More pictures from the Christmas party

Here are our friends Becca & Jason.

Here are the hosts Paul & Kelly.

Pictures from the Christmas party

Here is me & Chad at the Christmas party.

Here is are our friends Melanie & Dave.

Jackson's first Christmas present

Chad & I got Jackson a Christmas gift and since he's only 9 months old he is not very familiar with opening gifts. It took him awhile and some help to get into his gift from us.

Here's Jackson checking out the gift.

Here is Jackson chewing on the wrapping paper while Kelly & I try to help him.

Here is Jackson finally playing with the opened toy aquarium!

Christmas party!

We've started a pretty cool Christmas tradition with some of our friends - we all get together at someone's house for a Christmas ornament exchange/party. This year it was at Paul & Kelly's house and we had breakfast food for our dinner. I think this ornament exchange is becoming one of my favorite ways to celebrate Christmas with our friends!

Here's the cake Kelly made and decorated for the party.

Here's Paul & Kelly's son Jackson with his Santa hat.

Semi-homemade gift

I really enjoy making homemade gifts for family and friends for Christmas, but I'm starting to get to the point where everyone has enough cross-stitched Christmas items and fleece blankets and scarves. So, for my grandmother I decided to go the semi-homemade route and paint a mug for her at a pottery painting place. I went with some friends to Pottery Place Studios near Concord Mills Mall and painted this mug. So, here are the pictures of the finished gift.

Sandy and the presents

Now that we have some presents under the tree Sandy isn't trying to get under the tree skirt anymore, but she still likes sitting under the tree with the presents.

Pumpkin pie from scratch!

I decided that I wanted to make Chad a pumpkin pie from scratch. When I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver it inspired me to see if I could make a pumpkin pie from actual pumpkins, not canned pumpkin. It was actually much easier than I thought it would be. I ended up fighting more with the crust (also from scratch) than with the pumpkins. I don't know if I'll do the whole thing from scratch again, but it's nice to know I can. And Chad said it tastes great!

From these...

...to this!

Here's a nice slice with some whipped creme on top!

Sandy's new hiding place

After we finished decorating the Christmas tree I noticed that Sandy was hiding under the tree skirt! Last year she enjoyed hiding among the presents, but I guess since there aren't any presents under the tree yet she found a new place to "hide".

Here is how she was when we first saw her hiding - just her tail sticking out!

If you look closely you can see Sandy's face where I pulled up the tree skirt.

The cats' early Christmas present

We decided to give the cats one of their Christmas gifts early. Recently Roxy has been getting into trouble for scratching our leather chair. They have scratching mats, but they have been needing new ones for awhile. So, we got them a new scratching mat for Christmas and let them have it early. As you'll see from the picture they both love it and Roxy has greatly reduced her scratching of our chair too!

Sandy tries out the new mat.

Tandem scratching.

Trimming the tree

Here we both are putting ornaments on our Christmas tree.

Here's to decorating!

Here is Chad preparing for the holidays.

Here is Chad putting the star on our Christmas tree.

Decorating for Christmas

Here is Chad working on the lights outside.

Here's the finished product!

Eat Pray Love

I just finished reading "Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert. Liz writes about her year long journey of self-discovery where she spent 4 months in Italy for "pleasure", 4 months in India at an ashram for "prayer" and 4 months in Indonesia to find "balance" between pleasure and spirituality. Overall the book was very interesting and extremely well-written. My favorite quote is when Liz is talking about when she was married and her husband wanted them to start a family and she just realized that she did not have the desire to have kids. Her sister, who had kids, told her "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit.(pg. 10)" So, I told Chad that that's what I'm going to tell people who ask me when/if we're going to have kids - I'm not at the "tattoo-on-your-face" committment level yet.

Sticky Fingers

For Thanksgiving with both sides of our families I baked a Coca-Cola cake. While we were at Chad's parents house for their dinner I heard Chad's sister yelling at Kathryn to leave the desserts alone. I just assumed she was trying to eat too much dessert, which everyone seems to do around the holidays. But, when we got home and I went to cut myself a piece of cake I noticed a suspicious "trail" around the edge of the pan. So, here is Kathryn's "handiwork" on my cake. Nice.

Thanksgiving with Chad's family

We had our Thanksgiving meal with Chad's family on Friday instead of having 2 meals on Thanksgiving day. Our niece Kathryn's birthday is in November, so we gave her her birthday gift at Thanksgiving.

Here is Kathryn with her birthday gift from us.

Thanksgiving with my family

Here's our table all set for Thanksgiving dinner with my family.

Here is Roxy eating a small piece of turkey we let her have. Sandy was hiding from all the people in the house, so she didn't get any turkey.

Our First Turkey

This is the first Thanksgiving that Chad & I actually cooked the turkey for our Thanksgiving dinner. We have hosted the meal at our house the last few years, but this is the first year we cooked the turkey too. I must say it turned out very well and we were very pleased!

Here is Chad about to put the turkey in the oven.

Here is Chad carving the cooked turkey.

My crazy husband/turkey carver

Here is Chad playing around with the netting that came around the turkey and the carving set.

Planting Flowers in the Dark

I had a Partylite candle party on Nov. 18th and all my spring flowers were dead and gross looking so I wanted to plant some Pansies before the party. We had so much to do the day before the party and since it's getting dark outside at like 5pm we ended up planting the flowers in the dark. Thankfully I have a wonderful husband who is willing to do that with me and he borrowed a light from his parents that helped us actually be able to see the plants.


Unfortunately a few days after we planted the Pansies they got eaten up by slugs (I think), hopefully they'll recover and bloom some more.

Double Decker Cats

Here is Sandy on the lower level (underneath the pew)

and Roxy on the upper level (on the pew).

Beautiful Wrightsville Beach

Wrightsville Beach is beautiful all year long - even in November!

I think this is my new favorite picture we've taken at the beach.

We're a cat family

Chad & I went to Wilmington for the weekend Nov. 9-11 and we saw both of my grandmothers and their cats. My family have always been cat people, so here are some of the other cats in my family.

My Mom's Mom has Sweet Pea.

My Dad's Mom has her cat Daisy.

Roxy's Cadbury Egg

Cadbury Eggs are now available at Christmas time as Cadbury "ornaments", so I love Cadbury Eggs and I bought two - one for me and one for Chad. Well, I come home one day and only see one Egg - I just assume that Chad ate his until I see the missing egg unwrapped on the floor by the stairs! Roxy got the Cadbury Egg off the counter AND unwrapped it and tried to eat and/or play with it. I'm sure you can't see from this picture, but there are teeth and claw marks all over the egg.

Here's the wrapper - almost in one piece!

Our pumpkins all lit up

Here are our pumpkins with candles lit inside - it's hard to see the actual pumpkin in this picture, but you can see how the light shines through the carving at least.

Halloween costumes

I put on my cat ears for Halloween.

Here are our nieces in their costumes - Kathryn is a pirate and Karissa is a princess.

Another family visit

My mom and grandmother were in town this past weekend for my grandmother's birthday. Here is me, my brother Fielding, my mom and my grandmother at her birthday dinner.

Here's the sandcastle pound cake I baked for my grandmother's birthday.

The finished products

Here are our carved pumpkins. Mine is the one with stars and Chad's is the UNC one.

Here are the carved pumpkins on our porch.