Christmas in ATL

This year we decided to spend the Wednesday before Christmas Eve in Atlanta and celebrate our Christmas together then. It was awesome not having to travel right after work and instead come home, bake some cookies and exchange gifts.
Kyle and I had not gotten each others stockings items yet (we both procrastinated) so we ended up going to Walmart TOGETHER, then splitting up to get little items for the stockings. It was hilarious trying to not see the other person and what they were getting.

So anyways, we started off our night by giving the cats their stockings. Walmart had these amazing deals of animal stockings for $5 that had so many more toys then I could ever get for that much. The cats LOVED them, especially the ones with catnip in them. I just love how Puck curls things in his paws like this:
And I can't leave out Elle:
Next Kyle and I ate our "dinner" of chips & queso while Tyson opened his stocking. I do have to say Tyson LOVES opening gifts and he's really good at it!

And next were our stockings! They were filled with candy, practical things, toys and lots more.
I then had Kyle open up my gifts to him! He already knew about 3 of them (a Dremel, the Dremel accessories, and a creeper to help him work underneath Levi) but I did manage to surprise him on pictures I printed out and framed for his office! I chose Tyson, a picture I took in Boone and a pic I took in Wyoming on Jackson Lake. He loved them!

Since Kyle bought me those earrings and printer I had already told him he wasn't allowed to buy me anything else. Well of course he broke the rules and bought me GUITAR LESSONS!! This may come as a shock to most of you but like Kyle knows I've wanted to learn for forever and am just so excited about this gift. Yes I did start crying.
He then handed me this:

That's right PHOTOGRAPHY CLASSES TOO!!! He had printed out a couple different options of places that I'll have to choose from as well as this {beautiful} gift certificate made from Powerpoint. If you'll read the fine print at the bottom: "If these lessons are not redeemed by April 1st, 2010 all knee pit access for Leah's toes will be revoked for one year". (does anyone else LOVE putting their toes in their hubby's knee pits to keep warm when you are going to bed?) I certainly don't want to lose that privilege and will gladly choose photography classes before then! I am just SO excited! Thank you "SANTA" I am so excited to learn new things in 2010!

Baking for Christmas gifts!

For the past 3 years I've been enjoying making little gifts for our friends with different recipes and packaging (you can see them all here). This year I went the easiest route and did Peppermint Bark. I've heard of this recipe from so many people but had never tried it myself! It was very very easy!

So first Kyle crushed up the candy canes with a hammer:
While I melted the white chocolate:
Mix it together and put in a pan! (Oh and you can put peppermint extract in the melted chocolate as well) Then sprinkle some extras on top:
I used some cute velvet bags that I had gotten for free from my company, made little tags for them, and stuck in a candy cane! (I put the peppermint bark in little resealable plastic bags inside the velvet ones)
SUPER EASY this year!

Card Swap!

This year I participated in a card swap with 5 other ladies from around the globe! I actually signed up for it off of a blog that I follow and I guess they divided everyone up into little groups so we wouldn't have to make that many. It was neat making cards out of scraps that I had laying around. No printer or computer designing at all... kind of nice :)

So the rules were just do send anything creative, and you could attach a recipe if you would like. As long as you send it out by Dec 15th at the latest. WELL I ended up sending mine out Dec 23rd so I made it "Happy New Years" cards instead of Christmas ones. I guess better late than never right?! haha

So here are the cards I got in the mail:




And here was mine that I sent out! I just cut some scrapbooking paper up, punched some holes, tied some ribbon, and used spray adhesive to put in some white paper for my note on the inside Very easy!

The inside where I wrote my notes:
The backs:

Very fun-- I'm glad I did it!

Merry Christmas!!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
-- Isaiah 9:6 --

Frame the Date!

I came home the other day to a package on our front porch addressed to me! I had heard about Frame the Dates, but never had one of my own!!

What a wonderful gift for Kyle's and my anniversary. All the numbers that Molly picked out are just perfect! You did NOT need to send me this, but I couldn't love it anymore! Thank you so much Molly, what a sweet sweet friend you are!

Only when Kyle's out of town...

- Do we get ants in our entire pantry. Not just on one shelf, but all of them. Not just on the outside of packaging but in every single food bag we had. EUGH!

- Does our 9 foot Christmas tree fall over. Leaving water everywhere, broken ornaments, a broken stand, and a crying wife THINKING she's strong enough to pick back up the tree but not able to b/c of the broken stand.

- Do I get locked out of the house.... even WITH my keys. Our front door handle decided to break leaving me completely locked outside at 7:30 am when it was 28 degrees outside with no phone. I had locked the back door (doesn't have an opening for a key) by the handle the night before since Kyle was out of town. Well luckily one of my neighbors was home and I was able to use their phone to call Kyle (yes it was 4:30 am California time... poor guy). He helped coach me to take one of his screwdrivers and take off the back door handle. I still can only go in and out our back door though since the front one is broken! Luckily Ky comes home today and will fix it!

What will happen next?! haha. This really makes me appreciate when Kyle is in town and what a great team we make together. It's a lot to face on your own for sure!!

Busy Busy little elves!!

YEAHHHH I've finally finished our Christmas Cards!

Would you like to see my workshop? Here is where I have my printer set up (printing off a roll rather than cut paper = cheaper). So I designed & printed the fronts, cut the fronts with my trusty exacto, designed & printed the backs, cut the backs with the exacto (wanted to print double sided but it wouldn't work on photo paper... it likes to smear), spray adhesive-d the back to the front, stuff all the envelopes, stamped all the envelopes, put our return address on all the envelopes and addressed all the envelopes. A LONG PROCESS that took me 2 days to complete.

Now I realize that I'm giving you a sneak peak of our cards so don't look too closely! haha

Also in the past couple weeks we have:
- Officially graduated from Newlyweds (completed the 2 year study) and attended the Christmas party! We are encouraged to join/form a small group with the other couples that graduated so I'll update about that when we do!

- Had our Christmas luncheon at KA with delicious food as always. Jennifer, our CEO, changed the words to the 12 days of Christmas once again this year to include a poem about our company with everyone's names in it.

Here she is reading it to us. Very cute :)

And our lovely favors on the tables:
- Went out to dinner at Ruths Chris with Kyle's boss Tim and his wife, Deidra. Since Tim and Kyle work in Atlanta and the rest of the company is in Memphis, we were able to go out for our own little Christmas party! Very nice!!

- Finished all of our Christmas present shopping and wrapped all the gifts! Don't you just love it when there are tons of presents under the tree? Especially when they are ALL FOR OTHER PEOPLE!?!

Our 3 year Anniversary Celebration!

Yesterday was awesome, just so much fun to celebrate our 3 years of being married together! Kyle made shrimp risotto for dinner and it was delicious! We then opened our cards & presents-- Kyle gave me the most beautiful diamond loop earrings! The only jewelry I own above $10 are my wedding rings, so it's even more special to have earrings that match from Kyle as well. For his present, I got his watch fixed and I was so glad to surprise him with it... he's the hardest person to surprise ever (yes and in turn that means his gifts ALWAYS trump mine). We then headed to go see The Blind Side. It was amazing just like everyone said, SUCH a good movie!! We ended the night with Coldstone (we are still using Kyle's gift card from Kerry & Brad!!). It was a wonderful way to celebrate for sure. Thank you for all of your Happy Anniversary wishes, that was so sweet!

We had been looking into renting a cabin in the North Georgia mountains this coming weekend, but it just doesn't make sense since we are part owners of a cabin in NC and could just stay there! We actually have our cabin over New Years so we decided to celebrate up there for our anniversary. It'll be our first time going up to the cabin without any guests, and we are really excited about enjoying it just the 3 of us (Tyson of course!). We are really looking forward to it!!

Our 3 year anniversary!

There is no doubt, we wouldn't be the people who we are today without each other. We are best friends and are more in love with one another than we ever thought possible. This past year has been amazing and I'm so looking forward to all the years to come with Kyle by my side.
Happy 3 year anniversary sweetie!

Book Club and Christmas parties!

On Friday night I rushed from work over to my friend Jennifer's apartment to meet some other n-wed girls for our book club that we just started. Most of us are readers and just enjoy having 'girl time' so we though book club would be perfect! The book that Jennifer chose was "Family Tree" by Barbara Delinsky. I honestly only made it to page 50 before our meeting-- haha YES I WAS THAT GIRL. Luckily everyone let me still come and chat for a while. (BTW I wasn't the only one who hadn't finished) We had a wonderful time, and I ended up leaving early to head to a Christmas party which ended up working out so now I don't have the end ruined for me! We'll be meeting again in January to discuss another book, and maybe then I'll get a picture of all of us!

So next is Gina's Christmas party!
Here is a shot I got of all the aspen girls (Jen, Lacey, Angela, Gina, me and Amanda)

So around 8:30 I swung by the house to pick up Kyle and headed over to Gina's apartment. She's one of the Aspen girls, and there were a bunch of other ladies there that we worked with along with some of her other friends. We had a good time hanging out (isn't that amazing that we work all day together but still look forward to seeing each other at night?) and playing the white elephant game. Kyle and I ended up with a SWEET cat night shirt... HAHAHA.

Kyle and I getting ready for the game:

Umm Kyle was not happy with my choice:

HOW PERFECT is this shirt for me though??

Here are the gals with our presents:

Lacey and I:

Afterwards everyone was starving so we stopped at.... yes you guessed it... Waffle House. The one and only place that I will refuse any food infront of my face. EUGH it's just so gross.

Lacey and Angela were so pumped:

Kyle was too, and I was not having it:

It was a hilarious night, fun fun!

Saturday night Kyle and I headed over to our friends, Matt and Amy's house for another Christmas party! She had some delicious food over there and we really enjoyed meeting all of their friends! We had a gingerbread making contest guys vs. girls and the GUYS WON!! They were creative using broccoli as trees and beer caps as satellite dishes. It was hilarious. 5 minutes after the judging though both roofs slid off of the houses... whoops! We also played the white elephant game and then called it a night! Busy couple of weeks before Christmas!!

Prayer blankets for our AUM room

Remember how I told you we were volunteering at the Atlanta Union Mission here? Well we did more for that this weekend and this time it was just with the ladies! This weekend I organized a get together for all the n-wed girls to help make fleece blankets for the bunk beds in our room. The workers at the mission have to keep all the rooms so cold to help bacteria and other germs not to spread... so needless to say it's FREEZING in those rooms!

We all picked up fleece fabric individually and brought it with us, then all sat around Barbara's dining room table to make it together and have girl talk. We ended up making 4 in about an hour, which was pretty good! We still have more to make but we are making progress for sure!

So here we are hard at work!
Did I mention how hard of work this really was?? (okay okay so it wasn't hard at all haha)
And the finished products!
We all had a really great time, I'm looking forward to doing it again!

More Christmas Decorations!

We had the best time last weekend putting up our Christmas decorations! There is no better feeling to me then coming home to a house that is warm and cozy with sentimental decorations. The scent of wonderful candles and just the faint light of twinkle lights... oh man I just love it.

We have nativities up everywhere... love willow tree!

And here is our tree, Kyle has officially named him "Manie"! It's bigger than we've ever gotten (and last week it fell over while Kyle was out of town... and yes I called him crying b/c there was water everywhere, some broken ornaments and it's SO heavy I could barely lift it), but we just LOVE our tree. Everywhere we travel we have been trying to get ornaments from, so here is our Belize one from our cruise and Wyoming one from our Teton Trip.

These are our most recent purchases from Kohls after thanksgiving sale. I just love them, they are on our mantle ;)

We bought a wreath in Boone when we were getting our tree... I'm not sure why I let myself do that since I'm definitely capable of making one myself with our tree trimmings... BUT we did anyways. I bought some pretty red berry vines and twisted them around the wreath to make it more interesting and colorful. This is what's on our front door! (a little funny story. Our front door has 3 little windows up top. The wreath sticks up halfway up the windows so when Tyson looks at the door from the kitchen he starts growling and creeping towards the door. He thinks it's somebodies head EVERY TIME haha)

And here are the rest of our outdoor decorations!

MAN WE LOVE CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS!!

Our New Stockings!!

I am so excited about these!! I actually bought 6 stockings the day after Christmas last year at Target, they were on MEGA sale. We have 2 ivory, 2 reds and 2 greens. My friend Jen's sister-in-law has an embroidery machine and since I'm a font freak it took a little while (she had to send me her entire font library so I could choose hahah) but I LOVE the way they came out. Now I just have to find a stocking hanger for Tyson's that matches our other two! Don't you love how it's hanging from our garland right now :)

Football game and Bella

Most of last week and weekend we were dog-sitting my friend Angela's golden retriever, Bella. Bella had spent a weekend with us over the summer, so we knew that her and Tyson would get a long great again. They are so cute together, Tyson really enjoyed having a playmate in the house!

Kyle took this cute picture on Saturday night after I had gone to sleep. He was laying on the couch and Bella came up to lay with him, then Tyson followed. He snuck away from the couch to take this picture with his camera phone! So cute :)

On Saturday afternoon we met up with my girlfriends from work and their husbands/significant others in Buckhead to watch the Alabama vs. Florida game. We were definitely rooting for Alabama since it's been ingrained in my head from Grandpa to always root AGAINST Florida since we are FSU fans :) It was a fun time, especially since Alabama won!!

Love these girls :)