Wednesday, November 25, 2015

WHAT'S UP WEDNESDAY

What we're eating this week...
I cooked 5lbs of chicken in the crockpot on Monday for chicken tacos for dinner/lunches. I knew we would be grocery shopping for Thanksgiving so I didn't want to spend a lot on regular groceries, so I used the chicken we already had in the freezer. 

What I'm reminiscing about...
I opened up my box of Christmas decorations last night to see what all we had to work with and saw my Christmas place mats I bought on sale last year for my apartment, and immediately started missing my little ole college apartment.  I love our apartment we live in now so much, but sometimes I really miss my apartment in Cookeville. 

What I'm loving...
This time of the year!! We went out the other night and got a few Christmas decorations that we were needing for this Saturday

What we've been up to...
Busy, busy! Working on our Christmas cards (I will be sharing those with y'all next week!!), cleaning, and baking! I made 4 strawberry pies last night. It was the first time I have ever made a pie from scratch, including the pie crust!! Matthew encouraged me when I thought about just running to the store and buying store bought crusts lol and helped when I needed help. Love my sweet husband!

What I'm dreading...
Cold weather. Seriously, the older I get the more I hate the cold weather.

What I'm working on...
All things Christmas!!!!!!!!

What I'm excited about...
Celebrating our first big holidays as a married couple!! 

What I'm watching/reading...
Fixer Upper!

What I'm listening to...
My Christmas playlists on Spotify! 

What I'm wearing...
These pants, but not in this color, sadly. These are my favorite pants, ever. 
They are from Gap, and they are 50% off right now! I bought mine at an outlet store on a huge sale weekend so I ended up buying one pair and getting the other pair free. So I definitely got every color they had available then lol. I love that I can wear them to work and even when I'm not at work! 

What I'm doing this weekend...
DECORATING FOR CHRISTMAS (!!!!!!!!!!!!!), watching the Egg Bowl and Predators game!

What I'm looking forward to next month...
Everything Christmas! It's the best time of the year :)

What else is new...
The new season of Fixer Upper comes on December 1st!

Bonus Question:
What's your favorite Christmas tradition?
Well seeing as this is our first married Christmas, we are going to make some!


Happy Thanksgiving, friends! 
I hope you are able to spend it with family and friends :)

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

RECIPES FOR THANKSGIVING

It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is TWO days away! I wanted to re-share some recipes I have shared here on my blog before that we either use for the holidays or some that I think would make great additions! So for those of you that are still trying to find a recipe or two to make for Thanksgiving here are a few ideas!

I am obsessed with Starbucks Caramel Apple Spice, but I am NOT obsessed with their prices. I found this copycat recipe and love using it!


This is my nanny's recipe that I have grown up loving. It's not Thanksgiving or Christmas unless we have nanny's dumplings and red apples!


Another one of Nanny's recipes I grew up loving! So simple and a great side for the holiday meals!



2 blog posts in 1 day, woo hoo!

THE SATURDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING

We have blocked off on our calendars, because we already have some plans. Big plans. Exciting plans. Plans that I have been look forward to for years. We are decorating our first place together for our first married Christmas. Growing up we never decorated before Thanksgiving, we always decorated the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It was an all day event for my family as we had as we decorated the whole house. We started downstairs and then finished up that afternoon with all putting the tree up and decorating it. Then me and my sisters would put up our small tree in our bedrooms and decorate our bedrooms. My mom would make sausage balls and we would jam out to Christmas music all day while the fire was going. I remember growing up thinking how I couldn't wait to do this one day with my husband and eventually my family. Well the time has finally come to decorate for Christmas with my HUSBAND!! This is a tradition I want to start and carry on when we have children one day.


Since it won't take ALL day to decorate, since we live in a one bedroom apartment, we decided to stretch it out as much as possible with a few Christmas movies to make it an all day event. I am going to wake up early and get the sausage balls and hot chocolate going. We'll snack on sausage balls all morning and into the early afternoon while decorating and listening to Christmas music and Christmas movies.

Once everything is decorated I'll start dinner. I told Matthew I wanted to have a meal that we both like, and that I can cook every year on our decorating day, and of course his first response was Nashville's Hot Chicken Pasta. I'm not a fan of the hot chicken part, but I am more than okay with the fettuccine Alfredo part so I agreed! Matthew's mom found a copy cat recipe so we are going to use that! We already have some cookie dough so we'll have some warm chocolate chip cookies to eat later that night for dessert.

That night we'll alternate between the Egg Bowl (Mississippi State vs. Ole Miss) and the Predators game by our Christmas tree. To say I am excited would be an understatement. This is my favorite Saturday of the year, and I am so excited to finally share it with my sweet husband. I think traditions are so important, especially the ones your create in your first few years of marriage.

Do you and your husband have any Christmas traditions? If so, I would love to hear them!

Friday, November 20, 2015

5 ON FRIDAY


1 | CHRISTMAS

Hate to be that person, but I am just SO excited for Christmas. We bought our stockings and Christmas tree skirt at Kirkland's last night and now I am ready to just take down all the fall stuff and put up all of our Christmas decorations. I'll wait though, for just EIGHT more days.The Saturday after Thanksgiving is when we are going to decorate. More on that next week, but it's going to be one of the best days!! 


2 | My dream desk


Also last night we made a stop in Home Goods. We are looking for ornaments for our Christmas tree. Although I was disappointed with their Christmas selection, I about died when I spotted this desk. White and gold....perfect. If you know me then you know how much I love anything gold. All my desk accessories at work are gold, one of our wedding colors was gold, and I'm adding a few gold decor pieces here and there to our apartment. I told Matthew I needed this desk for Christmas and I didn't need anything else but this desk. I was all heart eye emoji in the middle of Home Goods drooling over this desk, and my sweet husband was willing to get it for me, but 1. We have ZERO room for this in our apartment. 2. I don't know if we'll have room for this in our future house (thinking ahead!!) 3. It was $200, and I just can't even think about spending $200 on myself right now when all we want to do is dump any extra money we have into house savings. So as much as I loved this perfect desk we left it at Home Goods...alone. Fingers crossed our future house will have room for it and we can find another one just like this!!

3 | Washer & Dryer
 
Our washer and dryer delivered a week ago today and they are PERFECT. We sat there for a good 10 minutes watching it run the first load out of pure excitement. #wearechildren


4 | Calendar

















I finally updated our calendar to November...just a couple of weeks late. We keep this on our refrigerator with important dates on it. I love it, look at that beautiful gold frame ;) and look forward to updating it each month!


5 | Spotify



















I am probably really late about this, but I just discovered Spotify....and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT.
I spent a good bit the other day creating playlists and now I am hooked. I used to listen to Pandora all day long while I worked, but I got tired of the same songs. So this week I've been pulling up Spotify every morning and listening to it all day. It's great! What about y'all? Do y'all use Spotify throughout the day some? If so follow me, I have enjoyed finding friends on there and seeing/following some of their playlists! I also have 5 Christmas playlists already #noshame

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

HOW TO SERVE ICE CREAM

My MIL is the queen of the kitchen. Give her random ingredients and she can make a delicious meal that will leave your mouth watering for more. Our rehearsal dinner was incredible and our friends and family are still talking about it, and I don't blame them. It was just that good!

For my BIL's rehearsal dinner they decided to serve blackberry/blueberry cobbler (insanely good) with ice cream for dessert. My MIL wanted to be able to keep the ice cream cold while it was served buffet style. So she came up with this genius idea, and I was SO impressed with how well it worked!



YES that is ice! 

Here is what she did...put water in the first bowl > ice cream in the second bowl > put the second bowl in the first bowl > put it in the freezer.


Seriously, why didn't I think of this years ago! Especially when we celebrated Matthew's undergrad graduation with an ice cream bar?!?!


Here's the "ice bowl" from the first bowl after the dinner was over and we were cleaning up. Still completely solid.


Making a delicious apple pie this Thanksgiving? Serve some ice cream with it, and give this trick a try to keep the ice cream from melting!

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

PUMPKIN CANDLE CENTERPIECES

One of my favorite parts about hosting special events is planning and decorating for the event. I'll spend quite a bit of time on Pinterest and blogs looking for ideas and then go from there. I shared yesterday about our Friendsgiving and today I am going to share about the centerpieces I made for it!



What you will need:

- Medium pumpkin
- Knife
- Pencil or Pen
- Pillar Candle
- Trash Bag
- Hot Glue Gun
- Artificial twigs, berries, and leaves (I found mine at Hobby Lobby for 50% off!)

Step 1 | You'll need to snap the stem off before you begin. It usually snaps off pretty easily and leaves a clean area to work with.

Step 2 | Using a pencil or pen trace your candle. Make sure it's in the middle of your pumpkin.

Step 3 | After you traced your candle in desired area you can begin cutting the hole out for your candle to fit!

Step 4 | Remove the pumpkin guts, as I like to call it. Make sure to get as much out as you can so your candle has room to fit.

Step 5 | Place your candles inside of the pumpkin at desired height. I recommend keeping them up pretty high so when you light them later it won't be too close to artificial leaves/floral stems and catch on fire. Learn from my mistake ;)

Step 6 | Start hot gluing artificial twigs, leaves, and berries all around the top. If there is room you can stick some in between the candle and pumpkin and it will hold it's place well.

Step 7 | Put it in the middle of your table for everyone to see!

Monday, November 16, 2015

FRIENDSGIVING 2015

Friendsgiving was a huge success and we are already excited about hosting again next year! I took a lot of pictures so get ready for a photo dump.


First some pictures of our Friendsgiving day with everyone!

My sister got there early to help with anything and I was so thankful she was there!

This sweet man also helped with anything I needed. He kept coming in the kitchen to check and see if he needed to do anything. So sweet! :) 

We finally got a good group picture! It took a few tries as the guys kept being goofy lol but it made for some hilarious pictures. Also, the two in orange didn't just break out of prison, they were decked out for the UT game lol.



I saw a couple of Friendsgiving snaps and got really excited!



And now pictures of the table setup! I searched Pinterest for a few weeks on what I wanted to do. I wanted to stay within budget, but still come up with something cute. I used a lot of stuff I already had and spent very little on the things I needed to pick up for the centerpieces/place card settings. 








I dug out some plates I had collected for our wedding and used. I think I have decided on keeping these for special occasions because I just love them so much. The gold detailing on them make me so happy!

And that's about it! I'll share how I made the centerpieces/place card settings tomorrow. 

Friday, November 13, 2015

5 ON FRIDAY

1 | Washer & dryer
Our old washer and dryer that we had decided to start acting crazy on us. Mostly it was the washer, leaving rust stains on our clothes and eating the ends of our nice new towels we registered for and love so much. So we finally decided on buying a new set and they are delivering TODAY! It's like Christmas Day for us lol. Matthew did a ton of research on them over the past couple of weeks and there was a really good sale going on so we just couldn't pass it up. We knew that this would more thank likely be one of our first big purchases after we are in a house anyways since most houses come with kitchen appliances so we decided to pull the trigger this past weekend. 
Soooo basically we're grown-ups now.


2 | FRIENDSGIVING
Is this weekend! I have worked on centerpieces a little this week and I am so excited to see how it turns out and to have everyone over to our apartment! The weather is looking perfect and I am planning on having the windows open ALL day. 


3 | Car ride & lunch dates 
 Tuesday & Wednesday of this week Matthew was working at a client's office really close to mine so we decided to carpool into work together. I was so excited to ride to work together and loved it lol. 

We even went to lunch together at one of our favorite Mexican places close to my office. So car ride and lunch dates are my new favorite :)

4 | Predator's game
The SOC made a trip to Nashville last night to watch the Pred's play so Matthew and I decided to join them! Sadly the Pred's lost but it was good to see everyone! 


5 | Christmas mantel decor
I have been searching away on Pinterest for the perfect Christmas mantel decor piece(s) and these three I am really loving. Our mantel is white so I am wanting some greens and reds up there to really pop. You can find these and many other similar pins on my Christmas board.