Celebrations

I love celebrating things. It makes daily living more fun to have something to look forward to and enjoy. And we've had plenty of things to celebrate the past few weeks. 

At work we had a Valentine's themed baby shower for my sweet co-workers, Ashley and Brittany. I made a big batch of taco soup, everyone else brought sides, and it was delicious and fun. Was this event after Valentine's Day? Yes. But it was in the month of February, and Valentine's Day generally encourages baby-making, so I felt like the theme was appropriate. Ha.

We like chips, ok?

 Ashley is getting ready to pop! And Brittany actually had her baby several weeks early. She finally got to take him home last week!

I celebrated being able to walk like a normal person and wear normal clothes again (after my burn incident), by going to Biltmore with some Kiewit girls. 

Me, Tess, Mary, and Cassie

We celebrated Caleb's 24th birthday with a dinner out at the Chop House. And this amazing Nutella cheesecake. Nutella is from the Lord.

My crusting skills could use some work. But it doesn't make it any less delicious. 

We celebrated our seven year dating anniversary with a yummy dinner of salmon in a strawberry balsamic sauce, mashed taters, and asparagus. Serious yum.

 And I got these beautiful pink roses. Amazing. My man is good to me.

It was National Pancake Day on Tuesday. I'm telling you friends, it's the little things.

Caleb celebrating getting a receipt with a total ending in a 4 by tipping in pi.

And finally, I celebrated making it through 52 hours of work this week by laying around until 2pm today. In a pair of green surgical scrubs. They are insanely comfortable. And free from my work if you encounter an...accident. But then you can accidentally on purpose keep them forever.

Happy Friday friends! As I looked back through this post I realized that we obviously celebrate life events with food. I'm going to go celebrate hating on some fat with a visit to the elliptical. Right now.

Celebrate something this weekend, ok?

Christmas Eve festivities

Do you ever have a day that you think is never going to end? I did. Yesterday. I got floated to the ER to help with overflow and I was wayyyyy out of my element. Around 10:30, I was like wow, this day is never going to end, I'm going to be down here forever, I'll probably get so old that I'll become a patient here and then die down here in the ER because the hospital is so full that they will never find a room for me. How sad. Sometimes I'm a little dramatic. Fortunately, I had the awesome new nurse I'm training to help me. (Thanks Chelsea!) Oh, and the day ended. And I went home and had wine and Chex mix for dinner while watching Boy Meets World with my hubby. Ah, the good life.

Anyway, I wanted to share our Christmas Eve. Because it was wonderfully fun this year. I had to work on Christmas Day, so we celebrated a day early. And it helped that we celebrated with our families a couple weeks ago...I think both Caleb and I had a much easier time with being away from home this year.

We woke up and opened stockings and gifts. Did your mom ever make you take a picture displaying all your gifts? Mine did. I thought the pics were dumb, but now whenever I see them they are hilarious.

I got massively spoiled this year by my honey. Also note my trendy new hairstyle.

Caleb's main gift is missing from this pic. He is getting a gun. (So crazy, I know. Tennessee, what have you done to us?) It is currently being shipped.

We spent the day hanging out, watching Christmas movies, and cooking. Then we went to dinner at Stephanie and Logan's, where they had some ugly Christmas sweaters waiting for us.

Logan was carving the roast and cut his thumb. Right after making a joke about cutting his thumb. Classic.

The food was amazing. I believe the roast is blood free.

Group photo shoot with the Christmas tree.

And we played a few rousing rounds of Settlers of Catan. Probably one of the best ways to spend a Christmas Eve.

One last great photo of Logan with one of his stocking stuffers, straw goggles!

Thanks Slogans, for a super fun Christmas eve! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!


For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be on his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 
(Isaiah 9:6)

Giving Thanks

So I am finally getting around to my Thanksgiving post...I almost skipped it, but I love Thanksgiving and honestly can't afford to NOT reflect on what I'm thankful for. So here is my list, with a few pics of recent happenings.

1. I am so thankful for my j.o.b. I have worked a whole freaking lot this year and I am so grateful for the opportunity to do that. I love my coworkers and my patients (ok, most of them). Sometimes I hate the hours, the poop, and the crazy people. But I love getting to help people through some of the toughest times in their lives.

B-12 is my favorite shot to give. Because its pink. Duh.

2. I am so so thankful for all the awesome friends we have. We have so many great friends here in Tennessee and actually spread all over the place. We spent Thanksgiving evening with Logan and Stephanie and our favorite nerd game, Settlers of Catan. Logan cooked a killer turkey. It was amazing.

3. Both of our families pretty much rock. So thankful for supportive, loving families! We met up with Caleb's fam in Nashville for Thanksgiving weekend. We shopped till we dropped, people. It was real.

And we saw my sweet cousin, Nicole while we were there. Tessa, Nic, and I got our shop on. L.o.v.e. this pic.

4. My darling husband. He is my favorite person on this earth. I got him a Thanksgiving card since I had to work all day. (Don't worry, he was fine with shooting guns with his buddies all day.)

5.  The little things that make my days good...coffee, Kathie Lee and Hoda, convos on the way home from work with my momma, laughing at silly tv shows with my hub, going out for lunch with Stephanie,  emails from my Grandma, a good butt kicking at the gym, Michael Buble's Christmas album, Instagram, and a tiny glass of wine at the end of the day.

6. And of course, the amazing fact that God send his Son to die for me. Wonderful, amazing, and the huge truth that gets forgotten in the little happenings of daily life.

That's my list! I would like to share that I am officially a Tennessean as of today. I switched my driver's license over. Caleb is switching his too. Why? So that we can legally buy a gun in the state of Tennessee. Oh Tennessee, what have you done to us?

(Oh, I really heart Instagram. Can you tell?)

Gettin' down on Friday: crafting nonsense, pink party, and more randomness

I just got done with two days of pulmonary symposium goodness, where I collected lots of free pens and drank like ten Diet Dr. Peppers to attempt to pay attention. I'm gearing up to work all weekend and all week next week, including Thanksgiving. And then participate in the Black Friday madness, because I'm not a hater. I love me some Black Friday.

Randomness:

1. I was making some yummy corn chowder last night and throwing in a bunch of seasoned salt. Which I love. (Seasoned salt, that is.) I looked on the back to see what the ingredients are in seasoned salt and one of the top ones is MSG. What?!? For reals? McDonald's doesn't use this anymore. Chinese restaurants don't even use this anymore! Does all seasoned salt have MSG? Or is it just my cheap Valutime stuff? I am dismayed. And disappointed. And saddened. Not that I'm all hippie about my food, but I do have a few standards for goodness sake!

2. Caleb and I worked out at the gym together last night for the first time since...before we got married? It was magical. Then we came home and ate the MSG soup.

3. I viciously killed a spider in my sleep last night. As evidenced by spider legs all over my side of the bed this morning. Take that, spider.

4. I am the worst crafter ever. We had a Housewives craft night last month and I was like all taking pictures of things. This is how far I got into my craft:

Do you like how I can't even focus the camera? That is literally how far the craft went. It involved cutting twine and hot gluing it to fake gourds. Everyone else's looked adorable. Mine looked awful. It's in a plastic bag somewhere, with all the other fake gourds that are not covered in twine.

5. We had a pink party at work last month in honor of the breast cancer survivors that we work with.
We had lots of pink treats and it was yummy and fun.

Left to right: Megan, me, Lauren, and Lynn (breast cancer survivor extraordinaire!)

The Baconator (Kim Bacon, also a beautiful breast cancer survivor!)

And now friends, I go to the gym with my husband. Because that is what we do now. Maybe we won't eat MSG soup tonight...

There's no place like home. And no shoes like ruby slippers.

We went home last weekend for a few days, short and sweet. We wanted to meet the new June bug. And she is so sweet! All these pics are from my iphone. Since I'm slightly obsessed with it and its picture taking capabilities.

And we are kind of obsessed with her big brother, who is growing like a weed! Seriously, this kid is adorable and hilarious. He changes so much every time we see him!

 We got lots of family time and included a trip to the Bass Pro Shop. My mom and bro just love the fish.

I also visited my Grandma Voth, who is 90. Wow.

 I had an afternoon with the besties and we hit up Pryde's in Westport. Ok, I did not even know this existed and I lived like a mile away from there for two years! Amazing kitchen store. Check out this chandelier made out of whisks. Love it.

 There is a pie shop inside the store so the whole place smells amazing.

 Cara modeling a sexy gardening hat.

Does anyone else love the owl trend that is happening right now?

Also, I'm in love with the instagram app on the iphone. I can't help it. All those wonderful filters...

 Love.

Caleb and I went to the Kansas sampler store to stock up on Kansas gear. I found this super sexy Dorothy wig to complete my Halloween costume. They said no one had ever bought one before. Ha.

Back to work on Halloween. I channeled my Kansas girl spirit. Red shoes: check. Mini Toto dog: check. Awesome Dorothy wig: triple check.

Are those red shoes dress code appropriate? I think not!

And there is our quick trip in a nutshell! I'm spending today cleaning, doing laundry, and doing errands. And going to the gym to get my butt kicked again. I could barely walk this weekend!

Last chance for the giveaway! I'll announce the winner later this week. You know you want some free Mary Kay! I also have been cooking up a storm, so I'll post some recipes as well.

Happy Monday!

The Real Housewives of East Tennessee get crafty

There is this super cool website called Pinterest. Oh, you've heard of it? You and your mom and your dog all have Pinterest? I know. It's very fun. And a great way to waste some time, whether it is free time or not so free time. Pinterest is a place where you can store all your good ideas for pretty much anything and see other people's cool stuff as well. So a few of the Real Housewives and I decided to have a Pinterest Party where we brought one of those good ideas to life.

Let me just say, while I consider myself a creative person, I am not very crafty. First of all, my patience for crafting is pretty low. I expect instant gratification with crafts and that doesn't happen very often. (Flash backs to hot gluing ribbons on my wedding invitations and ironing hems on the pink toppers for the reception tables.) Second, I am slightly paranoid that my crafts look like something a talented preschooler could do. Despite this, I was excited to start this crafty goodness, so we gathered supplies and a bottle of wine and got our craft on.

We decided to make wreaths in the theme of our respective universities. I can't believe I was outnumbered by Missouri supporters. Basically, we took a 18 inch straw wreath form ($5 at Michael's) and covered it with yarn. Mine was covered in KU blue. Emily and Stephanie's were covered in black. Which could represent MU. Or death. (I'm sorry, the anti Mizzou jokes just flow from me.)

So we started wrapping our wreaths in yarn. It was at this point when I started doubting this craft. This is progress of about an hour.

But we persevered, watched a little Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, and eventually got our wreaths covered. No one on Pinterest mentioned that it would take 3+ hours to cover the wreath in yarn. So I am mentioning it now: be warned!

After we got tired of yarn wrapping, we started making flowers to go on the wreath. The flowers are the fun, quick, and gratifying part of this process. Take a piece of felt (any size), cut it into a circle but make it kinda wavy. Then cut your circle into a spiral with a circle of fabric in the middle. Starting on the outside of the spiral, wind it into a lovely felt flower. If you wound it the right way, the circle will be at the base of the flower and you can use some hot glue to stick it all together. Perfection. You can't even mess these flowers up. It's kind of impossible. They all turn out different and cute. Like people. (Awww...)

At this point in the evening, it was like 9pm, which is totally my bedtime now. So we took a few photos of our progress and hit the road.

There is even documentation of the time, check out the clock in the background.

Emily is pretty cute for an MU grad!

The next day, Stephanie and I decided we needed to do something with the white letters. (Just wooden letters from Michael's, I think they were $2.50 each.) I thought about covering them in red yarn, but I was pretty much yarned out. So Steph got some Martha Stewart acrylic glitter paint. Which we quickly figured out was also time consuming since you have to paint layers and layers to get the color you want, waiting for the layers to dry in between. (See? I am not a good crafter. Not at all.)

I've been working the past few days, so I finished my wreath up this morning. Filled in some spots on the wreath with extra yarn, just hot glued the letters, and made a few extra flowers and hot glued those on as well.

Not horrible, right? And it goes with my KU wall. I am feel pretty darn crafty right now. Thankyouverymuch.

What you need to make your very own wreath:

*5 hours
*patience
*a long movie
*an 18 inch straw wreath form (leave the plastic on)
*a ball of yarn in your color choice
*felt in your colors of choice
*wooden letters
*paint for the letters
*a hot glue gun

So get your craft on this weekend! At least get your Pinterest on, because that is just good clean fun.

Caleb is working this morning and I am catching up on laundry and cleaning and blogging and wreathing. This afternoon we are heading to Nashville for the evening. Tomorrow Caleb gets to go to the Titans game and I get to hang out with my beautiful cousin, Nicole! Holla!

The Biltmore Mansion Beat-boxing Birthday Bash

We all love a good alliteration to start out our holiday weekend. You are welcome friends. I know I've been MIA the last few weeks in the blog world, but between work and this computer acting strange, there has been no blogging.

On Monday, Stephanie and I took a short road trip to Asheville, NC to visit the Biltmore mansion. Because my darling husband says he doesn't care to spend "a bunch of money to just look at an old house." (Thanks, honey.) Also, it was Stephanie's birthday, so major reason to celebrate.

The Biltmore is this castle sized mansion built in the late 1800s by one of the Vanderbilts. He lived there with his wife and one child. But kind of only as a vacation home. How nice.

The house was pretty cool. We could tour 42 of the rooms but there were still many many rooms that weren't part of the tour. There were 43 bathrooms in the house. A huge super cool library with half of Vanderbilt's collection of 23,000 books. And Napoleon's chess set. There was a pipe organ, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, and a gym inside the house. Mostly it was huge and gorgeous. And we were not allowed to take pictures. Which is why I don't have any.

I have no idea how I obtained this picture.

After swooning over all the little tourist shops they have to get you to spend all your money, we took an extensive tour of the gardens. Which were beautiful. And took a very long time to walk through in flip flops and Tom's.

We finally made it to the waterfall. And we saw the boathouse. And the brick bridge that was apparently in The Last of the Mohicans.  And then we had to walk all the way back.

Exhausted and famished, we got some wine and burgers for lunch. A stellar combo, let me tell you.

Seriously yummy.

I told our cutie waiter that it was Steph's birthday. He brought out a 14 layer chocolate and peanut butter cake with a candle. He told me he doesn't sing. But he said he would beat box while I sang. So he beat boxed, I sang happy birthday very loudly by myself, and Stephanie died laughing. Other diners looked at us strangely. Good quality birthday fun was had by all.

And that cake was delicious.

Next up, the winery. We got to taste all the Biltmore wines (they have quite a few) and it was a great way to end the day.

Steph, getting her wine on.

 We loved Biltmore! Now, just to get my hubby here...

Happy Friday friends! My bestie is in town for the weekend and we are planning to get our shop on and fight some white waters in a raft. Yay for long weekends and bffs!