Five on Friday

One
I'm super excited to finally share our Christmas cards this year! They should all be delivered by now but we were so excited with how they turned out. The day before Thanksgiving, I wanted to get a feel for what cards we liked and which company we wanted to go with before the black Friday sales. Stephen mentioned Amazon did cards so we looked into them and were shocked to see how cheap they were! We ended up purchasing them that night and we're super pleased with the quality for the price - they even included free return address printed on the envelope!! Definitely using them again

Since we traveled around the country a lot earlier this year, we decided to use a picture from NYC & San Fran and incorporate that into the card text.

Two

At work on Wednesday, they had our annual Christmas lunch. It's something fun they do and provide all of the employees a Christmas style lunch. Y'all, best cornbread I've ever had in my life. Every year, I look forward to this event because of the cornbread lol

Three

We made another one of Christina's soups this week and it was delicious! We have yet to find a recipe of hers that we didn't love and this tortellini soup was no exception

Four

Last night, one of my co-workers hosted our second annual cookie exchange. It was so much fun and I can't wait to try all the delicious cookies! My sister sent me an amazing sugar cookie recipe and then I dipped half the cookies in dark chocolate and added sprinkles & crushed candy canes to them. 

Five
And now that I've realized almost my entire FoF post is about food... we are hosting our #basicchristmasparty tonight with our friends from our fall party! We are so excited to have hot chocolate, see Christmas lights, build gingerbread houses and play a Christmas game :) Tomorrow, we're going to Disney to see the Christmas decorations before we lose our passes and hopefully, we'll get to see Kurt Russell read the Christmas story at Epcot!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! Can't believe Christmas is coming so quickly!

Weekending

We had a great first weekend of December and kicked off the Christmas season in style! Friday morning, my group had our annual Christmas potluck - there were tables of food all the way down the hall. There was so much delicious food! After getting our food, a few of my friends camped out in my cube to eat before our meetings.

Later that evening, we headed to the local garden center for a Christmas wine and cheese event with some of our friends. It was a super cute setup but unfortunately, we got there late and missed out on all the snacks so we went to dinner afterwards.

We were supposed to go to Disney Saturday but our fire alarms went off at 3 am for no reason and I wasn't feeling well so we decided to stay home. It was probably the best decision of the weekend because we got to take it easy, watch a Christmas movie, make Christmas cookies and wrap presents. Later that evening, we went to Stephen's Christmas party which was at Kennedy Space Center. We had so much fun and it was the perfect venue!

I will say, if you want to see some funny video of Stephen dancing, check my Instagram ;)

Sunday, we went to church and read the advent reading for the week. Then we did our usual errands and I embroidered all day before we spent the rest of the night wrapping presents and watching another Christmas movie.

Linking up with Biana

Five on Friday

Happy December 1st!! I am so excited it's officially December - let the Christmas festivities officially begin!! Tonight, we're kicking things off with a cheese and wine event at the local gardens followed by dinner with some friends and then Saturday we're hitting up Disney and later we have Stephen's Christmas party at the Space Center.

One
Unless you live under a rock, you've heard there's going to be another royal wedding!!!!!!!!!! To say I'm excited is an understatement - I can't wait to watch it! To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Megan #stillkatesnumber1fan but I'm definitely loving all of this royal news and hope they have a wonderful marriage :)

Two
This year was the first year we watched the Rockefeller tree lighting ceremony! I've tried to get Stephen to watch it in the past and he never had any interest except this year he was game because we were there a few months ago #illtakewhaticanget. We didn't see the whole thing but it was pretty cool to watch! Were we the only ones who noticed they lit the tree before the end of the countdown?

Three
My friend made some adorable Christmas baby bibs and blankets to match and we're selling them with an option to add a monogram to them! She did such a great job; now I only wish I had a baby so I could use one lol

Four
I recently got my first pair of block heels and now I'm all about the block heels!! They're so much easier to walk in and more comfortable than regular heels. The weight is distributed a lot better. I was able to wear mine for the first time for an entire day at work - I usually lose my regular heels by lunch. I'm going to wear them for Stephen's party this weekend so it'll be nice with all the walking we'll be doing.

Five
We are super pumped because we ordered our Christmas cards (kind of on a whim) from Amazon Photo because it was so cheap and they had a really cute design - we are pleasantly surprised with the product! They didn't have a lot of special options but for the price, it was fantastic!! I'll share our card once they've been sent out but I wanted to give y'all a heads up in case you still need cards :)

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend filled with Christmas activities and movies!

Thanksgiving 2017

This Thanksgiving was a little different this year - we hosted it for the first time! Since getting married, we've alternated Thanksgiving and Christmas with our families and this year it was a Hirst Thanksgiving. My BIL & SIL hosted 2 years ago when our niece was 3 weeks old so Stephen and I decided to step up our game and host before we had kids to deal with ;)

I was nervous about the turkey but thankfully, we borrowed our BIL & SIL's roaster which freed up the oven and Stephen attempted a smoked turkey - both turned out amazing!! I wanted to make sure everything was cooked on time and ready to eat shortly after everyone came over. Everyone laughed at me when I said I was going to make a cooking schedule utilizing a Gnatt chart but let me tell you, it worked like a charm and kept me on track! 

Getting my first turkey ready - we bought a brine kit from Publix and it worked so well for the roasted turkey and Stephen made a custom brine for his smoked turkey breast. Stephen also thinks I look like Tupac with that bandana ;)

Even though we ordered a fresh turkey, it was still frozen so I broke out the hair dryer to melt the inside so I could get the neck out

I was really happy with how the tablescape turned out. I had a thick, plastic table cloth and paper leaf placemats which worked great since our niece was 2 - I didn't have to worry with anything getting ruined. I picked up a bunch of pumpkins on Halloween for dirt cheap at the local patch and left them in the fridge after soaking them for a few minutes in a bleach/water solution. I was really happy that they stayed fresh and I was able to use the small pumpkins as place cards. 

We prepped everything the night before so that on Thanksgiving day, we had some time to sit on the couch, watch the parade and look through Black Friday ads - it was perfect. Everyone came over about an hour before we were supposed to eat so once everything was pulled out of the oven, we were good to go!

We didn't have any toys for Siena in the house so I grabbed her my old iPhone and she loved it!

When we pulled the turkey out and I saw the leg bones sticking out, I panicked thinking it was bad but thankfully, it was fine - just didn't look as pretty (and you can see my schedule on the counter on the right lol!!)

Stephen cutting his smoked turkey breast - next time, we'll get a full size!

Stephen's mom brought all of the pies!

After lunch, Siena took a nap while we cleaned up and watched some videos. It was a pretty rainy day but thankfully, it cleared up later in the afternoon so we went outside and played some football and corn hole. 

After corn hole, Stephen, Lauren and I loaded up and hit a few stores nearby - we didn't find too many deals. My BIL & SIL headed home that night while my in-laws and little BIL stayed the night. The next morning, we had cinnamon rolls and chatted until it was time for leftovers for lunch. 

After lunch, Stephen and I headed out to the outlets while my in-laws headed home. I found a ton of great things at J Crew as well as some other little items we had gone in for. If you didn't see on social media, we were stuck in the parking garage for 1 hour and 45 minutes... and there was no earthly reason why we were stuck!! It super sucked but let's be real, it could've been way worse - we could have a screaming baby in the back and have bad attitudes lol After getting home, we did another big house clean to get ready for Christmas decorations!

Stephen's now having fun and making faces in my mirror pictures

Blazer / Sweater / Button Down / Boots

It was a great Thanksgiving and I'm so glad we were able to have Stephen's family over (and it went really well lol). Although, I don't think we'll be hosting for quite some time haha! Linking up with Annie