Oh We Par-tayed!

Because I work for a large state agency that takes up lots of floors in a large building, and there are so many people on so many floors, finding a room for a Christmas celebration is impossible.  Our solution? A Christmas Open House where each bureau decorates their "lobby" and provides refreshments during a specified time frame on a specific day. It seems to workout pretty nicely. You don't get a ton of face time with a lot of folks, but you get to see new faces and some you didn't know moved to that floor and whatnot. This year's celebration was moved from the usual afternoon time slot to 9AM on a Monday morning. I am still NOT a supporter of Monday celebrations, but no one asked for my opinion on the matter....Thursday and Friday parties for the win!

Our bureau picked a Tacky Christmas theme this year and I don't think I have ever had so much fun decorating! It turned out so cute and for our efforts, we won best decorations!

I have no idea how much wrapping paper we ended up using but between all of the presents and covering the walls, it was a lot!

 Our "Major Award" (the ribbon, not the snowman)

 Our Cat Paper Wall. The paper is covered in cats wearing Santa hats....lots and lots of cats. 

 We even had a photo booth wall with lots of fun signs.  We left a space for our friend who is out on maternity leave. =)

The lights hung from the ceiling might have been my favorite part of all of the decorations.  They're made from green solo cups and balloons.  We didn't even have to attach the balloons, the're suctioned into the cups! We taped the backs of the cups to some ribbon and hung them from the ceiling.  I can't tell you how many people asked where we got the giant lights from because they looked so real!  I kinda want to throw a Christmas party just to make some "lights!"

The decor pics were taken before we put the food out but we treated our guests to Panera bagels, cheese, and fruit. I lost count of how many bagels I ate during the course of the day, but it's safe to say that it was an obscene number. But they were sooooo good! By the time we finished I was in a post-party carbohydrate coma for a couple of hours.

And the best part of the day?? Getting to wear my super cute Tacky Christmas Attire all day! Light up ears and all!

#ineedtoworkonmyselfieskills

Christmas Season is Here!

...and just like that Christmas has come to town...in our house anyway. Eric was away on a hunting trip all weekend and I told him to have fun but that I better have a Christmas tree to decorate while he was away. He obliged and I'm ashamed to say it took me nearly all weekend to get it decorated. I started stringing lights Friday night only to realize I was two strands short so I did what any normal person would do, threw on some shoes and went to Walmart at 9pm. Unfortunately for me, the Walmart close to where we live was out of clear lights. The manager said they might get some by the end of the weekend so I figured I'd check back.  I ended up getting busy with other things and didn't make it back to Walmart until Sunday afternoon and they STILL didn't have lights. Grrr... However, thanks to divine intervention I happened to wander over to customer service to return some stuff I'd been meaning to return for several weeks, and wouldn't you know it the woman in front of me was returning 3 boxes of CLEAR lights! It took every ounce of adultness in me not to jump up and down and interrupt the clerk as she was helping the woman. As soon as I got up to the register I asked if I could buy the lights that had just been returned and did a little happy dance (inside of course) when she said I could.  It saved me at least and hour of driving round trip to the next nearest Walmart and back, a trip I had been dreading but had accepted that if I was going to get the house decorated this weekend I would have to take.

The holy grail lights I was able to snag! Could someone please explain to me how Walmart can run out of clear lights on December 4? It seems a little early to be running out of lights to me!

Once I had the lights in hand, decorating was a breeze and ended up with the most gorgeous Christmas tree! If I do say so myself.  

Of course I also made the pups put on their Christmas attire for their annual photo. They were thrilled....as usual. 

Aside from decorating, I had a fairly productive weekend that included finishing some crafts for a craft bazaar my P.E.O. group is putting on this weekend and our town's annual Christmas parade!  Our dance studio marches in every year, and this year was no different.  I know I'm a bit biased, but I think we were the cutest little dancing snowmen in the entire parade! It was a blast and I was beat when we finished. Let's just say I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon on the couch vegging while going through the Christmas movies I have saved on the DVR.

The Christmasing didn't stop there because Monday was my office's Tacky Christmas Open House.  Our 1st place winning decorations deserve a post of their own, but let's just say that it involved lots and lots of wrapped "presents," Christmas Cat "wallpaper," and giant Christmas "lights," and it was fantastic!

You Know You're Busy People When....

....you meet your husband at Costco on your way home to pick up a Christmas Tree. Mind you that Costco is just over the halfway point on the interstate between our house and my job, so we left about the same time and he barely beat me there.  I wish we could have made an evening out of it, but I had to be at the dance studio at 5 so I ran in paid for the tree, and he met me outside the truck with the trees. He held a couple of them up for me to pick from, we made our selection, threw it in the back of his truck, I gave him a kiss-making sure to remind him cut the bottom of the tree off before he put it in the tree stand, and we both went on our way...him to run another errand and me to the house to get ready for dance.

Eric wasn't going to just take one that was laid out...he had to go all the way in the truck to find the perfect tree.  I would have gone, too, but I had on heels and I probably would have fallen through the pallets on the way up.

Do I wish we could have made an evening out of it with dinner and maybe some Christmas shopping? Yes, well the diner part for sure, but we don't shop well together so maybe it's a good thing we didn't. =) That's just how the cookie crumbles for us these days. I thought that once I stopped coaching basketball, I would find myself with ridiculous amounts of spare time. Clearly that is not the case.  At least not during the week because apparently we are unable to do that thing some people call "down time."  Weekends though? Those are another story, at least for me.  Eric has been filling his up with hunting and fishing, while I have made sure to spend some time unwinding. But I know what I'll be doing all this weekend!

Did you know that the pine needles on the floor are Eric's FAVORITE part of Christmas?

Isn't she a beauty!?! I cannot wait to pull down all of our decorations from the attic and start decorating! Our Christmas season is really starting to ramp up.  We have the Christmas Parade in our town Saturday, the first of 2 work Christmas parties on Monday (yes Monday - clearly not my idea), a Christmas Craft/Bake sale for P.E.O. next Saturday, and my second work Christmas part the following week. I am really loving how all of the events are spread out this year because I get to do a little more Christmas every few days.

Speaking of doing Christmas...I am planning on trying this out this weekend because the only thing better than your house smelling like a Christmas tree is to have it smell like Christmas tree AND cranberries!

Cranberries are one of my favorite holiday scents (I can't do the super sugary scents - they make my teeth hurt) because they're so fresh smelling. I'll let you know how it goes!

A Thanks Filled Weekend

I'm just going to lay it out there today and say that I am absolutely 100% exhausted today. However, it's not from the hustle and bustle of a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.  It's from trying to escape the earthquakes I kept dreaming about last night....Word to the wise: If you would like to watch the movie San Andreas, watch it because it's a really great movie.  However.  If you are like me and tend to have vivid dreams about after watching movies that tend to be adrenaline-inducing (action-packed, scary, etc.), do NOT watch this movie right before bed.  I woke up in the middle of the night exhausted from running in my sleep and scolded myself for letting that movie get to me, but it didn't help because I went right back to dreaming about earthquakes. =(

We had an absolutely fantastic Thanksgiving weekend that was jam packed with family, delicious food and so much fun! Eric started the long weekend cooking 7 of the 11 turkeys he had to fry this year, needless to say our kitchen sink looked like the frozen meat aisle at the grocery store.  My BIL, SIL and nephew arrived Wednesday and my SIL and I spent most of the day cooking for Thanksgiving. Eric fried fish that night and we had a crew over to eat fish tacos.  Thankfully the night didn't go to late because we were up and ready for Turkey Day the next morning.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Eric's family, that [of course] included entirely too much food.

One of my most favorite smells in the entire world...fried turkey =)

Clockwise from top left: 1) Our Thanksgiving spread. It was enormous as you can see and everything was delicious!  The there were a couple of platters on the stove behind Eric, too. Eric and I were talking that night and we could not think of a single thing that was missing from our spread.  2) Our dessert table included Buttermilk Pie, Pecan Pie, Ooey Gooey Pumpkin Butter Cake, Lemon Coconut Cake, and Pineapple Upside Down Cake. And yes they were all amazing.  3) The obligatory Thanksgiving plate photo (this was plate #1). 4) The most delectable Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, complete with turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing....yes stuffing. I've eaten 3 so far and will probably polish off another one tonight. #noshameinmyleftoversgame

We washed our meal down with Apple Cider Mimosas and were really excited about it (as if you couldn't tell).

My SIL and I decided to venture out Black Friday shopping on Friday morning. Neither one of us had anything major on our lists, and as luck would have it we both found what we were looking for as soon as we walked in to the first store. Thank you J.C. Penney's for having a great sale on boots and for having several pairs of larger sizes left!  [I'm looking at you, Belk's.] We figured we found what we were looking for so quickly anything else we bought would be bonus.  We hit up 2 different malls and were back home before noon. To be honest I think we spent the longest amount of time in Penney's trying to find $5 worth of something so we could get a $20 off coupon.

Saturday was the Iron Bowl, so we put together some delicious hors d'oeuvres that morning and  footballed all afternoon. Alabama pulled out a win, and half of the crowd at our house was happy, the other half was sad they lost the game, and one guy was beside himself because we had a $2/square football board and had Derrick Henry not scored Alabama's last touchdown with less than 30 seconds to go in the game he would have won $80.

 Leaf piles are the best when you're 1 year old, in case you didn't know.

I am so glad we got to spend a few days with these guys (plus our husbands who were in the woods when we decided to have this little photoshoot, but I promise they were around all weekend.) =)

See?  Little man was loving sitting on his own little perch with the big boys!

We were up early again on Sunday as my BIL, SIL, and nephew headed back home.  After they left I had every intention of cleaning up the house and getting things back in order, but the night before I was informed about the Hallmark Channel's Christmas movies by my SIL and a couple of friends, so I decided to see what they were talking about.  6 hours later I had watched 3 fantastic movies and had only dusted because the majority of the dusting was in the living room where I could watch movies. I ended up forcing myself out of the chair around 3:30pm and managed to walk the dogs twice, wash my car, and finish cleaning the house before 6pm.  I can only imagine how productive I could have been had I not watched movies all day. This is why I don't watch movies....they suck me in and I get absolutely NOTHING done. The purpose of cleaning was so we could go get a CHristmas tree but that didn't happen Sunday, but hopefully we will have one in our possession before the end of the week (or before Costco runs out). I know what I'll be doing this coming weekend!