FIRST MARRIED THANKSGIVING

Last week was crazy busy and left me with no time to blog at all. So today I'm sharing about our Thanksgiving! 

 I posted this picture on Instagram on the Tuesday night before Thanksgiving. I was really excited to make 4 strawberry pies. I got the recipe from my good friend, Rachel. I had Christmas music going and was working away in our tiny kitchen.

Unfortunately, they didn't turn out right and I was pretty bummed, but there were PLENTY of other desserts to make up for it lol.

I got off early on Wednesday and had to make some pictures for a friend's family, and Matthew headed on to Murfreesboro. I got there in time to make it to church. We stayed at Matthew's parents and his two brothers (and sister-in-law) were home, too! So fun all being together again.

We have two places to be on Thanksgiving day and one place to be the day after Thanksgiving. I would say we are pretty lucky, only having three places to go. We know people that have 3+ places to go. 

We had lunch with Matthew's family on Thanksgiving Day, and everything was delicious!

Here's the dessert table...SO many good things!

 Matthew's dad put these centerpieces together! I loved them!!

Then we went to my parents house for dinner later that day and ate more delicious food!!!! It's always so good to see all of both of our families!

And of course we had to take some pictures! The weather was so warm and it felt great!!

This might be my new favorite picture of all of us! I just love my sweet sisters.

Friday morning we woke up and had breakfast with Matthew's family and then headed to my mema's house for Thanksgiving lunch! We helped her decorate the "grandchildren's Christmas Tree" that we always do every year at Thanksgiving. 

Another successful Thanksgiving with my best friend, except this year I didn't have to tell him bye at the end of the day. Absolute perfection!

First married holiday in the books, and now we're ready for Christmas! 

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FIRST MARRIED THANKSGIVING

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!

Caramel Apple Spice

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!

Dumplings 

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!

Red Cinnamon 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!

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RECIPES FOR THANKSGIVING

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

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5 ON FRIDAY

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. 

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FRIENDSGIVING 2015

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

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

GATLINBURG

We had the best time in Gatlinburg this past weekend, and as usual we were sad for it to end.
This was our first trip just the two of us since our honeymoon so we were really excited and had been counting down the days until we left. We stayed in a cute one bedroom cabin that we fell in love with. Our cabin was called Sugar Booger. It was even called Sugar Booger on Google Maps, how precious?! It's completely outdated with floral wallpaper everywhere and could use some new paint (we have been watching too much HGTV, hello Fixer Upper!) but that is what we loved most about it other than it's location! If you are looking for a cabin I highly recommend looking into Mountain Laurel Chalets!

We left bright and early Friday morning around six and decided to stop in Cookeville and meet our friends for breakfast at Chick-fil-A, because is there a better breakfast for a road trip? No.

We got to enjoy this beautiful sunrise on Friday morning

We can't travel without road snacks!

Not pictured: Matthew's road snack...Buncha Crunch

Our first stop once we got there, Smoky Mountain Knife Works. Matthew and my dad love this place. We took our time and browsed different knives and guns, and even picked out my dad's Christmas present! Matthew decided on a new pocket knife and then we headed to the Lodge Cast Iron store. If I could I would but every piece of cast iron in there. Especially in their scratch and dent section. A small scratch and they knock off 40%...I'll take it! Unfortunately since we have about 0% of cabinet space in our kitchen we decided to just browse the store. We still enjoyed it though!

We were almost into Pigeon Forge when we started getting hungry. Matthew saw this place called Boogaloos and decided that's where we NEEDED to eat. I was a little skeptical about this place as there were only 3 cars in the parking lot at lunch time. Matthew was feeling adventurous and talked me into trying it...without looking up any reviews...gettin' crazy y'all!

I had the caesar salad with blackened chicken and Matthew got the chicken strip basket with fries. 

It actually turned out to be REALLY good! There was no one there so we enjoyed the quiet atmosphere and the waiter was on his game since he didn't have to wait on anyone else. The waiter did say they are really busy at night, which we believe as it is a sports bar lol. They had it decorated really cute for Halloween. It was good enough that we would definitely go back...during the day! We love finding places like that.

Our next stop was The Christmas Place. Hands down this is one of my favorite parts about coming to Gatlinburg. I could stay in there and shop forever. Matthew gets his time at Smoky Mountain Knife Works and I get my time at The Christmas Place...compromise y'all compromise. ;) We picked out a few really cute pieces!

We finally made it to the cabin and unloaded the car. When checking in the guy told Matthew to watch out for the bears, they are active this year. Of course when Matthew told me that I about died from excitement, but tried not to get my hopes up because we have been told that before. 

We decided to stay in on Friday night and just relax. We ordered Pizza and went and picked up a Red Box movie. Ski Mountain Pizza was on the way up to our cabin so that's where we got our pizza from. It was okay, but not something we will get again. 

We got back to the cabin for the night and Matthew started the fire while I got the pizza and drinks out to eat. And yes, I brought our favorite candle with us. #noshame

The location of the cabin was absolutely perfect. We were about 5 minutes from downtown Gatlinburg or as we call it, the strip, but we still had beautiful views of the mountains and fall foliage.

This is the view from the living room upstairs.

The cabin was perfect for the two of us, and we plan on going back to that exact cabin if the dates are available!

The view from out bedroom on the first floor. We absolutely love the glass sliding doors on the first and second floor.

Matthew had to leave early Saturday morning to go to work and I was wide awake so I watched Christmas movies on Hallmark while waiting for the sun to come up lol. 

LOVE Snap chat filters!

The best way to enjoy my hot apple cider.

Matthew got back from work around 11 and he took a nap, then we decided to go to Ober Gatlinburg.

We rode the sky lift 3 times and played mini golf. We were going to do the alpine slide but it started sprinkling and they closed it for the day. Huge bummer! While we were riding the sky lift we looked for bears but never saw any. Someone said they saw some off in the distance but we never them. I was convinced I was never going to see a bear in the wild...LOL little did I know.

I was really afraid we had missed the leaves changing colors since they had reached their peak the weekend before (from what I read on various travel sites) but I think we went at THE best time. We couldn't stop talking about how gorgeous the colors were. I told Matthew it's something about Gatlinburg, because even the green leaves were a different green than the ones here at home. 

When we got off of the sky lift this is the beautiful views we got to see!

I'll share about our Saturday afternoon and trip home Sunday, tomorrow!

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GATLINBURG