Handmade Gifts

Each year, I try and do a batch of handmade ornaments as Christmas gifts. In the past I've done canvases and knitted scarves, so this year I decided to try out ornaments and wreaths. The wreaths of course being inspired by Anna-Marie after the one she made for us in October!

Check out some of the final products...

I have to brag...

...about the fact that I have a pretty amazing husband. He's on his winter break from school now, and I came home to a delicious cooked dinner last night, got a ride to work this morning at 7:30 am because of the ice/snow, don't have to go run any errands or get groceries this week because he's already done it, still have a lunch buddy that comes up to meet me despite the gas cost because he knows how much I hate already having to be at work all day bored out of my mind, AND he took care of getting my car's oil changed which I would have otherwise had to do on a Saturday and has picked up the apartment!

Thanks for being wonderful, Eric!

Christmas 2009 in Pictures

I think Eric and I don't want to sit in a car for a long period of time ever again after all the traveling we've done the past several weeks. :)

Eric went home to Memphis for a few days last week while I was working, and then we both took of to Arkansas early on Christmas eve to beat the massive winter storm. This is what it looked like outside that night before midnight as we were heading out to Midnight Mass:



I sure struggled to stay awake until 2 am! Here's Eric and Kim in the car on the way there:



And Drake sure enjoyed rolling around in the snow.






{Eric, me, Kim, Payton, Lauren, Aaron}

And, we came back to even more snow in Columbia!



Eric actually had to get out of the car to go to the ATM because his window was frozen shut! I laughed so hard...



And here are some of Eric's photos from his 2 trips...


{Memphis Zoo}


{Kent and Amanda}


{Snow in Fayetteville}


{Mom and I}

"Little Red Riding Hood"

So, Eric's been gone the past few days and work has been slow, so the other day I did a little online shopping... :) (But we're not telling Eric how much I spent...*just kidding*)

One of the downsides of moving up here to the Midwest is that I lost a lot of the shops and restaurants I love. No Forever 21, no Qdoba, no Chick-Fil-A! (SERIOUSLY COLUMBIA?!), no TJ Maxx, no Bed Bath and Beyond... etc. Granted, we did gain Macy's and Michaels, but it's still not the same.

Now, I have to say, I love Forever 21. I can't always find something I like, but when I do it's great. It's very affordable and super cute. My sister claims though that she doesn't like it anymore because EVERYONE at her high school wears it all the time, but I don't think that's the case anymore for me since there's not a store around here. :)

Anyway, I continue to get the F21 emails even though I've tried to unsubscribe multiple times so that it won't tempt me to spend $$. But, I gave in and did a little bit of shopping the other day (hey, I found a coupon code for spend $40 get free shipping!). As you may remember, I talked about my super chic yellow fall jacket I got back in September/October. Well, the other day I found a heavier-weight red winter jacket. LOVE! I had to give in since it had a hood and was a more winter-type coat. I only have one other jacket with a hood, my white GapKids winter coat (Yes, GapKids LOL. I worked there freshman year and it was so cute and actually fit!). Aaand...get this. It was $22! Who can beat that?! It even has black plaid lining, too!

It came in the mail yesterday and I was so excited to wear it today. It'll be great for when I go home for hog games, too, and I could even pull off being Little Red Riding Hood next halloween with it! :) Ok, just kidding.



I hope everyone is ready for Christmas! I can't wait to share some of the handmade gifts I've been working on...but that will have to wait until next week. :) We head down to Arkansas tomorrow for the weekend, so I'll have lots of pictures to share when we get back.

Merry Christmas!

I actually cooked a successful dinner :)

So as some of you may already know, Eric cooks 95% of the time in our house. I haven't had much of a chance to learn some cooking skills, but I'm not complaining. :)

Yesterday I decided to do a little something somewhat fancy for dinner. Here's the recipe, feel free to tweak the amounts for your specified serving size:

-3 Chicken breasts
-3-4 cups Kelloggs Cornflake Crumbs
-1/2 cup Milk
-2 tbsp Margarine
-Dash of Paprika
-Dash of Salt and Pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F. Coat the chicken breasts with milk, then cover with a mix of cornflake crumbs and a dash of salt. Place on pan and then add paprika and pepper to the top of each chicken. Drizzle each piece with some melted margarine. Cook in oven for 1 hour (yes, that's a long time but definitely worth it!)

Mmmm can't wait to have leftovers for lunch today!

Christmas, Finals, and Life Lately

Whew, has it been a crazy few weeks. Eric just finished up his finals on Tuesday (wahoo!), I went home for my church's bazaar last weekend to sell artwork (which was a huge success - I was very pleased. More on that later!), Amanda came down for a few days, and now we're in the middle of the chaos of finishing up preparations for Christmas. Can I get a few days off to relax now please?! :) (I wish!)

So with the help of my wonderful sister (thanks Kim!), we were able to get a few Christmas cards printed this year. They're nothing fancy, but I thought it was important to start a tradition so that Eric and I would have one every year from the year we got married. I'll share them on here once we get them in the mail. Next year it's my goal to start working on them sooner so I can do something neat and creative.

Eric's out of school now for 5 weeks (I'm so jealous), and I've decided that I definitely don't like the whole "no winter break" thing and having to work the whole time. :) Thankfully though, a few of my girlfriends are in the same situation and we all have to work while our significant others get to do nothing all day. :) At least we encourage each other, LOL. However, I'm finding that it's not all bad - I came home last night to a vacuumed and clean apartment and Eric even had the grocery coupons all printed out. He's also been getting up at 6:45 to fix lunch as usual, too, so I can't complain! (THANK YOU ERIC!)

It's going to be one of our New Year's resolutions to start budgeting even better. We've been doing pretty good, I must say. It's especially been a little more difficult for me to get used to since I'm used to spending some of my paycheck at the mall on clothes. Eric did the whole Dave Ramsey series a few years ago, thanks to Aunt Cindy and Uncle Dave!, and I'm thinking I should probably look into it, too, since I'm not as good as he is. But we have a good envelope system with cash, he has his calculator out every week at the grocery store making sure we don't go over our budget (that's depressing sometimes though, because we reach the limit so quick! Goodbye snacks, sweets, and other good food! :) ), and I'm always trying to find coupons to save a few dollars here and there. My friend Kalyn found a website a few weeks ago that Dave Ramsey is a fan of called e-mealz.com. We haven't created an account yet, but we're going to in the next few days! Check out her blog on the left (Life with the Cavaliers) and read what she has to say about it! I'm definitely excited about it because it tells you how you can budget your money, find good coupons, etc. Now, the next step is how do we get this rising utility bill down?! :) I just about cried when Eric just sent me the bill especially since it was a LOT more and we were gone a whole week for Thanksgiving! Aye aye aye. I just told Emily that I guess we'll be turning off the heat and getting us some Snuggies instead! Oh the life of being newlyweds...

That's all for now. Have a great weekend!

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Long time no blog! This past week has been pretty crazy - weatherwise, schoolwise, workwise, etc!

On Sunday, we got our first taste of Missouri snow! It was only a dusting (and we got another dusting on Wednesday), but boy has it been COLD! You Northerners are probably going to laugh at me, but this week was the first time I actually layered 2 jackets. I didn't even realize people layer fleece jackets with winter coats - this winter is going to be a huge eye-opener for me! :) Granted, we didn't get the huge snowstorm the rest of the Midwest got, but this sure is cold for a "Southerner!"

Eric's been busy studying away with finals (less than a week left for the semester!) and I've been painting all the time for my church's bazaar this weekend (I've been blogging some on my Flair blog HERE). Plus, my job has been pretty hectic the past 2 weeks, too! I'm beginning to wish I still had a winter break off...

One of Eric's big projects this winter break is going to be rebuilding a desktop computer. His broke over the summer, so we're in the process of shopping for parts online. He started dusting it out last weekend and this is what he discovered:

Look closely (click to enlarge!)- all the gray stuff on the side is DUST! It was so disgusting.

In other news, Amanda is coming back to visit us again next week! And we should actually have an apartment free of paint, canvases, and books everywhere! I'm looking forward to things slowing down a little bit so I can reorganize and redecorate some things.

In the mean time, this is where we'll be from dawn 'til dusk.

O Christmas Tree

As soon as we got back in town yesterday and unloaded the stuffed car, I jumped immediately on unpacking all the Christmas decorations we had bought over the past week. And, finally finished the tree! :) (Ignore the ugly white blinds in the background please - I need to get some curtains to get rid of those!)







While we were in Fayetteville last week, my wonderful mother gave us a set of German Christmas ornaments for brides. (Thank you, Mom!!!) I Googled what each of the 12 stand for...

According to the old German tradition, the tree of a newlywed couple should include these twelve ornaments
to insure blessing and happiness for their life together........

An Angel - God's Guidance in the Home
A Rose - Beauty and Affection
A Rabbit - Hope and Faith
A Teapot - Hospitality
A Pine Cone - Motherhood and Fruitfulness
A Santa - Unselfishness and Goodwill
A House - Shelter and Protection
A Fruit Basket - Generosity
A Bird - Happiness and Joy
A Flower Basket - Good Wishes
A Heart - True Love
A Fish - Christ's Blessing

And here are some photos of the beautiful pieces...











Happy Monday!

Thanksgiving Break in Pictures

Our break has been a BLUR - it's hard to believe we'll be back to work/school in less than 48 hours!

We left Saturday for Fayetteville to see my family for a few days...


Our dog, Drake


We got to go see the lights on the square with Emily, Drew, Anna-Marie, and Michael




And then us girls had an ornament-making party (Robyn was there earlier in the night, too!)



I actually got Eric to go antique shopping again while we stopped in Prairie Grove!




And then Wednesday we hit the road to Memphis!


Thanksgiving lunch was delicious!




And Friday we hit the bargains at the mall (after sleeping in of course - we can't do the 5am stuff! :) I managed to survive my first Black Friday experience, and actually got a lot of my presents taken care of! - I'm usually pretty last-minute :)

Hope your break was great!!

One Year Ago Today...

On this day in 2008, Eric very sweetly proposed! :) I thought I would mark the anniversary/occasion with the story...

November 21, 2008

Eric took me out and surprised me with a fancy dinner at James at the Mill, just north of Fayetteville. For the drive, he had compiled a nice CD of jazz music since he knows I like to listen to jazz on XM radio during the evenings when we're out driving around.

After dinner we drove around town waiting on Eric's "surprise" to be set up with the help of his friends Collin and Brett (thanks again guys!!!!!). Eric then drove us around to Wilson Park where I could see several candles almost lighting one of the back fields on fire! We circled around to the back of the park and he slowed the car down and told me to look out the window. Candles filled the center of the field, spelling out "Marry Me?". We got out of the car, he took my hand, and told me that there were 120 tea candles in white bags spelling that out. Then, he got down on one knee, told me how much I mean to him, and proposed. It was the sweetest thing ever!

I love you Eric!

Christmas Canvas Giveaway

Check out my art blog, Flair Artwork, to read about the giveaway I have going on right now! :)

I feel like we live at a zoo...

I have to say, our apartment complex has quite the variety of wildlife, and we experienced a new type this morning...

We encounter a group of 4 deer on a regular basis...




We lived with ladybugs all over the place for a few weeks in October (this was our outside storage unit - we'd get a few stranded ladybugs that would make it into our apartment). Surprisingly, this is only about a 1/4 of the total number of ladybugs we dealt with...



Of course you know about the mouse. And then there was a stint for a few days that we found one dead and one alive wasp in our bedroom.

And, today, get this...TURKEYS! Eric has seen them before, but this was the first time I'd ever seen them!



I kid you not, there were 4 HUGE black turkeys outside this morning.

What's next? Pandas or polar bears? :)

Don't get me wrong though, we live at an awesome complex and couldn't be happier with our current living situation. It's just we've seen some crazy creatures lately!

Groceries, Christmas Trees, and Thanksgiving!

It's become our Friday night ritual to go grocery shopping now apparently. I guess that's what happens when you get married. :)

So, Friday we went down the street to our new neighborhood HyVee that just opened last week. I had to take this photo just for my sister - this summer when my family was helping us move, we were driving around town and saw another HyVee store. Since this isn't an Arkansas grocery store, it was new to us and my sister yelled out "it looks like that sign says "WeeWee!". Granted, it's a little bit of a stretch, but from a distance it did kind of look like "weewee". Needless to say, the whole car busted out laughing and my mom probably laughed for 20 minutes straight (I'm cracking up just thinking about it now).

Kim, this is for you:



Unfortunately, our HyVee experience was slightly disappointing due to the fact that we're a newlywed couple on a tight budget. The store was very nice, but after pointing out several items that costed dollars more than it does at Wal-Mart, I don't think this will be our usual Friday night date location. It was a fun experience though!

Our next "adventure" for the weekend was scouting out Christmas decorations. After paroosing around Hobby Lobby, Wal-Mart, and Michael's, we made a few purchases. The first being our first Christmas tree! Wal-Mart had some really great deals (we got 48 ornaments for $10 and wrapping paper there is as low as $1!) so we snatched up our new tree.



We had some difficulty finding the "perfect" angel tree topper, but Michael's had the one we just fell in love with!



Here's the tree in progress. We'll be making some outings this week to get lights, garland, and more ornaments, so I'll keep you updated!



And, the countdown has begun for our "thanksgiving break!" - 5 days and counting. Since Eric is out of school all next week, I was able to ask off with some unpaid vacay days so we can travel to Fayetteville and Memphis! We can't wait!