Peppermint Tea & Christmas Movies

Good morning bloggy ladies :) Have a good weekend? I started getting a little bit sick half-way through my weekend, but that didn't stop me from enjoying a little bit of my two days away from work anyways...

FRIDAY
I know I made buffalo Bleu cheese turkey burgers for dinner, but other than that, I seem to have forgotten the rest of the evening. I assume it involved a Christmas movie and a bit more decorating of the house, but I'm just not too certain. My, what a short-term memory I seem to have...

SATURDAY
Woke up and made myself an egg sandwich for breakfast, and then waited on my Mama and sister to come pick me up. Then we went down the road to the fair grounds, for a big giant craft show, called Market Days. It's huge and awesome, and there are lots and lots of different vendors, from all over Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. My mom and sister both bought quite a few things. My mom got us both a cute little gingerbread house (that smells like cinnamon!), and Meg got lots of random things. I got a present for my family's Secret Santa exchange, and a Christmas ornament to celebrate mine and Jeff's first married Christmas together!

After we ate lunch there and walked around a little more, they dropped me back off at home with my bag full of goodies. Jeff and I then spent quite a few hours cleaning up around the house, and working on our second bedroom. That room has kind of been the "dump zone" as we moved both of us in over the last few months, and it was quite a disaster. However, the twins are coming here for 9 days, and that's "their" bedroom, so we need to get it cleaned up and ready for them! It's nowhere near done yet, but we got a lot done.

I had woken up feeling a little strep-throaty, so by 4 pm, I was exhausted and just needed to sit down and rest. Primrose came and cuddled up with me on the couch, and I ended up taking quite a nice little nap. While I was asleep though, Jeff ran out and picked up some Chinese food, so when I woke up it was dinner time, which was great and so yummy. We spent the rest of the night just laying on the couch, cuddling our doggie, and watching Christmas movies on Netflix. One of which, I would recommend if you're into Christmas music - "The Mistletones." It's an ABC Family movie, and it's really cute :)

Oh and then of course we watched my amazing Seminoles woop that Blue Devil bootay! National Champs here we come!!!!

SUNDAY
I woke up feeling even worse than the day before, and even though it was only 8 am, I couldn't go back to sleep. So instead I  watched another ABC Family Christmas movie :) This one was also cute, so check it out if you're into that kind of movie - "A Christmas Kiss." I got a little stir-crazy, so I did very minor cleaning around the house, and put away some clean dishes. I quickly ran to the grocery store for just a few items, and then spent the rest of the day back at home again. After a very late lunch, I threw together some soup really quickly, and let it simmer in the crock pot all afternoon for dinner. I was thankful for this super yummy recipe of mine, because it's so stinking easy to put together, it was even a cinch while not feeling so great.

This recipe actually debuted on my blog an entire year ago, so if you're interested in the recipe for Crock Pot Chicken Enchilada Soup (and you should be interested because it's delicious), then you can check out that post here.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing and staying hydrated with lots of water, hot peppermint tea and some cran-apple juice. While Jeff blew off the leaves in our entire yard, I worked on some wedding recap posts and rounded up some pictures from our honeymoon in Cancun. (Those will all be coming soon, finally!) We watched "Robin Hood," Jeff fell asleep on the couch at 7:30, and then I watched the newest episode of "Once Upon A Time," while writing this very blog post. I went to sleep not much longer after that to try to get some rest and get better before beginning another work day.

So even though I was feeling kinda sick and yucky all weekend, there were still some bright spots that managed to peek their way through :) Now if I can just get rid of this icky-ness and get better, things will be all good! Happy Monday again ladies!

Much Love,
Halie

*Update* I was too sick to go to work today, so I'm at home still. I'll be going in to my doctor later, to make sure it isn't strep throat. Ugh, gross...

Practicing Gratefulness

I truly do have so much to be thankful for. More than I'm even aware of really - things like life and breath and family are sometimes taken for granted, although those are sometimes the things that deserve the most thanks! God has blessed each and every one of us in so many beautiful and unique ways. And the sad thing is, we often don't even realize it. God loves us enough to place amazing things and people and opportunities in our lives, so is it really too much to ask that we remember to thank him for those things? Of course not. So I want to take a just a bit to highlight just some of the blessing I'm thankful for this year...

I am thankful for:
My husband, and our new marriage.
Adorable step-sons.
My loving and supportive parents.
Siblings who I not only get along with, but genuinely like/love being around.
Our new doggie, Primrose.
Promotions (over the summer) and more new responsibilities (again!) at work.
Sweet family members.
Caring and thoughtful in-laws.
Being able to run or ride a bike, pretty much whenever I want to.
Our cute little rental house.
A forgiving Savior.

I love making lists like these. It makes me truly take a moment to stop and think about all the wonderful blessings in my life, and appreciate each one of them. This list in reality is a lot longer than just these eleven things. In reality, I have hundreds of things I'm thankful for - but these are some of the ones that mean the most to me. I definitely encourage y'all to think about all the wonderful things in your life that you have to be thankful for! And it doesn't have to happen just on Thanksgiving every year! You can thank God at any time, any day of the year. Just show the guy some appreciation for all He's given us!

I wish each and every one of you a Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you have a great holiday with family and friends! I for one am very much looking forward to a few days off work, sleeping in a little bit, spending time with family, and of course lots of yummy food!

Much Love,
Halie

P.S. - I just randomly found this quote, and I loved it too much to not include it....

“. . . my obsession with gratefulness. I can't stop. Just now, I press the elevator button and am thankful that it arrives quickly. I get onto the elevator and am thankful that the elevator cable didn't snap and plummet me to the basement. I go to the fifth floor and am thankful that I didn't have to stop on the second or third or fourth floor. I get out and am thankful that Julie left the door unlocked so I don't have to rummage for my King Kong key ring. I walk in, and am thankful that Jasper is home and healthy and stuffing his face with pineapple wedges. And on and on. I'm actually muttering to myself, 'Thank you. . .thank you. . . thank you.' It's an odd way to live. But also kind of great and powerful. I've never before been so aware of the thousands of little good things, the thousands of things that go right every day.” 
― A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

Pumpkin Pie French Toast

So I forgot to write this post last night like I was planning, because I got too distracted watching the catch-up episodes of "Once Upon A Time" on Hulu. Oopsies! But now we're finally caught up, and we can watch the new episodes when they air each Sunday. So that's exciting!

Anyways, since I'm kind of in a rush, here's a quick weekend recap. It was a pretty chill couple of days, but that's really just what we needed...

FRIDAY
For some reason, I honestly can't remember what we did...not one little bit. I know I cooked dinner, but I don't remember what. I know we watched a movie, but I don't remember which one. Not every night is memorable, but that's OK. I know it was spent enjoying the company of my husband and doggie :) I do know however that I tried out our new air popper machine, and it's awesome. The popcorn comes out so fresh and airy, and there are a million different toppings and "recipes" for homemade popcorn! Friday night I made buffalo ranch popcorn, and it was quite tasty.

SATURDAY
Primrose woke us up pretty early, and we were up and out of bed right around 8 o'clock. I went right to making some breakfast, and this Pumpkin Pie French Toast turned out so stinking delicious! I will most definitely be making this again before fall is over. It's super simple, costs almost nothing (especially since I already had all ingredients on hand!), and taste so good. What's not to like?!

We then sat around till about noon, just snuggling with our puppy, and watching a couple episodes of "Once Upon A Time." I made our to-do list for the day, and then we finally got ourselves out of the house. We ran tons of errands, spent some wedding gift cards at Bed, Bath & Beyond, bought groceries, and even a few Christmas presents too. By the time we got home, we were pretty exhausted, so we spent the rest of the night just being lazy and relaxing around the house. We did do a few more chores such as laundry and dishes, but after I made dinner, the rest of the night was spent on the couch again :)

Check out this GIANT polar bear at Costco! I just wanna cuddle it all day long.

SUNDAY
I had a brilliant idea to make cinnamon apple pancakes, and boy did they turn out delicious! I put a peeled, sliced apple in our Ninja with some cinnamon, then just added that to our regular pancake batter. And it was so good! Jeff loved them too, and we will absolutely have those again sometime soon. Then we got dressed and went to church, followed by some more errands. We got a few Christmas decorations with some of our wedding gift cards, and grabbed a couple things from Trader Joe's.

After a quick, easy lunch of hot dogs and chips & dip at the house, we both did some chores separately, and then we both did some yard work raking up and removing leaves. Also, our property manager had cut down some trees in our yard right before we moved in, and they were still in a big pile of yard trash - so Jeff had the brilliant idea to grab out the good pieces to save for firewood, for the next time we go camping! So we fished it all out, and I stacked it under the front porch. Now we will have plenty for the next time we need to make a campfire. Perfect.

So then we needed a tarp to cover the wood, so we rode our bikes up to Harbor Freight, which is less than a mile from our house. But we decided we wanted to ride a little more, so it ended up being a much more challenging, almost 6-mile ride by the time we made it back home.

After bathing Prim, and showering too, I made chili and cornbread for dinner (which was really yummy), while Jeff folded a couple loads of laundry. Then we just vegged out on the couch for a few more hours. (Which is when I should have been writing this blog post but was too wrapped up in  watching the last few episodes of "Once Upon A Time.")

She was so cute all cuddled up on her Daddy's side! :)

All-in-all, it was a good little weekend. Lots of rest and relaxation, with a little bit of chores and exercise mixed it. And of course lots of hugs and cuddles! Sometimes those are just the kinds of weekends that you need, and it definitely was for us. Now it's Monday again, and we're back to the daily grind. It's foggy and kind of rainy here, so that makes it just a little bit worse. Hopefully the day won't pass by too slowly though, because I'm ready to be back at home again for the night with my little family!

Happy Monday & Much Love,
Halie

P.S. - Oh, and my new Social Security card came in the mail on Saturday, with my new last name! Now I get to experience the joy of going to the DMV to update my driver's license as well. And you know, change my last name on about a billion other things!

Primrose Joins the Family

Here I am with my first "real" post back in blog-land, after quite a bit of a hiatus. And I know, I know.... I'm sure you were all hoping that I would jump right in with wedding recaps and what-not, but I just can't dive back into the blog-pool straight into the deep end, before I wade around in the shallow end first. Plus, I haven't actually gotten the professional photographs back yet, so I'll wait for those before sharing all of the wedding stuff :)

So today, we're starting out with our newest addition to the family - little miss Primrose!

Last Saturday morning, we were sitting on the front porch drinking coffee, and I said all I needed to make it perfect was a little furry friend sitting all warm and cozy in my lap. So I grabbed my laptop and starting searching Craigslist. I ended up on the website for the animal shelter, and before we knew it, we had added that as a stop on our list of errands for the day.

We got there around 3:30, and found out that if we donated blood before 4 pm, we would get a voucher to waive the adoption fees! So Jeff went in to try, but couldn't while on antibiotics. Fortunately for us though, they gave us the voucher anyways! We saw a couple of cuties, but once we saw this one, we knew pretty much immediately that she was a good choice. We had them take her to the little dog-walk-section, and we fell in love with her fun little personality!

So we decided to make her our own little baby! She's a 2-year-old Dachshund mix, although we're not really sure what the mix is. It could be a little bit of Beagle, it could be a little bit of Jack Russell, but who really knows?! She's already been spayed, but sadly she is heartworm positive. Luckily for us though, the shelter has an assistance program for dogs that are heartworm positive when they're adopted, so we get a discount on her treatment at a "partner vet." Jeff dropped her off this morning actually for her first shot, then we have to take her back in a month for a second shot. Then after that she will be perfectly healthy!

She is seriously one of the sweetest little dogs ever. She absolutely loves cuddling and getting petted and scratched. She loves sleeping all curled up on my chest on the couch while we watch a movie, or between my legs at night in bed. She walks right by your side both inside and outside, and doesn't even like to be alone to go to the bathroom. She doesn't eat much, but that might be due to the heartworms. She does however love marshmallows as treats! And she also jumps up on top of her crate trying to get to the kitchen table ;)

First family picture, right after adoption :)

She's been a perfect fit for us so far, and I can only imagine it will only get better and better as she gets more used to us! We both love her so much already, and I'm so glad we have our own little fur baby. She's the first dog that's ever been "all mine," and she's the greatest little doggie. Oh, and this is another thing I get to mark off my 30 Before 30 list, of "have my very own pet!" I am so excited to have my own baby dog to love and play with and have as a part of our little family! So very glad to have found this sweet baby girl - our little Prim! :)

Much Love,
Halie

P.S. - Yes, her name is from one of my favorite book/movie series, "The Hunger Games." It's perfect for her really, because she is quite prim & proper. It's pretty funny so far :) But in spite of it being from a favorite book of mine, it also starts with my favorite letter, so it was perfect. And of Primrose Pullen has a good ring to it, right?! :)

Procrastinating My Blog-Return

So like three weeks ago, I said I was coming back to blog and coming out of hiding. And look how well that turned out for me..... but a lot has been going on over here in newlywed life, and I've just been so busy! But I officially decided over the weekend that I am finally ready to get back into blogging.

There's so much going on in blog-world that I've been missing out on! There's obviously no way I can completely catch up on the last two-ish months, but I'm gonna do what I can to at least visit some of my favorites :) Also, so much has been going in with me lately, and I still really want to share it all! I'll start working on some wedding recap posts here soon, and get those out to share with everyone. Also, last weekend we adopted a doggie, so of course I want to share all about her! For now, here's a quick puppy-picture though to wrap things up - meet Primrose!

Hopefully tonight I'll get a chance to start uploading pictures and working on posts, and I'll be back in the blog-world full force by the end of the week! I've got some updates, some recaps, some adventures, some adoptions, some rants, and who knows what else to share. Can't wait to get back into it, and reconnect with you lovely ladies! See ya soon!

Much Love,
Halie