halloween 2013

this halloween, we decided to throw our first ever spooky party.  we figured we should go all out, seeing as we have a graveyard behind our house, and we prepped for about a week and made many different store runs.  we ended up covering all the furniture with sheets, all the walls with plastic, and had various spooky parts of the house.  the hall bathroom was especially bad, and when you walked out, you saw a creepy hunter guy standing in the hallway of our bedroom.  i don't have a ton of pictures, but imagine all of these in the pitch black, with scary music, and with a fog machine.  (yes, we had a fog machine.)

oliver built this so it would look like we boarded up the windows. note the lack of curtains--we took them down all over the house. 

we were red riding hood, the woodsman, and the big bad wolf.  :) 

fall deco and fall fondue fest 2013

this fall marked the 4th annual fall fondue festival that i hosted.  a bunch of girlfriends and i get together at our house and make cheese and chocolate fondue with all the dippers.  we usually do some sort of craft or pumpkin carving too.  its always a fun time.  this year, we decided we needed to do the 2014 fest on a weekend night. :) 

goodie bags for the girls

enough wine? maybe.  

back to school party

my good friend rachael got a new job as a 7th grade math teacher and basketball coach this summer, so we used her exciting news as an excuse to throw a party! ( it doesn't hurt that i have a ton of teacher friends also.) we live in a community with a pretty big lake that you can boat, fish, and swim in, so in early august, we decided to throw our first annual back to school party.

during the day, we blew up all of our river tubes and grabbed the kayaks and headed out to the lake.  we probably ended up with about 20-25 people there throughout different times of the day/night, and we had previously cleared using the lake with the HOA to make sure no one would have any issues with it.

no party is complete without a theme and decor, so cacey and i went all out with the teacher inspired goods. 

we had the kitchen table set up as the dessert table, with lots of apples, paperclips, erasers, and little worms and scissors set out.  cacey made her famous cake balls, but this time they looked like apples!

for the mantle, we set out more of my apples and tried to stick to primary colors. i went to home depot and grabbed a bunch of paint chips that we wrote on and strung up for a quick banner.

and for the guest of honor herself, i found this star student poster at the dollar store and we filled it out for rae!  it was a fun night, although i wish i had taken more pictures. 

next up, fall decor time! 

a great weekend

this past weekend was a GREAT weekend.  let me just tell you all about it.

first off, the thursday prior i got called up to my bosses office without any advance notice. i had just wrapped my training class, and she IMed me saying can you please come upstairs before you leave today?  i was slightly anxious and going through my head the things i could be in trouble for.  after some chit-chat, she told me that i had actually been nominated and made it through the process of getting an MVP award! this is an internal award that is given to a few people each year, and it has to go through 4 levels of the organization for approval.  (from my boss up 4 levels).  it came with a nifty polo shirt with my name on it and MVP on the arm, a certificate that i still need to get a frame for, and some bonus money!

i hadn't had my hair cut since january (my birthday present, thanks mom!) so that was one thing i knew i wanted to get done.  i started asking my friends where i should go since my regular lady was in a really bad car accident and isn't cutting hair for awhile.  i settled on volume salon in webster and made my appt for saturday morning.  here is a pre-haircut picture from the friday before.  see how stringy-washed out-gross it looks??

friday night i had a great dinner and some wine with family in sugarland.  it was nice to catch up!  then saturday morning, i got up and picked up my prego friend jennifer and we went to get my hair done.  the salon was super cute and the girls there were really nice.  i decided to cut off some of the length, add in some low-lights, and get bangs (which i immediately regretted). 

after the haircut, we decided to grab some lunch and head to the mall.  i had a mimosa with lunch, and kinda wanted another one, so jenn introduced me to the amazing bar they have at the mall off bay area!  i got champs in a sippy cup and was very excited.

after the mall, we went to start her registry at target.  it was so cute! they give you a little bag full of goodies for the baby, and they were really nice.  the only problems were 1) we were both TOTALLY freaked out about the registry.  her because, um hello, there's a baby in there! and me because i have a terrible time making decisions at stuff like this. (for our wedding registry, i just let oliver take over.) and 2) there was some sort of plague of mosquitoes in target that were eating us alive. seriously, it was weird. 

on saturday am, oliver and i woke up and wanted to do something different, fun, and out of the heat.  so we randomly decided to go on a day date to NASA!  neither of us had been since we were kids, so we loaded up and drove south.  we watched a few shows, walked around, and took the tram tour through the actual NASA training center and to see spaceships. (are they called spaceships? that sounds weird.)  although it was crazy crowded, we had a great time. 

don't feed the interns....i concur. 

after NASA, we drove down to Kemah to have some appetizers and a happy hour before meeting up with some friends.  we went to outriggers and sat in the perfect spot--upstairs, so we could hear the live music but it wasn't too loud, and near the railing so we could watch the boats come through.  so fun! 

this was followed by a pearland emma's trip and a night out with our crossfit gym members--always a good time. 

not sure why i am making that face on the far right...i was having fun, i swear!

on sunday morning, oliver and i decided to have people over for some labor day BBQ.  we went to the store and got a bunch of stuff, including a new dinosaur squeaker for Harley, and we went to town cleaning the house and prepping food.  it turned out that our friends james and rebecca had gotten engaged that weekend too, so i threw up a couple of decorations to celebrate them!  all in all, a great weekend was had!!

new toy for harley

congrats james and rebecca! 

the bride-to-be and her gorgeous ring! 

a little tiny surgery story

sorry, i am terrible at blogging.  but i promise i have a few more coming that i am working on.  bear with me!

so, a couple of weeks ago, i got surgery. it was an outpatient surgery, just an hour or two, but long story short, i had a cyst rupture on my ovary in june.  (jennifer's birthday weekend! happy 25th! ) and then after an ER visit and two ultrasounds, my gyno found a polyp (and more cysts) in my uterus.  they weren't causing any immediate concern, but when we want to start trying for a family down the line, they could potentially cause miscarriages.  so, after my doctor got back from her own maternity leave, we went ahead and got them removed.  

(if i didn't tell you about this, please don't be mad at me! i didn't want to worry anyone.) 

it went very smoothly, and the hubs was great and so supportive.  i was really nervous about the IV, but it didn't really hurt at all.  

this is a good look for me 

ouch!!  (not really.)

hubs hanging out in the pre-op area

 

after they got me all hooked into the IV, they waited for the doctor to arrive and then they gave me a "margarita" in my IV.  my doctor said this was to relax me before we went back to the surgery room. i am glad they did, because when we got in there it seriously looked like the movies.  everything was all tile and steel and felt very SERIOUS.  they moved me from the wheely bed to the surgery one, and that's all i remember. 

i got the procedure, and after we got the all clear, oliver took me home.  my mom met us there and stayed with us for a couple of days and forced me to rest.  the only hard part about the surgery was the anesthesia caused me a LOT of pain (headache, soreness) for a day or two and then the breathing tube hurt my throat pretty bad.  i have my follow up tomorrow, but i think i am pretty much healed!

pretty flowers from my sister! 

relaxing with me the weekend after 

hand painted dotted glasses & pitcher

about a week ago, my cousin cacey and i did a fun, quick, and SUPER easy craft.  have you all seen those painted glasses around town? i bought some for my friend's birthday at anthropologie, and i had been wanting some of my own.  knowing me, i would have just bought them, but cacey had the idea of painting them ourselves...which is so much better!

so we started off with choosing our paint options and getting some cheap glasses.  we would have preferred dollar store glasses, but we couldn't find a dollar store where i live, so we settled for a $10 box of 4 glasses from HEB.  the paint cost about $1.30 per bottle.  the paint needs to be enamel because you have to bake the glasses afterwards, and the enamel holds up to the oven. 

anyway, so here are the glasses and paint that we used. 

for the actual dots, all we did was start with the color you most wanted your glasses to be.  my kitchen and alot of my decor is red, so i started with red as my base color.  cacey used a pretty sage green. then you just grab some q-tips and start dotting.  i got really frustrated at first that my dots weren't perfect and kept wiping them off....but eventually i got over it and just went with it.  i did all of my red dots for all 4 glasses before i moved on to the next color.

by the time i had finished the 4th glass with the first color, the 1st glass was ready to go again with color number 2.  it worked out pretty well! after the first color, i just went through the rest of my colors and added layer after layer.  i tried to add less dots each time as well. 

once we had finished with the dots, cacey had the awesome idea of flipping the glasses and painting the bases!  that way, people would know which glass was theirs.  so cute! 

after the bottoms were painted and had dried a bit, we turned on the oven to 375 and let the glasses bake for about 15 minutes to set the paint.  after that, we were good to go!  i definitely recommend hand-washing these, as they are probably delicate.  but so fun to make!

a couple of days later, i found this glass pitcher from a different set that i hadn't really been using, and decided to go ahead and dot it too!  i painted the bottom of the pitcher a different color from all the glasses.  and now i have a complete set!

this was a great summer craft night and i can't wait to serve some white wine mojitos in my new dotted glasses!