Brain Break

Tonight I am working, but I need a brain break. This entry is just that. This is the first of many nights to work in the coming months. It is tax busy season. Oh joy! Part of me is glad that I am busy because of the past couple months of not being busy at work and the stress that brings in my line of work. Its all about chargeability. Clearly Nov./Dec. is the slowest time for taxes, but being so new to it all I want to be a valuable asset to my company at all times and not feel like I'm falling behind. That being said, I'm eating my words and am very busy. On top of that I'm a bit stressed that I am taking a part of the CPA exam on February 24th and have not yet really begun my studies for it. When will I find the time? I have to pass. I am praying today and everyday until then for efficency with my time, energy, and the desire to study and comprehend and retain.

But then when I sit here thinking about the stress I feel about it all, I realize that I should be thankful that I have a wonderful job to be stressed about and that I have an opportunity to become a CPA. So I'll stay positive and focus on that, especially knowing how hurt parts of our world are right now. I am thankful for the blessings God has given me.

Ok, so enough about being stressed...and a little more on my brain break...

This is what my wonderful husband is doing to help me:

Dishes. :) What a man!

Then, I have been meaning to post pictures of our home as set up as it is thus far and will do a bigger more detailed post sometime in the future. In particular, I will do one on decor, and then one on organization and Elfa Shelving (A true miracle invention). If you know me...you might be laughing at that, but we do have a pretty organized house now. Really! But for now, here is the latest project, our entry way.

We don't have a lot of space but its been needing something at least hung on the walls. On the left is a beautiful tiled cross that Caroline Kieschnick gave us for our wedding. On the right is a little table and mirror that were in my grandparent's house in San Angelo.

Prior to yesterday this mirror had a dark brown/bronze colored finish. Beautiful, but dated, and antique looking. So I took a leap of faith and painted it a glossy white to match all the molding and trim in our house. I was going for a more modern, updated look. I think it turned out pretty good!

Here is a close up shot of the beautiful detailing of the mirror. It is really exquisite carving. I hope I haven't ruined the mirror, but I really do like it better this way and to me it almost brings out the detail more this way.

Then, I bought some fresh flowers (ok, greenery because its so inexpensive and smelled so good!), and put it in this taller vase with turquoise irridescent pebbles in the bottom to bring in the turquoise that is the accent color in pretty much our whole house.
Hope everyone is having a blessed evening and takes a brain break every once in a while. It is quite refreshing. Now back to work.

Been Awhile

Whew. Its been awhile since I've blogged. Really haven't been too terribly busy...but should be. Does that make sense? My house needs organizing, I need to be studying more for the CPA, need to be working out, etc. etc., but all I want to do when I come home from work is hang out with Jonathan or cook. I think I'm finally getting motivated to get all of this on a more steady pace though as Jonathan is away on business this week. He's in the middle of the gulf of Mexico on a boat doing something with collecting data to help us find oil in America. (I think). So, to fill my time...I'm doing all of these things, well not the working out part yet. I haven't found a good place/activity to do here in downtown Houston that is not ridiculously expensive. Anyone know of something? I LOVE aerobics classes and group exercise but don't want to pay the huge fees to join a full gym. I love eliptical machines and have thought about buying one for our home but well that's expensive too. Anyway, maybe this week cleaning and studying at least will become a habit. Well the CPA thing has to be, so I probably won't be blogging to terribly much over the coming months with finishing the exam and tax busy season.

So anyway, I didn't make any new year's resolutions out right, but subconciously I think it is to be more organized and intentional in getting things done. I tend to do better when there's a lot going on, and starting this week its finally getting that way. Work is really picking up and my sweet parents are coming in town this weekend to see our place and maybe help me get a little more organized. That's it for now. Oh and today on my mind are the people of Haiti. I don't know a whole lot about what's going on but I've been praying for the country since yesterday. I can't imagine what it feels like to have such a natural devastation occur on the streets where you live.

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. :)