Two in One

I feel like I had two holidays in one this weekend. 

Thanksgiving went great, and I really enjoyed it. Friday was recovery day, and Saturday was Decorate For Christmas Day. 

I have to be honest. I didn't have 100% this year. Maybe because I was still coming down from the Thanksgiving high, but when I saw these

And these

And this

I became a little overwhelmed.

But the process had to begin, and so did I.

 Porter thought he would be helpful and watch over me and my fluffing.

Porter then thought he would get out the lights for me. 

I continued working, Chris continued sweeping up behind me and Grace slept. 

Will our Christmas house ever come together?

We enjoy our farm

Chris and I took a long weekend and visited my family's alpaca/black Angus beef farm. Before we left, Chris gave me my 5-year anniversary gift early. He took me to a camera store and let me buy a new fancy camera. He gave me the gift early, our anniversary is June 11th, because he wanted me to have the camera at my family's farm this weekend. I was able to take so many great photos that I created some slide shows to share with  my family who wasn't able to be there.

I want to donate an entire post to my new love, the camera, so this post is about what I have done with the camera so far. It's also about how I don't wear makeup or pretty clothing on our farm. Sorry.

Here are the slide shows that I have made so far. 

Enjoy!

And then I became a pilot

Well not yet. Or maybe not ever. But I did take an introductory flying lesson yesterday, and I didn't cry, scream, panic or otherwise freak out. 

Chris gave me the flying lesson for Christmas because I have been questioning whether I could stand to fly in one of the small planes that we frequently see flying over our house. 

For some reason, I just kept wondering if I would like it, so the lesson was the perfect gift. 

I had been holding on to it since Christmas, and the feeling finally struck me. Late yesterday afternoon, I went to the little airport by our house and flew!

This is me at my house before I left for the airport. See the excitement?

I was a little early so I decided I would use their ladies room. Apparently, lady pilots like to be well groomed. 

Then we went outside, and I met my plane. And, my very nice instructor. He was super tall, and I couldn't imagine him fitting into that small plane.

This is where I sat.

A few of the other planes.

I don't have any photos from the air because I was really flying the plane. I made all the turns, took us higher or lower, and I even took some steep banks (that means turns in pilot lingo) where we were almost completely sideways. 

The best part was that I wasn't scared. I was amazed how much control you have, and it's completely different than how it looks from the ground. From the ground, it looks like this little bitty airplane totally out of control in the air, but when you're in the airplane, that's not how it feels at all. 

We even hit two pockets of turbulence and that wasn't bad because I just corrected for it with my steering. Being in control of the airplane, even though it was tiny, was a lot less stressful than sitting in the back of a big airliner and wondering what that bump was and worrying that things are shaking around. 

I'm not sure if I'm the next Top Gun, but I'm truly happy that I had the experience. 

It's Christmas!!

On Christmas, we woke up early, ate sausage and cream cheese rolls and opened presents. Yeah!

Opening presents:

Every year on Christmas, we give Grace one of those fabric squeaking toys. We are fully prepared for the fact that she will and always tears the squeaker out in 10 minutes, if that, and pulls all of the stuffing out, just minutes later.

Here's a video of this year's toy. Unfortunately, we caught her on tape a little bit after she ran circles in the backyard as fast as she could filled with the joy of the hunt.

At Home Christmas Eve

So this was our first Christmas in our new house, and we hosted Chris' family, including his folks, sister and her son Bryce. Here are some photos from our extravaganza. Please make it noted that I made a sweet potato soufflé, a vegetable casserole, and a chocolate pecan pie. I had some professional help with the crescent rolls and Honey Baked Ham. I thought everything was great, and I really enjoyed Christmas in our new house.

Here I am on Christmas Eve cooking. I really enjoyed getting most of it done beforehand, and so I could really enjoy Christmas.

Please forgive that neither of us has on our makeup, but we were in cooking mode. Here is my mother-in-law and me.

After I had cooked on Christmas Eve, and we were all hanging out, the lights went out. All the lights. On the entire island. Ummmm, not good. I checked with MLGW and 18 areas were affected, including something like 1800 customers. Oh dear. Thankfully, we pulled out the candelabra and had a very nice, romantic evening!

The Ghost Chili Vodka experiment

I am still working through my great box of goodies from Marx Foods Blog that I won, and one of the packets included Ghost Chilies. I capitalize it because they are the hottest chilies in THE WORLD. Seriously, in the entire world!

So I looked back on MarxFoods.com, and they made vodka with their ghost chilies. I thought, why not? And even better, I will give it as gifts in case it's totally toxic or gross tasting. At least it's unique!

You can see the original recipe here.

Here are my instruments:

The packet of THE HOTTEST CHILIES IN THE WORLD!

Here I am preparing for battle. Yes, I wore gloves. They are THE HOTTEST CHILIES IN THE WORLD, PEOPLE!

I was having a little reservations.

It's so little to be so hot. Kind of like me.

Okay, I'm ready and excited about it. Let's do it!

There it is. Floating in the bottle. It take one ghost chili per liter of vodka.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't even remember to take a photo of the final product, but it was pretty. The pepper gave the vodka a nice red color, and I took the pepper out after 2 days, per the recipe.

Thanks again, MarxFood.com!

Christmas Parties

We were lucky enough to have two Christmas parties in one night. The funny part was that they were on the opposite spectrum of parities.

The first was my boss' Christmas party at his new condo. So we put on cute clothes, took our photos in front of the Christmas tree and we were off.

Our second party was a Tacky (although if you like some of the sweaters you see here, just think of them as "festive") Christmas Sweater Party at our neighbors' house. So we raced home, put on our best Christmas sweaters/attire/accessories, and we were gone again.

 

 

My earring lit up. They are awesome.

 

Grace even got in on the fun!

We thought the reindeer antlers were a nice touch, and the jiggle bells on them were truly awesome.

I've stolen some of these from Facebook, but they are worth repeating.

There are two of our neighbors.

 

Our neighbor Abby and me--one of my antlers had given out.

Do you recognize Charlie Brown's Christmas tree? We thought it deserved a sad face.

So we had a great Christmas weekend. It was perfect to get us in the spirit!

Christmas cheer

This past weekend, Chris and I had two holiday parties that we were very excited about. Those pictures to come later. To get us in the holiday spirit, we pulled up several old videos from Straight No Chaser. They are an amazing male a cappella group that does hilarious songs and are super talented. Watch this one to get in the holiday spirit.





And watch this one just for fun! Can you name all of the sitcoms?



Hope you enjoyed!

Christmas decorating

So Chris and I got back from the Arkansas Thanksgiving festivities on Sunday morning, and we began decorating for Christmas.

First, we unpacked the tree--we're not ones for real trees although we appreciate their beauty.

We knew we wanted the tree in front of the French doors so that everyone could see it from the street.

We then unpacked our ornaments. We are so fortunate that we have lots of family ornaments, ornaments that we've purchased over the past years and a few ornaments from each of our childhoods. Once we got it all out of the attic, we realized we had lots of boxes to sort through.

And the boxes piled up.

When Chris and I first began dating, we, or I more so, discovered these Cannon Falls S'Mores ornaments. I love them because they are s'mores, and I want to squeeze them! We've purchased several overall the years, and I always love the cute little characters.

This is me fighting the lights. Not too dramatic, but just checking everything and making sure I like where everything is strung.

Porter really loved the lights, and he thought that he needed to lay on them to really welcome Christmas.

Here I am still working on the lights, and making sure they were strung right all the way up to the top.

Look how good our tree looks! I love the gold fabric on the bottom, and Chris added the fabric ribbon from Jenny, and you can see how nice all the ornaments look!

Here is a cute shot of some of the s'mores ornaments that we like. This is one for the year we got married. It's a cute little groom with a bride in a veil.

We have lots of cool ornaments from my family, including lots of ornaments from my grandmother Jenny. Some of the really cool ones include ornaments like this one that actually fits over a light. This Santa Clause glass ornament fits over a light and then looks like it is a built-in light piece. Very cool. 

Here you can see a little bit of our mantel, including our personalized stockings, which my grandmother made, and you can see the little ceramic "people" that tell me Christmas is here.

These ceramic Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus have always been in my grandmother's window, and now that Chris and I have upgraded our Christmas displays, we're fortunate that they have joined our collection.

For some reason, I just loved them to death, and they mean Christmas to me. So now their new house is on our mantel.

Tonight, we had our neighbors Sean and Nicole and friends Matt and Laura over for our official house lighting party, complete with homemade apple cider and cheese straws. Chris did a great job on the house's exterior.

 

Happy holidays to everyone!