Date Night

Belated Merry Christmas to you all! Hope you had a wonderful holiday! We spent last weekend with Taylor's family and had such a great time. We don't get to see his extended family very much so it's always nice to spend time with them.

Well, tonight Taylor and I went and did something we don't do very often... We went on a date! John David and Julia (Taylor's brother and SIL) got us a "night out" for Christmas and we had such a good time.



We decided to go eat at Red Lobster! I always like when we go to RL or Outback because Taylor, for some reason, likes to share meals at these places and then we get an appetizer. It's just the right amount of food! We went for the Surf and Turf tonight and it was delicious. I love snow crab legs and Red Lobster's are yummy!


We had planned on going to see a movie after, but dinner ended up taking longer than planned so we went and got ice cream instead. Even though it's 15 degrees outside! Thanks Julia and John David!

Wrapping Presents

So, I have just about finished our Christmas shopping and have most of the presents wrapped! I know this may sound silly, but I am not a good wrapper and since it is our first Christmas I look time wrapping and I tried really hard to make our presents look nice! Haha. I even took the time to put ribbon on them :) I never realized how long it takes to wrap presents since my mom was always the one to do it.

Here is a picture of the tree with all the presents under it!

Also, last weekend we went to Wichita to see my friend Caitlin get married but I didn't take any pictures cause our camera was dead! But I will post pictures once my friends post the ones they took on Facebook! Haha. We hope you all had a nice weekend and can't wait to see many of you this weekend! :)

My Best Friend's Wedding

So in the last week... my best friend got married, I met a celebrity in an airport, Taylor has almost finished his first semester of grad school, we got our first Christmas present, and we may have lost most of our free cable! Ha. Here is quick update on each one...

My best friend Jessica got married on Saturday, so on Wednesday I left for Tulsa to spend time with her and be a part of all the festivities! It was such a fun time and her wedding was so beautiful. Here is the beautiful bride!


Here is the bow bouquet I made for Jess to use during the rehearsal. Since I'm not a very crafty person, I really thought this turned out cute!


Here is my family in front of the beautiful fireplace they had at the wedding venue! I absolutely loved all the Christmas decoration Jess had at the wedding. It was like a Winter Wonderland!


And just so we have a record of this... here is a picture of my parents dancing! Ha. This never happens!


While I was on my way back to Champaign, I got to meet Laurie Smith while waiting in DFW! I was so excited when I saw her waiting at her gate. In case you don't know, Laurie was a designer on the show Trading Spaces. She was always my favorite and I used to tell my mom that if we went on Trading Space, I would want Laurie to decorate my room! She was soooo sweet and asked me questions about myself, my family, and wished me a Merry Christmas. It was really cool!


We also got an early Christmas present from The Massey's! Now we have a first Christmas ornament and isn't it so cute?! My mom gave it to me while I was home and I just love it! Thank you Massey family :)


And finally... sadly... I think we may have lost our free cable. We knew this day would come someday! We still are able to pick up local stations and a few other channels, but for the most part, we don't have cable anymore! It's really not that big of a deal because we didn't watch a lot of the channels we picked up, but I have to admit I will miss TLC and ESPN a little! Ha. Guess we will have to find a new place to watch the Sugar Bowl!


Hope you all have a great rest of the week!

Winter Wonderland

So this is what we woke up to this morning....


We had heard that it was supposed to snow overnight, but we did not expect this! Taylor thinks we probably got about 6 inches.


We decided to make a trip to Walmart this afternoon and see how the roads were. Here is Taylor being sweet and cleaning off my car. What you don't see is that he had just hit me with a VERY large snowball... Ha!


While we were out, we decided to make a quick trip to Hobby Lobby and pick out a new ornament for our tree! Taylor's family has a tradition where they pick an ornament out each year that represents an important event from that year. Here is the ornament we ended up with...


Since a major event this year was us moving to Illinois, we thought the corn was a good representation of that! We are also going to find something that represents Taylor starting graduate school, but he didn't see anything today, so we are still looking. We need to get a first Christmas/marriage ornament but all the ornaments had really creepy looking faces so we passed on buying one of those today as well! :)


Now we are just hanging around the house so I decided to try and bake some cookies. Taylor loves his Moggie's sugar cookies so I attempted to make a batch of them. Mine didn't quite turn out as pretty and yummy as hers, but Taylor still said they were good!


Ok, now off to cook dinner. We are making Poppyseed Chicken which I am excited about, but I feel like I've been in the kitchen and washing dishes all day! ha. Hope you are having a nice weekend! We are really excited to see many of you soon :)

Oh Christmas Tree!

So last night we had Laine, Andrew, and Keith over to put up our Christmas tree and make homemade donuts! The donuts were delicious and I really like our tree! We don't have a ton of ornaments right now but I found some red ribbon and bought a big bow for the top so I think it looks pretty festive :) And I really like our stockings. I love stockings that look like they have been knitted, so I found these at TJ Maxx and got a really good deal!

Here is the tree all lit up! I love the way a Christmas tree lights up a room at night My dad always puts our tree on a timer so that it is turned on when you get home at night. It just makes me happy to see Christmas lights!


And here is our mistletoe! The Massey's got this for me last year at Christmas and I think it's so pretty. Well, hope y'all had a good week! We are just planning on relaxing this weekend because starting next week, we have something to do every weekend until Jan. 8th! But we will be traveling for exciting things so it's ok :) Have a good weekend!

'Tis the Season

So tonight was Taylor's last night class for the semester and he was very excited! He only went to class for about 5 minutes and then got to leave! And this is how he celebrates...


Haha! More studying! I feel like I have posted this picture a few times already, but it just goes to show that this is probably what you will see when you walk into our apartment.

And since it is officially the Christmas season, I decided to put up a few of my holiday decorations today when I was home for lunch. I know it's not that cute at the moment, but I'm still rearranging and I need to get our stockings!


I got the candle stands when were in Tulsa last weekend at Pier 1 and I just love them! I feel like they are kind of "Christmasy" but will look good on the mantle the rest of the year since they match the living room. And I'm sure you are wondering, "Where are the candles?". Well last Christmas I bought these really pretty red, cinnamon candles from Pier 1 that had ribbon on them. But sadly, when I got them out of the box this afternoon they had melted and were all deformed :( I guess I will just have to go get some new ones.

I think we are planning on putting up our tree sometime this week so I will be sure and post some pictures! Taylor wants to make homemade donuts while we put up the tree so I am really excited about that. Hope you all are having a good week! We love y'all!

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, we are still alive. Sorry we have been MIA for awhile! We have just been so busy and tired that I haven't taken the time to post. I'll try not to let it happen again!

We hope you all have had a very Happy Thanksgiving and are enjoying spending time with family and friends. Yesterday we headed to Oklahoma to spend Thanksgiving with my family, but due to EXTREMELY strong rain we ended up staying the night in Springfield to be safe. Taylor and I had never seen rain so strong! At one point we were going 15 or 20 mph on I44 with our hazards lights flashing and not sure if we were still on the road. But we found a hotel quickly everything turned out fine. We got up early this morning, finished the drive, then turned right around and headed to my grandma's house. It was nice to spend the afternoon with family and eat very delicious, and way too much, food!

This wasn't our first thanksgiving meal this year though! Last week we decided to have a thanksgiving meal with our "Illinois family". Laine and I split up the dishes and here are some pictures of the evening.

Taylor carving the Turkey!


After the turkey was carved... We had it smoked at a local deli and it was delicious!

Here is the whole "family" after enjoying a yummy meal and watching The Santa Clause!

The boys taking a break from discussing physics...

My new favorite sweet potato casserole recipe!

Stuffing is one of my favorite Thanksgiving meals. This is my friend Stephanie's grandma's recipe.

This is our friend Can. He is a Grad student and is from China! He is really funny and wanted me to take his picture with the turkey. Ha!

We also got to go to the U of I vs. Yale basketball game this week! It was a lot of fun but since the game started late, we ended up leaving with about 9 minutes left since the Illini were most likely going to win :) We cheered loud for you Daniella!

Well we hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week! I will try and keep you all updated on our trip!

Weekend Fun

Hope you all have had a wonderful weekend! Friday night we had poker night over at Laine and Andrew's house and had a lot of fun! Taylor and I haven't played much poker but we both really love card games. We had a lot of fun and Taylor actually ended up winning :) We played until about 1:30 in the morning and by the end of it I was exhausted! I just don't understand how poker players can play for hours and hours and stay focused. So we went to sleep pretty late (early?) that night and had to get up early to go to the stations last tailgate! Woohoo! Let's give 3 cheers for the last tailgate of the season. Haha! They are a lot of fun but it will nice to be able to sleep in on Saturdays now.

After we got back from the tailgate we picked up the house and did some laundry before my family got here! I have been really excited all week for them to come visit since they haven't been here since we moved in July. Even though it was a short visit, we had a really fun time! Lastnight we went and took a tour of the station and then got Olive Garden to go and watched the OK State game at the house. During halftime my dad helped us hang up a bunch of stuff we have needed to hang up for a while!

We got this mantel at Hobby Lobby and I really like it! Now we can hang stocking for Christmas :)

This is a cross I have had for a long time. Eventually we want to get another chair to put in the open space!

And Hobby Lobby has all their decorative crosses on sale so I picked up a few the other day to add to the ones we already had! We don't really want to hang up a lot of stuff since we're not sure how long we will be here, but it just feels homier (not sure if that's a word! ha) with a little on the walls!

My family left about 11:30 this morning and now I am just finishing laundry while Taylor works on homework. We just caught the end of Stepmom and I need to go buy a new box of tissues! That movie makes me cry every time. This evening we are planning on going to a Newcomer's Dessert at the church we have been attending. Laine and Andrew are going as well so it will be nice to meet some people in the church and get to know the pastor and his wife.

We hope you all have a relaxing Sunday! Tomorrow night we are having Thanksgiving dinner with Laine, Andrew, Keith, and our friend Can so I will be sure and post recipes and pictures soon!

U-Rock

The commercial we filmed for the stations new U-Rock 107.9 is done!

So here it is... our big TV debut!! :)

Haha! Taylor was to the right of me, just in case you couldn't tell.

Hope y'all are having a great weekend!

Family, Halloween, and Pie

Hello! We had a really nice weekend visiting with Taylor's family in St. Louis. This was also the Monster Mash Dash race I have mentioned before and it was a lot of fun :) I ended up just running the 5k since we hadn't trained for very long, but everyone else did the 10k. I am happy now that all I did was the 5k because my calves were STILL tight when I woke up this morning! Susan placed 3rd in her division which was awesome! We headed back home Sunday after breakfast and I didn't realized how close St. Louis was to us until this past weekend. Taylor and I both really enjoy St. Louis so I hope that we have more reasons to visit in the future!

So this was our first Halloween married and I have been really excited about setting out a bowl of candy for the kids in our apartment complex! I set out our pumpkin with candy and a cute sign about 4pm just in case any kids came by early. When I went to bring the pumpkin back in the house at 10pm guess how much candy was gone?? NONE! What in the world? I have seen tons of kids in the area and I was so shocked when none of the candy was gone. Oh well, I guess. Taylor said he would be happy to eat the candy! Haha :)

Finally, I wanted to share this grasshopper mint pie recipe with y'all! My roommate Steph made it once our senior year and I loved it. I have been craving it lately so when we went to Walmart Sunday I decided to pickup the stuff to make it! Taylor isn't big on desserts, but he had a piece Sunday night and took a piece for lunch today so I think he likes it!

Grasshopper Mint Pie

• 1(8 oz) pkg cream cheese
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1 (8 oz.) cool whip
• 1 c. chopped keebler fudge shoppe grasshopper cookies
• 3 drops green food coloring
• 1 (6 oz.) chocolate Pie crust

Directions: Mix cream cheese and sugar with electric mixer. Fold in cool whip, chopped cookies and green food colors. Spoon into crust. Refrigerate at least 3 hrs. Garnish w/ extra cookies!

Happy Birthday Keeley!

HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY KEELEY!!!

We just want to say Happy 16th Birthday to my sister Keeley! She passed her drivers test this afternoon, so watch out everyone! If you see this cute yellow bug driving down the road, look out! Haha!

We love you Keeley and are sorry we can't be there to celebrate with you!

Mid-Week Update

The week is half way over! Yay :) This week has been pretty relaxed for us so far. We have just been working, studying, and running in preparation for the race this weekend. I am getting really nervous but I know that eventually I will cross the finish line. Ha! Besides the race, we are really looking forward to spending some time in St. Louis and getting to see Taylor's family. It's always nice when we get to spend time with our families, but always really hard to leave them!

I do have one recipe that I wanted to share with you guys! This is my sweet friend Daniella's bruschetta recipe! It is sooo delicious and simple.

Daniella’s Bruschetta

• 1 loaf sour dough or French bread (sliced ¾-1” thick)
  
• ½ cup olive oil
  
• 8 oz. Ricotta cheese
• 6 oz. Basil pesto
• 4 Roma tomatoes (chopped fine)

Directions per slice:

• 1. Preheat oven to 350
• 2. Brush or dip both sides of bread in olive oil
• 3. Place on baking sheet, bake at 350 for 8 minutes (may turn once)
• 4. Spread with 1 tbsp. Ricotta cheese
• 5. Top cheese with ½ teaspoon basil pesto
• 6. Finally top all with a few pieces of chopped tomatoes
• 7. Pop back in oven for 2 minutes until warm

I do have a prayer request that I would like y'all to remember. This past weekend, in Sand Springs, there was a really horrible wreck near my parents neighborhood. 4 teenage girls, my sister's age, were involved and 2 of them have passed away. My parents know the family of one of the girls who passed away and I was actually the flower girl in their wedding. Everything about the situation is terribly sad so I would love if you could keep these families in your prayers. With Keeley about to start driving, it makes me nervous and reminds me how important it is to be a cautious and responsible driver.

We hope you all have a great rest of the week!

PS: Just for my records... I just beat Taylor 3 to 1 in Wheel-of-Fortune! That never happens!!

5 Months

So today we have been married for 5 months! It feels like so much longer :) So much has happened in only 5 months, I can hardly believe it. Taylor and I have never been good at remembering anniversaries so I was impressed when we realized yesterday that today was the 22nd. We decided to go try out a new restaurant tonight called The Great Impasta. It was pretty good and I'm sure we will be going back to try out some of their other options! After dinner we went and got ice cream to celebrate and now we are at home relaxing and watching a movie!

Well, not much else to say tonight but we hope y'all have a wonderful weekend and we love you!