Partying a little too hard...

Stone Mountain Mariott Resort

Since we are now affiliated with the wonderful world of Delta we were invited to their annual Christmas party. I got to wear a fancy little dress and mingle with important people :) haha. Ok, seriously. I went dress shopping this past Tuesday with Liz and Erica (also wives of delta personel) and found a dress I really liked at White House/Black Market. Erica also found her special dress there - Liz already owned half of the store so bought a cute red clutch to go with her black dress and red pumps. Like I said, I found my dress, but I didn't buy it. I couldn't justify it in my head to spend more money on a dress that I would wear once and maybe twice looking down the road. I was strong and walked away. How did I get the dress then? Bryce decided I should have the dress and that he would go back to the mall where it was in Atlanta and buy it for me as a surprise. And what a surprise it was! :) Thank you Bryce! Thank you Liz and Matt for helping him find the right dress and size. Bryce and I carpooled to Stone Mountain with Erica and Adam. We never did get a group photo or couple pictures so the pictures I have are of me doing a pre-party fitting and then after the party where my hair has lossened and gotten messy a bit. :) Just use your imagination to picture it how it was. I had some pretty large grey pearl earrings I wore. Bryce wore a light grey shirt with dark grey pants and a tie that had grey and black stripes on it. It's the first time we've purposely coordinated, and we looked dang cute! Bryce jokes that I drank out of someone else glass at the party (which I did not!) b/c I was out this morning. He called at 10:35 (church starts at 10) after trying me a couple times earlier and asked if I was ok and coming to church. I was dead asleep when he called too, not this half awake, half asleep business. I've never slept that hard for that long. I guess I was tired from the dancing and late hours but it was lots of fun.

My stingray skin clutch from Oly.

Tree skirt!

I picked the material out a couple years back and my dear mother has made me a tree skirt to enjoy. I got it in the mail yesterday and immediately put it under the tree - as I should. Jamba really likes it and has actually been crawling under the skirt and out the hole in the middle around the base. Great. I had mostly forgotten the fabric I picked, but I'm glad to say that I still like it. My genius mother backed it with a nice white tone on tone fabric so I can switch sides when I get tired of the green and red. Here's another shot of the tree in our green house. :)

Art

We hung two pictures in Bryce's office. We used the museum standard and hung the center of each picture at 57" from the floor. Although, on an after thought, since the room has a stripe we probably should've had them land at the same place on the stripe. Too bad. They're on separate walls so it's not as bad as if they were next to each other.

"Tire" by Bryce Blauser (he did this in high school after school one day b/c he was bored.)

"Sunset" by Monet

It's officially Christmas Season

It's the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations and music are fair game. We got our tree up and stockings out. Little by little I'm adding bow to everything :) I have a couple projects for next Christmas. I'll get the stuff on sale when Christmas is over and you'll get to see how they turn out later. I know you're looking forward to it...ah, ah. I know. Jamba's got her wild eye on you - watch out. Darn flash. We've found out that she likes to bite fake Christmas trees and knock low-placed ornaments off. Anybody want a cat? That's a joke Bryce. One thing I like about Georiga is the serious supply of evergree/pine needles. I just cut some low sprigs off the small trees and stick them in my decorations. I added the bows on everything, pillows, card holder, towels, chandelier, as a tree topper, on a lamp... Also, adding more evergreen sprigs. Yes, the 'Christmas' card on the left says Welcome. It's from Delta, and we like it there. This is my project for next season. drum roll for a year.... It probably will not go in front of the fire place (can we say fire hazard. I like my house thank you.) I was imagining it up behind the couch where the camel and other things are. I'm still keeping my eyes open for a Nativity set I like, I hope to add one to the decor soon!

25% off and another 50% before Noon!

My first Black Friday (dun-dun-dun-duh) experience. We decided since Bryce LOVES to shop and LOVES even more to be around large gatherings of people to go experience some Black Friday madness and get some deals. Ok, mainly, I made him get up early so we could go to an outlet mall south of us so we could buy him some new clothes for his new job (where he can't get away with wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and whatever he throws on) when nice things would be a bit cheaper. We scored a deal at the first place. We saved $94 on three pairs of pants from Bass. They are really nice pants - wrinkle free out of the dryer and fit him well. We actually didn't save $94, because we wouldn't bought them if they weren't on sale. We really just found some really nice pants for $18. That's what I'm talking about. I found some nice stuff at half off and maybe 60%off, but my best deal was probably a nice peacock colored cardigan from Ann Taylor for $11. No, there were no missing buttons or holes in the armpits. No pictures of this excitement - shopping was enough to fill his excitement reserve for at least another 3 months. Bryce bought his shirts at Banan Republic - a first for him. He's just steppin' up in this world isn't he?!

Fun in Kentucky! (no, it's not an oxymoron)

I got a little appeitite for something different by the time November rolled around. Lucky for me the best opportunity in the world presented itself and I took it. Jenifer flew in from UT the same week as my friend Molly was going to be available to play. I gave plenty notice at work and told them the day before that I would be taking two days off of work. I left my house at 3:30 A.M. and arrived just in time for some breakfast! It was a great change of pace to be with some family in Kentucky for a few days. Sadly, it was only for a day and a half. I'll take what I can get! Molly was a great host. We had some Trivial Pursuit adventures and I won - that's right Molly - it came back to bite ya. :) My arm was sore for a couple days after the Wii, and I passed out gingerbread contest flyers for PBS (for 5 hrs) with Molly on a cloudy, 37 high, Saturday. I got treated with free dinners and great company. Thanks Molly and Eric for being so cool. And thank you Amy, Jared, Pierce, and Megan for feeding me lunch on Sunday and for the entertainment/excitement. Your house echoes really well when kids scream. :) Sadly, there are no real pictures beside my hair cut, which is super cute and another real perk to being around Jenifer. If you've experienced it then you know what I'm talking about! Driving home I had my back seat down to make room for a chair, shell chandelier, and some vases. Thanks Ma! I do have pictures of those.

Smokin' Buns...well burgers in this case

I decided to do something better for dinner since I'm tired of the ol' rice and chicken or noodles and chicken dinner so we did Hamburgers tonight with all the fixins including bacon. I didn't have a tomato so the Ketchup made up for it. And we don't have a grill so I broiled them. The exciting part of the night was the smoke dector blaring in our house. They made the smoke detector go off so we had a couple doors open and fans on, and Bryce had a broom waving it around the smoke dector so it'd quit beeping. That was sort of comical - definitely moreso for me than for Bryce. Pretty exciting. I've never broiled anything so maybe next time there will be less smoke :) They tasted pretty decent though. They were moist and not dry and not too flat. We mixed garlic powder, salt, pepper, and one egg in with the meat. If you have any good burger recipes, hand them over!

Watch out for those Boobees

Yes, I'm flyging and I'm a boo bee. My whole face is cut out b/c you can't have you face covered at Trunk-or-Treat. Bryce was supposed to my companion on this but got disapproving looks from someone when he was talking about it so he changed his mind - I didn't care so I still went as a boobee. Oh well. Bryce's costume was great - no one recognized him until he talked, or if I was standing next to him they figured it out. He told people, "I'm me in 10 years." Everyone expressed their concern for me and he reassured them that he had warned me before we were married so it's fair. :)

I had to add this one b/c I thought it was so funny how he was buckled in. As he opened the garage door and was walking around the car some kids from the neighborhood were walking by and started laughing. They stopped and waited at the end of our driveway for us to pull out so they could look at him some more. Probably just trying to figure out if it was real or not. :) I had some good laughs.

Final Blowout

Thank you Debra and Liz - it wouldn't have been half as good without your help! The pictures are of the spread, one game I like to call "Mommy and baby" and the decorations we did in the Relief Society Room. It turned out cute. Shout out to Taryn for the clothesline idea. The baby is super cute - she was 5 weeks early. 4 lb 14 oz if I'm not mistaken. She hit 6 lbs today. Her little burpy cloth thing was cute so I took some pictures.

Let this be a lesson to all you pumpkins!

One Down...

I got to give Michelle at work a baby shower. yeah! I posted the Halloween inspired invites earlier. Everything came down to today. I think it was a success! Here are a few pictures of the cute notes we put on the table with the food. I had my pumpkins and mummy on display and we had black, white, and orange balloons adorning the food and present tables. We had orange and black eating utensils and paper products as well. I made a diaper cake for Michelle's present and to do double duty as decoration. Here are the pictures. We used little socks for the rosettes (flower wanna be's) and some ribbon. The blanket we stuffed down the center of the cake so it wasn't too long and then stuck the bear on for a little extra something. I think it turned out cute. We've got another one at the next baby shower for a girl. I'll post some pictures. People told me they had fun at this shower and were all impressed with the decorations and execution. That's good. :) Julie and I put some effort into this. :)

High of 67

I love Fall. Let me type that again. I love Fall, Autmn, the chilly temps. Today was our first day out of the 70's. The high was supposed to be 67 I think really it did end up being a little warmer than that. Being out in the fall weather made me really want to decorate the house. I too have pulled the boxes out of attic and closet and rearranged some things and added leaves and berries to other things. I have the Boo ghosts out as well - of course! The pumpkin things I've got sitting out are actually for the baby shower but will take up residence on my coffee table for now. I've got a little bit of holiday spirit in each part of the house downstairs - good start for me.

Virtual meets Realtiy

Today was an interesting day for me. I woke up ready to go hiking with the scouts and realized I wasn't sure which trail head we were meeting at. I called one of the den leaders and she assured me the scout hike was not today, but next Saturday. Today was also the enrichment activity for the month which I signed up for and then cancelled on b/c of the (nonexistent) scout hike. So, I decided I better go to enrichment. One of the projects I had signed up for was decorating the mat for Family: A proclomation to the world and I needed pictures for it. I hadn't gotten any ready b/c I thought I was hiking this morning. So, I grabbed some pictures I had of Bryce and I when we were younger and then the first few dates we went on and headed to Wal-Mart, just up the road from the church building. Long story short I ended up having to scan 20 pictures twice and then when they printed the lady told me I couldn't have my sheets of prints b/c there was a picture of Bryce when he was 10 and it was a studio picture-copyrights. She said she couldn't just cut the picture out of the sheets and would have to take the whole sheet of prints and that I could rescan my pictures again if I wanted to. Well I didn't want to and after talking with her about how silly it is I told her I didn't want the prints and left. I just was not up to and I was frustrated. So I have a proclomation and blank mat. Maybe I'll draw stick figures and make up my own pictures of us at the beach, surfing, climbing mountains, parachuting... I did make a mummy candy holder though. Super easy. Pictures are coming. Bryce and I got out of the house today to go to Target and Best Buy for some baby shower things and for a new headset for Bryce. Don't ask. I logged our exciting day with pictures.

Look closely, they had the sea captain guy from Pirates of the Caribbean buckled in their front passenger seat. Sweet.

A sign at Best Buy that made me think of Mom. I love you Mom.

I snuck one of Bryce eyeing the goods. He doesn't know about this photo yet. :)