I don't know about you guys, but I'm seriously feeling the holidays this year. Last weekend, I spent the afternoon at my parents' house and made some really fun Christmas ornaments with my mom. She has a huge collection of wine corks that we've kept over the years, so we picked out all the La Crema ones and made a reindeer, some grape clusters, and a couple of angels to hang from the tree. They were super easy to put together and turned out so adorable! I think we may have a new holiday tradition on our hands.

This post is brought to you in partnership with La Crema. Make your own wine cork ornaments by following the tutorials I posted on their blog last week--happy holidays!

Photos by Sarah Gatrell of Photo + Love.

Hello from Boston! Rob and I landed late on Thursday evening and spent yesterday exploring. I can't believe this is my first visit! We walked ten miles yesterday. Ten! Boston is magical and I already can't wait to come back again.

We started with coffee from Barrington Coffee Roasting Company and a quick breakfast at Flour Bakery (Rob got a delicious-looking sticky bun and I had the egg sandwich on gluten-free bread) before heading to Beacon Hill. Once we got to Beacon Hill, we walked around (all the way down Charles Street as my sweet friend Anna recommended) and admired all the dreamy shops and buildings for a while.

Then we headed toward the Boston Public Library, stopping at Joe's American Bar and Grill for lunch on the way. (The food there was delicious but my Bloody Mary was super boring.) We split a super decadent hot chocolate from L.A. Burdick before finally going to the library, which is beautifully and overwhelmingly majestic.

After the library, we grabbed a Lyft to Harvard Square and walked around there a bit. By 4:30 we were fading pretty fast, so we went back to our hotel to relax and warm up a bit before going to Harpoon Brewery for some beers and cider (I got pumpkin cider and it was perfect).

We had planned to go to 75 on Liberty Wharf for dinner, but it was closed for a private event, so we resolved to go for brunch in the morning and then accidentally wandered into a hotel bar disguised as a restaurant (what can I say, we were tired). It was a lovely day and Rob and I had a great time.

Today, we're at my friend Jenna's house to work on the first edition of The Eighty Twenty Magazine. We'll be Instagramming away all day with the hashtag #8020WinterFest, if you'd like to tag along!

Rob and I are flying to Boston tonight. We're spending Friday exploring and Saturday at my dear friend Jenna's house, where she and I will see each other in person for only the fifth time.

I had plenty of friends as a teenager because I went to a small Catholic school and there were sixty people in my class. Everyone knew each other, and even if you weren't friends you still were kind of friends because you had the fact that you were both there in common. I was one of those young women who make me cringe now--the ones who say that they "just don't get along with other girls." In my defense, I had an incredibly tight group of female cross country teammates who are still my best friends today, but because we were spread out among three different years, I never felt like I had that circle of best girlfriends with whom I would graduate.

I made friends in college and lived in an apartment with three women who felt like family. But once we graduated and I started moving around a bit, I realized how hard it was to make connections with people unless we were in a classroom together. Working helped, but then I started making the transition to working from home and it got difficult again.

In December of 2011, I found myself in Washington, DC, deep into the small talk of a cocktail party full of people I didn't know. It was my first blogger event and I surprised myself by first purchasing a ticket in advance and then driving two and a half hours to be there. I figured I would make some friends who had blogging in common, and I really did--just a few years later, Jenna was one of three of those cocktail party strangers standing behind me in a bridesmaid dress as I married my husband.

Being connected by our blogs and Instagram accounts and just having the Internet in general is something that I might have been uneasy with in some other life. But we live in a world where my best friend from Minneapolis is a wonderful person who I never would have met without an email from her telling me that she moved here from far away once too, and she knows what it's like to be in a new city and not know a soul. Friendship today is so limitless--both old and new ones are strengthened every day. And for that I am so grateful.