Tacky Sweater Holiday Party

This year my work had our holiday party at a great restaurant!  We had to wear tacky sweaters and there was a contest.  We didn't win anything, but it was a fun time!

Tree

We put our tree up the weekend before Thanksgiving because I was in such a festive mood this year.  Yes, Drew did think I was crazy but at least he helped me put it up!  I bought a cool picture app on the iphone and we took this picture which I really like.  Sort of gives the tree an antique feel!

I had a hard time getting a good picture of our Christmas tree with all of the twinkling lights.  It kept coming out blurry, but this one isn't too bad.

I posed Penny in front of it and that took the focus off of all the lights so I think it is a little better!

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas card

Merry Christmas from The Smiths! 

Christmas lights

This is our first year putting up Christmas lights and I love driving home at night with it all lit up!  It was unseasonably warm the day after Thanksgiving so Drew didn't freeze while putting up the lights.  Only a few days left to enjoy the glow!!

North Carolina

We took the week off after Thanksgiving and went with our friends Josh, Angie and their baby Adler to the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina.  Josh and Angie had a timeshare rental with two bedrooms so we tagged along and had a great time!!

Our condo was beautiful!  It snowed one evening but was pretty sunny the rest of the time.

We took a day trip to the Biltmore mansion and it was such a fun day!  (other than the weather being freezing!!)  The mansion is amazing and there are so many rooms.  It was decorated for Christmas but you are not allowed to take pictures inside. We followed the rules. :(

We took the tour and then went to each lunch in the stable area.  We actually ate in an old horse stall!!

The boys went golfing a couple days so Angie and I hung out with Adler and took him to the Christmas tree farm and shopping. 

Isn't he adorable?!  He has the cutest dimples!

Here we are with his cute Santa outfit!

It was a great week and we really enjoyed hanging out with Josh, Angie and Adler!

Family photo!

My friend Leslie takes such great photos!!  I love our Christmas family photo. :)

Stocking Garland

I was at Target the other day and saw the cutest stocking ornaments.  I knew that they wouldn't really go on my tree but I figured I'd find somewhere to put them.

I found some yarn I had from a different project and ended up making garland and hanging in the living room.  It is so festive!!

Puppies playing!



Penny and Abbey playing!

Puppy!

Drew's parents got a new puppy!  They named her Abbey Road and she is adorable!! Now we have an Abbey Road and a Penny Lane!

Football

This past weekend we drove to Purdue to tailgate for the football game with some of Drew's college friends.  Luckily the weather wasn't too cold! It was a great day!!

We stopped by Drew's Fraternity house and saw his brick!

Wedding invite project

Another fun project inspired by Pinterest! (inspiration found here) I took our wedding invite and cut it up and put it in a glass ornament ball to display on our picture wall.  Now instead all of our invites sitting in a box, we can admire it as we walk by our wall!

It's coming!!

My favorite holiday is only 6 weeks away!  I know it's early, but I'm so excited to decorate our new house, so I'm starting off slowly.



Can you see Penny looking out the right hand window?



Fall Celebration!

After Drew and I moved into our new house we knew we wanted to have a party and we decided that Fall would give us enough time to get all of our projects done. 

The party was great and we had so much fun!  Friends, family, neighbors, and co-workers helped us break in our new house.  Thank you to everyone that came! I wish I would have taken more pictures during the party but at least I got some shots of everything set up.

Chili and pulled pork

Drew's cousins Madison and Shelli

Acorn cookies

We had a party on Saturday and it was such a good time!  I made a bunch of food, and of course these cookies were inspired by Pinterest my favorite website.

I used the snack size nutter butter cookies, peanut butter, Hershey's kisses, and small chocolate chips.  I took apart the nutter butter and spread a little extra peanut butter on the cookie so it would hold the Hershey's kiss.  Then flipped it over and put a little dab of peanut butter to hold the chocolate chip. 

They were so yummy!!

Bucket Light

I found another fun project on Pinterest and luckily Drew humored me enough to try it out and it looks great!  He definitely looked at me like I was crazy when I said I wanted to make a bucket into a light fixture for the kitchen.  Who would have thought the Lowes garden section could provide such fun lighting!

 (original project inspiration and photo found here)

I picked up a couple pendant light kits at Home Depot and my handy husband wired it up in the attic!

I don't  have a picture of what the ceiling looked like before we put the lights up but basically it looked like someone had hung a pot rack over the island and took the rack but not the hooks and base that held it to the ceiling.  You can see below that the base of the rack is still in the ceiling. 

I love our new lights!!

Wedding Photo Strips

One of the best things we did for our wedding was to rent a photo booth!! Everyone had so much fun taking pictures and a few people even dropped their photo strips into our card box so I had a few of my own!

 I wanted to display them some how but they weren't fitting into any frames I had.  I ended up cutting each strip up and arranging them to fit. 

Now we have a fun frame on our wall reminding us of our great night!!