Mom's Table(s)

The house was full and stretchy pants were adorn. Thanksgiving setting in my parent's home:

Thanksgiving Menu 2010

Lee and I rotate Thansgiving to avoid spending the majority of the holiday traveling between each of our hometowns. This year we spent the holiday with my parents and boy does my mom know how to throw down a yummy meal. Our menu consited of....

•      Hot Rolls
•      Grandma’s Famous Cranberry Relish
•      Turkey
•      Ham
•      Giblet Gravy
•      Grandma’s Famous Dressing
•      Deviled Eggs
•      Mac & Cheese (not from a box)
•      Corn
•      Sweet Potatoes
•      Mashed Potatoes
•      Broccoli and Rice Casserole
•      Chinese Coleslaw
•      Pumpkin Pie
•      Coconut Pie
•      Chocolate Ice-cream Mousse Pie
•      Pumpkin Roll
•      Banana Pudding

What's your favorite holiday dish??? What's mine? Handsdown-my grandmother's dressing. I took very diligent notes this year while I helped her put it together.

Project Elf

You've heard of the Angel Tree charity during the holidays, right? I'm super pumped to share that I'm heading up something similar this year at my company. I'm calling it Project Elf because I feel like an elf. I'm in charge of Christmas! Specifically, the children in our state's care. More specifically, my local community. I have been given a large portion of the lists to distribute. The lists provide a number of things a child wants for Christmas with number 1 being the gift wanted the most. It's getting closer to delivery date deadline and my office looks a lot like one would imagine Santa's Workshop. Who better to host Christmas than Mrs. Christmas herself?! See below for a glimpse of my poster design. I plastered these everywhere on site.

Our Thanksgiving

I still really want the feathered placemats that I saw HERE. C'est La Vie.

Pillow Talk

This past weekend I managed to knock a lot of peeps off my Christmas list. You see, each year the women in my family caravan to Dallas and get a major portion of our shopping for the holidays completed in one fast swoop. (Dad managed to get us the Presidential Suite this year. Go Dad!) However, I did manage to get something for myself! You've seen the "Keep Calm and Carry On" wall hangings and posters. Well...this past weekend I went shopping and bought this pillow:

I first saw this pillow HERE and it fits me so. I had to have it!

HSN-Update

My stockings have arrived and they look super. I really love them. The reds are the same in person and they are all equal in size. Note the angle of the camera.

AND since we're on the Christmas wagon right now, I must share my new gift name tags with you. I love Christmas. Duh! I like to use tulle ribbon to create big bows and I tie name tags to the base of the bow rather than using the sticker kind. I use ties because they're cuter and tulle rather than wire ribbon because we travel from one one end of the state to the other end to visit both our familes for Christmas. Mrs. Christmas must have pretty fluffy bows. Tulle is easy to fluff back to cuteness.

Weekend News

This past weekend was eventful! I was busy completing homework and studying for my upcoming Midterm...

We saw Unstoppable this past Friday night. It was decent, but seemed like another Pelham 123 except Denzel was on a train instead of focusing on the subway. Whatever. I wish we would have watched Morning Glory. (Great, title. Huh, Taylor?!) Still, Denzel is a great actor.

Saturday, I studied my booty off. Lee took a break from his Army chaos to buy me a new vacuum. He knows the way to my heart. Ha! He did very well. I hope this vacuum lasts longer than my last two cheapies. 

 Lee and I did meet Mal and James for dinner. Mal lived across the street from Caroline and me  during our SR year of college. We were Thetas together too. She is my favorite tall friend. Mal and James live in Houston, but came into town to see the Sooners gain another victory. We laughed our faces off during dinner and we're all looking forward to Katie's wedding in December so we can do it all again! Dang. I wish I would have thought to take a picture before we said buh-bye!

Our friend Katie had a bridal shower on Sunday. She opened presents while I drank wine. She looked fabulous. I love going to showers. Baby or bridal-it is always fun to see how my friends are decorating their homes whether it be the kitchen or a nursery.

I couldn't find a cute "Our First Christmas" ornament, but I did find her new monogram. I tied this to the bow on Katie's shower gift.

"Google" It

I have heard that Google is an extraordinary place to work. My favorite search engine really is that great. Here's proof:

Google has given all of its employees $1,000 cash "holiday bonuses" and 2011 salary increases of at least 10%. In addition, Google will also be giving each employee an additional raise equivalent to 1X the employee's target bonus for the year. AND employees will be eligible for additional "merit increases" based on their individual performance.

Enjoy Every Bite - Update

Elizabeth got to go home last night! The doctors are waiting for one more test, but they feel that she is stable enough to wait for the results from home. Should the levels be too high than she'll need to pack up and head back to the hospital. It's too early to make official, but fingers crossed for "it" being the flu!

Enjoy Every Bite

Made a stop yesterday evening at the Children's Hospital to see our niece. She has been throwing up sporadically at school and feverish. She broke out into lymph nodes all over her body the other night too. They have been running tests and fearful that she may have Lymphoma. Sweet girl is a trooper.  She's feeling better and we're hoping her test results come back with positve results today so that she can go home.

Elizabeth was born five weeks early with only 10% function of her kidneys. She received a kidney transplant donated by her daddy (Lee's brother). She has since undergone a complete reconstruction of her bladder. She has been doing really well for awhile now so we're hoping she's only caught a bug. Her bugs effect her ten-fold since her immune system differs from the norm.

I like this pic because you can tell that she genuinely enjoys my cookies! She enjoys every bite.

Drill Weekend

Lee got back from drill last night and we went to the theater to watch Due Date. It is LOL funny. Go see it. Zach Galifianakis cracks my face up.

Also, Lee came home with this:

He is the OCS Platoon Leader for next month. In civilian terms? He is the leader of the pack. He'll be in charge of organizing everything from the way the unit folds their underwear in the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to every head being accounted for when they receive the mass amount of memo requests from the Cadre (person who trains officer candidates) throughout the month. One weekend a month my A$#. However, I am strangely excited for Lee to have this opportunity. In college, he always assumed leadership positions and totally rocked his role every time. It's exciting to finally see how all of these little-time consuming-Cadre-given tasks add up to something of use.

Lee's next drill is obviously in December and offers family visitation! They are hosting a meet and greet Christmas luncheon for spouses. Secretly, I am excited and nervous. This will be my first time to interact with other Army families and meet his Cadre. If you haven't noticed, we're not involved with his assigned unit/branch/etc since Lee has been in training since we started this adventure. Now, what should I wear??? To be cont'd...

Polish

I've been craving the perfect muddy color for my nails. I've been talking to my pal Taylor about it for a week now. Silly, I know. Well, I treated myself to a mani/pedi on my homework break today and I found my mud. OPI's You Don't Know Jacques is the winning shade. To me, it's the perfect blend of grey and brown. Little did I know, this shade is all the rave for Fall. I googled an image to show you a more true color because my iphone is making my nails look a lot darker than what they really are.

Feather Me Crazy

I'm kinda obsessing with {RE}cycled's table setting look for Fall. I love all the layers and accents that she's added to the table. I want need 8 feathered mats and I haven't found any that are within my ME budget being this close to the holidays. If I find the feathers I like, I just might attempt this crafty look myself.

FABRIC

The fabric is here! The fabric is here! I ordered my 5 yards of fabric from FABRIC.COM and it shipped immediately. I love that. Seriously, it felt like minutes after my order I got a personalized email thanking me for my order and another email with my tracking information. I am definitely using them for future projects. At lunch today, I'm going to get fabric to line the inside of the curtains. During my homework breaks this weekend, I am going to attempt the curtain making process myself.  Maybe. I'm sure it's going to be a lot more attention to detail than THESE updates I added to our living room curtains. Young House Love has THIS DIY technique, but it's not for a pocket rod curtain with lining. I prefer lined curtains and I already have a curtain rod up that I believe is too thick for "clip rings". To be cont'd...

Lake House Bedrooms

I mentioned briefly in THIS post that the lake house is coming along nicely. A bit theme-y, but very fun for a quick weekend getaway from the norm. It's a fun work in progress. Here are a few pictures of the bedrooms! The awesome thing is that we haven't had to do any shopping yet. All items were in our previous lake house or found in my garage. Ha!

HSN

Did you know that HSN employees get 40% off at Ballard Designs? Jealous, I know! Just so happens that my connection let me use the discount to score these fabulous stockings. I chose the Style 2 font and cream colored thread to monogram. They should be arriving soon. They really have a great stocking selection. I almost chose the burlap and linen stockings to mix and match together, but figured they wouldn't look as perfect with my current whimsical Christmas decor. Tis' the Season!

Trendy Third

I stopped by Cuppie & Joe with one of my coworkers to fulfill his wife's cupcake wishes for their daughter's birthday. Of course, I had to test out a cuppie while we were there! I drank my favorite coffee too. If you're keeping notes, I like a skinny iced vanilla latte. It was all soooo good!
Technically, I was working so I didn't have time to do more than window shop. Peeps are calling this up and coming area, Trendy Third. You and I should go checkout all the new shops-like yesterday.

Goody Bag

Two special babies dressed up for their first Halloween this year; Rian and Kaden. I found these cute Carter bags to treat them both. I stuffed them with cute gender appropriate long-sleeve shirts, mommy's favorite candies and a pumpkin carving kit. Lee, Cooper and I delivered them to each of the kiddos before racing home to pass out candy.

Shark Attack

My little great white shark is too cute. We passed out candy to many trick or treaters last night. This was the first time Lee and I had ever had the opportunity to pass out candy. We started by letting the kids grabs fists full of candy. I wish someone had told me that the 1st Rule of Thumb for Halloween is to distribute the candy yourself. Luckily, we caught on to this rule early in the night and managed to have enough candy to last all evening.