Our New Baby

I guess it's time to introduce the newest addition to our little family. Our new puppy, Xander. He was a present from my wonderful hubby. J picked me up from work one day, told me he had a surprise for me, and took me out to a Beagle breeder to pick him out. He has lots and lots of energy, but we LOVE him!!

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Today is mine and Jason's ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY! It's hard to believe a year has passed so quickly. This is what we were doing on this day last year ...





To celebrate our anniversary we are taking a trip to Florida. Right now Jason is making breakfast (eggs, bacon, and toast ... YUM!!) and then we're hitting the road! BRING ON THE BEACH!!

Birthday Parties!

A couple of weeks ago Jason turned 30 and we had a big party for him at our house. Of course, we couldn't have a party without a Stargate Cake!! The lady who did our grooms cake for the wedding did this one. She is amazing!



Last Saturday was my Dad's 50th birthday and we had a surprise "Prom" party for him. It was a lot of fun and the first time my whole family had been together all at once since Christmas. So, naturally it was PICTURE TIME! Here's one of the whole family:

It's been a busy couple of weeks with all these milestone birthdays and graduations, but now its SUMMERTIME! Bring on the warm weather!

Graduation!

Finally ... I'm a college graduate!

Crafty Evening

I found a fat quarter of material at JoAnn's today that I fell in love with and had to buy. Of course, I had to no idea what to do with it, so as soon I got home I turned to google. Finally, armed with a tutorial I sat down at my sewing machine and began to make my first real project on my own. I had to wing it quite a bit and the end result isn't totally perfect, but I LOVE IT!

And the good news is that it will coordinate with the purse that I'm in the process of making. Hopefully that project will be completed (or mostly completed) tomorrow night. Look for pictures of that coming soon. :)

A Wedding Shower

Today we're having a wedding shower for one of the girls in the office. For the past two weeks I have been getting together the favors and decorations. Here a little bit of my handy work:

These are the favors. They're heart shaped cookie cutters. I used green cardstock to make little tags and attached them with brown ribbon. (Those are her colors).

Here are some of the signs I made to hang up around the room. There are about 15 different signs with different sayings. It's a kitchen shower, so all of the quotes are food/kitchen themed.

I will try to post some pictures from the shower, so you can see how we used these items. I had a lot of fun being creative with these and am looking forward to the shower.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

J and I celebrated our Valentine's day on Friday night, because I had to work on Saturday. He took me out to dinner at TGI Friday's and then to see the movie Taken. I'd been dying to see it and it was really great!!

Even though we were supposedly done with our celebrating, I woke up to this on Saturday morning:


He made me breakfast! YUM!!

Early Valentine's Treat

I came across a really yummy looking recipe on one of the blogs I read and decided it would make a great little Valentine's treat to give my hubby. Thanks to my busy schedule, however, the only time I had to try out the recipe was last night while J was at church. I convinced my little sis to help since she knows how to cook and I do not. After a quick trip to Kroger and an hour in the kitchen, I ended up with a batch of these:


They're red velvet cake cookies with cream cheese icing in the middle. Red velvet cake is J's favorite. Jen supervised and I actually made these things entirely by myself and they were GOOD! Click here to get the recipe from Bakerella's blog.

Being Crafty

I may not be doing a good job of keeping my resolution to post more often, but I have been much better about keeping the one about being more crafty. A few weeks ago I bought my very first sewing machine.

This is what it looks like. Nothing fancy, but it does its job and is easy to learn on. Jen and I are taking a sewing class once a week and so far we are loving it. We spent the first few weeks learning the basics and making pillows. Here is my first ever project that I made on my new machine:


Again, nothing too fancy. At least I kind of know what I'm doing now. As soon as I get the time, I'm going to use what I learned from here and make a better one. :) Next week we will begin making our very own taxi tote. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

Coffee and Old Friends

So, last night I was able to go out with two of my oldest and dearest friends. I have known Spence literally my entire life. He just got back from a semester in Europe and it is wonderful to finally have him home again. Mere has pretty much been my best friend since the third grade. Now that we're both married we don't get to hang out as much as we used to, but we are working on that. The three of us grew up together in the same church. Last night was the first time we had seen Spence since sometime last August, so we were VERY excited about that. We ended up going to a little coffee house downtown and just sat there talking for a few hours. I had a great time and I loved catching up with those two. It seems like just yesterday that we were still in high school and looking forward to graduation. Now, we're almost finished with college and looking foward to another graduation. So much has changed in our lives during the four years in between, but when we take the time to get together it's almost as if nothing has changed at all.

Last First Day of School

Today was my last first day of classes for my undergraduate career. It went pretty well, I think. It looks like I have one really, really hard class and the rest should be not so bad. I think the worst part of today was having to pay ridiculous amounts of money for the textbooks I will need this semester. Thankfully I was able to get a voucher from a scholarship to pay for the books, but still. Almost $250 for 3 books is insane!!

It looks like this semester is going to be just as busy as the last one if not more so. Here is what I have on my plate until May:

12 hours of classes per week, including a Master's class that I will begin in March
20 hours of work per week at my on-campus job
20 - 25 hours of work per week at my retail job
Volunteering at ENCM on Tuesday afternoons
Sewing Class on Wednesday nights
Church on Sunday
An internship at the Hope Clinic which will be 5 - 10 hours a week

Whew! It makes me tired just thinking about it! I guess I'm going to have to be extremely organized this semester and push myself to get everything done. Still, it's nice to know that once May hits most of these obligations will be done with and I will have a Bachelor's degree under my belt. Hurry up May!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Okay, so this post is a little late, but I've been out of town for the last week. So, here it is:

Our first Christmas as a married couple was wonderful! We did the annual Christmas eve party at Doc and Jo's house and then went to my parent's house where my immediate family all gathered to do our gift exchanging. It was great to have the whole family together at one time. That doesn't happen often. Christmas morning Jason and I exchanged gifts with each other before going to his parent's house for more gift opening and then to my parent's house again for Christmas breakfast. We had Christmas dinner with Jason's parents and then the four of us went to see Four Christmases. (Great movie, by the way!)

For New Year's Eve we went to a party that some friend's of ours had. It was pretty low key, but fun. Then the next day we left for the annual Ski Trip to Snowshoe, West Virginia. We had a lot of fun skiing and hanging out with everybody. It was definitely a much needed vacation.

Now that the holidays and vacations are over, it's time to get back into the swing of things. I'm back to my on-campus job today and then classes begin tomorrow. I'm so excited to get my last semester of college underway. It's hard to believe that it's already here.

Oh yes, before I forget ... here are my New Year's Resolutions for this 2009:

1. Blog more. I'm going to try to update this page more often and maybe even start another blog for crafting/creative stuff. Which brings me to...

2. Find more time for crafting/being creative. I am taking a sewing class starting next week and I have several projects that I've been meaning to find time for.

3. Pay off debt and get finances in order so that Jason and I can possibly buy a house at the end of the year of the beginning of next year.

Those are the three big ones. Of course, there are a bunch of other things that I want to improve this year, but I thinks it's best to focus on a few things at a time. :)