Weekending

This past weekend I drove over to Tampa for a wedding and to spend time with my family which was perfect since we're not spending Christmas with them this year. Our childhood friend was getting married Friday afternoon in Tampa so I took the whole day off and drove over early to spend some time with my friend, Susannah. She just had a baby a few months ago (along with 2 other boys) so it was great to meet him, catch up with Susannah and spend some time with her other boys! It was so much fun and I wish we lived closer to each other.

Afterwards, I met my family at the wedding. It was beautiful - they had it decorated so well! There wasn't much dancing but they had lots of fun lawn games as well as smores around a bonfire. It was fun catching up with our long-time friends.

Saturday, we enjoyed a delicious omelet breakfast at the country club we used to be members at when we lived in Tampa. Afterwards, we headed to my sister's boyfriend's parents house (that was a mouthful) to drop off their Christmas gift then head over to Top Golf. We had so much fun at Top Golf and can't wait for them to put one in Orlando! Later, we headed to the hotel for a nap while dad played golf and then we got our nails done at our old high school nail salon. We finished up the night with Smoothie King (going real big) and then a new card game that my sister taught us. 

Sunday morning, I headed over to meet my friend in Orlando and meet her new baby for the first time! Eloise was so adorable and such a good baby - I'm so glad we got to meet up and I got to hold Eloise :) Afterwards, I headed over to my SIL's mom's house for lunch and to see that side of the family before heading home. On my way home, I was able to see Stephen's rocket launch from the highway which was really neat! I'm so thankful they were able to launch so now we can focus on Christmas and enjoy the rest of our time together :)

I hope everyone had a great weekend as well! Linking up with Biana

Four on Friday

How the heck is this the last weekend before Christmas!? I seriously can't believe it...

One
I am currently en route to Tampa for a family friend's wedding! My family is meeting me there for the weekend and I'm so excited to see so many friends and family this weekend (Stephen has a launch on Sunday so he has to stay behind :/). The wedding is actually where our friends got married almost 2 years ago and I will get to see my sweet friend, Susannah again! I haven't seen Susannah since the last wedding and since then, she added another sweet baby boy to her brood. It's so weird seeing the picture below because Noah (the baby) is so big now and baby Asher is currently the size of Noah in the picture.

Sorry for the blurry picture

The wedding is this afternoon so Saturday we're planning on doing Top Golf for the first time and then Sunday I'm meeting up with my good friend, Camilla. I get to meet baby Eloise for the first time and I'm so excited! I'm also hoping to swing by and see my BIL, SIL, niece and meet their newest niece. So many babies this weekend and I can't wait for all the baby snuggles!

Two

I was on a business trip in Atlanta for the first 3 days of the week and since Wednesday was a travel day, I got SO much done at home after flying back into Orlando. It was heavenly and I felt so good about getting things done (like really cleaning the house for the first time in a month... so bad). Later that evening, Stephen and I made hot chocolate and then took a drive around our neighborhood to see Christmas lights. It was so much fun and we loved seeing our neighbors houses lit up (even though it seemed like less houses were decorated this year compared to last). I failed and didn't get any pictures but we can't wait to continue the tradition we started last year, especially when we have kids. 

After the lights, we came home and watched Christmas in Connecticut  which is such a fun, old-fashion Christmas movie.

Three

I've been on a little bit of a spaghetti squash kick lately and I thought I'd share 2 recipes that have turned out really well! This Spaghetti recipe turned out super delicious and was very hearty of a meal. 

I made this broccoli and cheese recipe Wednesday and it turned out really good! It's not super flavorful but I thought it was light and refreshing, especially after a few days of bad eating on my trip.  

Four

I'm going to end my Five on Friday with this one: Christmas is barley a week away... what the heck!? I have 3 more days of work and then I'm free until 2017 #praise. Stephen and I always do our "own" Christmas day before heading out to spend Christmas with family. We love this tradition - we are able to open our own gifts in the comfort of our home, we get to cook what we want and we get to do exactly what we want. This helps us feel like we didn't miss out on Christmas if our families do things differently.

We will be doing our Christmas on Thursday and then heading down to Stephen's parents house on Friday. We are so tickled to spend Christmas with our niece this year - she's just over 1 so it'll be really fun seeing her run around and experience Christmas for really the first time now. After Christmas, we'll be heading home to get some much needed R&R back at the house. Okay, probably not much R&R like I originally hoped for because we have 1 day tickets to Sea World and my family will be popping in for a short stay on the way to and from the Orange Bowl but at least we'll be home and not traveling!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!!

Our Christmas Decorations 2016

I absolutely love having our house decorated for Christmas! It's so cozy, warm and uplifting - is it socially acceptable to leave our tree up all year? I wanted to share some snip-its of our house decorated for Christmas this year.

Since taking this picture, we got some pre-lit, Magnolia garland which is now behind the nativity scene. I moved the garland seen above to our living room table.

I added our names to our stockings this year and I love how they turned out!

I had to make a new Christmas card display this year so I got an empty frame from Hobby Lobby and added some twine to clip the cards to. So far, it's working really well!

Our 2nd tree that gave us so much trouble... thankfully, the new adapter seems to be working well!

I totally failed and only bought 2 placemats in this set a few years ago. I'll be looking for new placemats and table decorations after Christmas this year

I just love how simple the outside of our house looks - the wreaths on the windows give me all the heart eyes, especially with the rocking chairs this year. We also put some lights in the bushes and around the small palm tree

Linking up with Jessi

Weekending

We were so thankful that Stephen didn't have to work this past weekend! After work on Friday, I decided I need to wrap all of Stephen's Christmas gifts so there's no threat of him finding his surprise gifts. I just love wrapping Christmas gifts and can't wait to finish Stephen's familys gifts later this week. Later that night, we went to a friend's 28th birthday party and then headed home to try to get some sleep for our Disney day.

Saturday, we woke up and headed over to Disney to spend most of the day and buy our season passes. Oh my Lord, it was the most crowded we've ever seen it (and that's saying something). From entering the parking area, it took us 2+ hours to get into the park - 90% of our time there was spent waiting in lines. Even though we only had time to eat lunch, walk around the park once and eat ice cream, it was fun being there again. We'll definitely be getting there earlier next time.

After Disney we headed to one of my regional manager's house for our regional get together party. He usually throws it during November but this year he had to do it in December. Every year this party is so much fun and this year was no exception! I'm so thankful Stephen was able to go with me because I thought I'd be flying solo.

Sunday, our alarms went off wayyy too early but we rallied and made it to church. We got home to find our garage door had broken... so that's fun #homeownerproblems. While Stephen spent the good part of the day watching garage fix-it videos, I was able to spend most of the day embroidering which was so nice! After getting everything almost everything done around the house, we settled in and watched the last part of Christmas Vacation because we fell asleep watching it last week #oldpeoplestatus.

Today, I'm off to Atlanta for a quick business trip. I hate leaving home, especially during Christmas (every night is so valuable) so I'll only be gone a few nights. I will, however, greatly enjoy the fact that I can lay in bed and watch TV without feeling guilty that more things need to be done around the house ;)

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Linking up with Biana

Five on Friday

It feels good to be back for another Five on Friday linkup! This weekend is looking jam packed but I'm super excited - a birthday party tonight, Disney tomorrow, a work Christmas party tomorrow night and filling Premium Pineapple orders on Sunday. Even though we have a great weekend planned, there's a high threat Stephen will end up working the weekend again.... so now it's looking like literally every weekend in December which sucks so bad (it wouldn't be as bad if he got paid for all of this overtime work). I feel like our Christmas season is slipping right out from underneath us :( Anyways, sorry for that rant - onto more cheerful things!

One
A few of us at work have been talking for a few months about doing a cookie and clothing exchange one evening after work. We were able to have it this past Tuesday and it was so much fun! We all brought appetizers, a plate of cookies and any clothes/accessories we didn't want anymore. Our sweet host made a recipe book of all the cookie recipes for each of us to have and got all of us adorable plates to take our new cookies home in. As for the clothes portion, the idea was to "shop" each others closets which worked out so well! I found some great shorts and a J Crew button down that I plan on monogramming the sleeve. We had so much fun - this is a tradition we'll definitely have to continue!

So sorry for the blurry picture but I had to share how many clothes were there!

Two
Every year I like to make a little Christmas goodie for my co-workers. This year I made some White Trash and put it into little bags for Stephen and my co-workers. The recipe is SOOO easy - literally, a bag of pretzels, a box of rice chex cereal, a bottle of peanuts, a bag of Christmas m&ms and melted white chocolate. Mix all of the ingredients together and then stir in the melted white chocolate. Coat and lay out on wax paper to solidify. This recipe made so much - 25 mini bags and 2 full Tupperware containers.

For another one of my groups at work, I made them Christmas Toll House Cookies and received a request for more so I will be baking again this weekend lol I also used some from that batch for our mailman and the cookie exchange.

Three
On top of the baking recipes above, here are some other things I've been cooking these past few weeks for Christmas parties:

For our Christmas potluck brunch this year, I made cinnamon roll french toast bake which was delicious and so easy to make! It was completely gone by the time I went to grab my casserole dish at lunch.

For our Christmas get together last Friday, I was tasked to bring a drink so we brought Rudolph punch which was SUPER easy and delicious (ginger ale and cranberry juice).

For tonight's birthday party, I took on the task of making a gluten free dessert (the birthday girl is GF) and I decided on these fudgey peanut butter brownies. It was super difficult to find a GF dessert that didn't have too many steps and odd ingredients. These brownies look delicious and fairly easy to make so hopefully they turn out delicious!

Four

I was so surprised to find the most perfect Christmas gift from my friend, Madison, on my desk last week. She got me a beautiful pineapple ornament which is perfect because #1 I love pineapples and #2 I opened my embroidery business this year which is called Premium Pineapple Embroidery - so appropriate!

Five

If you missed it this week, I shared 2 fun Christmas collaborations! The first one was our Christmas cards with Tiny Prints

And the second one was a fun, Christmas phone case with CaseApp!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!! Only 1 more weekend until Christmas!