Christmas, Atlanta

Even though the trip to Atlanta was a bit stressful, we managed to take the red eye flight and arrive bright and early Christmas morning.  Atlanta must have known we needed some excitement and boy did it deliver!  For the first time in 128 years (since 1882), Atlanta had a white Christmas!  I of course was ridiculously excited and it was all around such a fun experience.  It snowed for a majority of the time we were there.

Chris’s brother had just recently bought a house, so it was only fitting that we all spent Christmas cozied up by the fire in the new home (which was to die for by the way).  We spent the day and night opening presents, eating wonderful food, and playing games... and of course, making sure we took the perfect picture for next years Christmas cards!And for the record... I do not like to play games with people that cheat.  Enough said :)

Whenever we see Chris's family, I always manage to take pictures of his mom's recipes.... This is one of his favorites :)

The night turned out to be bittersweet though, as we went back to his parents house and found his puppy Cody laying down by their front door.  We knew it was time to say goodbye, and I couldn't have been more grateful that Chris was there for him. We love you Cody!!!

Fast forward to the next day.... 

While we were in Atlanta, I had always wanted to visit the World of Coke.  I had been there a few times already, but had never been so I was super excited when I found out we were making the trip.  I LOVED how it was decorated for Christmas with bright red everywhere.  They had so many exhibits and all in all, it was a super fun trip :)

So, in the end... all though it was a stressful trip to get there, it was definitely worth it!

Christmas, Arizona

So....

Chris and I have never spent a Christmas together, so were both so excited (me a bit more than him) to finally see each other on Christmas day. I think we were both worried which family we were going to see on Christmas (again, me a bit more worried than him) because of course we didn’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt...

Well, little did we know that Delta was going to decide that for us. I HATE DELTA AND WILL NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER FLY WITH THEM AGAIN. The original plan was to spend Christmas with my family in the morning, and then fly to Georgia and be there in time for Christmas dinner. Two days before, Chris had gotten a automated message from Delta saying our flight was going to be delayed, and that we were now going to fly through Ohio to get to Atlanta (at the time there were several storms going through the East, and Atlanta was getting ready to receive their fair share). But really Delta?!?!?! Fly us through Ohio where the weather was already worse?!?!?!?! Needless to say, the automated message called us back the next day to tell us that flight had been canceled as well.

So now we were not going to get in to Georgia until the Monday after Christmas. Thank goodness I had planned for this by monitoring other airlines and their flights. AirTran saved the day, and we were able to book our last minute tickets with them to arrive early in the morning on Christmas. ***And as a side note... AirTran did not cancel any of their flights.....

Okay, I’m ready to stop ranting now.

So we cued the Video Camera (Aspeitia Tradition), the Mariah Carey Christmas music (another Aspetia Tradition), and the Santa Hat. It was still as much fun as it has always been every Christmas before, and my anxiety went away when Santa dropped of my new Ipad... Thanks Santa!

Everything worked out perfect and it was a nice start to our first Christmas :)

Christmas Decor

I can't believe it's finally here.... After a couple of months of buying supplies, decorations, ornaments, glitter, paint, fabric, etc. etc. etc, it is finally time to decorate! I was too excited to wait until the Friday after Thanksgiving, so I decided to start putting our tree together at almost 9:00 at night on Thanksgiving :)

I'm not sure I mentioned this on the blog yet, but I scored this 12 foot tree from a super nice old lady off of Craigslist for $50. It's my find of the century!! It didn't come with lights, but it was in practically perfect condition, and you honestly can't beat that price... Craigslist is the best!

This was when I was testing out my "candle" lights, but I couldn't resist showing how Mr. Husband contributed to this project... He left me alone :) It really was for the best. It's like there was a glitter storm while he was sleeping, and he would have probably had an anxiety attack if he knew what was really going on...

For the past four weeks, I had been getting about 10 ornaments a week (total) from Hobby lobby, Target, Michael's, and sometimes Crate and barrel. I'm so glad I did because I pretty much underestimated how many we were going to need to fill up this tree...

Here are the candles I was talking about... Next year I'm going to put glitter on the wax drippings, but these came from Hobby Lobby. I first got the idea when watching Little Women. One of the first scenes in the movie is when their singing Christmas Carol's and apparently back in the 19th century, they thought it was okay to put candles on their Christmas tree's (instead of having our modern day lights). Well, I liked the idea so much that I wanted to try and replicate it. They sell this lights in packs of 10 and they come in white. I wasn't to crazy about the white (it kind of stuck out like a sore thumb), so I painted a light coat of gold-ish paint on them, then took Rub and Buff, and used my finger to apply it to the wax drippings...

I also wanted a bunch of music note ornaments, but they were going to be pretty expensive. They had wood cut out ornaments at hobby lobby, and after the discount, I think they were only about .60 cents. So I grabbed a whole bunch of them, painted on glue and dumped lots and lots of glitter on them :)

And I of course had to make my own bows :)

Then lastly, I couldn't find a tree topper that I liked, so I took a whole bunch of ribbon that I had and made a bunch of swirls, and gripped them down at the bottom with a rubber band. Then I simply just let it rest on top of the tree and stuck a few swirl twigs in at the top. For now, it will work :)

And here she is!! I finally feel relieved to have gotten this out of the way :)

p.s. I never new how hard it was to pick up massive amounts of glitter off of tile. So here is your warning : )

Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I wasn't going to post this, because it really has nothing to do with crafting, but I just had to get the word out about Alton Brown's Turkey recipe.

Seriously... hands down amazing. I started the brine two nights before the big day and it made our house smell amazing! P.S., I am now a huge fan of vegetable stock... It has such an amazing flavor that in my opinion, you don't get in just regular chicken stock...

and BAM! My picture perfect turkey :) I should probably start counting my lucky stars, because I have no idea how this turkey turned out so pretty... Those stars weren't with me when baking that pie though :(

I think we stared at the turkey for quite a while before we even started carving it. We couldn't believe how perfect it turned out... and it tasted even better than it looked. If you're looking for a good turkey recipe you have to try Alton's!! Thanks Alton!

Then, I don't know how I did it, but I convinced Mr. Husband to take a break from Football to start doing this.... I don't know if any of you have ever seen those poles with clips to hang up the lights, but it worked so well for us, and the lights are still up :) The pole is a little cheap, but it certainly did the job...

And I just had to capture Mr. Husband's first time on a roof... I don't know what was funnier... Him being concerned about being on the roof, or being concerned that the lights are going to burn the house down...lol...

His mom is probably going to kill me when she see's this post :)

San Francisco

Towards the end of November, Chris had training in San Francisco for work. Whenever he goes on work trips, I always throw a fit! I hate being home by myself.... But this time he was finally going somewhere fun, and I was happy to tag along :)

When I got there to join Chris, I was immediately in awe of the buildings. I am in love with the old architecture.

I was even more so in love/obsessed with the chandeliers in the hotel. I let Mr. Husband know that I only want to stay in this hotel on future trips so I could stare at the chandeliers :)

We only spent the weekend there, but we did sooooo much! We walked around the market and of course near the pier and Fisherman’s wharf. I remember going to San Francisco when I was in junior high with my parents, and the one thing I was looking forward to was a big bowl of clam chowder. It was even better than I remembered it...

And, of course my obsession with light poles continues....

Now lets talk about the trolly’s. I was obsessed, and Mr. Husband knew this was going to be my favorite part of San Francisco. Even though I had been there before I had never ridden a trolly.... I felt like I was in a episode of Full House! We also visited the museum and it’s unbelievable the amount of work that goes in to maintaining them, and even more unbelievable as to how long they have been running.

Then it was on to Lombard street. Most people would take pictures because it is the most crooked street in the world, but I took pictures because of the amazing Hydrangeas :) This is one of my favorite flowers and even said to Chris that “These were the flowers in MY wedding”. He gave me the look, and then I remembered that he was at the wedding too :)

One of the last things we did was visit Alcatraz. I love the move “The Rock” because of all the action in the movie and the concept of how the island was used back in the day.... but mostly because Sean Connery is a hot old guy.

I neglected to mention that this whole trip we were in the rain, and Mr. husband didn’t tell me that flats were not going to be sufficient... so I walked around in extremely cold weather wet, with extremely cold, wet feet :(

The next morning before we left, we went down to what I think would be downtown San Francisco.... I loved seeing Schwab branches everywhere, and couldn’t believe they had as much advertising as Apple... I was proud :)

Overall, we had a wonderful trip. It was super short, but the perfect little weekend getaway!