its the most wonderful time of the year!!!

I absolutely love Christmas!! I love everything about it, the music, the decorations, the candy, and most of all, the celebration of Jesus' birth. I look foraward to wrapping presents (I put gift cards in boxes so I can wrap them!), houses decorated with lights and Christmas trees!! As a child, I was always so excited to help decorate the tree and I loved visiting my grandparents house because their tree was dripping with ornaments, all of which had sentimental value. Each year they would give the grandkids an ornament, my favorite is a mouse ballerina, which is hanging on my tree right now because Tyler and I finally had a day off together and we put up our tree!!!

And yes, the topper is a cabbage patch doll. She even has a star on top of her head!

Tyler decided he would have the Grinch stocking (he's not really a Grinch, just a cool stocking, the heart lights up!) and I chose the Peanuts because I have watched the Charlie Brown Christmas cartoon every year since I was born and it is just fantastic.

We found this hip little graphic tee for max at Target for $2.50 and he loves it! They don't make them in Hercules' size (he wouldn't wear one even if they did).

He was a little sleepy and not in the mood to have his picture taken!

We finished most of our shopping today, which is pretty good considering we started today, and I was even able to wrap all of the presents!

We also visited Tyler's family today. I love them and am so blessed to be a part of their family. Overall it was a pretty fantastic day!

the ties the limit!!

So Tyler recieved a promotion last week (I'm so proud of him!!) and now he has to wear a tie to work! I think thats pretty exciting because I love it when he wears ties and there are sooo many options when it comes to ties. They come in every color and design you could ever dream of. I'm a bit jealous.

This is by far my favorite

I fell in love with this tie the moment I saw it. I really didn't think Tyler would go for it, but he did and he looks good!!

He has a blue version as well, but it is definitely not as fantastic as this fuschia one.

Halloween!!

So Tyler and I talked about halloween costumes for a while before we made the final decision 3 days before the halloween party.

This is what we came up with:

Probably some of the best costumes ever! I remember watching Gumby as a child, and I had a poseable Gumby toy. Brings back memories.

The party was Saturday night and we were looking forward to spending Sunday together as we were both off. Tyler got called into work for a bit and I didn't feel well so I slept for quite a bit. Sorry that I missed church and seeing Misty today. I was looking forward to that all week. Tyler did suprise me with a late lunch from Panera!! We watched a little football and slept more, then visited family this evening. I am still exhausted and ready for bed.

So not ready to go back to work tomorrow.

halftime means bath time...

I love my puppy, max

and apparently, so do the neighbor girls. They rang our doorbell at least 3 times and asked to play with max this afternoon.

One of the girls said he is "good at agility" and was "adored by others" while she was playing with him!! I'm pretty sure she is only 8 or 9 years old so listening to her talk about his development was super cute. She also informed me that she was working with him on his chewing!

Because of his multiple play dates, his bath was postponed. Now its halftime in the Sunday night game (go Green Bay!!), its bath time!

after a bath, he is completely nuts, running around the house for about 15 minutes! Its quite entertaining! Hercules lucked out and didn't get his bath today, although I think he enjoys them. Tyler promised me he would give him a bath tomorrow.

Have I mentioned I love watching football with Tyler? He knows so much about football, its crazy really. He knew that Reggie Wayne was one of two players to have 1000 yards each season since they started in the NFL. Ask him anything, he knows the answer. Today I told him I hoped the Browns would win against the Saints and he said "that will never happen" and guess what? It did!! I thought that was pretty funny.

Well, now its time to get back to the game.

glee!!

I love glee!! This is a clip from last weeks episode, such a great song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tt2u-S7NTs

Wish I could sing. Sometimes when I'm driving alone I pretend like I can sing and sing (very loudly) along with my glee cds.

daytime dates aren't half bad

Tyler and I had a day off together, which doesn't happen often.

We decided to go to the Indian State Museum to see the Titanic exhibit. We planned on eating lunch somewhere before going to the museum and we hadn't been to P F Changs for a while so that was our pick.

We had Crispy Green Beans, which are amazing! Tyler didn't realize how hot the dipping sauce was and downed half of his drink after the first bite!


Tyler had Orange Peel chicken (which was my favorite when I ate meat)


I had Vegetarian Fried Rice. It looked better than it tasted.



The Titanic exhibit was fantastic. There were a lot of neat artifacts and it is amazing what they have been able to find and salvage. That was one beautiful boat!

When you enter the exhibit, you are given a boarding pass with the name of a person who was a passenger on the ship. At the end you find out if they survived. Tyler was John Rourke, a third class passenger from Ireland. I was Eleanor Widener, a first class passenger from Philadelphia. Tyler did not survive, I did.

Then we went to the gift shop and purchased rock candy!

We thought about going to a movie that evening, but we have been on a Glee kick so we decided to rent a few DVD's. Probably one of my favorite TV's shows...of all time. I'm glad Tyler likes it almost as much as I do! It was the perfect ending to the perfect day!

cupcakes!

I have been baking like crazy on my days off and yesterday was no exception! I made banana muffins for breakfast and had two cupcake recipes I wanted to make. The first cupcake was the hi hat which is a chocolate cupcake with marshmallow creme-like frosting dipped in chocolate. I have made these a few times but since Tyler doesn't really like chocolate I wanted to try an orange flavor. The cake was a yellow cupcake with a hint of orange flavor, with the marshmallow frosting dipped in orange flavored white chocolate. The verdict is still out as he got home from work late last night and went straight to bed. The white chocolate was much harder to work with so I resorted to bittersweet chocolate to speed up the process. The majority were dipped in the white chocolate so I think he will be happy!
This is what they look like before the chocolate bath!


and after!




The second recipe was for homemade hostess cupcakes. These are a big pain to make and my oven is so super hot the some of the bottoms were burned. The cake part is really good and easy to make. Its the filling and frosting that is time consuming and uses about 6 bowls so my dishwasher was full when I was finished.


The two have white icing because as I was cleaning off the table I discovered them off to the side on top on the lid of the container. I was over decorating at that point. I think next time I will stick to one recipe per day.