Oh.so.excited!

I am overwhelmed with excitement for tomorrow! I spent the better part of the day preparing tons of great food for our family's Thanksgiving Feast at my parents house--and oh what a feast it will be. I made my pumpkin cake, a Heath bar pie, sausage balls, and four-layer dip! I'm getting hungry just thinking about all the food that we'll have.

I also cannot wait for this! I got my shirt and race number from Lauren today. We're official!

I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

My Practical Christmas Wish List

Hello blog world! I'm back from a week full of travel and am so thankful to have another weekend here at home. I love that I have the opportunity to travel for work, but it almost always takes me the better part of two days to recover. I would definitely not make a good flight attendant!

I'm looking forward to a short week at the office next week, and helping my Mom prepare for Thanksgiving at her house. I have a new Pumpkin Spice Cake recipe that I made for our Annual Thanksgiving FEAST at work yesterday and it was a HUGE hit. I am planning to take it to Mom's on Thursday and can't wait to see what the fam thinks! This year I was an Indian at our Thanksgiving FEAST and I had the cutest A&M headdress. I didn't have a chance to take any pictures, but will update with a pic soon. Remember last year when I was a Pilgrim? We always have a blast at the FEAST!

So on to the point of my post...

I feel as though my Christmas Wish List is growing more and more practical with each passing year. Don't get me wrong, I always love a good perfume, frilly socks, clothes, lip gloss, earrings, cocktail rings, belts, headbands, and anything girly you can think of. But this year I have more than a few practical items on my wish list. I'm cooking more and more and I've found a need for the following items:

• Food chopper (i.e. The Slap Chop, Magic Bullet, or something of the sort)--because my knife and cutting board just aren't doing it for me anymore! Seriously though--my life would be so much easier with a good chopper.
• Apple slicer--because cutting your apple with a knife is so last year :)
• Cake Carrier & fun-shaped bundt pan--did I mention I have a new cake recipe?
• Deviled Egg Holder--for the one time a year I make deviled eggs. Wait, have I ever made deviled eggs? Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure I need one.

I'd love to know some of your favorite kitchen gadgets.

Here are a few non-kitchen items on my pwl:

• Set of nice, white sheets. Preferably 600+ thread count
• Bath mats for the master bath--we never decided on a "theme" for our master bath and have been living without bath mats for WAY too long.
• Picture frames and decorations for our master bedroom--so I can finish what I started back in July.
• Gift card to Home Depot or Lowes--for those "around the house" projects I've been meaning to tackle.
• More drawers for my upstairs storage closet

My list may seem silly (or even unnecessary) but I want to know, are any of you asking for more practical gifts this year?

‘Neath the Wreath

This past weekend my Mom and I went to the Plano Junior League’s version of Chi Omega Christmas, ‘Neath the Wreath. I will be traveling this year when Chi-O Christmas will be going on, and was thrilled when I found out Plano was having a similar “canton-like” market. It was just as glorious (if not more) as last year. They had several of the same vendors as Chi-O (who also have a booth in Canton), and had a ton of great, new stuff! Mom and I had a blast checking out all the booths—it took us almost 4 hours to get through the whole thing. I got several Christmas gifts and a few decorations, and can hardly wait to do it again next year! Yeah for keeping this fabulous tradition alive!

Papa Murphy’s

A few nights ago Kelly and I ate Papa Murphy’s Pizza for the first time and LOVED it! Papa Murphy’s is a take-out pizza joint—kind of like Subway, but for pizza. You can pick out the type of pizza you want and then they build it right there in front of you. They use fresh meat, veggies, and cheese and provide you with cooking instructions to you can bake it at home. I was skeptical at first—why would you want to go to a pizza joint, have them make it for you, and then have to take the pizza home and cook it? But let me tell you—that it’s the best pizza I’ve ever had! It was full of flavor and you could taste the freshness in the veggies. Somehow just knowing everything was so fresh made it taste that much better. So next time you have a hankering for pizza, check out Papa Murphy’s. You can thank me later.

Cooper’s going to be a big brother!

No, no. I’m not pregnant, but Cooper’s real mom is pregnant with her second litter of puppies and is due sometime in mid-December. And yes, we’re getting ANOTHER puppy! Cooper is so excited he can hardly stand it! We wanted to get two puppies from Cooper’s litter, but it didn’t work out, so we were thrilled when Jan and Mark decided to breed Abby again. Cooper’s sibling will have the same mom and dad! My cousin, Lauren, is also planning to get one of the puppies from this litter—so we’ll have three brothers and sisters in our family! We’re looking forward to spending another holiday season watching this set of little puppies learn and grow.

Traditions, new and old.

Can Thanksgiving really be next week? It seems like just yesterday I was celebrating my birthday in the hot summer days of July. I guess the heat hasn’t really gone away (except for the chill in the air this morning), but the time sure does seem to be flying by. I’m really excited about Thanksgiving this year for a few reasons. Kelly and I will be celebrating with my family; however, we’ll be in Carrollton this year instead of in Bridgeport at my grandparents’ house. As my grandparents get older and our family continues to grow and move around the country, it makes sense to move the celebration to where the majority of the family will be. So this Thanksgiving I’m thankful we don’t have to travel anywhere (other than to Mom and Dad’s house of course.) I’m also thankful that I FINALLY get to participate in the famous Turkey Trot! I’ve always wanted to run in the traditional race held in downtown Dallas on Thanksgiving morning, but we’ve always been out of town. This year Kelly, Cooper, my cousin Lauren and her fiancé, Chase, and my cousin Amanda, her husband, Justin, and their dog Abby will head to downtown Dallas early on Thanksgiving morning (along with the rest of the crazy Turkey Trotters) to participate in this long standing (but new for our family) tradition! AND I can’t WAIT to wear my long sleeve Turkey Trot t-shirt to the gym like a true, hardcore fitness nerd. See you at the finish line!

Viva Las Vegas...again!

I leave for Vegas tomorrow for the third time this year. Don't get me wrong, I love the Sin City, but I think there comes a time when "one more time" is too many!

I'm going for a training course and will be staying at the MGM Grand for the first time! I have to say I'm a little excited about staying somewhere new and exploring the city beyond the traditional casino tours. I'll be sure to provide a full report when I return!

Until then, I'd better start packing my bags!!

A Friday Afternoon Pick-Me-Up

Need a little pick-me-up at the office?! I've got the perfect thing to spice up those long work days--especially on a Friday. I found a great website that streams all different kinds of music from the Internet to your PC. No, it’s not Pandora. And you don’t even have to have an account! Just go to this website, click “listen”, and spend the rest of your afternoon jamming to your favorite artists! I've been listening to Frank Sinatra, country music, and maybe a little holiday music too :). Enjoy!

Happy Friday!

The worst NABLOPOMO member ever award...

... goes to ME!

I have been horrible at participating in the '30 posts in 30 days' challenge. In fact, I've flat out failed. It's November 9 and I've only posted twice! Seriously, I promise I have an exciting life.

However, since it's been so long since I've update you on anything, I decided to go back and read some of my posts to see where I should pick up. And that's when my anxiety hit! Remember when this happened to me last time? Well, today when I tried to pull up my blog it wouldn't load at ALL! Nothing. Nada. Zlich!

You see, a few weeks ago my Mom told me that she couldn't load my blog on her computer any more, but since I was still able to pull up my blog on my computers (at home and at work) I thought it had something to do with her computer. We deleted her cookies and cleared her temporary internet files but that didn't seem to help. I'm not "java script" savvy enough to know if there was something on my blog that I needed to fix, so I chalked it up to "her old computer."

And then today it happened to me. And can I tell you what an awful feeling it was to not be able to see my online journal. This virtual version of a procrastination tool that I've grown so attached to over the past year and a half? What was I suppose to do now? Transfer all my posts to a new blog? Would I have to get a new header? Is Marina back from maternity leave so she can create a new header for me? Oh the panic.

Well, as my Mama always says, "Necessity is the mother of invention," so I got creative! I deleted a few side bar "gadgets" to see if that would do the trick and VOILA! My blog seems to be loading now--so we'll see if that did the trick.

Mom, can you see my blog now?

I have a million other things I need to tell you, but they'll have to wait til my next post. I've wasted too much time trying to get this one to work. ;)

Finally...

...A weekend all my own! Kelly and I have been on the move lately—filling our weekends with travel. Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE catching up and hanging out with our friends and family, but we haven’t had a weekend at home (and all to ourselves) in over a month. Literally. I just checked the calendar. Here’s a quick recap of the last month’s weekends:

• September 26: Wedding for an old high school friend :)
• October 3: Headed to Cowboys Stadium to watch the A&M vs. Arkansas joke game
• October 10: Traveled to Waco to visit Michael and Virginia and watch the A&M vs. OSU game
• October 17: Flew to Austin with Jen to celebrate her 26th birthday with a Day-O-Shopping!
• October 24: Kelly’s B-Day! Traveled to Big Spring to visit his family and celebrate!
  

So see, we’ve had plenty of fun all along the way, but our poor little house has been missing us. And I’ve been missing the peaceful, quiet time home with nothing to do. Well, there’s plenty to do, just nothing “planned.”

So, this past Saturday was glorious in every sense of the word. The weather was beautiful, we gained an hour, and I was over-the-top productive! I didn’t really take advantage of the extra hour and sleep, but I did wake up before 8:00 am and got on with the day. I did a load of dishes; cleaned, swept, and mopped the kitchen; vacuumed the living room; worked out; ran errands (some of which included Christmas shopping!); went to the grocery store; and made it home in time to get ready and cook dinner for us and our Halloween guests, the Smiths. We made fajitas (Kelly grilled the meat of course), I made homemade guacamole, and they brought pumpkin pie and apple cider. YUM! And of course, we had a bowl full of candy so we could see all our trick-or-treaters. Surprisingly, we didn’t have that many. But if you want to know where to go to get the “good candy” just come to our house—my husband gives away handfuls at a time. We did have one very cute trick-or-treater. Our conversation went a little something like this:

Me: “Oh my goodness! You are so cute! Are you Scarlett O’Hara?”

4 Year Old: “Um. No. I’m a Southern Belle.”

Me: (Feeling the age gap) “Oh. Right. I see.”

In that very moment I felt old. You know--the kind of old where even if I tried to explain to her who Scarlett O'Hara was, she'd still look at me like a had a third eye? Ya, I’m getting old.

After a fun night filled with Halloween excitement, I woke up on Sunday ready for another productive day. I was planning to go work out, finish my defensive driving course, and relax, but before I knew it, I was knee deep in cleaning out the upstairs closets. We’re not just talking straightening the shelves. No. We’re talking take everything out, look through it, trash the junk, reorganize it, and put it all back! I was in heaven! I love organizing all our stuff, and now that I can see the finished product I love it even more! Our guest room closet is now the home to my gift wrapping station and Christmas decorations. I took ALL the Christmas décor out (and almost put it up, but resisted the temptation) and put it away in matching gray storage boxes. Then I went through all the cardboard boxes that were stashed away when we moved in (yes, I know it’s been over a year and a half ago). I found a ton of Kelly’s old keepsakes and spent a while going through every last card I’d ever given him! After it was all said and done I’d spent 6 hours, gone through 2 closets, threw away 3 large cardboard boxes and a ton of junk, and felt GREAT! I can’t wait to do it all again next weekend. Just kidding…well kind of.

So, how did you spend your weekend?

Nablopomo is bad for business!

NABLOPOMO is back and I can't wait to get started! I'm an official member of National Blog Posting Month (even thought I don't really know what that my membership requires). Last year was my first attempt at completing the 30 posts in 30 days challenge. This year I hope to do better! It's so exciting to check my Google Reader during NABLOPOMO because I know there will be posts from some of my favorite bloggers. (I've even been know to check it multiple times a day--which is why NABLOPOMO is bad for business. It's so distracting!) If you have a blog, you should try it. 30 posts in 30 days. See if you can do it.