A Magical Transformation

Once a year a magical thing happens at our house. Twinkle and tinsel adorn the mantle and doorways. Snowman smile happily at you. Christmas music plays in the background. Cinnamon scented candles burn throughout the house. And a sense of joy and merriment begins to spread throughout every facet of our days. That's right people, IT IS CHRISTMAS TIME! This is the point where if you could see me you would see me doing my "Christmas dance and song".  Hubby says the Christmas dance and song are ridiculous, but I think he secretly likes it and waits for it all year long. Get ready for a lot of pictures!

I know what you are thinking, "But Thanksgiving comes before Christmas," and you would be right! Don't get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving! The food, the parades, family time, and the official beginning of the holiday season. But I don't host any Thanksgiving related parties or meals at my home right now so I like to go ahead and get started on enjoying my Christmas holidays. Plus hubby had his gallbladder taken out today so I wanted it done before he had his surgery. Lets get started shall we?

Our Christmas Mantle

Christmas Wreath

The mantle is decorated with a pre-lit garland bought at Hob Lob for 50% the first year we were married. I then draped the poinsettia lights from Walmart over it and added the silver and pearl garland. The Christmas tree's were bought at Kirklands last year and the nativity set was Hubby's grandmothers. The wreath was also pre-lit from Hob Lob and I simply added pics and some gold ribbon also bought from Hob Lob. The "Merry Christmas" ornament was a gift from my mother-in-law.

Fireplace ledge

Fireplace ledge

The lighted Christmas presents are from TJ Max, the gold scrolly reindeer from Ross, and then I just added some $1 Walmart ornaments and fake snow to my lantern. Lurve!

Entry way table

Other side of entry way table

You know how some people collect Nutcrackers? Well I like snowmen and you will see them pop up around all around my house. The Lennox wedding cake ornament was from our first Christmas as a married couple, and the "Little Brown Bag" was a gift from my mother-in-law  from when she went to New York.

When we bought our house

When we got engaged

One of Bella's ornaments

Another NYC ornament

Snowman Tree

Kitchen window

I finally have a tree devoted to my love of snowmen. Now I don't really like theme trees for the main tree in the living room, but this is my kitchen tree and I decided to have my snowman tree! Andy says I should have made a cow tree because I love cows too, but I thought that might be taking my love of cows too far. Over the kitchen window I hung candy cane striped ornaments and then put my dollar store tree and clearance snowmen on the ledge.

Our tree

I purposefully did not take a picture of the top of the tree because we currently have no tree topper as our angel is no longer functioning. Hubby had the nerve to suggest we replace her with a *gulp* star. Ahhh I know, I couldn't believe he dared suggest it. Moving on... I love our little tree and it has a history. This is the tree that my parents had for their first Christmas so that means it is older than me by a couple of years. Through the years it has made reappearances at my parents house when whatever current tree they were using came to the end of its life. When we moved into our new house a few years ago they said we could start using it. Before this tree we were using Hubby's grandmothers tree that is probably as old our parents!

That is not all of my Christmas decoration, but you get the idea. I hope that you remember to keep Christ in you heart this holiday season and remember everything that you have to be thankful for.

Time of the month

Since I only have two followers, Whitney and Jamee, then I have no shame in sharing this with the girls. This week has been the period week from HELL! I've had all the classic tell tell symptoms of a girl on her period. I have cried, been angry, been bloated, been constipated, cramped so bad I wanted to cry again, seriously considered eating a whole package of Oreos, felt fatigued, and had headaches. It has been miserable! I can't remember the last time my period was so bad. I'm pretty sure I told Andy at least 5 times this week that, "I hate being a girl"! Thank goodness my husband is super patient and understanding and doesn't want to leave me when I get like this. And he already got a little practice in for when I get pregnant someday...I was so miserably constipated one night this week that he made a grocery store run at 10pm to by my prunes! God bless him! I took it as a positive sign that when I'm pregnant someday and am craving ice cream or something he will undoubtedly go get me some. 

On a completely different note I did manage to get a few workouts in this week, but its hard to see any improvement when you're bloated so I always give myself a little break when I'm on my period. Next week its back to the grind though! 142lbs here I come...

NO more being lazy!

Since August I have been working on taking better care of myself. I have been trying to eat healthier, count calories, and workout on a regular basis. Some weeks I do better than others. I use an app on my phone called My Fitness Pal and it helps me set goals, count my daily calories, and keep up with my exercise. Andy recently started using it too. He gets twice as many calories as I do and that is totally unfair! I also have been using Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred DVD at home. That girl kicks my butt, but with consistency it has gotten easier.

Kicks my butt in under 30 minutes!

The reason I love this DVD is because the workout is only about 28 minutes long. I mean who has time or patience to spend hours a day working out?! Since I started taking better care of myself I have lost about 8-9lbs. My clothes are fitting better and I just feel proud of myself for taking the time for me.

The last couple of weeks though I have been pretty lazy and complacent. I actually told Andy one night that it is too much work trying to be skinny. And I was partially right...it is work to lose weight and take care of yourself, but I think I just had the wrong attitude about it. I was just looking at the being skinny aspect instead of the doing something for myself and being a better me. So I'm back on track with my goals. I went to Zumba yesterday with Jamee and it was a blast and an awesome workout too. Today I got up and did level 3 of the 30 day shred and my two new Jillian MIchaels DVD's came in the mail earlier this week. I'm going to power through and do a week of level 3 30 day shred to finish that one out for now and then get started on one of the other two.

This is the one I'm going to try next!

Now like I said earlier it's not easy and here are some of the hardest parts about taking care of myself and they are mostly food related (I have picked up some bad food habits over the years and unfortunately so has my husband).

1. Taco Villa- I can't eat it once a week like I used too and if I do eat it I limit myself to one burrito and a water
2. Dr. Pepper- I don't miss this as much as I thought I would because I have given up caffeine before and now I drink Spark from Advocare instead for an energy boost. 
3. Potato chips- They are my snack weakness. I still allow myself some but in small amounts and not everyday.
4. Dairy and carbs- So I don't really drink much milk but I LOVE cheese and so trying to not just munch on cheese cubes all the time is hard. I haven't cut carbs out completely but I do try to limit the amount of carbs I get. But this girl loves bread and crust like pizza crust. I could probably just eat pizza crust and bread sticks and make a meal out of it! Instead I mainly try to eat lean meats like chicken and pork, green salads with tomatoes and a little bit of cheese, steamed veggies, fresh fruits like apples, grapes and bananas.  
5. The last hard part is just motivation. I have discovered that if I could work out mid-morning every day I would be golden and probably skinny in a month. But I can't...I have class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays so I would have to get up early and do something before or wait till after class. The bad part about after class is I'm tired when I get home and just want to nap, watch TV or I've got something to do around the house. So basically I can usually talk myself out of working out easier than I can talk myself into working out.

But I have a new goal and that is to lose 5lbs during the month of November. Today is only the third day and I have already worked out two of the three days so I'm off to a pretty good start. I'm also hoping that once Andy gets his gallbladder taken out he will feel better and want to be more active too and we can do stuff together.

Now I'm going to be very brave and put my current weight on here as a reminder of what I'm working towards and as a commitment! Current weight is 147.5 and my goal is 5lbs so approx. 142lbs.

Heart Prints

Last time I talked about people a person that had been weighing heavily on my mind and heart. Well yesterday I saw them for the first time since June. You know how you build things up in your head to be this horribly scary but potentially amazing thing...well I had done that and had pretty much been avoiding seeing this person since June. Truth be told it wasn't that hard to do because we only have one thing in common and avoiding that one thing was not hard. Like I said before we both needed the space and agreed that we needed time. Time to heal, time to live our lives, time to move on. Well seeing this person yesterday wasn't as scary as I had made it out to be in my mind, but it also wasn't as amazing as I hoped it would be. I thought that after months apart it would be a rush of excitement for both of us to finally see each other again. And it was for me, but I'm not so sure about how they felt. I pride myself on being able to read people pretty well, but this person guards themselves which means I have no clue what they were thinking. I need a crystal ball or something. I mean wouldn't that be an amazing and awful power to have. To know what everyone is thinking all the time. Like Alice from Twilight. It felt good to see this person, to know that they are doing well, and to know that they haven't forgotten about me. In a few months, however, I will not be able to run into this person and see how they are doing. All lines of communication will have been severed. What happens to our questionable friendship then? Do we just leave it to fate and maybe someday we'll run into each other on the street and everything will be different but okay? Is this my real life "Serendipity" where I have no idea what is going to happen to this person and whether they are suppose to be a part of my life? Maybe all of that is the case...but in the mean time they have left a mark on my heart that I will never forget and that is okay with me.

You are always on my mind

I have had some people on my mind a lot lately and I don't know what to do about it. They are people that I would consider friends but we have grown apart some by choice and some by circumstance. One in particular is one that its not an option to just call out of the blue (circumstances would not allow for it). I had the opportunity to see this person today and talk with them, but then I decided maybe its for the best if I didn't. We have not seen each other all summer and maybe for us that is the best thing we could do for each other. It is just that I miss this person, I miss the friendship, I miss the laughs and the smiles. I guess our friendship was what some would say a "seasonal" friendship. We both needed each other and became friends because of our common ground, but friendships grow and change just like the seasons and now we don't need each other and for reasons I won't disclose here we made the decision to take a step back from our friendship. But every now and then this person just weighs heavily on my heart and my mind and I just want to be able to talk to them. For now I guess all I can do is pray that this person is happy and doing well. Maybe someday I will see them and I will go and talk to them and everything that we left behind will be okay...maybe.

A very merry birthday to me!

This week was my 27th birthday and my family and friends always do a great job of making me feel so special. My parents had Andy and I over for dinner and my Dad even made me some homemade Butterfinger ice cream! My parents got me a bike for my birthday and my brothers got me a couple of tv shows on dvd that I had been wanting. It was a hard not having my Meme around for my birthday, but I am thankful for all the birthdays she was here for.

My new bike that my parents gave me!

Enjoying some homemade ice cream!

I have the best husband ever!

Is it Fall yet?

I go through phases with my blog. I like the idea of blogging, but then I think what is the point? I think for me it is a place to get my thoughts out. I have thought about using an actual journal, but to be honest I don't like the idea of hand writing everything. So here I am again blogging my thoughts or experiences. Today is one of those days where I am just so ready for Fall. I am ready to wear sweaters and scarfs and ready for the sun to not be out until 9pm. Don't get me wrong, I love summer. The long days, late nights, crickets chirping, thunderstorms, and everything else that goes along with it, but now I'm ready to move on. The problem is that I live in West Texas where Summer runs through October and September is sometimes one of the hottest months of the year. Today the weather is overcast and cool and I'm stressed about school so I'm pretending its Fall by laying around in my sweat pants and drinking hot chocolate. 


Lately I have been cleaning/organizing our house, and it feels overwhelming and relieving all at the same time. I have been purging the things that Andy and I do not need or use. I already have two large bags and a milk box full of stuff to take to Goodwill. I am not going to go as far to say that I am not materialistic, because I am, but I want to live a simpler life. I want to give what I do not need to people that may need it. I want to save money and not just spend it because we can. My goal is to get the house back to looking somewhat normal before Dana comes in two weeks. I'm not doing so well at my goal today as I am just sitting in front of the tv in sweat pants. Oh well...everyone deserves a break! I also want to go through all my old photographs from before I had a digital camera and I got prints of every picture I ever took! I like having physical copies of pictures and I like that my Mom made baby books for my brothers and I. I feel sorry for the kids who have grown up completely in the digital age and don't have baby books, but just look at pictures of themselves on an IPhone. Anyways...I want to go through all those pictures because there are a TON from high school that do not pertain to me and whats the point in keeping pictures of people I can't even remember their names? There is no point! So that is also on the to-do list. 


Another goal of mine is to start writing down my memories of my family or special events. I loved hearing stories from my Grandparents growing up, but sadly now they are at a point where they can't really share those stories anymore. I think it would be neat if I wrote down different memories that I have and also asked my brother and parents to do the same. What a cool way to save our family history! Getting my brothers to do this may require some bribing, but maybe if they just told me there memories I could write them down. Its a big dream/goal of mine, but I am going to start working on it!