2023 so far, and the Oscars are tonight!!

 Hello!!  Wow, I've really been slacking on the blog posts again!  So, I'll do a quick catch-up here, with no pictures because I can't get that to work correctly at the moment.  Let's see... not a lot has been going on, really!  We had a good Christmas and New Year, and in early February we celebrated Guinness turning 10 years old!  How is our little guy 10 years old??  I do not know... but thankfully he still acts like a puppy most of the time.  He naps a lot more than he used to, but other than that you can't really tell that he's 10 years old now.  We decided to spoil him rotten this year since 10 is such a big birthday!  We bought him a few toys and a little birthday bandana, and he got to have some boiled chicken!  He was a very happy pup for his birthday.  I will post pictures very soon of him on his birthday!!  

And tonight are the Oscars!!  Wow, I can't believe that's here already!!  We didn't get to watch many of the Best Picture nominees this year, but we did see some of them.  I will be rooting for Everything Everywhere All At Once to win EVERYTHING it is nominated for!!  It should definitely win Best Picture, Michelle Yeoh should win Best Actress, and Ke Huy Quan should definitely win Best Supporting Actor.  I'm also rooting for the Directors (the Daniels) to win. 

Out of the Best Picture nominees, we also watched Top Gun: Maverick (very fun and entertaining!), The Banshees of Inisherin (wowwwww was it dark.... I was very upset at the end of that movie), and Elvis (Austin Butler did a fantastic job, but I do not think this movie should win). I still want to see Triangle of Sadness (which is supposedly a comedy, even though the title doesn't sound very funny....), but that might be it that I still want to see out of the Best Picture nominees.  Oh, and it is a CRIME that RRR did not get nominated for Best Picture.  That movie is absolutely amazing (but suuuuuuper long).  RRR did get nominated for 1 award (Best Song I think?), so I'll be hoping it wins that one. 

For animated features, we saw most of those and I will FOR SURE be rooting for Marcel the Shell with Shoes On to win!!  That movie is ADORABLE, and I highly recommend that you see it if you haven't seen it yet. The Pinocchio movie by Guillermo Del Toro is highly favored to win, but we didn't really like that movie... so we're strongly rooting for Marcel the Shell to win!  It's an underdog for sure. 

I hope 2023 has been going great for all of you so far, and I will definitely do another post VERY soon with lots of pictures!!  The Oscars are starting in 10 minutes, so I'm going to go watch them!  Bye for now!

December is here!!

Hey guys!!  Wow, we made it to December!!  Welcome to the last month of 2022.  

Our Thanksgiving was really nice!  For breakfast we made blueberry muffins and bacon, and for dinner we made our short ribs and pasta and it was soooo delicious, and the apple pie turned out really great too.  We watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles for the first time, and we LOVED it!!  That is definitely becoming a regular part of our Thanksgiving tradition. Here are some of my Thanksgiving decorations:

It's December!!!  Wow, only 23 days til Christmas.  Craaaaaazy.  We went to get our tree this evening after work!  We'll decorate it this weekend after it's had some time to settle a bit more.  We still have to find time to put up the Christmas lights!  The weather has NOT been cooperating, so we'll see when we're able to do that. Here is my Christmas Bucket List!  And I'll post our list of movies we want to watch below the bucket list: 

Christmas Movies:

1. Elf

2. Mickey’s Christmas Carol

3. Muppet’s Christmas Carol

4. Rudolph

5. Santa Clause is Coming to Town

6. Year Without a Santa Clause

7. Christmas Vacation

8. Love Actually

9. The Grinch (old cartoon)

10. The Grinch (Jim Carrey)

11. The Grinch (new one)

12. Home Alone

13. Home Alone 2

14. Die Hard

15. Charlie Brown Christmas

16. White Christmas

17. Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version OF COURSE)

18. It’s a Wonderful Life

19. Prep & Landing 

20. Scrooged

21. A Christmas Story

22. The Night Before

23. The Nightmare Before Christmas

24. Arthur Christmas (we've never seen it!)

25. Klaus

26. 8-Bit Christmas

27. Christmas in Connecticut (1945) (we've never seen it!)

I'll try to post again soon with an update!  Love you all, and Happy December! 

Our Halloween, and it's almost Thanksgiving!

Hey guys!!  I meant to post about our Halloween much sooner than this, but November has been INSANE.  So, I'll do a quick summary of our October and a Bucket List review before I talk about the fact that Thanksgiving is TOMORROW!!!  Whaaaaaat???  I can't even believe it.  

Our October was pretty good!  It was filled with a LOT of Phillies baseball because the Phillies made it to the World Series.  So, we stayed up soooooo late watching all of those games.  If you pay attention to baseball then you know that the Phillies lost, but it was still really exciting.  We also had a lot of fun watching everything from the Fall Bucket List!  Here's the update: 

So, we almost did everything (except the Thanksgiving stuff of course)!  We didn't get a chance to watch Wellington Paranormal (we've seen the first season and LOVE it), but we did watch ALL of What We Do In The Shadows!  It was quite amazing and hilarious. We also FINALLY watched Dr. Sleep and we really loved it!!!  If you love The Shining like we do, then I think you'll really appreciate Dr. Sleep. We were SO excited by so many parts of it!  So many amazing callbacks to The Shining, and it was a cool story too. We also watched the 1959 version of House on Haunted Hill, and it was SOOOO great!!  We had so much fun watching that movie, and it is for sure going on our permanent Halloween movie list.  

Here's a few pictures of our Halloween (I forgot to take pictures of all of our decor! But I got a few): 

Here's our fireplace decor!

And here's some blow molds!! We bought the one on the left a few years ago, and then Kevin's parents had the other 2 and didn't want them!!  

Our pumpkins!  Kevin's is on the left and mine is on the right.  

And here are a few random Fall pictures: 

Guinness and his pumpkin man that he's currently obsessed with!

Now moving on to Thanksgiving!  I can't believe it's here already!  Kevin and I are doing Thanksgiving dinner with just the 2 of us this year, and we've decided not to do turkey!  Maybe we'll cook a turkey at Christmas?  But, for Thanksgiving we are going to do short ribs.  Yummmm!!  Short ribs over some awesome pasta, and some veggies, and then an apple pie for dessert.  Yay!  We are going to watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving of course, and then we're also going to watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles because we heard that's a Thanksgiving movie and we've never seen it!  Plus it's Steve Martin and John Candy so it's probably hilarious?  We will find out!  Plus we'll watch the parade and lots of football of course. 

I will post again soon with some pictures of our Thanksgiving decorations and maybe our food if I remember to take any pictures!  And I'll also post my Christmas Bucket List!  I hope you all have a very Happy Thanksgiving!!  

Yay Fall! And my first post of 2022...

Hey guys!  Wow, so I have no posted anything so far in 2022.  That is pretty crazy... But I guess it's just been one of those years, ya know?  It's been busy and stressful and weird and difficult... so I guess I just haven't been up for posting.  BUT, it is Fall now and I'm REALLY excited that it's the best time of year! I really love October, November, and December.  So, I'm going to try to finish strong with posts for the rest of 2022.  

To start things off, here is my Fall Bucket List! 

So, nothing too crazy on my Fall Bucket List this year.  We are finally going to watch Dr. Sleep though, because I've really been wanting to see it for years.  And we've also never seen the 1959 version of the House on Haunted Hill which was recommended by my Uncle Jim, so we're super excited to see that too!  Oh and OF COURSE so excited for Hocus Pocus 2!!!  

The Fall weather is definitely here already!  It's been chilly for a little over a week now, so that's exciting!  This Summer was brutally hot, so I'm excited that is over now. I've already been wearing lots of hoodies, and I'm excited to unpack my cold weather clothes and start wearing sweaters soon!  I can't wait for all things cozy for Fall.  The leaves are starting to change now too, so I will definitely take some pictures soon and do another post with lots of Fall leaves and probably our Halloween decorations! 

I hope you're all doing really well, and I will definitely do more posts this year!!  My goal is to finish strong for 2022 :)  Happy Fall!!  

Christmas Bucket List

Hey guys!  I got through my surgery ok!  I'm almost 2 weeks out now, and I'm starting to feel more like myself.  I still can't do much and I'm mostly still on bed rest with small walks here and there, but I'm slowly but surely improving!  Kevin has done an amazing job of taking care of me. 

Not much new to report because I've pretty much just been napping on and off for 2 weeks, but I'm finally able to make it through a movie so we've watched a few Christmas movies to get in the Christmas spirit!  We've also decorated a bit, and Kevin went to Home Depot to get our tree and video-called me from Home Depot so I could "help" pick out the tree!  What a guy :)

So, since there isn't much to report and no pictures of anything from the last few weeks, I'll just post my Christmas Bucket List and my list of Christmas Movies we're going to try to watch, and then I'll post again soon with some pictures of our Christmas stuff!  Love you all, and I hope your December is off to a great start! 

Christmas Movies: 

1. Elf
2. Mickey’s Christmas Carol
3. Muppet’s Christmas Carol
4. Rudolph
5. Santa Clause is Coming to Town
6. Year Without a Santa Clause
7. Christmas Vacation
8. Love Actually
9. The Grinch (old cartoon)
10. The Grinch (Jim Carrey)
11. The Grinch (new one)
12. Home Alone
13. Home Alone 2
14. Die Hard
15. Charlie Brown Christmas
16. White Christmas
17. Miracle on 34th Street (1947 version OF COURSE)
18. It’s a Wonderful Life
19. Prep & Landing 
20. Scrooged
21. A Christmas Story
22. Gremlins
23. The Night Before
24. The Nightmare Before Christmas
25. Klaus 
26. 8-Bit Christmas (it's a new one!)    

Halloween, and Thanksgiving plans

 Hey guys!  Wow, I feel like Fall is really flying by this year... It feels like it just started but it's already wrapping up!  The trees in our neighborhood are looking GORGEOUS right now, and there are leaves on the ground everywhere too.  The temps have been REALLY chilly overnight and in the mornings, so it definitely feels like Winter is approaching already!  Crazy.  Here's some pics of the progress of trees in our neighborhood (I took these pics every week so you can see the progress!): 

Fall's barely starting in this one!  Just some leaves on on the ground and some leaves starting to yellow.

And then here's just a few random trees in our neighborhood that were looking lovely: 

 

Our Halloween was good!  We were able to do most of the Halloween things from my Bucket List (I'll put the updated one towards the bottom of this post). We carved pumpkins and sat outside to give treats to trick-or-treaters.  Our neighbor sat across the street and did the same, so we were able to chat and catch up from across the street which was our tradition until last year (we didn't do anything last year).  It was nice to do our tradition again, and we had fun! 

Here's a few pictures of decorations in our neighborhood: 

These witches were creepy!!  They were up a hill under a bunch of trees, and it looked super creepy and I LOVE it!! 

Here's our pumpkins!  Kevin's is on the left and mine is on the right

There's some bat lights hanging on the fireplace too but the picture turned out funny if they were on, so they're off for the pic.  In the picture below you can see the blue/purple glow from them though! 

Aren't those skulls cool?  Those were my new addition this year and I love them!! 

A blow mold!!  I ordered this online for pickup at a hardware store over the summer because it was on super clearance (I guess because it was like June and nobody else was thinking about Halloween?) and I LOVE it!! It's probably like 3 feet tall and it's just amazing.  Blow molds are just the coolest.  I don't know why, but I really love them.  We have a tall Santa that we got from my parents so I'll show that at Christmas time!  I think I shared a pic of it last Christmas too. 

Here are some mummy lights and a few more Halloween decorations! 

And here's one of my favorite Oktoberfest beers I had this year!  Which brings me to my updated Bucket List, and then I'll discuss Thanksgiving stuff after that. 

So as you can see, we've done almost everything!  There are 2 movies we didn't get to watch (ran out of time!), and I'm still working on making more soups/breads/apple and pumpkin stuff.  And then the 3 Thanksgiving things are left! 

I think Thanksgiving is going to be different than we'd planned though, because I've had some medical stuff going on and I'm actually going to have to have surgery on November 22.  I think most of you already know, and I don't want to bore you (or gross you out) with details, but I have to have a hysterectomy and oophorectomy.  So, my surgeon said recovery will be 4 to 6 weeks, so I don't think Kevin and I will be doing much for Thanksgiving.  Trader Joe's makes a brined and cooked turkey breast that we're going to try to get (it just has to get heated up in the oven for 40 minutes! Easy peasy), and then we'll maybe grab a few other easy things, but I'm not sure.  I have decorated for Thanksgiving (pictures below!), but I think we might take our Thanksgiving decorations down soon and decorate for Christmas early, because I'm not sure when I'll be up for decorating for Christmas after my surgery.

You can see my 3 gourds for this year (2 in this pic and one in the pic before), and these were all from Trader Joe's!  Gourds are so fun.  

So, that's our Fall!  I probably won't post again before my surgery, but I'll definitely post afterwards and post my Christmas bucket list (almost all movies this year...) and share some pictures of our Christmas decorations too!  Love you guys, and I hope you all have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving!! 

Fall 2021 is here!!!

You guys, it is officially FALL!!!  I'm sooo happy and excited.  It feels like this summer lasted a million years.  We've finally had some really cool mornings around here (49 degrees last night!), and the leaves are just beginning to change. The bugs are finally starting to die, and once some freezing temps hit then way more will die (yay!).  I'm so ready for mosquitos and other biting bugs to go away. Here are a few bugs that I've taken pics of the last few weeks (one is cute and alive, the other is really gross and not alive): 

So here's the gross one.  This is a cicada shell.  So, this isn't exactly a bug, but it's part of one! They molt and shed this shell, and it's really gross.  And they are huge, and just SO gross.  Did I mention they're gross?  

And here's the cute one!  It was soooo hairy and adorable.  So here's a few more pictures of it: 

And now... It's finally time for my Fall Bucket List!!  I'm so excited for Fall!!  Yayyy!! 

I hope you're all doing really great, and I hope you're as excited as I am for Fall!  I'll make sure to post at least a few updates this Fall to let you know progress on my Bucket List and bore you with lots of pictures of trees with pretty leaves!