The Oscars!

The Oscars are tonight!  I'm excited.  We just finished watching the last of the Best Picture nominees that we're going to watch (we watched all but one!), and I really loved a lot of the movies this year!  Two of them I did not enjoy, but for very different reasons. I'll give you my thoughts on each movie!

1.  BlacKkKlansman - I really loved this movie.  I definitely would be happy if this got Best Picture, but this one isn't MY pick for Best Picture.  It also isn't the one that I think will get it.  This one dealt with some very difficult subject matter, but it was SO well done, and there were funny parts and serious parts, and it was just great.  There were also LOTS of parallels throughout the movie between what was happening during that time period and what is happening now, and juuuust in case the viewer wasn't understanding the parallels, they really put it right in your face at the end of the movie, which I thought was amazing.  I loved this movie.  I am pulling for Adam Driver as Best Supporting Actor!  He's an awesome actor.

2.  Black Panther - I thought this movie was VERY enjoyable, and I think it's very awesome that a Marvel movie was finally nominated, but this definitely isn't my pick for Best Picture.  Fun movie though!  And I think it's nominated for Best Costumes and Best Production Design, so I hope it wins for those categories.  Everything looked beautiful in this movie.

3. Bohemian Rhapsody - I loooooved this movie!!  I'm kinda hoping this wins, but I don't think it will. And I DEFINITELY think Rami Malek needs to win for Best Actor!  He was awesome.  Really great movie.  It made me laugh, it made me cry, it was just really great. 

4.  The Favourite - We did not see this one!  It was kinda our last priority, and we ran out of time.  It doesn't look great to me, but I'll probably watch it sometime.

5.  Green Book - Oh my goodness, loved this movie so much.  I loved Viggo Mortensen in it and also Mahershala Ali. This was SO well done, and I really loved it.  This is my pick for Best Picture!!  I really hope it wins.  I think it has a good shot!  Everyone should see this movie - It's SO good.  Loved it, loved it, loved it. 

6.  Roma - This one was great!!  It really surprised me how much I liked this one.  I'd seen a few different trailers for it, and I couldn't get a good feel for it.  I'd heard from multiple people that it was awesome, but I just wasn't sure if I was going to like it.  But, I definitely did!!  I thought it was great, and this is the one that I think will win.  It isn't MY pick, but I think it'll win, and I'll be happy if it does win.  I also think this will win for Best Director!  It's a Netflix movie, so it's an easy one to watch!

7.  A Star is Born - I didn't like this one at all.  Like, not even a little bit.  I know this is like the 4th or 5th remake of this one, but I just didn't enjoy it.  And, I truly can't believe that Lady Gaga is nominated for Best Actress.  Her acting was NOT good for the most part.  She had a few scenes that she did a great job in, but for most of it I was like, "Oh my gosh... this is terrible".  Bradley Cooper did a good job though, and so did Sam Elliott. But I'm not rooting for either one of them.

8. Vice - I didn't like this one either.  I think it was REALLY well done and everyone involved (acting, directing, etc) did a great job, but OH MY GOSH this movie made me so upset, angry, stressed, and sad.  I had a feeling that's how I was going to feel watching this one, so I wasn't excited to see it.  So, I think they did a great job with this one, but I just really didn't enjoy it one bit.

Guinness is 6 years old! Plus Oscar nominations.

Guinness turned 6 years old on Groundhog Day, and I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by!!  It seems like just yesterday he was a little puppy.  We hung out with him all day on his birthday, and there was snow on the ground (he loooooves snow!!), so we played lots of frisbee with him throughout the day! We also boiled up a little bit of chicken breast, because that is his faaaavorite.  And of course me and Kevin watched the movie Groundhog Day, because that is tradition!!  I love that movie. 

Here's our little goober as a puppy!! 

Another one of him as a puppy.  He's still got that white line down his forehead! 

He had so much fun playing frisbee on his birthday! 

Here he is chowing down on some boiled chicken. 

And here he is suuuuuuper passed out after a fun birthday!! 

You can kinda see the white line down his forehead here!  This was during a nice walk yesterday! 

We have had some craaaazy weather the past few weeks.  We have had insanely cold temperatures (down to 1 degree), and just a few days ago it got up in the 60s.  So... I cannot keep up.  The poor planet is broken.  Climate change is real, guys.  But, one of the days we had snow,  Kevin pointed out something ADORABLE on our front porch!!  A bunch of birds had been hopping around in our snow, and left the cutest little footprints.  Oh, and there's a few Guinness footprints there as well, so just ignore those! 

The Oscar nominations were announced!!  Wahoo!!  You guys know I love the Oscars (I have no idea why... but I do), and for the past 5 years or something Kevin and I have tried to watch all of the Best Picture nominations.  I think we only actually watched all of them once, but we have been VERY close a few times!!  This year the Best Picture nominees are:

-BlacKkKlansman:  This one is by Spike Lee, and we just watched this one over this past weekend!  It's based on a true story about the first African-American police officer in Colorado Springs in the early 1970s, and how he organized an investigation into the local KKK chapter.  John David Washington (Denzel Washington's son!) stars in this, and Adam Driver is AMAZING in it.  He's nominated for Best Supporting Actor for it. 

-Black Panther:  I love this one!!!  I've seen this one so many times already (and saw it in the movie theater too), and I think it's so cool that a Marvel movie is nominated!!  It was such a great movie.

-Bohemian Rhapsody:  I haven't seen this one yet, but I really want to!  This one is about Freddie Mercury, and it looks amazing.  Rami Malek looks so much like Freddie!  It's crazy.  I've heard this one is a front-runner to win, but I have no opinion yet!

-The Favourite:  I don't know much about this one!  I know Emma Stone is in it, and I know it's supposed to be funny?  But other than that I don't know anything at all.

-Green Book:  This one looks great!!  I really want to see this one.  And Mahershala Ali is amazing in everything he does, so I'm always excited to see anything he's in.  Mahershala is nominated for Best Supporting Actor too I think, so that seems like a tough competition this year! 

-Roma:  I literally know nothing about this one, except that I know it's on Netflix and I've heard it's great!!  I think we'll definitely watch this one.

-A Star Is Born:  I think this is the 4th or 5th time this movie has been done?  I'm not super excited to see this one, but maybe I'll end up loving it?  I'm not sure!  I do love Bradley Cooper, and sometimes I like Lady Gaga (though I haven't really seen her acting I don't think?), so this one is kind of a wild card for me.  But I've heard this one is a front-runner to win too. 

-Vice: This is the one about Dick Cheney.  This one definitely seems interesting!  Christian Bale is very unrecognizable as Cheney, and Sam Rockwell is great in everything (ANOTHER Supporting Actor nomination!), so I'm guessing this one will be pretty good.

So, so far we've seen 2 out of 8!  We'll see how far we get before the Oscars at the end of month! 

January

Oh my goodness, so far I am not doing good with my New Year's resolution to write more of these posts!!!  This is only my 2nd one of 2019... NOT a great start!!  Haha.  I'll try to do better.  I am doing GREAT with my resolution of cooking more though!!  We've been eating at home a LOT more.  I'm doing pretty good (but not great) at my resolution to eat more vegetables, and I'm NOT doing well with my resolution to exercise more.  So... I've definitely got some work to do!! 

Our weather has been SO back and forth this month!  We've had single digits and snow, and we've had 60 degrees and rain.  Today we are getting snow, and I think tomorrow too... and I think Thursday is supposed to be crazy cold (like 0 degrees F or maybe negative??). 

We've gone into the city 3 times this month!  Crazy.  We were there for January 1 (Mummer's Parade) which I already posted about in the earlier post this month, and then we went into the city again on January 5th for dinner at a VERY fancy restaurant for Kevin's aunt's 60th birthday, and then we were in the city again on January 19th for a fundraiser at Monk's Cafe!  Monk's is an amaazing bar in the city that also has some really amazing food, and they were having a fundraiser to raise money for the Camp Fire Relief Fund!  They were donating 100% of all draft beer sales to the Camp Fire Relief Fund. It was totally making me emotional to see all the cash everyone was donating to the fundraiser.

Timmy, Kevin, and me at the Monk's Cafe fundraiser! 

These were the taps at the front bar, but they also had a lot more taps at the back bar!  They had a bunch of cool Sierra Nevada beers there for the event, and other beers like Pliny the Elder and Allagash were also part of the fundraiser! They also had 3 versions of the Resilience IPA from different breweries, and it was really cool to taste the difference between the 3 versions! 

City Hall!  I love this building so much. 

Boathouse Row!  They had all the lights green to support the Eagles.  

 Towards the beginning of January we also went to a brewery very close to our house called La Cabra, because they had Resilience IPA (this was before we even knew Monk's was going to have a fundraiser!), but it was already all gone!  So, we ended up just hanging out and having lunch and a beer or two. 

La Cabra!  It's a great little brewery.  

Guinness has been loving the winter weather we have been getting!  He looooves snow so much.  

 And nothing makes Guinness as tired as playing in the snow!!  He always passes out after running around in the snow.

That's pretty much our January!!  Lots of crazy weather, and lots of trips into the city.  Who's excited for the Super Bowl this weekend??  I REALLY don't want the Patriots to win.... I hate the Patriots, and I hate Tom Brady.  So, I will DEFINITELY be rooting for the Rams!  They've had a crazy amazing season, so it would be awesome to see them finish it off with a Super Bowl win.  Fingers crossed!  I still have to figure out what to make for our Super Bowl food!!  I have zero ideas right now... 

This weekend is also Guinness's birthday!!  Our sweet boy is going to be 6 years old.  Where does the time go?!  

I hope you all have a great rest of your week, and weekend!!  Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Adriana today!!!  

Hello 2019!

We're 6 days into 2019!  I'm hoping this is a year full of impeachments and indictments.  We shall see!! 

The end of 2018 was pretty great.  We went to Longwood Gardens on Saturday Dec 29, and it was sooo beautiful.  It was definitely crazy busy though, which was a little overwhelming at times!  We haven't gone to the Longwood Christmas lights in many years, so it has definitely gained popularity!! If we go again next year, we will for sure go on a weeknight so it's not as crowded.

We sat on a bench looking at this and talking while it got darker!  It was lovely and relaxing.

These trees were suspended above a pool!  

And now for some less impressive gardens... The cacti in our kitchen window have been blooming like crazy!  We have two Christmas cacti, and they bloomed almost exactly on Christmas!!  Crazy.  The larger one (in the orange pot) used to have light pink flowers, but somehow those were a beautiful light orange color with pink centers this year... I don't know how/why that happened, but I love it.  The smaller one (in the blue-ish pot) has bright pink flowers like it's always had.  

Look at those light orange flowers!!  With light pink centers... so pretty.

On New Year's Day we went into the city to meet up with Timmy (the guy who married us!), and Kevin and Timmy's friend from childhood Sarah and her boyfriend Rob.  Sarah and Rob have been traveling all over Asia for the last 18 months, and they just ended their trip and moved to Philly!   On New Year's Day Philly does the Mummer's Parade, which is always a great time. Sarah and Rob had never experienced it before, so they were loving it. 

 

I made a few New Year's resolutions this year (I always do), and one of them has to do with this blog!  I want to post more this year, because I really slacked last year!  I saw the counts, and I only did 25 posts last year!  And 37 the year prior.  So, I definitely want to do way more than 25 posts in 2019!  My other New Year's resolutions are to cook a lot more (we went out to eat wayyyy too often last year!!), and exercise more (I really slacked off at the end of the year), and eat more vegetables (this is a New Year's resolution almost every year!  I'm bad about eating enough vegetables).  The exercising more is not off to a good start, but I'm going to fix that very soon.  Cooking more is off to a pretty good start, and I decided the best way to do this is to plan out the menu for the week and buy groceries over the weekend.  Last year we were pretty much winging it every day, which led to a LOT of fast food and going out to eat.  So, I definitely did some cooking last week (yay!), and for this next week I have a bunch of meals planned and we shopped for everything today!  If anyone has any amazing recipes we should try (especially if vegetables are involved!!), feel free to email them to me!! :)  

It doesn't look great, but trust me it's amazing!  It's a soup with orzo pasta and chicken meatballs.  It's sooo delicious. 

I hope you all are having a great 2019 so far!!

Christmas!!

Oh my goodness, how is Christmas over already?!  This month has seriously flown by. 

Earlier this month I flew to CA for a few days to surprise my brother for his 40th birthday!!  It was SUCH a quick trip, especially since I still had to work because I'm completely out of PTO for this year!  But my boss was nice enough to let me switch around some work-from-home days, and she was totally ok with me heading to CA to be there to surprise my dear brother.  I got in very late Wednesday night (I left after work), and then I had to work on Thursday and Friday, and then Saturday we had a surprise party for Brad!!  And then I left very early Sunday morning.  It was a whirlwind trip!!  Trips to CA always go by way too quickly, but this one was wayyyyyy faster than any other trip!! 

The night of the 22nd (Saturday) we hosted a party at our house, so that whole day we were cleaning and prepping for that.  We were exhausted by the time the party started!!  It was a really fun time though, and it was really great to have people over to our house for Christmas!!  We've never done that before!! 

Sunday (the 23rd) during the day I did a bunch of Christmas baking (3 kinds of cookies, plus fudge), and Kevin met up with his friend from high school that lives in L.A. now, and he was just home for the first time this year!  Sunday night Kevin and I got to hang out at home together, so we watched It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street (the old one, NOT the new one... I can't stand the new one, but the old one is one of my favorite Christmas movies!!).  Kevin and I had not seen It's a Wonderful Life in sooo many years, and we both really loved it this time around.  It was SO great!!  I feel like I never appreciated it when I was younger... Maybe it's one of those that you have to be a bit older to fully appreciate. We also made some pasta and homemade alfredo, and had a lovely evening of relaxing in front of the fire while watching movies :)  It was perfect! I'm so happy we got some time for us. 

Christmas Eve Kevin and I both had to work all day, but after work we drove over to Kevin's parents house and spent the evening there hanging out with Kevin's family.  Christmas morning we were able to just hang out at home and have a nice relaxing morning.  We made cinnamon rolls for breakfast!

We have watched a LOT of Christmas movies!! Here's our list:  Scrooged, Bad Santa, The Grinch (Jim Carrey version), The Grinch (old cartoon version), Santa Clause is Coming to Town, The Year Without a Santa Clause, Rudolph, Frosty, Elf, National Lampoons Christmas, Muppet Christmas Carol, Mickey's Christmas Carol, Die Hard (it counts!!), Love Actually, Prep and Landing (thanks Lizzy and Claighton!!), The Man Who Invented Christmas (it was pretty good!), Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, The Holiday, Home Alone 1 and 2, and Charlie Brown Christmas. That's 23 movies!! 

I was terrible about taking pictures, so I'm sorry this post is picture-free!  This weekend we're going to Longwood Gardens to see the lights, so I'll take pictures of that!!  And I'll do the Bucket List update too :)  Love you guys!!!

Christmas is Coming!

You guys!  I'm getting so excited for Christmas!  I can't believe it's only a few weeks away!  I feel like October, November, and the first bit of December have all gone by SO quickly! 

Our house is looking VERY Christmasy, and I'm loving it.  We went and got our Christmas tree on December 1st, and we decorated it that evening!  We also put our lights up on the house that day because we actually had pretty good weather.  Here are some pictures of our tree and our inside decorations!  I'll take some exterior pictures soon. 

Here's our Christmas glasses and a few little plates and bowls!

Here are all of our Christmas mugs!  So many good ones.  There's a Homer Simpson one for McGee right in front there, and we both love the Bumble one of course, and I love that adorable Mickey and Minnie one on the left!  

Some gifts made by the amazing Lindsey! 

Here are a few of our pillows!

Our fireplace!  This makes me so happy!

Some decorations on a side table, including an adorable picture of my nieces when they were little! 

Our tree!!  I think this is our best tree yet!!  I love it so much, and it makes me so happy. 

I've worked on making a few Christmas presents this year!  I'll try to show some pictures of some others later, but here's one I made for my Uncle Jim!  He loves A Christmas Story. 

I also made a Bucket List for Christmas! I have SO many movies I want to watch this year, but I will just tell you them as I watch them because it does not fit nicely on the list!  So far we have watched Bad Santa, Scrooged, Elf, and the Jim Carrey version of The Grinch!  So, 4 out of 24! :)  We are going to have a fun month!!  Here's my Bucket List: 

Love you all, and I hope you're having an amazing December so far!!