Christmas Break!

So, Matt and I are in Texas for Christmas!!! Merry Christmas by the way! Each day we've been away has been full of hanging out with family, eating, and showing off our Airstream! Here are some pics of our trip so far-

It Snowed on Christmas Day in Texas!!

Our Airstream parked at the lake, a huge dog we met at the RV park we camped at on our way to Texas (we stayed in our 1st RV park this week! It was pretty fun!), all the men with the bowties they got for Christmas!

Cats!! They are so cute!

I hope you're having a lovely week! I'll be back next week in 2013!

High Five for Friday

Almost everyday this week has felt like a Friday, it's been such a fun week! I pretty much lost track of the days this week which I think means it was a good week! Some things that made this week great are-


1. Snow! We had our first snow yesterday and now everything is beautiful and white
2. Christmas cheer = lots of people bringing good food to the office to share!
3. Wrapping Christmas Presents!
4. Preparing our Airstream for a big trip! We're heading to Texas today and I'm excited that we'll be traveling in style with the Airstream.
5. Staying up late. We've stayed up pretty late every night this week and it's been kind of fun.I know I can stay up late whenever I want but this week it's just felt more fun for some reason.





Have a lovely weekend! It's almost Christmas!!!

It Snowed!

What a perfect time of year for a big fluffy snow storm!!! We went to sleep last night to a thunder storm and woke up to tons of beautiful snow!

Check out those icicles!

 How about that!?

P.S. As you can see, we finished painting our house blue! If you have been following along you know that we put new siding up on the back of the house and got it primed but we weren't sure if we would get around to painting it before it got too cold but we did! Yay for matching paint colors on the whole house!

Are you enjoying a snowy day where you are?

The Week Before Christmas

Well, Christmas is next week which means, I would love to revert back to my student days when I would be done with classes by now and have a 3-4 week break. Because I got so used to having all that time off, I'm unprepared to have it any other way.

What's up with no more long leisurely breaks in the real world?? It's times like this that I would love to become a college professor, I seems to me that they have the best schedule possible in the working world.

 I'm excited to head home to Texas on Friday for Christmas! Here's hoping this week goes by well and that I will not complain too much about not being a college student with awesome winter breaks anymore!

High Five For Friday!

1. The weather was over 50 degrees yesterday, today and is suppose to be tomorrow so that means I had a window of opportunity to prime the last unpainted part of our house! I sprayed it this afternoon, what a relief to have that project crossed off the list!

2. I've sold 3 items in my ETSY shop this week, now that's big business!

3. Matt and I watched the Geminid Meteor shower for about 15 minutes last night and saw 11 meteors! < you can't get much cooler that watching meteor showers.

4. We're having garlic mashed potatoes with dinner tonight, I love me some garlic mash.

5. This time next week I'll be headed to Texas for Christmas!!

Happy Friday, I hope you have a lovely weekend!! I'm planning on lots of reading, a little shopping and hopefully fully finishing the paint job on our house. See you next week!

Christmas Party Vest

Do you see this ridiculous outfit?

This is what I wore to work today for our all staff Christmas party! I know it's pretty fantastic right? The only bad thing about this outfit is going out in public around people not dressed in Christmas attire for example, when I went to Williams Sonoma on my way home today a few people may have thought I was dressed a little cray.

Good thing I'm not easily embarrassed by my clothing choices.

See you tomorrow!!

Wednesday Randomness

Hey y'all, how's your week going? Mine is going by fast! yesterday at work we got to go out for our departmental Christmas lunch, today my co-worker and I are eating at Pei Wei with a coupon and tomorrow is our all staff Christmas party catered by Panera! As you can see I'm having a good eating week which is very exciting in my world!

Matt and I went to see "Lincoln" on Monday night. A Monday night movie is amazing, the theater was pretty empty, the tickets to the movie were cheaper and the movie was great! We loved it. The only thing was all the recognizable actors in the movie decked out in the1860's look left me wondering, where have I seen this actor before?? The theater we went to also has new recliners which was a lovely surprise, I don't think I can go back to a normal movie theater seat again.

I've started using half and half in my coffee this week, so yum! It's also got less calories than milk which surprised me.

I worked out hard last night for the first time in a couple of weeks and I'm feeling it today! I know I had a good workout at least (I did yesterday's Tone It Up Tuesday Workout! Love TIU!)

I also plan on making these soon! Don't they look so good??

Source: joandsue.blogspot.ca via Michelle on Pinterest

Happy Wednesday, I hope you have a great day!

Sparkly Headband Tutorial!

I love headbands and I especially love these shiny little ones that you can wear 2 different ways! Today I'm going to teach you how I make them!

Supplies you'll need are- Sparkly Ribbon (I bought it at Hobby Lobby) Hair Bands (to allow the headband to be stretchy) Tape measure (to measure your head) Sewing machine to attach the hair band to your ribbon or needle and thread if you don't have a sewing machine.

First, gather your supplies- 

Next, measure your head. I measured my head two ways and found that it's pretty much the same measurement both ways.

Next, cut your ribbon the length you need for your headband. Keep in mind the hairband length and subtract that from your length of ribbon. For example my head is 22 inches so I cut my ribbon to 20 inches. This allows for my 3 inch hairband to make up the difference and I have an inch to use when I sew my ribbon to the hairband. So, after taking away another inch when sewing my headband is 19 inches plus 3 inches of stretchy hairband= 22 inches. I like my headband not too tight so i make it the same measurment as my head. If you want it tighter cut a shorter ribbon.

Next, fold ribbon over one side of hair band and sew on.

Sew other side of ribbon on hair band

Boom you have a headband! You can wear it simply with just the band or add cute flowers too!

If you like these cute glittery headbands but prefer not to make them yourself, I can make one for you! Just click here and order yourself one!

Happy Tuesday!

A Wedding Shower and Christmas Parade

This past weekend was so fun because I got to go to one of the quaintest little towns I've ever experienced, Siloam Spring, Arkansas. Either I was hanging out with the most popular people in town or everyone knows everyone in that town.

I went to Arkansas for one of my college roomies wedding shower! Everywhere we went her and her fiance and friends were saying hi and striking up conversation with everyone we came in contact with. It was nice to see a small town like that and it make me want to live in a place where I know everybody!

The wedding shower was a lovely brunch complete with petite fours, mimosas and brunch foods.I love showers mostly because of the food (who doesn't?).

I enjoyed hanging out with my old college bud all weekend!

The bride and groom!

We also went to another small town Siloam spectacular event called, Light Up Siloam. The Christmas lights were turned on over main street and then there was a parade complete with ponies, the town's mail truck, the town's lake patrol boat being pulled by a huge pick up truck, the local tax service had a float, and lots of the local churches had awesome floats too.

The whole town came out for this awesome parade down main street and I just could not get over how cute it was! I wish I could show you better pictures but, maybe next December you should just go experience this event for yourself to fully understand how amazing it is.

I drove home Sunday morning and got straight to work on this-

Don't worry, we don't have a large hole in the side of our house anymore, we got the plywood and house wrap back up before calling it quits last night.

We are immersed in another house project and I'll tell you more about it as we progress!

Friday Happenings

Welcome Friday! Even though it's still November I feel full of Christmas spirit because everything is now decorated for Christmas and we've started singing Christmas music at church.

This morning, I ate a cookies and cream cupcake for breakfast! It was all sitting on the counter screaming out for me to eat it, so I did.

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas somehow turns into an eating free for all for me. There are so many parties, people bringing food to work, me thinking- it's only the holidays once a year! So, I indulge and I'm already starting to look/feel like it's time to slow down and quit eating so much junk (even though it's delicious junk)

Another holiday food I've been enjoying is Chex Mix!!!! Also called Texas Trash around my parents house. My mom and mother-in-law both make big batches of chex mix every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas and my brother, husband and me love it!!

This weekend I'm going to Arkansas for a wedding shower!! I'm super excited! I'm leaving straight from work so I have my front seat filled with my favorite road trip snacks- salt and vinegar chips, coke, water, chex mix. My poor husband will be home alone working hard on our back room, what a good man.

Some of you asked me what Pallea is since I wrote about it on Wednesday. Pallea is a Spanish dish made of meat or seafood and rice. You cook the rice and choice of meat in a huge pan all together with tomato, onion, garlic, olive oil, saffron, lemon juice and red pepper and it turns out super flavorful!

One last thought to leave you with today, I always feel the need to add an ! mark or 2 in any email I send or else it looks like i'm being too serious/unkind. When I get emails without exclamation marks I tend to read it in a monotoned voice and it's hard to tell what that person's voice inflection would sound like. Do you do this too?

Happy Friday and weekend!

Random Wednesday!

Wednesdays are a great day for a random post so here you have it-

I read "Pretty Little Liars" over the Thanksgiving break. I realize it is written for teens but I was entertained by the book. I couldn't wait to find out who "A" was or what the heck "The Jenna Thing" was by reading the rest of the books so I looked it all up in Wikipedia. Now I know all about Pretty Little Liars and didn't have to read a bunch more books to figure it out. I never do this with books but I knew that there were much better things I should be doing with my time than reading Pretty Little Liars.

It's time again for another home renovation project! Our house has a room off the back that used to be a screened in porch. Currently the room has no lights, why do people do this?? All the rooms in our house were like this until we added lights. Lamps just don't cut it for me. Also the back room has a tiny half bath that had a sink and urinal only. Our plan for the room is to knock out the half bath and put a full bath along the back wall and use the rest of the room as a study/guest room with a day bed and a desk.

The room currently serves as a dark, ugly orange, storage room but that will change over the next few months!

Have you ever had pallea?? My mother in law and I made some over Thanksgiving break and I'm a big fan! It takes a while to make but it tastes fantastic. It also make a lot! I love left overs so this is a great meal for me because I was able to eat it for 1 dinner and 3 lunches before running out.

Waiting For My Windshield to Thaw

I took some pictures this morning while waiting for my windshield to thaw out so I could see where I was driving.

My frozen windshield

It's a COLD 20 degrees this morning!

I got crafty last night a made a few glittery headbands! I bought the gold band part at Hobby Lobby. I'm lucky and have a job where I can wear a hippie headband to work and it's more than ok.

There was a urinal in our house up until last night. Apparently a bachelor lived in the house before us and had a half bath with just a urinal and a sink. Matt started taking that bathroom apart last night preparing to renovate the last room in our house before we will deem our home renovation complete!

Have a lovely Tuesday, is it cold where you live?

We had a Happy Thanksgiving

Here are some of my favorite photos from our weekend trip home to Texas for Thanksgiving! It was a lovely trip and I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving too.

Mine and Matt's family around the table ready to eat!

Laura came to visit! We both love Bella and Francis!

Some precious kitty pictures!

Airstream Interior

I'm excited to reveal our Airstream interior now that the couch, pillow, bed, and curtains are done! Check it out- (All pillows, curtains and cushions made be me).

The living area of the Airstream with a forest of pillows!

Chevron Curtains! I got the fabric from Hobby Lobby.

Curtain over the Kitchen Sink. We have a green tahoe that pulls the airstream so that's what's happening on this curtain.

Convenient shoe storage inside the door!

Bathroom Window

Bedroom!