It's almost December!!

 Hey you guys!!  Wow, I can't believe November is almost over!!  So crazy.  I am trying to get excited for Christmas, and I think it's working!  It's challenging this year with COVID causing so much stress and just changing everything, but we're trying really hard to enjoy this holiday season.  Like, LOTS of effort going into it.  Our Fall ended up going well, and I think we did most of the things on our Fall Bucket List from my last post!  We didn't end up buying pumpkins or gourds (so we also didn't carve the pumpkins or roast any pumpkin seeds), but I think we did everything else!  So, that's pretty good I think!  I hope you all had a happy and safe Halloween and Thanksgiving!

Today we decorated our house for Christmas!  We'd started on it a week or so ago, and then yesterday morning we went to Home Depot early in the morning to get our tree from their outdoor garden center, and it was GREAT because we were literally the only people there shopping for our tree.  And then we got the tree all set up in the tree stand at home, and then just let it relax for a day before we tried to put lights on it and decorate it!  So, today we did all of that fun and our house is feeling very Christmas-y!  I'll take pictures and post those soon.  I have also been working on a pandemic-safe Christmas Bucket List, which is MOSTLY going to be movies.  I'll post that and the movie list below!  

We are also doing advent calendars this year, because that just seemed like a really great thing for this year so we have a little something exciting to look forward to every day to try to make December more fun.  I can't really do chocolate advent calendars nowadays because of my soy allergy, so we had to look for other options. We got cheese advent calendars from the grocery store (yay cheese!), and then we also wanted beer advent calendars, but that isn't really a thing here in PA (PA has VERY strange laws about alcohol... It's confusing and weird), so Kevin made beer advent calendars for us!!  He picked out 24 individual beers for us (a few places around here sell individual bottles so you can build a 6-pack, etc), and he's organizing them into an order that will be fun for December! I have no idea what any of the beers are, so they will all be a surprise to me :). So, both of those things will be starting on Tuesday and I am EXCITED (so my thought process for advent calendars has worked so far!). 

So, no pictures in this post (sorry!!), but my next post will have a LOT of pictures.  And below is my Christmas Bucket List and Movie List! 

Christmas Movie Bucket List - 2020

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

October is here!!

Hey guys!  Wow, I am SO happy October is here.  And not only is October here, but we're over halfway through it already!  October and November are my favorite months by far.  Fall weather is DEFINITELY here in PA!  Last night our temps dropped to the 30s!  So, we put our flannel sheets on our bed yesterday, and we started using our heater yesterday for the first time this season.  I can't believe Halloween is approaching so quickly!!  So, it is BEYOND time for me to share my Fall Bucket List!  It's highly modified this year because of COVID, because we're pretty much just staying home, and we won't be going to pumpkin patches, apple orchards, etc.  So, the list has a LOT more movies than it usually does! 

So, there it is!  So far I have decorated for Halloween, and I've had one Oktoberfest beer.  So, lots more things to do!  I have pictures of some of our Halloween decorations, so I'll post those below!  For our pumpkins, I think we're just going to get those at Trader Joes or something, because we just don't feel confident that the pumpkin patches and orchards around here are being safe in terms of social distancing, etc.  I still want to get pumpkins and carve them and roast the seeds though :) We haven't decided what we're going about trick-or-treaters this year either... We just aren't sure if there's a safe way for us to give out candy, or if we should just abandon it this year. We're kinda hoping for terrible weather so that the decision is made for us!  Haha :)

I hope you're all doing really well, and I hope that the lovely Fall weather is either already happening where you are or at least on its way very soon!!  

Fall-ish?

 Hey guys!  Wow, I haven't posted in like TWO months!!  That's a record I think... But honestly there just isn't much exciting stuff happening to post about.  And I figure you guys must be getting sick of just looking at pictures of Guinness and pictures of random nature-y stuff from our yard and neighborhood!  But, that's what this post will be... haha :). And I am also going to try to come up with a Fall Bucket List, and I'll post that in the next post, but it's going to be HIGHLY modified this year because of the pandemic.  We won't be doing orchards, pumpkin patches, etc.   So, the list will be a LOT of movies I think!  The weather has definitely been feeling pretty Fall-y lately, so we are loving that!  

So, here are pictures of Guinness and nature-y stuff from the past 2 months!  

We had a little groundhog in our backyard!!  So that was adorable. 

We've also seen a lot of deer in our yard and around our neighborhood while we're on walks with Guinness!!  Here are some pictures of the deer we've seen: 

A buck!  

A little baby deer!  Adorable.

And like a month ago I saw a cool praying mantis bug on the bush by our front door!  I saw some leaves moving so I started looking closely, and then I saw it!  Hopefully you can see it in these pictures! I zoomed in very close on the 2nd picture: 

Oh here's a non-naturey picture!  We went over to Kevin's parents' house for a social-distanced birthday party for Kevin's Sister Mo!  We all sat in the backyard, very far from each other.  

And, to end the post, here's a bunch of pictures of Guinness sleeping:  

I hope you guys are all doing great!  I'll work on that Fall Bucket List and get that posted soon.  Love you guys!  Take care, and stay healthy!

Happy Stuff

Hey guys!  Now it's time for a catch-up on the happy stuff from the past 2 months.  So, mainly a lot of flowers and birds and Guinness.  Oh, and at the very bottom of this post I will let you in on a little idea that I had for this coming weekend that I thought would be fun for me and Kevin, so you might think it'd be a fun idea for you too!!  Or, you might think we're lame... It could go either way!  You'll just have to wait and see...

Happy Stuff:  Flowers!  It has been hydrangea season in our neighborhood, and I loooove hydrangeas!  My favorite flowers BY FAR are daffodils, but hydrangeas are definitely #2.  Some of our neighbors have some beautiful hydrangeas!  I really love looking at them on my walks with Guinness.  Here are some pictures from our neighborhood over the past few months:

Happy Stuff:  Birds!  We have still been enjoying our bird feeder and checking out all of the cool birds, and we've also seen some birds around our yard and I saw a pretty eggshell while I was on a walk with Guinness! 

That's an eggshell!  It was so bright blue!  And it was in the middle of the street. 

 

Happy Stuff:  Miscellaneous Nature!  We have a lot of deer that hang out in our neighborhood, but something that is way more elusive in our neighborhood are foxes! We've seen them a handful of times, but over the weekend Kevin and I saw one and were able to get a decent picture of it!  

Happy Stuff:  Guinness!  Guinness has continued to be a source of happiness and comfort for us during these crazy times.  We take him for at least one walk per day, and he's become a champion napper.  We have realized that Guinness LOVES a pillow when he naps!  He loves to create a pillow out of a blanket (he'll drag the blanket around), or use the side of his dog bed as a pillow... He'll get creative, but he loves to prop his head up.  He's a fancy pup!  

This one cracks me up!  His mouth was open while he was sleeping

Throw pillows!  He looooves a pillow.

Happy Stuff:  My idea for this coming weekend!!  So, I had this idea that I thought could be fun, because I don't know about you but I have been needing some uplifting entertainment to get my mind off of everything going on and to de-stress on the weekends.  So, because of that... I have been craving CHRISTMAS MOVIES.  Christmas is a loooong ways away, but then I remembered that people totally do Christmas in July!!  That's a thing!!  So, next weekend, Kevin and I are going to do Christmas in July and watch a bunch of Christmas movies all weekend.  We aren't going to do anything else Christmas-y (we aren't decorating or anything... that sounds exhausting), but some Christmas movies sound pretty darn happy and uplifting.  There are a bunch available on Disney+ (they have Miracle on 34th Street, Muppets Christmas Carol, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Nightmare Before Christmas, and others!), and Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu also have some!  So, just an idea I thought I'd pass along in case you think it'd be fun and bring you happiness!  

I hope you all are doing really well!!  These are crazy stressful times, and they've been crazy stressful times for a LONG time now, so make sure to take time to be good to yourself!  Love you all!!

Our 5 Year Anniversary

Hey guys!  Wow, it's been 2 months since my last post!  Sorry about that MASSIVE delay.  There's really no good reason for it... I've just been pretty blah the past few months with everything going on, so I didn't really think to post anything.  But, I'm trying very hard to feel less "blah", so here we go!  I'll give an update of some of the stuff that's happened over the past 2 months, and I'll probably break this into a few posts just so they aren't crazy big!

The biggest thing that happened is probably that Kevin and I had our 5 year wedding anniversary last month, and we'd planned on having a lovely evening of hanging out together and making some homemade pasta and a lovely dinner, and GUESS WHAT.  2020 decided to make our 5 anniversary more "2020-esque", by having a HUGE storm come through our area and knock down a bunch of trees, which then caused our whole neighborhood to lose power for 5 days.  Yeah.  Yep.  That's what happened.  On our 5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY.  We were LITERALLY in the middle of making our homemade pasta when the power went out.  We were hoping it'd come back on soon, but then we looked outside and saw that there were tons of trees down and our neighbor's tree had fallen on the power lines in front of our house, so then we knew we weren't getting power back for a loooong time.  We found out after that this was a crazy storm called a "derecho", which basically means that there were hurricane-force winds that are widespread and long-lived, and the storm moves in a straight line.  During the worst of it we went down to our den for safety, and I was looking out a window and saw total INSANITY and I was completely enthralled, but then Kevin was like, "Umm you might want to move away from the window", and I was like, "Oh good point!".  But what I saw was seriously nuts.  It was like the wind was just coming straight DOWN... There were leaves, sticks, etc just being forced down to the ground all at once.  Here are some pictures from our neighborhood:

That's the corner by our house, with our neighbor's tree down...

This is our cross-street... with another huge tree down... 

Here's another huge tree down... 

And here's a close-up of our neighbor's tree, and you can see some of the power lines down.

Here's a shot from further up our street, looking down towards our house.  

Our cross-street again.

So, we were without power for 5 days.  The first day was kinda ok, and we were thinking/hoping we'd get the power back at some point that day, but so many neighborhoods were hit really hard so we didn't actually see any tree crews our power company workers until the 4th day.  So, we played a LOT of Monopoly and other board games, and we ate stuff from our cupboards and some camping food that we had (we could boil water on our little camping stove), but that was about it.  It was an experience for sure... and the whole time we were worried about our food supply in our refrigerator/freezer, because it's wasn't exactly easy to get groceries during that time thanks to the pandemic.  So, we ended up having to throw allllllllll of our refrigerator/freezer food away, which was super depressing.   Oh, and we didn't have hot water during this time either, so it was cold showers or no showers for us! 

We went for a walk around our neighborhood the next day to survey the damage (and that's where I took some of the above pictures).  Guinness was VERY stressed out for parts of the walk (especially if Kevin would leave to go check out a downed tree).  But, while we were walking around we realized that we were VERY lucky, because quite a few houses in our neighborhood had trees fall on the roof... so... at least we didn't have to deal with that!  Those people had that AND the power outage to worry about. We were definitely lucky.

Oh and we had storms for all of the nights after the derecho that knocked out the power, so Kevin and Guinness and I slept downstairs in the den because we were NOT taking any chances.  Plus, we didn't have air conditioning of course, so it was at least 10 degrees cooler in the den.  

Here's one of the trees after some crews came through to clean some stuff up.  This is one of the trees that was blocking our cross-street.  

So, all in all, that whole experience was just TRULY fitting for 2020.  We tried to make the best of it with just hanging out with each other and playing games (and we definitely drank a LOT of beer that first day!), but we were definitely really stressed almost the whole time.  We're very happy that's over!! :)

Now I'll work on a post with just fun stuff, since this one wasn't very fun!