3 more days!

This is where I'll be in 3 days.

With these characters...

And these....

And these (minus Carla...:( she's a busy girl!)

Merry Christmas!

Are you doing anything different for Christmas this year?

Have Ourselves a Merry Little Christmas

After Jonathan and I got moved in to our new home (and by moved in I mean our boxes were there), I told him that it would be ok if we didn't really do Christmas decoration and that I doubted I'd even want to with all the other decorating we had to do.

HA!!! Yeah right. I fooled myself even.

Needless to say that thought didn't last very long and we now have a few Christmas decorations.

My parents gave us a tree that was my grandmother Dixie's. It is old and on a wooden stand but very sturdy, and quite real looking actually. It's the perfect size and looks wonderful in our living room.

Upon hearing that we may not be decorating for Christmas, Stephanie said that was nonsense and that when she and David came down to visit she would help me decorate. So, naturally I had to go buy Christmas ornaments for the tree I now had so that we could indeed decorate. I decided to do sort of traditional colors, but use silver instead of gold since that is what the metal in our house is mostly. So...here is the tree!

This is the amazing, beautiful tree topping bow that Stephanie handmade!! She is incredible.

These little white birds are just beautiful and were also my grandmother Dixie's. There are probably 20 or so of them and they look so sweet on our tree.

Then here are the ornaments we were given for our wedding.

This is the one little souvenir I bought in Hawaii. I Kissing Hula Couple!

Our stockings

Decorations elsewhere in the house.

Our Simple Christmas Bedding. Our normal bedding is a busy brown and ivory paisley print, so for Christmas I changed it to a clean white with the softest brown fur throw from my mother and a simple red pillow that I added some ribbon and berries to.

Little bit of Christmas, little bit more Birthday

To start my Christmas decor blogging (which really won't be that long), I must show my other birthday present from Jonathan's parents and grandparents. My mom had started me on traditional Spode Christmas dishes and for my birthday the Theilig's wanted to give me some more. I'm just so excited to have another set of dishes, especially ones that have a sentimental value for me. So, here are my new Christmas Spode dishes. More on those to come!

I'm In My Mid-Twenties

My most recent birthday was this past Saturday, December 5. And now, I am officially in my mid-twenties. 24 years ago I was born. That makes it sound much older than it is, but everytime I think of how old I am that's the first thing that comes to mind. But that's neither here nor there...onto the celebration!

It began on Wednesday, sort of by accident. Well actually there was an accident. It was raining and I drove home from work headed to the grocery when I changed lanes and bumped another car. Long story short...everyone is ok, it was VERY minor, but I was not in a great mood when I got home. So I opened my gift from my parent's for my birthday! It is the larger vase of the 2. I had bought the one on the left for our house because I just fell in love with it. And my mom decided to get me the bigger one which I REALLY love for my birthday. Thanks Momma and Daddy!



Then on Thursday Jonathan decided to give me my birthday present early. He is terrible (in a good way) about keeping surprises for gifts. If he has the gift in his possession, he has never once that I can think of, waited until the actual event to give it to me.

So, we were on our way to dinner, getting into the car and Jonathan asked me to put the papers that were on the front seat into the trunk. I got the papers and opened the trunk, put them away, and came back to get buckled in. When I sat down he just looked at me and didn't back out. I said, "what?". He said go back there again. So I went and he got out too, and when I opened the trunk, he pulled out my gift! I had completely not seen it.

He got me an art easel. I had tried painting some art for fun that turned into art for our home (not sure if I think its good yet but he likes it...that's another story) and I did it on the hardwood floor in our house. I know, I know...not good. But anyway, he thought an art easel would be a much better solution. So thoughtful! I just love it. What a perfect gift for me when I truly have everything I need, so this is something I can enjoy and sort of take up a new hobby. I love my husband!

The next part of the birthday celebration was the entire weekend. Our best friends, David and Stephanie, came down to be our first house guests this weekend. They arrived Friday night and we had pizza and just enjoyed catching up since the wedding.

Then Saturday (my actual birthday), we woke up to J Dub's freshly baked cinnamon rolls. He brought me cinnamon rolls and coffee in bed! Then we watched Four Christmases, my gift from David and Steph, and had Mimosas.

Next was on to lunch at one of our favorite Houston restaurants, Little Bigs for some sliders. mmm soo good.

Then we came back and decorated for Christmas. Pictures on that to follow.

Then, we popped open our wedding gift from David and Steph. A bottle of Robert Craig Cabernet that they had signed.

Cheese and Salami on an Arthur Court cheese set we got for our wedding.

Baked Brie on my Dad's Aunt Julia's crystal cheese server that Aunt Karen gave me at Thanksgiving.

After wine and cheese we got ready and went out to dinner at a local Mexican food restaurant we found near our house called Terilingua. If you know me well, you know I LOVE mexican food. What a wonderful birthday!

Wedding Dishes

This post is a little later than I wanted to put it up but I thought I would anyway.

I love dishes! I really do, and I like mixing it up and using different sets and different glasses all the time. Therefore I have already used my china and crystal a couple times as well as our everyday dishes. I am not one to save china for super special occasions. I probably will change my mind when I have kids, but handwashing to place settings is not that bad.

For our china, we picked out the Ralph Lauren Hewitt Platinum collection and for crystal we chose Waterford Marquis Allegra Platinum. The china is white with a hammered platinum band around the edge. It is classic yet a little modern and was the first thing for our registry that we unequivocally agreed on. The crystal also mixes classic with modern by having the beautiful waterford signature cut crystal in the stem, but then has a sleek to part (don't know what you call that technically) with a platinum rim at the top to match the dishes.

This is the first meal Jonathan and I ate with our china on. It was pepper steak, courtesy of the huge boxes full of steaks my mom sent us, and my homemade green bean casserole (A favorite for us both).

My green bean casserole recipe is probably standard but I prefer it over any other I've ever had. The thing I may do differently than your average one is I DON'T follow the recipe on the french fried onion can that adds milk and seasoning, and mixed onions in with the casserole before baking. Here's what I do:

Ingredients:
2 regular size cans french cut green beans (don't get low sodium or else you will just be adding salt to yours later and its never enough)
1 can 98% fat free cream of mushroom soup
1 can French's French Fried Onions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Drain the green beans and put them and the cream of mushroom soup into a pyrex dish. Mix it all together. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. At 25 minutes, open the oven and sprinkle the french fried onions on top. Bake for another 5 minutes or until the onions are brown.

Enjoy!

Our next set of dishes is our everyday. We chose the latest design from Fiesta which is the square dishes. We picked out four colors to start, although I'd like to have all the colors eventually. :) To start we got the ivory, peacock blue, emerald green, and sunflower yellow. For most of the serving pieces we chose ivory so that we could always use it no matter what color we were setting out.

One of the meals I attempted to cook was a pork loin recipe from my coworkers in Dallas. Supposed to be done in a crockpot, but we couldn't find ours so I did it in the oven. Big mistake...and it took like 3 hours to cook from the time I got home from work. When I do it again with a crockpot I'll put the recipe on here. I won't now because it didn't turn out just wonderfully in texture although the flavor was awesome.

I also have Christmas dishes now, but I'll save that post for Christmas decor ones soon to come. :)

Spelling correction :) oops

scratch that last website for the pictures....Jenny is only with 2 n's not 3. Imagine that? Silly me

www.jennymartellphotography.com/darkroom/share

Wedding Pictures Are Up!

The first glimpse of wedding pictures are up on the online gallery from my photographer, Jenny Martell. Go to: www.jennnymartellphotography.com/darkroom/share

type in melissajonathanwedding

Enjoy!

New Post coming soon

I will have a new post soon. Just been busy with the house, and Jonathan is feeling under the weather so been taking care of him. Included in upcoming posts....A rockets game, my birthday, and CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS!! Lots of thanks to Steph for helping out with those and my parent's for giving us our first Christmas tree.

Oh and I have a promise from my wedding photographer that pictures will be available today online so in the next couple weeks I should have the CD and have those uploaded as well. Maybe I'll be able to get a sneak peek on here.