Since I missed blogging for the past two months, I missed the last two holidays…so I figured I'd write about Thanksgiving and Black Friday before I write about Christmas :) The above photo are my croissants I make for practically every holiday, my family loves them :)

 My family, with some heads cut off...

My family is so awesome…Dad, Tim, and Anna still need to learn how to do our random photos

Thanksgiving night Tim, my two brothers, and I drove to Traverse City to do some shopping!

While my brothers and I drove around to random stores, Tim waited outside the mall for two hours, then inside the mall for four…all to get a ps4! He ended up being first in line haha

I thought this was a little LOT ridiculous-people were lined up through each aisle at Target from the front to the back of the store! We walked out (and went back later :), there were no lines a couple hours after that). Old Navy had their entire store 50% off, which I took full advantage of :) I got the cutest teal peacoat for only $25 along with a bunch of other stuff :)

This is probably the worst picture ever taken showing someone with their new ps4 since you can't even tell what it is…he was too excited to wait to open the box while I took a photo :)

We also bought Skylanders along with those four extra characters on the top that Tim's holding…I had to get Spyro since "The Legend of Spyro-A New Beginning" was the first game I finished by myself :) Although, I have to say, Spyro isn't my favorite character in Skylanders (because I KNOW you care about all this).

We had leftovers for a couple days after Thanksgiving…Tim absolutely LOVES my sister's sweet potatoes…so do I; although, he likes to hog them.

To end our day, Tim climbed on part of our roof and got all the snow and ice off, since it was leaking into our closet...

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Merry (Belated) Christmas, from our family to yours…

AND…………..here are the outtakes, as there were many…Tim hates getting his picture taken. And for some reason, so did our cat??? I wonder why...

 

Told you he hates getting his picture taken. He loves procrastinating when it comes to picture taking…

I have the next week off, so expect me to FINALLY start writing again! I've been insanely busy what with starting at a new firm with my boss, I feel like all I've done is work, eat, sleep, work out, and more work. It's SO nice to be able to relax for a week! I've even been sleeping in until 8am!

Yesterday Tim and I hoped to have fun at a local vineyard's harvest day, where they had pumpkins for sale, hayrides, and donuts and cider...when we got there, it was POURING rain and us being the lazy people we are didn't really feel like getting out of the car...so we went into town instead to find some pumpkins.

We went to the produce market, and they were asking for way too much. Guess where we ended up finding the cheapest pumpkins? Yup, the grocery store. $2.99 for these bad boys (yes, I felt dumb writing that).

 We also went in search of Halloween decorations and walked out with this:

 Today we carved the pumpkins :)

 A pumpkin-scented candle and The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack helped us get in the Halloween spirit (that feels weird, normally it's the Christmas spirit. whatever.).

Tim's pumpkin was a little dirty.

Of course we had to make our cat one :) Turns out, pie pumpkins are not meant for carving and are insanely hard to cut into, so we drew on hers instead. She seemed to like it.

 After carving the pumpkins, we relaxed with some apples and homemade caramel dip (a little time consuming to make, but to die for...especially on ice cream :D).

Now I just need to stay away from everything else that's sweet-I've already opened up the three HUGE bags of candy we bought for trick-or-treaters...

Leaving our apartment

We've now been in our home for two months, and it finally feels like home; however, the first month in our new home was pretty difficult. When we were finally all moved in, Tim and I spent a day at our apartment cleaning, then I walked around taking pictures. We slowly walked through each room; and holy crap, all these memories started flooding in...I mean, this was our home for four years!

Walking out of the bedroom, I accidentally touched the door and it creaked-that's what started my crying. Every morning that door annoyed the crap out of me because I tried so hard to be quiet to not wake Tim up, and that door never failed to make a noise. I never realized until we moved out how homey that noise was...our new home doesn't have any creaky doors :(.

Walking into the bathroom-while I never particularly cared for the boat decor, I loved the natural lighting, easy for putting on makeup. We have two bathrooms in our new house, but one of them seriously needs updating. And the lighting SUCKS so bad.

Walking into our living room reminded me of how cozy it was. And actually how fricken' hot it was up there in the summer because we couldn't open the windows! Other than that, I loved the living room.

Our kitchen was the worst. The best memory I have of our kitchen is that Tim proposed to me in here. It was sad we had to leave behind the place where that happened, and we can't go back to visit.

The last "room" that had the most memories was our deck. It definitely wasn't anything special, and they should have used wood instead of roofing so we could actually set foot out here in the summer...but the thing I most remember were brisk mornings coming out here and sitting on one of our deck chairs with a blanket and tea and a magazine; and it's still a mystery, but there was usually the smell of donuts being made (we didn't live near a bakery)?

Our new house slowly turned into our home. We've had problems with bats (another post), and I absolutely hated our kitchen, downstairs bath, living room, dining room, and bedroom when we first moved in :). Very slowly, it started feeling better. I am happy to say our cat is finally eating again too! She took this move very hard and hid under the couch for like a week straight. Poor girl. Now she won't stop running around/slipping on our wood floors haha! She sounds like a horse galloping-great for when you're trying to sleep...

Learning from mom

I grew up on a farm. My family had rabbits and chickens and a massive garden. I remember as a kid hating to have to go out on my summer vacation and weed. My mom also used to can everything. Peaches, pears, applesauce, beans, apple pie filling, tomato sauce, pickles...you name it? She canned it. Us kids had to help with that too. We also dehydrated a lot of fruit-bananas, pears and peaches for fruit rollups, apples..etc., we helped with that too. And we picked strawberries, blueberries, peaches, apples, beans, peas, cherries, tomatoes, and much more :) As a kid, I absolutely hated doing this. I'd much rather have laid around doing absolutely nothing.

Now that I'm older, I so appreciate everything about food that my mom did. This fall, I've dehydrated some bananas and apples (with cinnamon...mmmmm!); and last month, I finished up washing some peaches, cutting them up, and adding them to my freezer stocked full of strawberries and blueberries. I didn't realize at the time, but not only was my mom teaching us the value of hard work, she was also teaching us how to be frugal and healthy! I can finally appreciate everything she did, and I'm doing it now in my own home. It's hard work!

 My mom gave me a super easy recipe for pesto as my basil plants are going crazy!

Basil Pesto

1 c. packed fresh basil

1/3 c. grated parmesan

1/3 c. olive oil

1 T cold water

2T either pine nuts or almonds

1/4t salt

1/8t pepper

1 clove garlic, peeled

Add all ingredients to food processor (in my case, a blender). Mix. Put in ice cube tray. Pop into freezer bag once frozen.

To thaw, put it on top of warm pasta. DO NOT HEAT (otherwise everything will combine weirdly). 

Enjoy!

Hot Stuff's parents just left today after being here two weeks.  It was such a nice time; however, I figured after being allowed a mini break from painting, cleaning, blogging, and pretty much everything else in my life, I'd better start my life back up again and post a few pictures from the past, oh, couple  months or so :)

I was so insanely excited when I made these homemade funfetti cupcakes! They looked and smelled SO good...until I took them out of the oven and realized they were super dense :( I frosted them anyway and took a picture because even though they tasted terrible, they were super cute :)

Near the end of July, my brother and his family came up for a few days, and he had a book signing at our library :) I'm so proud of him! I finished his book in two days. It was awesome. He's already got a second book (not in a series) finished, just waiting for someone to publish it! He was always such a great story teller growing up-as weird as it sounds, I could imagine him reading his book out loud to me :) You can buy his book on Amazon :)

My friend Heather and I met up for dinner after work recently. We went to James St. Station where they have $3 appetizers! We were so excited :) We got deep fried pickles, deep fried beans, chili cheese fries, and santa fe chicken wraps...all super bad for you and SUPER yummy :) I absolutely love hanging out with her!

We walked downtown where there was some sort of festival going on, and House of Flavor's was handing out FREE tubs of ice cream! It was awesome.

I was reading a great blog, This Heart of Mine, the other day, came across her rhubarb crisp recipe and knew I had to try it. I didn't add enough rhubarb (I accidentally didn't buy enough); but even without enough rhubarb, it was super yummy.

This came in the mail a while back-doesn't it sort of look like a horror movie? haha

This was at a family reunion...

Rebecca, Micah, and I went blueberry picking about a month ago :). So much fun! Micah especially loved eating the plants haha! It wasn't super hot or anything, but Rebecca and I both got major sunburns (not Micah-we took great care in making sure he was covered)...

He's so stinkin' cute. It was getting pretty hot when we were done, so Rebecca and I got some waters; Micah LOVED licking the water droplets off the bottle haha!

Today I got out of work early due to having to stay late twice. It was perfect timing-first day Tim's parents are gone, and both of us are able to be at home, relaxing. I'm watching Grey's Anatomy (I'm in the middle of part 2 on hulu-so suspenseful!!!) and Tim's playing WOW. Surprise surprise haha. The rest of my night I think I'll spend finishing up book 5 of Harry Potter, writing up some blog posts, and watching Iron Man 3 :)