Thanksgiving Hangover

Uggghh...I'm STILL full from yesterday! We have been serious lazy bums today - ok, that's a lie. I have been a lazy bum, Jake has been a busy bee! In my defense, I did address ALL our Christmas card envelopes so they can go in the mail next week. But I really only did that because I could do it from the comfort of our couch...ha! 

J has been BUSY BUSY BUSY on our powder room, which was gutted last week. I'm very proud of his handiness! He's been working on the floor and he's pretty sure he will be laying and finishing the tile floor tomorrow...woo hoo! When he pulled up the old tile and ripped out the vanity, we found a pretty messed up subfloor which has required more work than we originally thought. That bathroom was a hot mess to begin with, so I'm not really surprised that it's been a huge pain to update it. I've been taking pictures of his progress, so I can document all his hard work. To give you an idea of how heinous it was, here's the before pictures:

WARNING - These pictures are very graphic and feature the world's ugliest wallpaper and most disgusting tile and sink EVER! Don't say I didn't warn you!!

GAH!!! Seriously, it's such a TINY space that going in there with that wallpaper can seriously make you sick to your stomach and give you a headache! (do you like how I hung up some monogrammed towels to "help"?? yeah, that doesn't help at all!)

Another view - lovely plastic mirror!

Oh and it gets better - even the CEILING is wallpapered! with coordinating colors!! Yeah, I'm not kidding. And check out that gorgeous light!! 

The vanity with about 15 years of built up caulk and grime. 

The floor - doesn't that tile look disgusting...the grout is seriously BROWN! NASTY!!

So that's the before, just so you know what we were dealing with. We honestly didn't even go in to that bathroom for the first 4 months we lived here. I pretended it didn't exist. Thank god we have 2 other bathrooms. Anyways, I will have pictures of the new beautiful floor in a few days!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! HAPPY BLACK FRIDAY!! (did anyone go shopping? I refused to leave the house today!! ha!)

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving Dinner!

I'm SO excited that it's almost time for my favorite eating holiday of the year! We are heading to J's aunts house to stuff ourselves silly on Thursday.

My Thanksgiving routine usually consists of this:

Wake Up Early

Go for a LONG run (hopefully I can get 6-7 miles in)...I love running on Thanksgiving day because then you can eat as much as you want without feeling too guilty about all the food!

Eat a small breakfast (usually a bowl of cereal - gotta save room for later!)

Watch the parade, relax and then get ready for the day

EAT!

As much as I love Thanksgiving, I actually do not like turkey at all. I don't know why - it's just boring to me, especially when there are so many delicious sides to eat! So I rarely eat turkey on Thanksgiving, maybe one small piece. I do, however, love me some turkey sandwiches the next day! YUM!

Here's what I'm most excited to eat on Thursday:

Stuffing - probably my favorite dish of the entire day!

Sweet Potatoes - I like mine with a few marshmallows on top.

Cranberry Sauce, straight from the can! Serve it right to the table with the ridges...delicious!

Mashed Potatoes and Gravy - basically the entire day is just one big carb!

But my most favorite thing in the entire WORLD (and I only get it on Thanksgiving)...

CREAMED ONIONS! Does anyone else eat these on Thanksgiving? I've always grown up eating these every year, but I don't think many people have these on Thanksgiving. Basically they are the small pearl onions in this delicious white cream sauce (super healthy, I'm sure!). My mom ALWAYS makes them and I usually eat the entire bowl...ha! Jake had never eaten them until he came to our house for Thanksgiving a few years ago and now he's hooked too! Anyone else know about these, or is my family just weird?

And now, things my family doesn't eat on Thanksgiving and I HATE!

Green Bean Casserole...YUCK! Not a fan at all!
Sauerkraut! I think this is a German tradition...I hate everything about it - the smell, the taste! Unfortunately, J's family is very German, so I know they will be serving it this year. BLAH!

What foods do you eat every year? Are there certain things that your family eats that you don't think anyone else does (like creamed onions)? Happy Almost Thanksgiving!

Back?

Whoa - could it be? Am I actually blogging? I have been such a slacker this entire month! I just lost all my motivation to write anything or read/comment on any blogs!! I'm sorry for being such a slacker. Not sure if anyone is even still reading this...

Of course, now the holidays are here, which is obviously always a super busy time, but I'm hoping to find more time/motivation to keep blogging. I honestly can't believe it's Thanksgiving week already. I love this time of year and I hate that it always goes by so fast!!

Even though I haven't been blogging, I have TONS of updates and projects to share! Here's a brief list of what's been keeping us busy this falll....

*** We are now completely finished with the basement. With the exception of hanging a few pictures up on the walls, that is the first room in our house that's "done". I will try and post pics soon - I love how it all came together! It's homey and casual, but still feels nice and polished.

*** We are currently re-doing our main floor powder room. By ourselves. Yikes! J gutted the entire thing (he was a crazy man with the crowbar!!) and now he's working on getting the subfloor ready for tile. He's hoping to tile this weekend since we have a few days off. Then it will just be putting up beadboard on the walls and installing the new pedestal sink. Definitely have some crazy before and after pics to share!

*** We bought a new BED! Hallelujah! We have been sleeping in J's old double bed that he's had since college - a crappy platform bed from Ikea. We had a bunch of Macy's gift cards and store credit, so we decided to get ourselves a FABULOUS new queen size mattress set! It gets delivered this Saturday and I cannot WAIT to sleep in it this weekend!

Of course, I ran out as soon as we bought it to get new bedding:
The Pearl Embroidered Set from Pottery Barn. I have literally lusted after this for YEARS so I finally bit the bullet and just splurged! And of course, I had the shams monogrammed! Now I just need Jake to make me a upholstered headboard and we'll be all set...ha!

*** We also bought a new antique rolltop desk from an antique auction a few weeks ago. J has apparently always wanted one and we got a really good price on it. We cleaned it up and put a protective finish on it and it looks so good in our guestroom/office. It's HUGE (5.5' long) and massive, but we love it! Pictures soon!

So we've definitely been busy with house stuff these last few weeks. So I apologize again for being a super sucky blog writer and reader! I'm definitely going to get better!! Happy Monday - thank goodness for a short week!!

A few party pics

I was a bad wife and I really didn't take too many pictures at Jake's party - I was too busy running around and making sure everything was going well with the party. But here are a few that I managed to get...

Jake's cake. This was one of my surprises to him - I found the cake toppers on Etsy, from the seller Bug & Boo. She makes custom cake and cupcake toppers and the most hilarious part is she can make photo toppers with a birthday hat photoshopped on. Highly recommended if you want something fun and unique for a party! She made me this whole set for a very good price and it was seriously the hit of the party! J about died when he saw his face on the cake. I had to do a FEW embarrassing things - you're only 30 once! Yeah, and I definitely did NOT make his cake - however, it was from the same lady who did our wedding cake and it was fabulous!

Blowing out his one candle - he didn't want us to sing, but we forced him. I only put one candle on it because I didn't want the paper toppers to catch fire!

This picture cracks me up - this is my mom talking to Spencer and telling her that she can't have any of the cake. My mom treats Spencer like a child - they are best friends because my mom usually gives her a million treats every time she sees her. She snuck her about 10 nilla wafers right after this picture.

The cake after we cut it - we left J's head on there for the rest of the night!

Opening presents - J's parents got him a handheld electric saw. Sounds boring, but he actually asked for it because we're going to be re-doing our bathroom and he needs it for that project (and probably a million other projects I will think of). We were cracking up because when he was playing with it, Spencer was going CRAZY over the noise it made - she seriously freaked out! I apparently thought it was the funniest thing in the world - yeah, I had a few glasses of wine at that point!

He would KILL me for this picture, but I had to take this one of him passed out on the couch after everyone left. Yikes!

Happy Almost FRIDAY! woo hoo!

Where has the fall gone?

How can it already be November? It's a little bit frightening that Christmas is 51 days - I definitely need to get my butt in gear and start my holiday shopping! Yikes!!

Anyways, J's party was great this past weekend - he had so much fun and was definitely hurting a little bit the next day. I told him he's getting old and he can't party like he used to. I think the night started going downhill when all his friends brought him bottles of booze as gifts and they all decided to "taste test" the different whiskeys and scotches. Yeah - he didn't get off the couch on Sunday! I'll post some fun pictures soon!

In other completely different news, I recently found this and I think I'm obsessed:

Pomegrante Lemonade....OMG this is so tasty! I'm actually usually not a huge fan of juice at all and I hardly ever drink it. I've been intrigued by pomagrantes lately because they are so freaking good for you. I saw this at the grocery store and it was on sale, so I thought "why not - if I don't like it, I know Jake will at least drink it" Well now we're basically fighting over it! Obviously you can't drink alot (it does have a fair amount of sugar), but I love it! I would highly recommend it for a unique treat!

Happy Wednesday!!

Party Preparations!

So Jake's 30th birthday party is tomorrow afternoon/evening. He wanted something super laid back because he's not really into being the center of attention, but obviously, I can't really do any parties "small". It's in my nature to plan, decorate and go overboard!! He got me to agree to no real decorations (gasp!), but I did get a few fun surprise things!

We're having people over around 4pm and J wanted to serve chili and get a half keg and then just watch football. Ummm, not really my idea of a fun party, but it's his birthday, so that's what we're doing. Of course, I had to get a little fancy and we're now serving 3 different kinds of chili - regular, a white chicken chili and a vegetarian chili. We'll have each kind in crock pots so people can serve themselves and then have a whole buffet set with different toppings for the chili - cheese, sour cream, green onions, tortilla chips, etc. I'm also doing cornbread (1 plain and 1 jalapeno cheese) and assorted appetizers. J is in charge of getting the keg and I made a really yummy mint ice tea last night, plus we got several bottles of wine for the girls.

We have like 24 people coming (a lot for our tiny little house!) including both of our parents and J's brother and his wife. It's also sort of serving as a house warming party, since we really haven't had alot of our friends over to the house since we've moved in. We've been working hard on decorating and getting stuff put away so our house looks cute. I think we're going to end up re-arranging some furniture in the living room so there's more space for all those people. I'm sure J will be REALLY happy when I tell him we're moving furniture around tonight - ha!!

So Happy 30th to my wonderful, adorable and fantastic hubby!!! I'll be sure to post pictures from the party! Happy Halloween weekend!