My latest reads!

I wanted to share the latest books that I've been reading. If you can't tell, I have hobbies but I'm not good at doing them all together. SO for about a month I'll be in the "reading mode" and read tons of books. Then the next month I'll be in the "cooking mode" and try all new recipes, etc. That's how my life goes :)

So the latest book I read was "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold:

It was a wonderful book, so interesting. The story is told by a little girl named Susie, who has been murdered and is watching her family, friends, and murderer from heaven. (The author doesn't focus on the murder too much though which was good). She has a real interesting point of view, and it was a very easy read!

The next one was "The Last Song" by my favorite author, Nicholas Sparks:

Man he never disappoints, I think I read this book in one day. A wonderful love story!

Another author I love is Emily Giffin, and this was her latest book "Love the One Your With":

The title is completely self explanatory! It talks about a husband and wife going through rough times, but in the end they are meant to be together, blah blah blah. Anyways it's good!

The next is "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows:

Okay this one took me a WHILE to get through. The way it's written is just by letters from all the characters to each other, which I thought was cool. It was very slow in parts, but the ending is great :)

Another read was "The Time Travelers Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger:

I wanted to read the book before I went and saw the movie! It was awesome, and so interesting. The movie was great too it just went by too fast-- they had to smash a lot of scenes into one. I absolutely love Rachel McAdams, her acting skills are amazing!

Another book I wanted to read before I saw the movie was "My Sisters Keeper" by Jodi Picoult:

Talk about an interesting story. The sister is suing her family for rights to her own body, since her parents only created her to be a donor for her sick sister. It was a sad story, but I loved every second of it. I still haven't seen the movie for this one yet!

And lastly I read "The Host" by Stephanie Meyer (the author of all the Twilight books that I've read):

I actually listened to this one on tape in my car, and it was pretty good! It's sci-fi which I've NEVER gotten into but once you get over the whole aliens taking over peoples bodies type thing, it is pretty good. haha

I wanted to share a website that my friend Angela told me about called ThriftBooks.com and it seems awesome. I've yet to buy anything off of it, but the books are SO cheap. I think they might try to get you with shipping costs, but if you buy a couple books it works!

A couple updates!

I've been meaning to write a couple updates lately so here we go!!

The litter box that we showed you here is working PERFECTLY!! There is so much less litter on our laundry room floor it's unreal! I keep trying to sneak in the room while one of our cats is in there JUST so I can see them squeeze through that tiny hole... but they always catch me and jump out quickly. I guess I can't blame them for wanting some privacy :) haha

As I told you about here, Lacey and I are still going strong with our workouts at planet fitness everyday after work! It's been such a blessing to not sit in traffic anymore. I'm actually working with a personal trainer every week right now, and he's really pushing me which is exactly what I'm needing! Still no weight loss (UNBELIEVABLE right?!) but I feel much better and am getting stronger. On the plus side, our company has decided to give us a $10 workout allowance, which covers our gym memberships :)Kyle and his boss Tim are also working out at a gym by their work almost everyday at lunch too! We are definitely taking baby steps to get back in shape!

Oh I wanted to show you a picture of our pumpkin lit up at night. Of course I didn't use a tripod so it's a little blurry but you get the gist! And yes if you noticed that he is not that proportional and the blinds don't line up it's b/c the "template" was too small so I free-handed it on the pumpkin... I'll know next time to just use a copy machine and make it bigger :) haha

As for the pumpkin Kyle 'holed' up for me... here is the finished look! I couldn't find any plastic mice so we went for the plastic spiders :)

And lastly I cannot WAIT to show you pictures of our Halloween Room Decorating Contest at work. It is OUT OF CONTROL-- any spare seconds we have we've been putting up streamers, cutting mice/spiders/bats out of construction paper, sewing curtains, and way way more!!! Everyone is getting super competitive, and it is just so fun. We have to be done decorating by Thursday at 5:00 pm, and the judging will happen on Friday. I promise to post with pictures soon... WOO HOOO!!

But for now I'll leave you with what our room looked like last week :)
Any guesses to what our theme might be off of this picture??

Kate's 5 year anniversary!

That's right it's been 5 years for KA! Last Friday our whole company celebrated by eating cake, presenting our owners with a plaque that had our company picture on it, and a musical performance! The musical performance was about 10 people from the company, and they sang about 10 different songs! (they changed the words to be all about our company). Our owners were in tears by the end, it was a very special day!

Halloween Fun!

Kyle and I got the chance to finally carve our pumpkins! Although last year we decorated our own (click here to see) we decided to go a little easier route this year. I went with a pre-drawn design of a scary pumpkin looking through the blinds. Who knows though if you can actually tell what it is haha.

And mine close up:

Kyle's pumpkin was actually for my work. He got creative with his drill and cut holes all over for me.... absolutely perfect! I'm going to put plastic mice crawling out from the big holes, and then the little ones can have gummy worms coming from them! Spppooookkyyy!

Kyle's close up:

I also bought a couple decorations from Walmart as this was my first time decorating for Halloween-- crazy I know, but unlike Christmas that I can keep up for 2 months, Halloween can only be up for a couple weeks! Anyways, I bought some cute signs and holders for candles and put them up!

I have tons of rafia, so I thought it would be perfect to hang our sign with!p.s. doesn't the first picture in the post crack you guys up? Tyson is clearly saying "mom I really don't feel like being in pictures" and then in the background Elle is trying to escape without me seeing her.... oh our life :)

I'm a cooking machine!

haha my title cracks me up... I WISH. Anyways, this past week I got the urge to cook 3 new recipes!! (If you know me well you are probably VERY shocked, I know!!) My friend, Jen, showed me this blog that I absolutely love... www.ourbestbites.com. Not only do I love the way the blog looks design wise, but the food is amazing! I also hate it when people give me recipes that say "a little bit of this... or cook until it's done"... REALLY WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?! I need to know the measurements for everything and this blog provides that for me, along with pictures of every step!

So the first recipe is called STUFFED PIZZA ROLLS. (you can find the recipe here). They ended up being absolutely delicious and SO easy. Kyle helped me make these (only took about 10 minutes), and it's a neat twist on having 'regular pizza'! I chose to put in pepperonis and cheese in ours and then we dipped them in marinara sauce! Needless to say there were NO leftovers, Kyle LOVED them!

The next recipe is called TORTELLINI SAUSAGE SOUP. (you can find the recipe here). I have NEVER made soup from scratch before, but this one was very simple and sounded delicious. It's very filling, with tons of flavor, and we had lots of leftovers to bring to work for lunch. We think it would be perfect to eat when it's really cold outside or when you come back from a long day of snowboarding!

And the last one I tried is called CHEESY ROASTED RED PEPPER DIP. (you can find the recipe here). We cut up some Italian bread and put the dip on top... heavenly :) Once again VERY easy, and perfect to bring or serve at a party!

It's very rare that I try new recipes that we actually like, so I think I'm sticking to this blog from now on!! If you guys have any other cooking blogs with recipes you like, share them!!

33 degrees in Marietta!!

We all are bundling up to try and keep warm around here!!

a surprise graduation party!

We went home this weekend for multiple reasons but one of them was that Kerry and Brad wanted to "Get everyone together because Leah, Nick, Rachel, Mike and all of the Raleigh family members were going to be in town". What everyone failed to mention to me (Kyle) was that it was actually a surprise graduation party for me for finishing my MBA program. The party consisted of mine and Leah's immediate and extended families, which is really awesome because even though most are living in the same town, with everyone's busy schedules, it is difficult to get everyone together.

Kerry and Brad decided to have everyone over to their house and we had all kinds of appetizers and then we had burgers, dogs and about the most delicious chocolate cake that I have ever had (I actually wish that I had brought the leftovers home and that I was eating a piece right now). We spent the afternoon catching up, watching football, playing with the twins, sitting by the fire on the back deck, etc. Kerry and Brad were thoughtful enough to include little "gift boxes" for the twins to keep them entertained the entire time!

The night was concluded with some very thoughtful birthday and graduation gifts from everyone including some sick new snowboard goggles, a DeWalt 825 impact driver, money to support a couple of my hobbies, a Coldstone gift card and more!

Basically, it was a really awesome time with our whole family! Thanks to Kerry and Brad for hosting and for everyone for coming and bringing the generous gifts!

Here is a group photo:

Gotta have a funny one too:

Wordless Wednesday: I promise Natalie is my niece, not my daughter!

THE RALEIGH FAIR!!!

I LOVE THE RALEIGH FAIR-- it truly comes right behind Christmas for me. The rides, the food, the rap music that blares from every direction and all the interesting people makes for one of the best nights of your life. Luckily, Kyle is okay with my weird fascination and he let us come up to Raleigh a day early (YES we took a day off work for the fair)!

We headed there around 4:30 and to our surprise it was NOT CROWDED! Kyle was thrilled as he just hates crowds. We immediately rode a couple rides since there were no lines. My mom and I went on the new swings ride called “Vertigo”, then Nick and I went on “The Claw” and “Freak Out” . We just LOVE rides.

We all also went on the Farris Wheel, I love how you can see everything from the top!
We walked around a little bit, ate lots of food (I’ll get to that in a second) and then Tara and Jamie got there! Okay so here is all the food we consumed: London Broil Sandwiches, Roasted Corn, Al’s French Fries, Root Beer Floats, Ribbon Fries with cheese, Cinnamon Donuts, Hot Chocolate, Carmel Apples, Ice Cream, Bloomin’ Onion, Fried Snickers, Wisconsin Cheese, and I think that’s it?! We really all just kind of had handfuls of everything, but man it was SO good!

Tara was absolutely cracking us up with the food. Granted she is feeding 3 people right now! (by the way we found out on Friday that she’s having a BOY AND A GIRL, click HERE to read!!) Anyways, right after she got her root beer float she was like “OH GUYS I see a shortcut to the deep fried snickers booth” and within a second she was doing her pregnant waddle behind all these booths to get to the snickers… HILARIOUS.

We walked around all the animals and agriculture sections too... look at the prize winning fruit and veggies!

We had such a fun night hanging out with my whole family at the fair. It never disappoints!

Getting together with Sara, Joe and Ethan!

On Friday afternoon, Kyle and I met up with Sara, Joe and little Ethan for lunch at Macaroni Grill in Raleigh. We had a great time catching up with them and getting to spend some time with Ethan. He is the happiest baby I’ve ever seen, and his giggles are truly contagious. Kyle and I loved having some cuddle time with him while visiting with Sara and Joe! What a fun 3 hour lunch-- so great to see you both!!

halloween project at work!

Our office is having a Halloween contest this year for Best Decorated Room! We have an awesome plan for our room (which I’ll show you in like a week or so) but right now we are working on more of our "little" decorations! Our boss, Donna, brought pumpkins in for us to glitter up! I’d seen this on Martha Stewarts website as well my friend Erin’s blog, so I thought we could try it! It was actually really fun and they look so cute by the end! Some of us are more artistic than others but either way it was a fun bonding experience for the Marketing Department!

Started out looking like this:

And the end result!

Jen with her pumpkin face decoration:Very fun and easy project! Cover the pumpkins with glue (using a paint brush to rub it all over) and then sprinkle any kind of glitter you want!

roller hockey team!

A lot of people have been asking what Kyle's been filling his time with since he's done with school. One of the things is ROLLER HOCKEY! He and some of his friends have been talking about starting a team since we moved to Georgia, and they finally did it. There is a new rink about 15 minutes from our house which is pretty convenient.

(in the picture Ky's team is in the white, and he's the one 2nd from the right looking right at us)

The team is not exactly a group of all stars but they play well together and have a lot of fun. Hopefully before the season is over they'll actually win a game, but so far the games have been blow outs :( Most of the guys haven't played hockey in several years (a couple haven't played in 20 years), but we're hoping after a couple games it'll start to come back. Either way Kyle's having a great time being on skates again!