Merry Chirstmas {and Happy New Year}!

I love Christmas.....

The traditions, spending time with family, snow, music, etc.

I especially love that my family leaves for Cabo San Lucas, Mexico the Saturday after Christmas each year.

Yep, that's right. Saturday we'll be leaving the cold weather for a week of relaxing on the beach.

Have yourself a wonderful Christmas and a very fun New Year.

See you in 2010!

Dog Bed

I'm outnumbered in our house. Guys-2/Girls-1. Typically, this isn't a problem. But, when Cooper didn't like the first {stylish} dog bed we bought, Kurt insisted that we just hurry up and buy one from Pet Smart. Of course, they didn't have any that look great {I suppose they aren't horrible}. We ended up buying one a couple weekends ago. I left the tag on with secret hopes that Cooper wouldn't like it and we'd still be in the market for a cute AND comfy dog bed. My plan didn't work. He L.O.V.E.S. it. I guess we're keeping it....

I didn't even have to bribe him to get on it {like I tried last time}!

The first night we had it, Kurt had a late hockey game so I was in bed before he was home. Normally Cooper comes up and sleeps upstairs once I'm up there. I kept calling for him to come up, but he wouldn't get off his new bed!!!

Oh well, boys win this time... :)

Room Redo - Laundry Room

Remember this? Well, we finally got the painting done and even added one new 'accessory' to the room! The paint ended up looking much better with two coats...even though it's probably not my most favorite color in the world. But hey, it was free! So, here's what the laundry room looks like so far....

We started off with a room full of white and not much storage.

You can see part of the one shelf we had that was SO high I could barely reach it! :)

We love our washer and dryer - didn't want any paint on them!

 

I was having a little fun with our paint that quickly started looking orange....ahhh!

Kurt was in charge of the tall stuff while I was stuck behind the washer and dryer...

It's hard to tell in this light, but the walls actually turned out to be the same color as the kitchen. They still look orange in the pictures, but in person they are a burnt redish color.

Step one of adding a new counter top: put door railing around the edges to hold the counter top up.

Finally, Kurt and his dad lifted the counter top into place and glued on the side splashes.

We've added a ton of space to fold clothes {and right now a great place to set stuff...}!

{The ironing board and things are there to hold the side pieces on while the glue dried.}

After the first of the year, we have plans to finish off the laundry room. We'll make sure to show you the rest!

!!!

It's Winter Break! I know I've been gone all week...it's been crazy...but hopefully I'll be back next week to share a few things. Enjoy your weekend!! :)

sad

As you know from the many dog posts, my family loves our doggies. Today we had to make a tough decision. Tonight will be the last night that Belle will sleep at my parent's house. Remember in June how I told you that we've had Belle for 16 years? We got her the summer before I went into second grade...and now I teach second graders! She's had a wonderful life, but we'll sure miss her! My family has never had to do this before....

Today after school, I went to my parent's house to spend the afternoon with Belle and Bailey. Belle laid on my chest like a little baby. We took a long nap together and just hung out.

I don't know what tomorrow's gonna be like. I don't know how it's going to feel going to my parent's house for the first time in 16 years without Belle there. But one thing is for sure, I know I'm gonna miss her a ton.

Thanksgiving Break - Night 5ish

Saturday night was technically 'night 5,' but I don't really have anything to share from Saturday. Kurt played golf and I spent some time with my mom and Julia. We did go to Brugge {an amazing restaurant in Broad Ripple} with some friends on Saturday night. Other than that, a pretty relaxing day...

Sunday was the last day of break {and it came WAY too soon}! Before we could watch the Colts game and relax, we wanted to get our Christmas lights on outside. It took us awhile, but the house looks great!!

It started out pretty chaotic....

We slowly, but surely got in a groove and got the lights up...

That's not to say that we didn't have to take down many things and redo them...

...for example this tree.

Kurt really wanted some colored lights {I'm a white light girl}.

His dad gave him a whole box of old colored lights for us to use.

We tested all the strands before and only one worked.

So I put it {really well} on our little tree outside, but decided I needed one more strand to finish off the top.

Before we went and bought a new strand of lights, we wanted to see if it truly did need more.

And when I plugged it in, only HALF of the tree lit up!!! AHHH!

So, I had to take it all down....maybe we'll have some color next year!

We added a nice little Boy Scout wreath.

And waited patiently for it to get dark enough to see the lights...

The final product!

Like it? 

We're finally done decorating for Christmas. Now we just need to finish our shopping {and wrapping} and we'll be able to relax and enjoy the season.

Thanksgiving Break - Night 4

The Friday after Thanksgiving, my mom and I always go shopping. But, we're not those crazy {sorry if you are!} early shoppers. We like to sleep in and head out to the stores what some people might consider 'late.' Anyways, we found lots of great presents and spent some quality time together.

The original plan was for Kurt and I to put up all of our Christmas decorations on Saturday. But, all the men in my family decided that they are going to start a new tradition of playing one last round of golf on that Saturday. Kurt really wanted to play, so we decided that we'd put our tree up on Friday night and finish the decorations on Sunday.

So, after shopping on Friday, I met Kurt at the Christmas tree place. We picked our tree, stopped at Target to pick up a few more lights, and headed home to get started. {Oh, I forgot to tell you about the new pj pants that we bought at Gap on Wednesday. We decided we wanted to have a night where we could just lounge together in our new pj pants. This was the perfect night! Maybe another new tradition for us?!?}

Putting up the tree didn't go as smoothly as last year. I think we rushed a little in the buying of the tree because we bought a crooked tree {or the guy drilled the hole a little crooked}!

We twisted, turned, and finagled the tree as much as possible, but it continued to be crooked. Kurt decided to take a string and tie it to the trunk, pull the tree straight, and tie the other end to the tree stand. For the most part, the tree straightened up! We had some more issues with the lights, but eventually they were on...phew.

 

{Much straighter, huh!?!?!}

Then the fun part....the ornaments! Each year, I buy an ornament for us at the Holiday Mart and get it personalized. This year I decided to buy one to remember our new house. This was the first ornament to be put on the tree.....

{Kinda hard to see, I know. Do you see Cooper in between us?!? Cute, no?}

It didn't take too long to put up the ornaments. After we cleaned up, we decided to lounge around in our pjs. I really wanted to watch a Christmas movie together. We decided on Love Actually {he vetoed The Holiday}. We searched everywhere, but quickly realized that my movies have been misplaced at some point during the move.....that's how much I watch movies!! So, instead we watched Santa Clause.

 

{Trying to get a picture of our pjs and the tree....not so successful!}

It was a nice little evening spent together. I love Christmas time so much!!

Thanksgiving Break - Night 3

Day/Night 3 of my Thanksgiving Break was actually Thanksgiving. We were supposed to wake up early and join my parents and my brother, Patrick, for the annual 'Turkey Trot.' Unfortunately {maybe/maybe not!}, we overslept and decided to not go. Instead, we slept-in until about 9:30. We had a pretty busy day. We dropped Cooper off at Kurt's parents house, because we knew we'd be gone longer than they would. We then headed over to Kurt's parent's friends house to eat meal number 1. After a couple hours of eating, drinking, talking, laughing, and playing war {....}, we headed over to my parent's house for meal number 2! It was great to spend time with both our families.

That night, Julia really wanted to play with me all night long. So, we spent a lot of the evening in her 'room' at my parent's house. This is where a lot of her toys are, especially her baby things. She is in love with her Bitty Baby {a small American Girl doll}. So, my mom bought Julia and her Bitty Baby matching Christmas pjs. She decided pretty quickly that she wanted to change both her doll and herself into her new pjs, and asked me to help.

This couldn't be any cuter....

As we continued to play, she decided that she wanted to sit in her Bumbo Seat {she used it when she was a baby} and read a book to her baby and me. She told a really great story about babies... :)

And of course, she wanted to take a picture of her baby and me...

{a little too close up!}

So, that's how we spent our Thanksgiving Day! We headed home somewhat early because we were so tired from all the food!! More Christmas and laundry room updates to come.....

Thanksgiving Break - Night 2 {part 2}

In case you were wondering, our room is still orange....

But, our Christmas decorations downstairs make me happy! :) So, back to the DIY project for all those materials I showed you.

I broke our one hurricane that we brought from the apartment. I knew I wanted to get a couple more anyways so this was the time to buy them all! I also knew I wanted to use different 'decorations' inside of them for different seasons/holidays. So, in came the idea for jingle bells, snow, and cranberries. Wednesday night we wandered through Michael's and found everything we needed....sorta. Instead of cranberries {or fake ones} we found a very long strand of red beads that look just like cranberries. All we had to do was snip the string and we had our cranberries!!

At first, we thought we wanted to put snow at the bottom of all three hurricanes, but shortly after I did the first one, we decided that wasn't going to look right...

So, we finally decided on the biggest one having the jingle bells, the short one with cranberries, and the tall/skinny one with snow on the bottom and a mixture of bells and cranberries on top. We found a few things we already had and put them all on top of our TV stand. It's really hard to tell, but here is what it looks like all together.

Here are the pictures of what each side looks like close up...

Like it? We really love it!! And, it'll be easy enough to bag up all the things and switch to something new in January.

Oh, and remember that green 'bowl' I showed you? We wanted to jazz it up a bit for Christmas {and we plan on doing so for each season}. So, we went to my favorite store, Target {!}, picked up a tube of silver ornaments, and popped them in the bowl. Check it out...

Hope you like it!!

Have a great weekend!

{mild} panic attack

Yes, we're crazy and we began a big project last night. We have decided to begin tackling our house going room at a time. Don't ask why, but the laundry room is the first....

We started a little of this last night....

With one coat of paint, I'm really starting to regret the decision. It's supposed to look like this mauve-ish/red-ish color in the kitchen.

You might be thinking that we picked a different shade that we thought would match, but NO it's from the exact same paint can!!! Currently, our laundry room is somewhere around the shade of Burnt Orange straight off of the Texas Longhorn's football jersey....oh no, what have we gotten ourselves into!

Keep your fingers crossed that another coat and drying time will dramatically change the color!

{Sorry about the short break from the Thanksgiving updates!}

Thanksgiving Break - Night 2

I wish I could say that we woke up early on Wednesday and had a really productive morning {like we'd planned}, but we didn't. And, it sure felt great to sleep in! Kurt's dad came over shortly after we woke up. We've been planning on doing some upgrades to our laundry room, including adding a counter top above our washer and dryer. Kurt's dad is a home builder so he hooked us up with a 'counter top guy' to find a cheap and perfect match for our tiny little room.

We had planned on buying any remaining Christmas decorations for the house so that after Thanksgiving we wouldn't have to fight the crowds to find what we wanted/needed. In order to do that, we needed to pull out all our decorations and make a list of things we needed to pick up. Getting our decorations out was somewhat of an ordeal....

Our coat closet has a great {finished} storage area behind it/under the stairs. There are a few minor problems with getting to the things stored in that area. Why you might ask?

1. The door is all the way at the back of the closet. The cleaning supplies and Cooper's food has to be removed to get access to the door {and the coats!}

2. The closet is an odd shape. There is only one rack for coats and that rack is smack-dab in front of the door. So....all the coats have to come out.

3. Once everything is sprawled out around our house, we can finally see the door. BUT, we have to unscrew it before we can get in!!!

Once all those steps have been completed, we're able to find all our things we've neatly stored away. {Major plans are in the works for making this closet and door more functional!} Needless to say, we only get in the storage when we really need to and make sure to put everything away before closing it up!!!

Here are a few decorations we already had.

 

 

 The Santa found a new home {and I can't wait to show you!}

The Cooper-look-alike will stay on the stair landing and the red and green candle has found a great spot on the window ledge above the sink. 

The remainder of the afternoon was spent running errands. We did some damage at some of our favorite stores! We knew our house would be very festive this year!

Remember this picture I shared yesterday?

The first thing we started to do was this...

Wonder what we did with the rest of the stuff?

I can assure you that all these things put together make up my favorite decorations in our house.

I'm running out of time, so I'll have to share the finished product tomorrow.

But until tomorrow, check out this picture...

...the green 'bowl' was one of our purchases of the day.

We added some umph to it to make it more festive.

Can you guess how?!?

Thanksgiving Break - Night 1

Our Thanksgiving Break was so great! I'm lucky to teach at a school that I love and that has great perks! Each year, we get Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off school to celebrate Thanksgiving. So, officially my break began at 3:20 on Tuesday afternoon. Kurt and I decided that we should do something fun on Tuesday night to celebrate. We've been wanting to see A Christmas Carol and thought it would be a perfect night. There is an IMAX theater downtown Indy not too far from our house. We went to the later showing, so not many people were there. The popcorn was horrible, but the movie was great! We'd both recommend it, just not for young kids. It's a little scary...there were definitely parts when I jumped in my seat! Seeing it in an IMAX made it even more realistic and fun....even if you look goofy!!!

If it wasn't so expensive to see movies at the IMAX, we'd be there more often! Hope you get out to see the movie as well!

I can't wait to share with you the many, many things we did this weekend to decorate our house for Christmas. Here's a sneak peak....

 

Bloomington

Last weekend, we headed down to Bloomington to tailgate and try to pretend like we were in college again. As much as I love our house, Indianapolis, not having homework or tests, I miss Bloomington like crazy. I get nostalgic every time we make the short drive down. And, we don't get to go nearly as much as I'd like.

Josh made hotel reservations {at the Travel Lodge...ha!} for us a couple months back knowing that we'd all want to party. The last football game of each season is the IU vs. Purdue game....a long time Indiana rivalry. We had planned on going to the game, but ticket prices are so high now we decided to hang out in the fields and catch the end of the game on TV at a restaurant. 

The weather was great for tailgating! It was great to see some friends that I haven't seen in awhile. Kurt and I spent time walking around to a couple different tailgates and made out with lots of great food and some great drinks along the way!

{Kurt grilling...weird!}

{Glad we found you!}

After tailgating, we headed to Yogi's - a favorite college bar. We found a great table for lots of friends to sit and watch the end of the game. Too bad the Hoosiers lost. :( An old friend from college works at another bar in Bloomington. He talked to the guys and apparently told them if we stopped by, he could hook us up. So we walked across town to the Irish Lion and drank our fair share of Irish drinks!

{Cheering on the Hoosiers!}

{Writing on each others hands or something crazy....}

{Boys chose to drink some sort of Irish whiskey, I think}

{And of course, we chose to drink Bailey's!!!}

After 6 or 7 rounds of Bailey's and whiskey, we decided we needed to grab a bite to eat. We walked to Kirkwood {the street with the majority of bars} and found ourselves at Uncle D's - a pizza by the slice joint that is normally for the late-night. It felt like late-night to us since we'd been drinking for like 8 hours at that point! We ended the night at one of my favorite bars in Bloomington, Upstairs. They have the infamous AMF drinks....so yummy, but very dangerous!

{Kurt pretending to work there while carding people as they walked in....}

After some shenanigans at Upstairs, we walked to the bus stop in hopes of either catching a taxi or getting lucky with a bus. We had to wait for a little while, but a bus eventually came. Yes, we'd be back to the hotel in no time! Well....that's what we thought. Until the bus driver was crazy. Kurt and I started to feel car sick. At that point, I remembered how badly Meredith gets car sick. I turned around and she was balling because it was so bad. The next thing we know, Josh had pulled the cord and we were jumping off at the next stop so Mer could puke outside instead of in the bus. Ugh, it was awful!

Since it was so late, we knew another bus wouldn't come for awhile. Josh and Mer took off towards the library leaving Kurt, Ross, Loyd, and I still at the Union. We didn't know where Mer and Josh went, so we decided to begin walking to the hotel.....by the mall. I'm sure it was at least a 3 mile walk. Our night finally ended with us all safely back at the hotel. After a few more crazy events, we all 'hit the hay' very quickly.

The morning brought about some more laughs, but we had to pack up the car and head out. It's always great to go back and visit Bloomington, especially when you're with so many fun friends. We're hoping to make it back soon!

thankful

I know I promised to share pictures from last weekend's trip to IU...I haven't forgotten. But, I've decided to take some time away from blogging and enjoy this Thanksgiving week. Today at 3:20, my break will begin!! It's going to be filled with lots of family, friends, food, decorating, shopping, and {hopefully} some relaxing. I promise to be back next week with lots of updates and things to share.

Remember to stop and think about all the things you're thankful for. Take some time and enjoy those people, pets, etc. around you that make you happy each day.

Have a {very} happy Thanksgiving!

{another} busy weekend

We have another crazy but exciting weekend ahead of us. Last night, we went to dinner at Benihanas {one of my most favorite restaurants!!} to celebrate Patrick's birthday with my family! {Happy belated Birthday, Patrick!} Yum, what great food!

Tonight we're going out with Patrick and Allison and many of their friends to celebrate Patrick's birthday {again!}. Dinner should be great and then we'll either go duck-pin bowling or to the bars...either will be a blast!

Tomorrow we're heading down to Bloomington to cheer the Hoosiers on {by tailgating and visiting our favorite bars from college}. The last football game of the season is always against our rival, Purdue. Go Hoosiers!! {Please} beat Purdue! :)

We're wishing we could get IU to bring back the Bud Light 'Fan Cans' so we could drink a few of these while cheering on our Hoosiers...

Oh well! I'm sure we'll still have an amazing weekend! Good thing next week is only a two day work week for me!!! :) Hope your weekend will be great, too!