Weekend Wrap Up & Pictures!

Happy Monday!

Do you ever feel like you have a weekend with zero rest and relaxation? I have to say that is what our weekend turned into. We had plans, but they just required more work than anticipated so we got very little rest in. I actually fell asleep on the couch last night before 9pm...true story.

So what did we do this weekend? Well Friday night we had planned a little date night but we were not very creative at all. With my exhaustion at the end of each day I am not really up for too much. We had dinner at our favorite Mexican restaurant and then headed to Wal-Mart to pick up paint for a little home improvement project we had planned...and then that turned into Christmas shopping. I am happy to say that we crossed off over 50% of our Christmas shopping in one evening. Granted, we already had lots of things that we have picked up throughout the year, so that helped!

Anyone else started their Christmas shopping yet?

Saturday we started painting the library at home. Or really, Stephen started painting and I wrapped Christmas presents in the living room while listening to Christmas music. :) We were able to get a few gifts wrapped and one coat of paint on the walls before my friend Dana came over to take some family photos of us. I am so thankful that she offered to do this because we usually take them with our tripod, but it's hard to get Louie in those photos! We got some decent photos and officially have our photo for this years Christmas cards picked out. Here are some:

There is definitely a bump present nowadays!

This photo obviously makes me laugh!

And last but not least, our Christmas card photo:

Saturday afternoon we did more painting and more wrapping, while watching and listening to the Gators beat the SC Gamecocks. Turns out a game I thought would be competitive ended up being a blow out, but it's a win for UF so I'll take it!

Saturday evening we had dinner at the very classy McDonald's...all because Baby D was craving a double cheeseburger! :) We also ran to church for a session of a conference they were hosting called Answers in Genesis. The session we attended was all about dinosaurs and where they are present in the Bible. It was very interesting and informative. I can say that I learned a lot!

Sunday morning we went to church and ran back to Wal-Mart for more paint to finish our project. The rest of the day was spent trimming, painting, and wrapping gifts. Man oh man! In the end, the room we painted looks amazing and almost all of our Christmas gifts are wrapped (all but 3). So it was a productive day!

We settled in to relax and watch the Amazing Race...but I fell asleep before it started. Stephen told me who was eliminated though, so I don't feel like I missed too much!

Hope you all had a good weekend too!

14 days until we know the gender of our little peanut!

31 days until Thanksgiving!

64 days until Christmas!

Thanksgiving and a weekend re-cap! :)

Well, it is back to the grind today. Let me tell you that my body is not with it. I so wanted to sleep in this morning! I am thankful for the break Thanksgiving provided and thankful that I have a job though, so there will be no complaining here!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and 4 day weekend! It all got kicked off when we found a box on our porch late Wednesday night. I was not expecting anything, so I was totally surprised. All I can say is that I am incredibly blessed with some great friends. I am very thankful for the friendships that have survived me moving to Indiana and still continue to grow. Well, the box was from my friend Vickie. A true friend! She was planning on joining us for Thanksgiving but plans were cancelled due to flight schedules and costs. Since she couldn't be with us she said she wanted to send "a piece of Florida" to Indiana. That girl touches my heart!

Here is the package:

And the contents of the package:

Yep, those are Pilgrim Mickey and Minnie salt & pepper shakers to add to my collection. I LOVE them. Really, I think I squealed and danced when I opened the box. Stephen will vouch for this!

Thanksgiving morning we were up around 9am to watch the Macy's parade in our PJs. We also prepared the things we were taking to the family Thanksgiving dinner: mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. Yummo! We ate at Stephen's parents house and had way.too.much.food-as always! For some people their favorite thing about Thanksgiving is probably the food, or the turkey. Not for me. My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is family coming together AND spending hours looking over the sales ads. I love it!

After feasting on the traditional Thanksgiving dinner; cranberry sauce, stuffing, turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, rolls, green bean and corn casserole...and spending much of the afternoon browsing the sales ads, we made our way home. I had to change quickly and pack a bag for our Black Friday shopping trip. Us girls pulled out around 9pm and headed to the outlet mall! We had made a hotel reservation...well, I had made a hotel reservation incorrectly so it was not actually close to the mall. We decided to head to the mall instead of first checking in at the hotel. In the end, it all worked out! We shopped until we dropped. Literally. We left the mall and decided to skip the hotel and just head back home at some hour early in the morning. Seriously. The sun was coming up. It was daylight and sunny when I made it home. I was pretty exhausted after shopping all night, so I took a shower and then a 4 hour nap. It was lovely!

Shopping at the outlet was not bad at all. I think maybe it is calmer there because their are no outrageous electronic sales or anything. Regardless, I like it and I think we all had a great time! Most of the things I purchased have been wrapped by my Santa (read: Stephen), so I will have to wait until after Christmas to share them with you! The other things I purchased (for other people) have already been wrapped too. Just trust me when I say that everything was a good deal!

After my nap we decided to take Louie to the vet. He had his last heart worm treatment on Wednesday and had been having trouble keeping his meals down. I was worried about him and he just was not acting himself....so to the vet we went. They could not pinpoint what was wrong, but they did give him a shot that seemed to help very much. He has been on the mend since Friday and has been keeping his food down. We actually had to run to Wal-Mart to buy baby food for the pup since he was on a white rice and baby food diet all weekend. We are slowly adding in his regular kibble and hoping for the best! I just hate it when he is sick and hurting!

After the trip to the vet, we left him at home to sleep while we scouted out our perfect Christmas tree. We snapped some pictures in the back yard on our way out:

My eyes were just too tired and dry from wearing my contacts all night, so I resorted to my glasses for this shopping trip. My eyes are still a little irritated from this weekend actually...so glad I have these glasses as a backup!

The above coat, friends is my new peacoat. Thank you Old Navy Black Friday sales! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it and got the best deal. It was on sale for $29, but the store was an additional 15% off and I had a coupon that I won for having a picture of Louie in my phone while I was in line the check out. That meant my coat was $20!!! Score! It was quite entertaining in this line-there was an employee asking for things in order for people to earn coupons. For example, my sister in law got a coupon for not having on white socks and some other girls near us got coupons for singing their favorite Christmas Carol. See what I mean? Fun and entertaining!

We went to 2 Christmas tree farms looking for trees and found this one:

I had my heart set on a Frasier Fir, but ended up not getting a Fir at all. Apparently they are very expensive around these parts! We tagged the above tree because we liked it...just didn't love it. I thought that we could find a better looking one, and we did!

While we were tree shopping we got to see the prettiest sun set I have seen in awhile:

Isn't it beautiful? Seeing something like this, I just can't understand people who say there is not a God!

At the end of the night we ended up with a tree! We settled on a Spruce Pine Tree and I must say...I LOVE it! It was pretty fun trying to make it fit in the back of my car...which is small, but bigger than Stephen's. We had to put the back seats down and push it through the trunk. The trunk still would not close! Guess it was a good thing I had rope and bungee cords in the car that I had purchased last week for Stephen's stocking! They came in handy!

Getting it out at home was easier than getting it in the car...maybe because I knew no one was looking at me so I didn't care how crazy we looked? Who knows! Here it is:

Louie was excited...okay, maybe not. But, he was feeling better!

On Saturday we put the tree in the stand and got to work decorating:

The tree's new home (until Jan) is in our dining room bay window. I love the way it looks inside and from outside at night. Plus I just really love having 2 Christmas trees...it may have always been a dream of mine!

Sunday we went to church and then spent the day being lazy at home. In my opinion, it was wonderful! I think Stephen might have gotten a little bored at points but it's okay. We don't have lazy days like that very often. We watched several Christmas movies...so many that we only have one left to watch. I sure hope "Santa" brings some more Christmas movies!

How about you-how was your Thanksgiving?

Did you join the crazy people in Black Friday Shopping?

Whoa-just realized how long this post was. Bravo if you made it to the end!

Pumpkin Muffins

Sorry for the lack of posting here recently. I don't know if it is how busy work is, or the cold, nasty, wet weather we have been having...but I am in a funk. A blogging funk that is. Ever happen to you?

Anyways, over the weekend I made some pumpkin muffins that were too good not to share with all of you. So, here I am blogging and sharing just for you...feel special!

These muffins were so incredibly easy to make (really, I can't stress that enough!) They only have 2 ingredients. 2!?!? I did decide to add some extra sweetness, so mine had 3 ingredients but yours could only have 2.

INGREDIENTS: 

1 Box Yellow Cake Mix

1 Can of Pumpkin

Handful of white chocolate chips if you wish :)

Mix all of the ingredients together and spoon into a greased or lined cupcake pan. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until a knife/toothpick inserted comes out clean. Note: my time varied between batches and I am not sure why, so I recommend baking for 25 minutes and continuing on if necessary.

Let cool before devouring enjoying!

We did some other things this weekend too! Here is the breakdown in pictures:

Saturday we headed to Fort Wayne for a Newsboys concert and a little shopping. Louie was looking too sweet not to take his picture!

Headed to the mall for some shopping. We only wanted to stop a 2 stores and Chipotle for lunch. It was a successful trip and yummy-after this we were onto the concert:

We LOVE the Newsboys. I like their old music and their new music-it is all Jesus filled and great! Michael Tait was pretty hilarious in between songs too. I loved all the references he made to the "chocolate church" and "vanilla people". I am sure someone in the crowd was offended by it, but it was just so funny. The color of our skin does not matter in the least. Jesus love us no matter what! Praise him for that!!!

There were several bands opening for Newsboys too. I really liked Royal Tailor-who I was not familiar with. We ended up buying their CD and it s great. I encourage you to check them out!

We did a little bit of singing and dancing at the concert, too :)

Sorry for the blurry picture, but it was crazy in there!

Our Sunday was spent at church and home. We watched The Amazing Race in the evening while Louie took a nap and made himself comfortable:

Can you believe how he is laying down, and sleeping!? We have a crazy pup in our house. Good thing we love him!

Hope you all are having a great Wednesday and week for that matter!

Weekend Wrap-Up!

This weekend was full of fun activities, even with the rainy couple of days here. Fall has arrived and you can see it everywhere; the trees are starting to change colors and leaves are already falling. Agh. Fall is my favorite season, and I am so thankful for the cooler temperatures!

Our Saturday started out at home. We had plans to spread grass seed and do some other yard work, but were unable to with the rain. We decided to head to Fort Wayne and get our shopping trip done in the morning. We also stopped at Logan’s Roadhouse for lunch and it was SO.GOOD! It had been a long time since I had a steak, and we actually split an 8oz. so it was the perfect amount! After feeding our bellies we were onward to Dollar Tree, Hobby Lobby, Kirklands, Menards, Gordon Food Service, Bed Bath & Beyond, Bath & Body Works and Country Kitchen. We got some great deals and everything we needed, too!

We came home and changed into comfy clothes to just relax. Is it just me or do other people like rainy days for PJs and relaxing too? I ended up working on a Fall Wreath that was inspired from Pinterest last week. Surprisingly to me, this project did not take long at all. In fact, it only took the length of two Friend episodes!  

After some crafting it was time to bake. We made these pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies that were also inspired from Pinterest (are you noticing a trend here?). They are quite yummy and I have plans to post the recipe tomorrow for you all to enjoy!

Sunday after church we got to have lunch with this adorable little girl:  

We met Stephen’s family for a yummy lunch at The Boathouse to celebrate September birthdays. Yesterday was actually my Mother-in-Law’s birthday; Happy Birthday Bev! My SIL Robin was going to come too because her birthday was last Friday, but she was not feeling good and did not make it. We missed you, Robin!   

Looks like Hadley and her Dad, Adam were having a very serious talk! J

We came home and tried to take some family pictures with Louie, but he wanted none of it. He was quite a little stinker this weekend, actually. We did get a family picture minus Louie and then some individual pictures of our little man, so I am going to call it a success!  

What else did we do on Sunday? Well, Stephen worked a little on his hunny-do list while I crafted. We got some pictures that we bought at Kirklands hung, and hooks put up in our coat closet finally. Now all our coats are hanging instead of being crammed into black garbage bags like they have been since our move. I am hoping that the wrinkles fall out before we need to wear them. I can dream, right?

Our new picture in the bathroom that I love:

   

Now I have my claw foot tub AND my chandelier that I have always wanted!

I put together a little dry-erase board inspired from Pinterest again. All it took was an old picture frame and some scrapbook paper. I added some letter stickers and a little heart sticker too to dress it up. We hung it in our kitchen above the hooks for coats, purses and umbrellas. We plan on using it for reminder notes…or maybe just love notes since we don’t get to see each other much in the mornings. I am very pleased with how it looks! (Note: the feather boas are usually not there, they were a purchase made this weekend at Hobby Lobby and they will be used on my niece’s birthday cup-cake display!)    

Lastly I worked on another Pinterest project. I had seen (and pinned) a unique and creative headboard made from an outdoor seatee cushion, some buttons, string, and a shelf. I took this picture immediately after Stephen hung it, so it is not final but I was just so excited and wanted to share it! I think it is such a neat idea for a fun headboard! What do you think?  

Well folks, that is our weekend rolled up into one long post! I hope that you enjoyed the pictures and ideas shared. Let me know if you try any of the craft projects and just let me know if you have any questions!

Happy Monday!