Merry Christmas!! (belated)

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!!  We had a really awesome week in California! It flew by WAY too quickly, as it always does... But it was SO great to spend some good time with family and friends. Here are a few pictures from my time there (some were taken by me, and some by my amazing sister-in-law Amanda!):

Here are the kiddos!! That's Cassidy, Addison, AJ, and Elijah!

The whole gang on Christmas Eve! 

Here's me and McGee with Cassidy and Addison! 

My parents in their "ugly" (awesome) sweaters! 

Here's my aunt Rhoda and uncle Jim in their "ugly" (awesome) sweaters! They won 1st and 2nd place in the Ugly Sweater Contest.

We traveled back to Pennsylvania on Christmas Day, and that was quite an experience... I don't think we'll be doing that again. The airports were pretty insane, and there were SO MANY delays. We were happy to be together (for the first time!) on Christmas, but it wasn't exactly an enjoyable travel day. We ended up getting to McGee's parents' house at around 8:30pm (and we drove straight there from the airport! And we woke up at 3:30am in CA to head to the Sac Airport... so it was a long day). We had a lovely dinner when we arrived at McGee's parents' house (they do Cajun food every Christmas!), and then we opened up presents, and then left at about 11:30pm to drive home with Guinness. 

Last night we went to our favorite dive bar (I've mentioned it a few times on this blog...) because we found out that it's closing for good at the end of the month! The family that owns it has owned it for 65 years, and they've decided it's time to close. We're pretty sad about it because we've had some REALLY great times at that bar!  That's where we celebrated closing on our house, and we've had some fun get-togethers with friends there. Plus, they have THE BEST cheesesteaks... and they charge $1.50 for these tiny 9-ounce glasses of Yuengling. It's such a charming place. So last night McGee's whole family met us there, plus a bunch of McGee's friends too! It was a really fun night!  

Here's McGee sitting with his sisters and one of his cousins. And that's his aunt standing behind the table! 

Here's Timmy enjoying a cheesesteak! We all had one. 

Here's Timmy chatting with Nelson (McGee's friend that lives in Los Angeles! He was home for Christmas). 

Today were are EXHAUSTED, so we've mostly been sticking around the house. We've done grocery shopping and a trip to Home Depot, but aside from that we've just been home and we've worked on a few small projects. We're not excited to return to work tomorrow, but thank goodness this is a short week!!  We're planning on heading into Philly on New Year's Day again for the Mummer's Parade, but on New Year's Eve I think we'll stay home with Guinness and have a chill evening! I hope you all have a happy and safe New Year's Eve!! 

Winter?

The weather outside today is certainly NOT frightful... It's 70 degrees and kind of humid!  In mid-December?  Whaaaaat???  SUCH weird weather. We had some cold weather last week and the week before, so it has felt kinda like winter, but the last few days have been incredibly warm. So, we've been enjoying it and trying to spend a lot of time outside!  We ate breakfast in our screened patio room this morning, and we saw a few deer walking through our yard!  Guinness was very intrigued by them, but he didn't bark or anything.

Deer!!!  (it reminded me of "Squirrel!" in the movie Up)

We have had lots of fun decorating for Christmas!!  We decorated right after Thanksgiving was over, because we wanted as much time as possible to enjoy it while we were home.  I finally took some pictures of all of our decorations, so I'll post some here!!  

Here's our tree!  We have a Bumble as our tree-topper.

Here's a cool octopus ornament I got when we went to SF right before our wedding in June!  And then a Capitol Reef National Park ornament from our honeymoon. 

A few awesome ornaments we bought this year (Heat Miser and Snow Miser!!)

A pretty Bryce Canyon ornament from our honeymoon! 

Bumble!! We love that guy...

A fun "Happily Ever After" ornament that my parents got for us! It says 2015 on the back :)  

A fun pillow I picked out!! 

And a fun pillow that McGee picked out!!!  

Our fireplace mantel! We bought some really heavy-duty (they're iron!) stocking holders this year! Mine is the snowman with the tree stocking, and McGee's is the santa holder with the snowman stocking. And that is a light-up Bumble (we might be obsessed with him...). 

Some cute little birds, and a cool Christmas mason jar decoration that Lindsey made me!

A few random Christmas deocrations

Guinness didn't know what to think about the lights... He was half curious and half scared.

Here Guinness is looking out our front window! He loves to look out our window... 

Here's the windows above our garage! We have a candle decoration in one, and a Santa in the other

Here's a close-up of the Santa deocration! 

And here's the whole house! McGee did a GREAT job of hanging the lights!! They go all the way around our house, so you can see them from the road that leads to our house. 

That's most of our decorations!!  I can't believe Christmas is almost here!! I hope you're all doing really well and feeling excited for the holiday season!! 

Six Amazing Months

My amazing husband reminded me last night that as of today we've officially been married for 6 months!!  I can't believe it's been 6 months already!!  It has completely flown by, and it's been amazing :)  I love being married to Kevin, and he's the best husband ever. I sure did get lucky :)

This was literally the best day of my entire life :)  It was perfect. 

Thanksgiving

We had a pretty good Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving weekend!  Thanksgiving morning was nice and relaxing, and we made some cinnamon rolls and watched the Macy's parade (with calm weather... booooo), and then I made a few pies for our Thanksgiving dinner at McGee's parents' house. We headed over to McGee's family's house as soon as the last pie was done, and we brought Guinness with us. McGee's family had invited Guinness to join the celebration, because they love seeing him. Weeellllllllllll, that turned out to be a huge mistake. Guinness was SUCH a pain all night!  He was whining and barking and going crazy while we had him contained (with baby gates) in the other room while we were all trying to eat in the dining room. It was SO annoying, and it was really stressful and embarrassing for me and McGee because we couldn't get him to behave and be quiet. So, the dinner was DELICIOUS, but we barely got to enjoy it because of our poorly behaved dog. He's darn lucky he's so cute.... But we will not be bringing him to any more Thanksgiving dinners, that's for sure.

I thought I'd take some pictures of some of our Thanksgiving decorations though!  One of them is new, and it's a craft that Lindsey purchased for me the weekend that I went to visit her. She got one for each of us to paint, and they each had our last name initial in them! We didn't end up having time to paint them at her house that weekend, so I took my turkey home with me and painted it!

Here's the turkey I painted!  It doesn't stand on its own (I'm going to have to find a way to hang it...), so I just propped it in a basket for this year. 

And here's all of our Thanksgiving decorations!  Definitely not as many as Halloween... haha

And this weekend McGee and I went to check out a hutch for our dining room that we found on Craigslist! The address was right in the neighborhood where we used to rent a house. We loved the hutch, so we bought it and took it home. But, before we took it home we stopped at our favorite bar that was right down the street from our old rental house, and they have THE BEST cheesesteaks that they cook up on a flattop right behind the bar. It's a dive bar, and we love it and miss it (it's a long drive from our house now!). I took a few pictures of the fun Christmas decorations that they had up in the bar. We had a great time hanging out there before we drove our hutch home. 

Here's the big moose head in the bar that we love and miss!  They have such delicious cheesesteaks... 

And here's our new hutch in our dining room!  We're going to put all of our beer glasses and wine glasses in the top area, and then our booze is going to go down below! 

For the rest of our weekend, we did a lot of Christmas stuff and we also raked and bagged a LOT of leaves!  The yardwork wasn't very fun but it was SUPER necessary, and the Christmas stuff was fun! We got the Christmas lights up on our house, and we also went to get our Christmas tree and we decorated it! We still have a bit more decorating to do, but I'll try to take some pictures in the next few days and post them!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!  

Leaves, a winery, and an Eagles game!!

We had a pretty busy weekend!!  We raked and bagged some leaves, but we still have more to do... And I met up with my friend Colleen at a winery on Saturday, and we went on a nice winery tour, and then we also signed up for a class on pairing wines with your holiday meals! So it involved tasting some wines and pairing them with a variety of typical holiday foods. It was great to see Colleen and catch up a bit! And we both learned a lot about wine too. And then on Sunday McGee and I went to the Eagles game!!

The Eagles game was soooo fun, but it was also soooooo cold!!  We'd purchased standing-room tickets for the game (rather than tickets for an actual seat, because the price difference is INSANE), and we wandered around a bit and found a few good places to stand and enjoy the game.  But, by the end of the 3rd quarter we decided we were both FREEZING (the wind just cut right through our layers and jackets!), so we left the game and walked to the bar across the street to finish watching the game on TV there so we could warm up!!  The Eagles ended up losing... They aren't having the best season (my Chargers lost too... boooooo). Outside of the bar was a really HUGE chair, so we hopped up in it and while we were sitting there a nice lady asked if we'd like our picture taken!  Luckily she took two because I was totally blinking for the first one... Whoops.

My blink! 

Not blinking in this one...whew!!  

Here was a pretty tree outside of the baseball stadium!  It's right next to the football stadium. 

This week is going pretty well so far, but I can't believe Thanksgiving is almost here!!  Where did November go??  Actually, where did October go????  We're going to McGee's family's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and I'm happy to say that I was able to claim bringing pies this year!!  I'm stoked to make a few pies. I think I'm only going to make two, and one will be my apple pie that I've made a few times and feel comfortable making, and then I'm going to make a Nutella Cheesecake that I've never made... but I figure everyone loves Nutella, right??  So hopefully that turns out ok. 

Theoretically my Nutella cheesecake should look like this one!!  

Oh, and I'm bummed to say that the weather conditions are supposed to be very mild for this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade!  I love watching the parade, but it's always so much better when the weather is a little crazy... Either really windy or rainy or snowy... But this year it's supposed to be super mild and nice. So, that's not very exciting...  But anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!!  

I Love Fall

It's already mid-November!!  How did that happen?  I have no idea... I feel like Fall is just flying by. And with that, I should update my Fall Bucket List!

We didn't do the Yuengling Oktoberfest this year, because that's actually the weekend that I went to CA when my dear Grandma passed away. So, it just definitely wasn't meant to be this year, so we'll go next year! 

I've made a few soups, but no breads yet... And I did make an apple pie, but no pumpkin goodness... and I plan to make more apple goodness and some pies for Thanksgiving. And we have to figure out when to do our own mini-Thanksgiving meal, but I'm thinking maybe the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Hopefully we can fit it in! 

I took a few pictures of some nice Fall trees in our neighborhood, as well as some pictures of the leaf situation in our yard: 

This is our backyard... We have a bit of a leaf situation we need to take care of. There are a lot of rakes and paper bags full of leaves in our future! 

These are a few trees down the street from us. The lighting is weird because it was right around dusk... 

But here's the same area on a different day during the daytime (but it was an overcast day...). 

This is a view from just up the street from our house. That's our house down on the right side. 

This is a picture from our back window!  Do you see all the deer in our backyard?  There are 3 that I can see... Deer are EVERYWHERE right now!  They love our side yard, and they walk through our backyard too. 

I hope all is going well for all of you! I can't believe it's already almost Thanksgiving!  And an early Happy Birthday shout-out to my awesome sister-in-law Amanda!  This coming Sunday we're going to the Eagles game, so that will be fun!!  

Halloween!!

We had such a great Halloween, and I hope you did too!  We had SO many trick-or-treaters! We'd heard that our street is kind of quiet for trick-or-treaters even though lots of kids live around here (probably because our street is on a MASSIVE hill...), so we weren't expecting much at all, but it ended up being great!

I'd decorated the inside of our house at the beginning of October, so here's a few pictures of our indoor decorations:

Here's the left side of our fireplace mantle... 

And the right side of our fireplace mantle! 

The day before Halloween we did some decorating outside:

The picture didn't turn out too great, but they looked nice in person! We got some cool vintage-looking Halloween cutouts for our window, and we love them! We also got some fun blue bat lights. Oh and this is a sneak-peak of our new windows before they were finished... They hadn't updated the outside trim, etc yet when I took this picture! It's all nice and finished now though. 

The morning of Halloween, Kevin and I woke up semi-early and drove to Linvilla Orchard to get a pumpkin and some other fun Fall items! With the honeymoon this month and everything, we haven't had a lot of time to prep for Halloween! We weren't even sure if we'd have time to go to Linvilla or if we'd just need to stop by a grocery store for a pumpkin, but the night before Halloween we decided we could head there in the morning! So we got there nice and early and got some coffee and apple treats from their cafe, and then we wandered over to their pumpkin area and picked up some cool stuff!  We found a pumpkin with lots of character that we both loved, and then we also picked out an assortment of gourds because I think gourds are so darn cute and full of character. And after we were done with the pumpkin area, we went over the the apple orchard and picked some apples!!  And when we got home, we carved our pumpkin!!

Linvilla Orchard! 

McGee carrying our apple box! It's later in the season than we usually go, so a lot of the good apples were gone already!!  We ended up finding some great ones after searching really hard though! 

We have like 4 gourds there, plus a cute pumpkin that McGee's folks got for us, and then a little pumpkin that we thought was fun (on the right). 

Here's our pumpkin! We loved that it was far from perfect... It had a lot of weird lumps and it was kind of oddly shaped. It had quite a good stem though! 

And here it is all lit up that night! 

At about 4:30pm on Halloween our neighbor had a fun party (lots of kids, lots of adults), so we got to meet a lot of our neighbors! We were told we could bring an appetizer, so I checked Pinterest for Halloween appetizer ideas and we made a fun one! And at the party I found out that one of our neighbors was born in Oakdale, CA (where the almond ranch is)!!  What are the odds of that??

This was our appetizer we brought! It's just some guacamole and some olives and sour cream for the eyes, and blue corn chips! It was easy peasy. 

And at the end of the party when it started to get dark, we left and went to our house to get ready for trick-or-treaters! We ended up just grabbing a few of our camping chairs and putting them at the end of our driveway, and our neighbor across the street did the same, and we sat at the end our driveways with our jack-o-lanterns. We chatted for a few hours and drank some beers, and we ended up getting quite a few trick-or-treaters! It was such a fun night. 

In non-Fall news, our new windows are in and completed and we LOVE them!!  Another HUGE project is checked off our list. We'd really wanted to have them finished before winter, because we could feel every cold breeze with our old windows (they were like 60 years old). If you stood anywhere near a window, you could just feel the freezing air coming through. So, we can already feel SUCH a huge difference in the temperature in our house (which will help a TON with our heating bill this Winter!!), and we've also noticed it's a lot more quiet in our house now!!  You could hear the wind and any outside noise, so now it's nice and quiet.  I have a picture of before and after, so you can see a difference for sure, but we didn't do it for the appearance at all. We just wanted more functional windows and they're so great!! 

This was a "before", taken last March I think. 

And this is the "after". Just a few subtle differences in appearance, but they are SO much more functional now!! And also before, we couldn't even open a lot of our windows because they were permanently stuck closed. So, they all open quite easily now! Oh and if you can see the window grids in the "after" picture, they were there in the before picture too but they were painted dark green so they were quite hard to see!