Goodbye, 5200! You can keep your snot.

Have I mentioned that I loved my job in Tennessee? It was awesome. Not the butt wiping, snot sucking, drug dealing, and restraint charting parts. But the people I worked with. They made it great. And I will always love them. (Oh, I didn't always hate the patients either. Just sometimes.) On my last day they threw a little going-away shin dig for me and another coworker who is moving to North Carolina, Cecile. It was pretty sweet.

Pizza par-tay!

The cake: super awesome. Thanks Stacey!

Cecile and I. There may or may not have been tears involved.

Tammy and I. I know you were the party instigator. I love this woman.

Loved my coworkers! Niki, you look amazing. Something was obviously hilarious.

5200 (and 5300) you will be sorely missed! You guys really are the best!

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?

Kiewit knows how to throw some rockin Christmas parties

Its an extravaganza because it was three (3) parties. That's right. I'm a high roller now. (Oh wait, I'm not.) I bought three (3) separate outfits. They were awesome. ThankyouExpressstore. Did you know that if you ask Express for the coupons in their mailer, they will just give them to you in the store? And then you get a large discount. It's quite nice. I'm never above asking for discounts straight up.

Ok. Party number one. This was my favorite. It was here in Tennessee for just us Tennesseeans. The band was super rockin'. There was even a prom photographer that took some super sexy pics. I left work an hour early for this party. And it was great to spend time with everyone before we all start moving to separate ends of the world.

This dress was my fave too. And my husband maybe smiled normal for half a second. Why are we holding hands like this? No one knows. Also, the things sticking out from my head is a reindeer antler, not some misguided curls.

There was a cocktail party in Kansas City a week later. No pics were taken. I work a cute purple dress. But my tights that claimed to be control top were not very controlling. Moving on.

Corporate Christmas party on Saturday night. I pulled out the big guns for this one. Super shiny top! I love it. Another awesome band played, Liquid Blue. The singers had a choreographed dance for every song and they played for hours. I was super impressed.

I love these girls. Our feet hurt (high price for heels) so we picked a table near the dance floor and did some people watching, learned some new dance moves, and found some dresses that should be on What Not to Wear.

Emily and Christi: Tennessee is not the same without you!

The hub, looking classic.

Elevator ride. Because I could never get him to take a super nice pic with me. Oh the burden I bare. I kind of love this pic actually.

Yeah so that wraps it up. We brought our big camera but sometimes we don't like carrying it around at parties. And we just love our little Iphones. But the moral of the story is, get yourself a nice sparkly top from Express. Thank me later.

And now on to folding laundry and my last of three in a row tomorrow... 

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...

Rocky Top Tennessee

Before I start the real post, I just want to say that a patient told me I was "too hardcore" yesterday. It was amazing. If making someone take their medicine that they would die without, then I am happy to be hardcore. I'm pretty sure I've never been accused of being too hardcore before, but I am excited about my new identity. Ha.

We headed out to Knoxville on Saturday to tailgate with all the Kiewit folks and watch Tennessee get beat by Georgia. (Coach Dooley, I don't know anything about football but I did note that your team cannot run the ball. At all. Maybe try something else?)  I hate to say this, but UT is just so much more hardcore about football than KU and their stadium is so massive, the games just have a different feel than KU. Also not sitting in the student section just isn't as fun. Ha. But we had a great time since we don't really care. And what's not to love about a great tailgate?

I do feel like a serious traitor wearing an orange shirt.

Just hanging out with some Housewives...

Caleb showing off his corn hole skills.

Neyland Stadium is huge. For reals.

But honestly, my favorite part was the halftime show. The band did this Wizard of Oz theme, complete with Dorothy and all the characters. (And the Wicked Witch of Georgia, hardee har har.) Since I get called Dorothy on a daily basis, I felt like it was just for me.

The weather was perfect, as compared to last year.  It did make us miss KU and college and being poor and not working 12 hour days and feeling like 9pm was the beginning of the night instead of bedtime. We feel old.

All the words to the Rocky Top song. Tshirt of the guy in front of us.

Last minute pic as we were leaving the stadium after the third quarter. I like it.

I just wanna say: Rock Chalk Jayhawks, Go KU!

I'm heading to my personal trainer session (fancy, I know). My last session was Thursday and on Friday I couldn't walk right. Don't kill me today, Chris!

Happy Monday!

Stephanie and Logan's Wedding (with lots of DIY goodness!)

Last Saturday Stephanie and Logan finally got hitched! The day was pretty chilly, but everything was gorgeous. I felt a little dumb because my camera ran out of battery at the beginning of the night. But I went up in the morning to help set up, so I got a few "before" pics.

They got married in this adorable mansion called the Chateau Selah. It sits up on a hill and is beautiful.

From the back

And the view. So beautiful. This might be my favorite thing about Tennessee.

I love all the milk glass vases she used for her center pieces. We whipped up those flower arrangements in like half an hour, thanks to Logan's mom!

Dried rose petals hung on every one's chairs to toss at the bride and groom as they walked down the aisle.

Napkins with the menus inside. Stephanie made those menus. Like a true crafter!

She also made these letters for the gift table.

She also hand stamped every one's names and tied them to mason jars for their drinks for the night. Originally, I think the plan was to put the table numbers on the back of the name tags but the wedding wasn't too big, so she just decided to let everyone pick their own seat.

Green straws for boys and pink straws for girls. Helllllo.

They even had a signature drink. Tennessee style.

The head table. Pretty sure she got that adorable banner from Etsy, as well as the vase to hold her bouquet and the unity candle. Perfect. They had everyone sign a framed pic of them as the guest book.

The centerpieces. Ivory linens, chocolate napkins, burlap squares with the milk glasses and votives on them. And yep, Stephanie made those votives as well. Moss + twine. Love the effect.

The cake was beautiful and matched the milk glass vases and the wooden, rustic theme.

They were planning to have the ceremony outside, but since it was so chilly moved it inside and had it in front of this fireplace. There were tons of candles and huge windows that let in lots of beautiful light. I have no pics of the ceremony since I was blanking out on picture taking at that time!

So the ceremony was on the main floor of the house. The cocktail hour was in the basement (adorable). The reception was in a huge heated tent outside. And the bride and groom got to stay in a gorgeous honeymoon suite upstairs. Such a cool place!

Steph bought her awesome wedding dress (and pink Badgley Mischka heels) on Rue La La for a steal. Then she did a costume change for the reception into a short dress with a bubble hem from David's Bridal and some sparkly white Toms.  She also wore white Vera Wang leggings that I snagged for $5 on the morning of the wedding since it was going to be cold!

I wish I had a thousand more pictures and am still kicking myself for the battery running out! I love this one though, of Stephanie and Logan coming into the reception. So cute!

It was a perfect wedding and a great party! Congratulations to Stephanie and Logan Cook! Holla to the newest housewife of East Tennessee!

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!