It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I finally got some Christmas decorations out on saturday afternoon. I haven't decided if I am going to use my holly branches in the hurricane vases or not yet. I might need a little green in my life. ;)

Merry Christmas to Me!

  My Christmas came a little early. I have been wanting a china cabinet ever since we moved into our house and today, I finally found one! I headed over to My Favorite Place and found a decent size china cabinet that I like. It took forever because I can't have a huge piece in the space I have and it has to be raised to allow for the floor vent. I am trying to decide whether to have it delivered or if I can't wait (probably will be the case), I will make Pat come with me on Saturday to pick it up. Hooray!! I will finally have a spot for my china (I know my mom will appreciate having it out of her house!) and it will be nice to have something up on the wall in the dining room.

  Now I just have to decide on paint colors!! Any suggestions? I will be replacing the hardware too, so this shall be a very interesting adventure!! Any good tips of how to refinish furniture? Comments would be much appreciated!! I'm thinking of doing a crackle finish on it or I might just paint it a very very pale blue or green. Oh, I can't wait!!!!

  I'm thinking about doing it like this: http://dreamywhites.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-blue-cupboard.html

Learning to crochet tonight

Exhausted

It was a long night at agility and little man is tuckered out!

Auburn Versus Georgia

  This year we were able to go to not only the Ole Miss game, but also the Georgia game. Pat and I were going to drive up to Athens just for the day and hang out watching the game at a bar with our friends, Stephen and Erin, but my parents were able to find us tickets. My parents actually flew into Atlanta on Friday and drove up to Athens to meet one of my dad's friends and his wife for the weekend. My dad has decided that he wants to go to every SEC football stadium, so when one of his friends offered him tickets, he jumped on the chance.

  We drove up on Saturday morning and grabbed the tickets from my parents' hotel, Hotel Indigo, which I think I want to stay at the next time I go to Athens. Patrick and I finally found the lot we were supposed to park in and made our way slowly towards the stadium. We saw my parents on the field (their friends got them sideline tickets too) and that was about as exciting as the game was for us unfortunately.

Can you find my parents yet? Look to the immediate right of the kicker's net. There they are!

  We got to see Kate who had flown in from Orlando and Allison and Stephen found us in our seats too. After halftime (or maybe the 3rd quarter), we left our seats to go sit with my parents and ran into (literally, almost!) my dad who was coming to find us in our seats. We went back with him and sat with my parents and their friends for the remainder of the game.

  Then we met up with Stephen and Erin outside the stadium and went downtown to find a place to eat. The first place we went had a "five hour wait" which very well could have been, but that seemed a bit much for us. We wandered down the road to another favorite place of Stephen's and Erin's, Transmetropolitan. We were standing in the very long line for a while until Stephen decided to go upstairs to get a pitcher while we waited. He came back downstairs and told us he had spoken to a guy who said we should order the pizza as take-out and then bring it upstairs to eat it there. Well done, my friend, well done! We followed his advice and our pizza was ready in 45 minutes, which was much quicker than waiting in line as all of the people directly in front of us were still waiting at the counter to order! We were even able to grab a booth (though we had to clean it ourselves-the bartenders weren't the best waitresses) and enjoy our drinks while we waited. After that, we finally headed across campus to our car and left Athens. It was a late night and long day, but we had so much fun! Patrick also enjoyed his first time in the stadium and my parents enjoyed their virgin visit to Athens too.

Fall Centerpieces

  Thanks to Pinterest, I created these centerpieces for my dining room table. I followed this blog and was delighted to find that my Dollar Store just a few minutes away had all of the supplies I needed! I chose some yellow leaves and meant to grab some red leaves before Thanksgiving, but a big storm blew them all off my Japanese maples and left them soggy before I could grab some up, so yellow it is! http://www.320sycamoreblog.com/2009/11/dollar-store-version-of-ws-glass.html

 

  All you need is a candlestick, hurricane, candle, and glue gun. Peel off all the stickers then glue the hurricane to the candlestick and glue the candle inside the hurricane. Then add your leaves.

 
  The only problem that I had was my glue didn't stick very well on one of my hurricanes, so I had to do it again, but I think it seems to be working now! I might even go back and buy a few more and leave off the candle stick holder to give some varying height on my table. (I think three will be perfect!!)
I will be adding some holly branches and berries for Christmas this weekend when I pull out the Christmas decorations!!

Ole Miss Versus Auburn

  Life has been moving at full speed recently and this blog has fallen by the wayside. I'm going to try to do a few posts this week to catch up on everything.

Ice sculpture in the new Foy

Fishbowls

  For Halloween weekend, we went to Auburn for our annual football game rivalry. My parents and sister met us in Auburn on Friday night. By the time we finally made it to Auburn, we were all starving. We tried to go to my dad's favorite restaurant, Amsterdam's, but we were told that the wait was going to be 2 hours (mind you, this is 8:30-9 AT NIGHT!). Yeah, no, not happening. So we called Niffer's and they told us the wait was 30 minutes and we put our name on the list immediately. Mom, Margaret, and I all got fishbowls while the boys enjoyed a beer. I don't remember when they changed it, but you used to be able to order a huge fishbowl if you had 6 IDs, I believe, but now everyone has to have their own much, much smaller fishbowl. I guess they are trying to stop spreading mono and other illnesses around campus? Anyways, we enjoyed our dinner and drinks and ended up shutting the restaurant down around 11, I believe.

Tiger Walk

 

  On Saturday, we were able to walk around downtown for several hours before the game since it was an evening game and really enjoy being back in Auburn. We ate at Momma G's (though not nearly soon enough for Patrick) after we visited, oh yes, all of the bookstores in Auburn for Mom. I found a really cute Auburn stocking and an Auburn onesie for sweet Stef's baby to come!! We sipped on some Toomer's lemonade and then started heading to campus to visit some tailgates. We saw Allison and Katie Doc before slowly making our way towards Tiger Walk. Unfortunately, we couldn't really see the players up close and personal there, but Andy and Jenny (one of my nursing school girls) found us and then we were able to meet up with Mindy!! We only got to spend a few moments together, but it was great to see them all!!

Waaaarrrrr Eagle, Hey!

  After I snapped a few pictures with Jenny and Mindy, my camera died so I had to rely on my phone for pictures for the rest of the night. We got into the stadium and our seats were on the second row. It was hilarious to be in Jordan-Hare and still watching the game on the jumbotron! We had a great time though and even made friends with the four Ole Miss guys in front of us. Poor Pat, but hey, there's always next year!

Little did Aubie know...

Nova, one of our eagles

Oh, hey, Dad!

  On Sunday morning, we got up and went back downtown to try Amsterdam's one more time, but this time, there was nowhere to park, so we turned around and went to Pannie George's for some good home-cookin'. I had no idea they had been in Auburn so long and got to talk to one of the daughters who is a cardiac nurse at the local hospital one day a week (possibly worked with her when I was in school). I really enjoyed it and was glad to be fed by the time we waited there for at least half an hour. You should definitely try if you ever go to Auburn! After lunch, we drove back downtown to go into some of the shops that we had missed and saw how they are now hand-picking the toilet paper out of our beloved trees (before the poisoning, they used to powerwash the paper down on Sundays). We stopped at Toomer's again for another lemonade and were back on the road to Atlanta. It proved to be another great weekend for our in-house rivalry, though I think Patrick has learned not to bet anymore on the game! :) War Eagle!

Toomer's Corner

Thanksgiving Week

  I am several posts behind, but this week I am really excited to have my family coming into town Tuesday! I cannot wait! I'm making dinner for everyone (I think around 12 people--eek!) on Tuesday night and I hope it turns out tasty!
  I'm making The Pioneer Woman's Pot Roast and Mashed Potatoes and my bread. I'm also making caesar salad and Patrick hopefully is going to make okra on the grill. My aunt is going to bring the drinks and a dessert.
  I should be back later with more updated posts and a recap of Thanksgiving!
I hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving!! In the words of my sweet friend, Katie, gobble til you wobble!!

Weekend Recap

  On Friday, I had to work so I finally got home around 11:30 and Pat and I caught up on The Sing-Off. Do you watch it? Because you should start if you don't. I'm rooting for the oldies, Northshore, and the Dartmouth boys; that lead singer can rock it. If the Dartmouth boys don't win (too many, maybe?), then I definitely think he needs to get himself another group and sing; I would buy his cd for sure. And the old guys, well, I just love them. I think they are adorable and they are the quintessential a cappella group.

Mustache glasses

We found Stephen!

  We spoke to Erin who ended up having two tickets to the Decatur Beerfest on Saturday. Erin has been to this festival for the last four years and raves about it, so I was excited to see what all the buzz was about. And it definitely lived up to the hype! Stephen was on a bachelor weekend for one of his friends and we met up with them down there for a bit. The square was a really great location for this festival because even though it was packed, you didn't feel like you were jammed in there with everyone. We got to sample a few really good beers and a couple not so great ones which Erin and I poured out. We rode the Marta down there and unfortunately because of the unpredictability of public transportation here in Atlanta, it took about an hour, but we finally made it and started a great afternoon! The weather was beautiful and not too hot and we enjoyed walking around the square.

The brewery that was the reception site for Kevin this summer

Love this girl!

Boo.

ATL from the Marta

  We finally headed back and ended up getting back to our house around 6pm, just in time for Pat to start mourning the would-be loss of his team. Allison came over and we rooted our Tigers onto victory. It was ugly and I think I suffered several mild heart attacks, but we will take it!

After the exhausting game!!