GOALS | NOVEMBER

I almost forgot about my November goals. I still can't believe I am making November goals already!! November and December will be busy months with the holidays. I hope that we are able to relax a little and enjoy our time together and with our families!

Here are October's goals:

- Clean out our closet and get our fall clothes out!

A big ole CHECK!

-Organize our kitchen cabinets

Another big ole CHECK

-Finish dining room chairs

Another big ole CHECK (seriously, it felt so good finishing these!)

-Get our mums from Cookeville and take pictures of all our fall decorations to blog about!

We missed our usual mums in Cookeville, but still got some beautiful mums from my BIL's wedding! 

-Finish Wedding posts...hope y'all aren't tired of them yet ;)

Completely failed on this one.

-Go on a weekend trip (I'M SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS!)

We had the best weekend in Gatlinburg! Bears, puppies, good food, and quality time with my husband...could not have asked for a better trip!

-Try some new recipes

We have tried some new recipes! Every recipe that we try that I get from Pinterest I pin it to a new board called, "Pinned it, did it" with my honest review. That way I can go back and find it if I want to make it again! 

-Check some things off of our Fall Bucket List!

We have checked off quite a few things, but have a few more to do!

1.  Host Friendsgiving. It is this Saturday and I am working on centerpieces + making sure we have everything else ready to go. I am so excited, and the weather is looking to be cool, but sunny with no rain...perfect!!!

2.  Create a cleaning schedule and stick to it! I feel with the time change we have literally gone to bed right after we eat dinner. And with that happening our apartment has suffered during the week and we are left with a lot of cleaning on the weekend, which is the exact opposite of what we want to do during our free time. So as we are adjusting to the time change I am hoping we'll get back on track. 

3.  Plan a couple of fun/cheap Christmas date ideas! This will be our first married Christmas together and I want to enjoy every second of this fun time of the year together, and maybe start some of our own traditions! 

4.  Try some new recipes. I have really enjoyed my time in the kitchen since we've been married. I love trying new recipes and using all of our new appliances! So I want to try even more new recipes.

5.  Share with y'all how we meal plan. The way we meal plan might not work for everyone, but if I can help another newlywed wife out I'll do it! I remember searching the internet before we got married to find THE best way to meal plan for us. I wanted to start off our marriage eating at home, to save money and to use our new appliances we had been gifted! I read many blog posts and eventually ended up pulling a little bit from all over to create the way we have been using. The first couple of weeks were kinda bumpy on our meal planning as we were still unpacking my stuff and settling into our routine, but we eventually got into a routine that we really like! 

6.  Finish Christmas shopping. I would love to have all of our Christmas shopping finished by the end of this month, but I don't know if that will happen. So we have given ourselves a deadline of December 12th, to have at least everything ordered! 

7.  Decorate for Christmas! And last but not least, decorate our apartment for Christmas! The Saturday after Thanksgiving we are going to put on comfy, cozy clothes and spend the day decorating for Christmas and watching Christmas movies. This is one of my FAVORITE days of the year and I am so excited to spend it with my Matthew! Also, Matthew has requested that there be sausage balls that morning, so I'll be making sausage balls for breakfast! :)

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GOALS | NOVEMBER

ORGANIZING YOUR PINTEREST

I remember Pinterest coming out back when I was still in high school and I would spend hours "pinning" things, and still do! In the past few months I have really tried to organize my Pinterest boards for myself and I have been able to see some growth in those months. So I'll share with you some of the things that I think helped.

1 |  Label your boards with one or two words...

Nothing annoys me quicker than going to someone's Pinterest and scrolling through all of their boards trying to find something specific and having to stop and read each long title to figure out which board the pin I am looking for is on. And then I remembered, "oh wait, that's how my boards are labeled." So I did some title changing very quickly!

          - Before my food/recipes board was labeled "Good lookin' what's cookin?" I changed it to "Recipes" you could also go with "Food" or "Eat" or if you separate them into different categories you could do, "Appetizers", "Main Dishes", "Sides",  "Desserts", "Drinks", etc. 

          - My Travel board was "Take Me There" and I changed it to "TRAVEL" of course you can see the pictures and make out what the board probably is about, but when I'm in a hurry trying to find a pin I saw earlier that day I need to get to that point quickly.  

2 | Move your boards..

My first board always stays the same, it's my blog board. The next few after that I try to keep it updated with the upcoming seasons. So right now I have my fall and Christmas board. Right now people are mostly pinning fall and Christmas stuff to get ideas for the upcoming holidays. 

Just click on your board and drag it to the location you want it. Very simple!

3 | Categorize your boards .

I like to have all my boards in their own little area. All my seasons are next to each other, style, travel, food, etc. Again, just click on your board and move it to your desired area. 

4 | Cover Photo

I make sure on all of my boards that the cover picture actually represents what is on that board. 

Example... These two pictures are representing what the board consists of, and they fit pretty well too.

To change the cover picture of your board...

1. Click on the board > Top right hand corner click Edit Board

2. Once you are in there, click on Change

3. You will be able to scroll through the pictures that are on that board. Go through them and decide which represents that board the best and which one fits the best. You can adjust the picture some to have it fit in the square. 

4. Save Changes. 

5 | Description...

On each board, go through and add a short and sweet description of what is on the board.

So there you go! Just some small tips that I think can really make a big difference, for you and for your followers! Do you have any tips for organizing your Pinterest boards?

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ORGANIZING YOUR PINTEREST

10 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT ME

I have a few new friends around here so I thought I would do a fun little post about some things y'all might not know about me. So here are 10 things most people don't know about me!

My favorite date, my favorite necklace, and my favorite dress‪. 

1 | I hate when my feet get cold. 

I usually wear two pair of socks with my boots in the winter just so my feet don't get cold.

2 | I lived in the house I was brought home to from the hospital for 21 years, until I moved to Cookeville. My family still lives there, and it always makes me so happy to go back "home". I know we are married now and have our own place that we call home, but I think Matthew and I will always call our parents home, home. 

3 | I always have to have a candle burning when we are home. They are just so relaxing and can put me at ease in seconds. Matthew has caught on to this very quickly and when he gets home before I do he usually lights a candle right before I get home...melts my heart every single time. 

4 | I absolutely HAVE to set two alarms every single morning. I sit a "warning alarm" as I like to call it, 10 minutes before I really have to get up. So if we have to get up at 6:00 am then I set my alarm for 5:50 am. I hate getting straight out of bed as soon as my alarm goes off so that 10 minutes lets me ease into it lol. #diva I know.

5 | I am not a coffee drinker. At all. I have tried and tried to make myself like it, but I just don't think it's going to happen. I'm not too sad about it, I don't have to worry about it staining my teeth! If you ever see me with a cute coffee mug, it probably will have apple cider in it or hot chocolate. Those two I can drink all day long. 

6 | My title at work is Administrative Assistant but more and more people are starting to call me Boss....and I'm not stopping them #youcancallmequeenbee

Just kidding, of course, but seriously. 

7 | I probably spend about 1.5+ hours a day looking houses for sale online. Zillow, Redfin, Movoto, and Trulia can be found in my History every.single.day.

8 | I can't sleep on a pillow, but I have to have a pillow with me when I sleep. Matthew thinks I am the craziest person, ever, but it's true. I have the flattest pillow that is probably 20 years old and I lay my head on it until it's time for me to go to sleep and then I put it up against my headboard and throughout the middle of the night I will pull it down in my sleep and lay on it for a little bit at a time. I usually never wake up sleeping on it though. Matthew didn't believe me when I told him I did this until we got married and he saw me moving it in my sleep lol.

9 | I used to hate not having plans for the weekend growing up. I remember being in high school and if we didn't go somewhere or have plans for the weekend I thought my life was over. I would beg my parents to just go grocery shopping or driving around in town so I could get out of the house and actually have something to do. Now, I feel like it's the exact opposite. A weekend with no plans? Sounds like the best thing ever. Not leaving the apartment all day? YES, please! I could get so much done if I didn't have to leave. I told Matthew the other day, I think we are actually becoming grown-ups lol. Sure we have big boy and big girls jobs, big boy and big girl bills to definitely make us feel like grown-ups, but the thought of having absolutely no plans makes me extremely happy.

10 | Apparently I am a violent sleeper...about a month after we were married I kneed Matthew so hard in his side while I was asleep that I dislocated one of his ribs and he had to go to the chiropractor for a few weeks. #wifeoftheyear

I honestly had no idea I even did it and every since then I have been so self conscious about it that if I am moving my knee up in the middle of the night I wake up and immediately put it back down so I don't knee him again. #newlyweds

And because I just love this picture from yesterday's post!

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10 THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT ME

BEARS & PUPPIES

Yesterday I recapped about the first half of our long weekend trip to Gatlinburg and today I am going to share the second half....which includes bears and puppies!

Saturday after we left Ober Gatlingburg we decided to go back to the cabin and just take it easy, Matthew was still pretty tired from work that morning. We were getting out of the car fixing to go into our cabin when we heard someone yell and say "better lock your doors the bears will get in your car if you don't!" We never saw him clearly because of all the trees but it was our neighbor in the cabin close to us. He was standing on his balcony and said the bears are out. I immediately got excited and asked where they were and he told us to look under his balcony...

You can't see them all because some were behind trees or in them but there were 10 bears! I about died. I started snapping pictures and Matthew talked with our neighbor. The neighbor told us they have lived there for 8 years and this is the most active they have ever been. There were two mama bears and eight cubs. The cubs were playing around while the mama bears just laid around. At one point two cubs started growling at each other and "fighting" it was really fun to hear and watch. We stood there for a good 10 minutes watching them when all of a sudden I saw something out of the corner of my eye...

There was another cub sitting up on the hill behind a tree about 20 feet from us watching us. I couldn't get a good picture because it was hiding out behind the tree waiting for us to leave, and I wasn't getting any closer to it to get a picture. After we saw him we decided to go on in since he was so close lol. We both ran up to the balcony to watch them and that's when the cub that was so close decided to go to our car and try to get in. Matthew and I didn't realize how smart they are. He seriously went to every single door and pulled on the handle to try and get the door open and then went to the trunk and tried to raise it. We we so amused by watching him lol.  After he realized he wasn't getting in our car he just laid down in the yard lol

We watched them off and on for a good hour or so and more tried to get in the car and then a mama and two cubs crossed over our front porch to go up in the mountains. It was so interesting and fun to watch them, but we were a little hesitant to go outside to leave that night for dinner lol.

Sunday we decided to go to Flapjacks for breakfast and it was really good! We stopped in Cookeville on our way home to hangout with everyone again and to go to church. On our way to Cookeville we decided to stop in Knoxville and drive around the University of Tennessee's campus since I have never seen it. It is a very big campus compared to Tech's campus! We also decided to stop at a place I have heard about through multiple friends call Puppy Zone. You can go in there and play with the puppies, and of course buy one if you want to. 

Matthew fell IN LOVE with this little guy, a shih poo. He just want to lay on and be held by Matthew, and every time he put him down he would jump back up on the side of the bed and wait for Matthew to hold him. It was THE cutest thing in the world, and my heart melted every time I looked at them. Unfortunately little man was about $1300 so we had to pass, but Matthew said if he would have been cheaper he wouldn't have been able to leave him...

We both thought this little one was cute, but definitely agreed that if we had to choose one it would have been Matthew's little buddy.

My favorite picture of the two lol

Every since we left Puppy Zone Matthew has been researching all about shih poo's and looking up different breeders in and around Nashville while I am trying my VERY best to convince Matthew that it would be better to wait until we are in a house to get one. 

It's really hard to do that when he keeps sending these kind of messages to me throughout the day...

and then he started adding little messages "from the puppy" to them

STRAIGHT UP KILLIN' ME Y'ALL.

#staystrongshelby 

And yes, my husband's name in my phone has a smiley face beside it. It has been that way since we started talking back in spring of 2010 and I don't think I'll ever be able to change it. :)

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BEARS & PUPPIES