Winter is definitely here!

It has been SO cold!!  Which also means we've now had the first fire in our fireplace at our house! We moved-in in March last year, so we didn't have any fires then, and the beginning of this winter has been too weird to have fires yet. With the windchill factored in, the "feels like" temperature the past few days has been around zero and even dipped into negative temperatures at night!  It's crazy.  And we've had a few days with a little snow, but nothing much... But the end of this week is supposed to be snowy. The last forecast I saw was predicting about 1.5 feet of snow between Friday and Saturday, so we're making sure we're prepared for that. We'll do some big shopping tomorrow to make sure our house is well-stocked with supplies, just in case it ends up being really bad... It could also end up being nothing at all, so who knows. It's better to be prepared though!

Guinness enjoying the light snow we had the other day! 

Our first fire in our house! That tree rug is fireproof so it protects our wood floors and area rug in case an ember flies out through the screen. 

I'm sure we'll be watching lots of movies this weekend if it does snow, which will include some of the 8 movies nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. In case you don't know but are curious, the 8 movies are: The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, Brooklyn, Bridge of Spies, The Revenant, Spotlight, The Big Short, and Room. The past few years we've tried to see all of the Best Picture nominees (I don't think we've ever seen them all, but we've been close!), but usually we've seen at least a few before the nominations... But this year we haven't seen any of the 8 yet!  So, we'll see how many we end up seeing... I know we definitely want to see The Martian, and we'd wanted to see that while it was at the movie theater but we didn't get a chance. So, I think that'll happen this weekend!  Lately we've been watching the 2nd season of Fargo, and it is SO good!!  We loved the 1st season, but we didn't get a chance to watch the 2nd season while it was being televised, so we made sure to DVR it and now we only have 4 episodes left!  It's amazing, and we're completely hooked.

As usual, we've been keeping busy around the house too!!  Last weekend we ended up putting in a new dishwasher. We were going to wait at least a few months before getting a new dishwasher, but the one we wanted ended up going on a CRAZY sale, and then with our gift cards it barely cost anything! So, we bought it and went and picked it up, and Kevin installed it (with Guinness's help, of course). The only bummer is that the valve to turn the water on/off to the dishwasher ended up springing a leak (the plumbing in this old house really likes keeping us on our toes... ), so Kevin is going to fix that this week.

Guinness stood right by Kevin, whining and making noises. 

Here's Kevin cracking up. Guinness was "talking" the whole time. 

Then Guinness decided he needed to get a toy, but he was still watching Kevin. 

He's so cute. And he was soooo confused by what Kevin was doing. 

Here's our beautiful new dishwasher!!  We just can't use it until we fix that darn valve... 

I'll keep you updated on the snow situation, and I'll take pictures if we do get a lot of snow!  I know Guinness would love it if we do... He looooves the snow. I hope you're all doing well and are warmer than we are here! :)  

Go Flyers!

We had a fun weekend! Friday night we just relaxed, and then Saturday morning we went out to breakfast at our favorite diner (they have THE BEST eggs benedict... and Kevin loves their pancakes). After breakfast, it was time to get ready to drive into town to go to the Philadelphia Flyers hockey game!!  I got Kevin tickets as one of his Christmas gifts. We got there a little early, and we stopped by the XFinity Live bar area and had a few beers, and then went over to the stadium! We had a blast walking around the stadium (and we got a bunch of free swag from vendors that had tables set up), and then we got to our seats right before the game started. The people sitting around us were awesome and so fun, and it was a GREAT game! The Flyers ended up winning 4-0.

This statue is outside of the stadium

We had really nice seats! They were high up, but the view was great. 

And since we weren't productive at all on Saturday, we were REALLY productive on Sunday!  We did a lot around the house. Kevin grouted the tile in our downstairs bathroom, so that bathroom is REALLY coming along now!  

Not much else is going on really... It was warm this weekend (in the 60s), but now today it's in the 20s... so Mother Nature is freaking out or something. Today really feels like Winter again though. And they're saying a bit of snow tomorrow maybe??  We'll see, and I'll definitely take pictures if we do get some snow.

I hope everyone is doing well!!   

Hellooooooo 2016!!!!

It's hard to believe that 2016 is here already! 2015 was quite amazing, and flew by!!  We bought our house, got married, and had our honeymoon all in 2015!!  We're planning on having a pretty chill 2016, which will be quite nice :)  We do have a few trips already planned, but nothing too crazy yet! We also have lots of house projects planned, of course.

OH MY GOODNESS is Winter here with a vengeance now! Winter wanted to wait awhile to make her appearance this year (it was 70 degrees here on Christmas), but now we are having some single digit weather. The "feels like" temperature this morning was 3 degrees! That is painfully cold. We still haven't had any snow or ice yet though, so that's good!

Our New Year's Eve was quite relaxing, as it usually is. We made some steaks at home, and drank some champagne, and watched some movies!  The next morning we got up pretty early to head to the train station to take the train into the city for the big Mummer's Parade. Our train ended up being an HOUR late (they were having electrical problems), so that wasn't very fun... But once we got into the city it was fun to see all of the parade madness. We walked over to our friend Timmy's apartment and  met up with some other friends there, and we all hung out there drinking champagne and watching the parade on TV for a bit before heading outside to join in the madness. After we'd watched the parade for quite awhile, a few of us walked over to Big Mike's apartment and had some pizza and beers there. By the time we got back home, we were soooo exhausted! It was a long day of being totally unproductive and irresponsible, and it was awesome.

Some of the floats/props getting ready for the parade!  

Some of the parade! 

More parade! And that's our friend Leslie in the blue scarf (and Big Mike is on the right)

Here's McGee and Jen (Mike's girlfriend) and Mike! 

Here we are hanging out in Mike's kitchen! He's holding one of his cats, and Timmy is clearly telling a super awesome story! 

On Saturday we FINALLY got our new fridge! I don't know if I've told most of you the fridge saga, but we've had TWO failed attempts at fridge deliveries... The two fridges were horribly damaged, but it turns out the 3rd time was the charm! We finally got our new fridge. Here's our old fridge:

The old fridge was dying, and it was also actually too big for the space. You're supposed to have at least a tiny bit of space on the sides for some air flow, and this one was literally wedged in the space. We had to take the molding off of the wall to be able to pull the fridge out! And it had scratch marks on the sides from where it scraped the cabinets and wall. So... here's our new (slightly smaller but appropriately sized for the space) refrigerator: 

It's slightly smaller, but it's also WAY nicer!!  And we moved the old fridge down to the basement and we'll use it for drinks, etc. which will clear out some space in our main fridge! 

Our kitchen is slowly but surely coming along. We still need to remove all of the wallpaper (and they wallpapered that whole wall behind the fridge too... how lovely of them...) and then we need to paint, and then eventually we'll need a new dishwasher (WAY cheaper than a fridge!), and we still need new hinges on our cupboards (they're still the brass ones that are in rough shape...). And then that room is officially done! 

We've also been working on the downstairs bathroom, and I'll post updates on that soon. It's slowly but surely coming along. We're also making good progress on our basement! I'll take pics of all of that soon. 

I hope everyone is having a great New Year so far!!  

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!!