Usual admission is somewhere in the $20 range for adults, but during Wildlights you can get in for $9. Granted most of the animals are away for the night, but that's fine. We were still able to see the penguins and walk around the lit up zoo which was kind of cool, but also still not worth the $9. There weren't any Holiday themed lights and the highest lights only reached like 12 feet, so it seemed kind of low budget but it was still a nice way to spend a week night walking around the zoo with some hot drinks.
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