Randoms

This is just a random little brain dump of things I have swirling around in my brain. :)

1. Last night we had a "holiday" party for one of the anesthesia groups Joe works with. It was really fun to get dressed up and get a babysitter! But several people asked me if I was rooting for 'Bama. Oops. Wardrobe fail!! Take a close look at Joe ~ he is wearing a bow tie! I have begged him unmercifully for years to wear a bow tie because I think they are so old fashioned looking and I ended up just buying him one for Christmas! Hah! I think he looks so cute in it! We're bringing bow ties back, y'all!! 

2. I have been in the mood to tackle some furniture projects lately. I had been looking for months for a little wood table to re-do to keep in the kitchen for Landon to eat at and work on crafts, etc. It had been such a challenge to find something close to what I want {solid wood with clean lines and at least two chairs and cheap}!! I ended up buying this one used for $30 and I'm not totally in love with the shape but I have some ideas on how to make it more my style. Stay tuned...!

Then I bought this china hutch at Goodwill I'm going to re-purpose for a tv cabinet for our family room downstairs. I have a serious love affair with old furniture. We have three other old pieces of furniture in our garage right now too. Please don't call Hoarders on me.

3. I pinned this recipe on Pinterest right before Christmas and I have made it three times now and it's just a problem that I know it exists - I just can't go back to life before I knew about it. Red Velvet Cheese Ball. Isn't that just dangerous? It's rolled in mini chocolate chips. Don't even click on the link unless you want this to be a part of your life permanently. Hah!

Look. I couldn't even get a picture taken before I took a bite.

4. I snapped this random picture after bath one night and I just love it. My boys. I love my boys.

5. The Dollar Tree has little nests with eggs in the craft section. I love tucking nests into random bowls and other nooks and crannies around the house.

Have a great week!!!

One Night Chef

At the very end of November I hosted our annual (and last!!) residency class Christmas and we did something very different and neat this year!! We have a local chef (engineer by day!) who does private parties to collect donations to send to his home of Nepal. He has a special school he supports there. He charges $25/plate to cook and serve a 3-course meal and then any tips above that are sent to support his efforts in Nepal. I love this idea! You can tell he has such a passion for his work and I was so inspired by him!

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited that I didn't have to worry about preparing the meal for everyone myself. Hah! The whole idea was my friend Trish's and I'm so glad she encouraged us to go this route as a class to celebrate Christmas and support this charity!

Surya came to my house with a huge load of groceries to start cooking about four hours before the party started. He also brought reinforcements! These two sweet girls helped him cook and serve :)

I was so amazed at all the action going on in my kitchen!!

We all sat down to eat and Surya did a nice little introduction to each of the courses and also at the end he talked about his charity work.

Our first course was a sweet potato soup served in a pumpkin. I am sure that I've never had the wherewithal to serve anything from the inside of a pumpkin. It was one of the best soups I've ever had in my entire life and I am not just saying that!! I didn't even get a picture of it on my plate. Yes. That good!

Then he served us shrimp fettuccine. I loved how he really decorated the plates! It was so full of flavor!! I think if I won the lottery I would just hire Surya to move in with us. Hah!!

For dessert we had (I wish I could remember the actual name) but it was an ethnic banana kind of like a plantain with ice cream and a cinnamon stick. I was just amazed!

Here is our whole group! I care so much for everyone at the table! We have become such a great family during this journey of residency!!! Such a fun night! :)

Christmas 2012

Like I said in my last post, our Christmas was very different this year than it has ever been. I feel like we're still trying to figure out what our groove is for holidays since we don't live in the same city as our parents. Yet! :) Usually, we travel to Kansas City and spend Christmas Eve with Joe's family having a nice meal, going to church and wake up Christmas morning and do the traditional Christmas then. And then we spend the next day or two at my parents'. But this year, since Christmas fell on a Tuesday and due to the rotation Joe is on this month, he couldn't leave town. So we celebrated our own "Christmas" on Christmas Eve and day and then went home the following weekend.

We always open one gift on Christmas Eve, which is a new pair of pajamas. This is one of my favorite traditions. I love PJs! Landon got really into opening his gift (he did not have the same enthusiasm on Christmas day as you will see..).

Joe got me a nightgown from the Disney Luxe collection. It sounds totally immature but it's actually so nice and we have a total Disney theme going on this year so it was fitting. The print has tiny little pumpkin carriages all over. I love it!

Since Joe had to work a half day on Christmas day, Landon and I actually woke up and acted like it was a normal week day. I put him down for a nap after lunch and during that time Joe got off work and we set up all the presents under the tree and Santa came ;-) So when he got up from his nap it was kind of like Christmas morning. He doesn't know the difference anyway!!

Unfortunately, Landon had no interest in gifts. We kind of forced him to unwrap a few and then unwrapped the rest for him. I put about 1/2 of them away to "introduce" again on a rainy/snowy/boring day. Hah!!

The biggest hit was definitely this Melissa & Doug cookie sheet. It is so cute and yes, I realize probably a little girly but he doesn't know the difference and he loves "cooking" and watching us cook! :) It has little wood cookies that velcro on the cookie sheet and a spatula you can use to scrape them off. He plays with it every single day!

On Friday we headed up to Kansas City to spend time with our extended families! We were so glad to finally be able to go home. We visited with Joe's family first. We had a really good time playing games with his brothers. Joe's parents got Landon a drum set he loved!!

On Saturday night we went to stay the night with my family and do Christmas with them. The celebration just kept going on! I love visiting because my sister's two kids play so cute with Landon :) My parents got Landon a Medieval Knight dress up set and he walked around all day with the shield and sword. It was so adorable!

We had such a good Christmas this year! I hope you did too!!

Paris Baby Shower

My friend Kelly Jo is expecting a baby later this month! I hosted a baby shower for her a few weeks ago and I had so much fun planning a way to celebrate her new little girl! I thought a Paris theme would be cute (and we kind of combined it into our book club and read The Paris Wife).

Here is the table set up! I ordered a cake from Sam's Club and I am serious when I tell you they have the best cakes!! I found this Eiffel Tower sculpture at Hobby Lobby and just sat it down right on the top. I got some baby's breath and carnations for the table and added a few framed "Paris things" like a little vintage print and a picture of Mona Lisa I converted to black and white. I made a pink glitter "M" for her little girl's name :)

For dinner I sat up a grilled cheese bar and asked all the girls to bring their favorite kind of cheese. I cut up French baguette bread and buttered my griddle and let people assemble their sandwiches themselves. We are talking super easy!! We had so much fun with it!!

Kelly Jo got so many cute gifts. She is just one of those people who is so full of energy and has so much charisma and I love her! I bet her little gal will be just like her :))

Congratulations KJ! I absolutely can't wait to meet sweet M!!!! :)

Christmas Tour 2012

I've finally had a chance to sit down and collect pictures from Christmas! I am so sad I didn't get a chance to do a "home tour" before Christmas. I still want to do it now so I can remember the details for myself. This Christmas was really special because it was our last one in Kansas and this house. I am keeping my decorations up extra long too; they may not come down until we move in June - hah! Also, it was different because it was the first year we didn't go back to Kansas City to visit our families over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Joe didn't get a day off for the holiday so we had to wait until the weekend following Christmas to visit. So we had Christmas for just our little family and that was really special too. :)

Here is our main tree in the living room - I call it my "fancy tree". I decided to just decorate in whites and silvers this year instead of doing a lot of color. It's simple and classic and suited us this year. I didn't really put up any other decorations around the house. I really liked being simple this year. And it was the easiest to do with a toddler!

oh hello :)

 I had about 95% of the ornaments I used for the tree already! I always buy ornaments at after Christmas sales and organize them by color into tubs I have in our basement.

I bought little feather poufs from Hobby Lobby - they are actually hair clips I found in the sewing department for $1!

I almost always have birds and flowers in my Christmas trees because I just think they are more interesting than all bulbs.

I don't have a tree skirt that I love so I just used a "fur" blanket I had and scrunched it up underneath. 

My friend Katie's sister made us the stockings last year. I absolutely adore them!!!

click to enlarge

Here is Landon's tree. I put this up in early November because we had just gotten back from Disney and I wanted to use his ears as a tree topper. We are starting to collect special ornaments for him we can put on his tree every year. We also have our own family "special tree" I put in the basement family room. I LOVE this tree. It's where we hang up all of the ornaments we've given to each other over the years, collected on vacations, been gifted, etc.

we always write on the back who the ornament was from and the year :)

this is a very special ornament. when I was pregnant I recorded Landon's heartbeat into the recorder

And the last thing I did this year was just put up a really simple mantle decoration. I kept it pretty monochromatic too. :)

I had this silhouette made of Landon at a local toy store. I love it!!

The 25 are just cheap wooden letters I spray painted. And I put buffalo snow in a jar next to it.

The wreath I made during a Craft Club night with my girlfriends - it's all cupcake liners!!

Here is our Christmas card for the year. I used Tiny Prints and put in a picture from Disney: On the back of the card we set up a page through Tiny Prints where people could look at more pictures online. : )

Hope your Christmas was as great as ours!!