It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As promised, here is Christmas post #1.

 One weekend when my parents came to visit they bought us a Christmas tree!

 I was soo excited to put it up I almost didn’t make it until after Thanksgiving, but thanks to Leslie I did. We successfully put up our tree and hung our pretty ornaments on it! My parents brought some of our “special” ornaments and I was excited to add them to the tree, as well.

One thing I’ve learned since moving to Louisiana is that people in Natchitoches love all things Christmas. The downtown area is covered in Christmas lights and every weekend from the end of November until the New Year there are Christmas events and an impressive firework show (yes, EVERY weekend!).

 The first weekend of December is the BIG Christmas festival and my parents came to venture into the madness with Leslie and myself. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as people said it would be, but perhaps it was because of the rainy weather. There were several parades, a craft show, and of course, a huge fireworks show (coordinated with Christmas music).

An alligator pulling Santa!

Parade!

They're riding IN a duck! So cool.

The Christmas excitement continued with several Christmas parties! Our Sunday School class had a party at a restaurant that we had to ourselves. We played Dirty Santa, chatted amongst ourselves, ate some good food, and ended the night with a game of Cranium. Leslie and I have been very blessed by the sweet people in our class and have made some very good friends J. The members of my counseling skills class also grew very close this semester and our professor had us over to her house for a Christmas party! We snacked and played games and just enjoyed each other’s company. Skills was by far my favorite class! We got to practice all of the counseling skills we were learning on our classmates in class and in the school’s counseling rooms.

I’ve also been blessed to volunteer with a fantastic group of ladies this semester. We had a little Christmas get-together as well (Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take pictures during much of this Christmas excitement). We had a cookie/baked good exchange, played several new-to-me Christmas games, and enjoyed catching up with everyone. There are a bunch of ladies that volunteer, but each of us only works one day a week. That means it’s only during get-togethers like this one, or during meetings that we’re all together. I’m still getting to know everyone, and I’m the youngest one working there, but I really enjoy being around these ladies!

We have quite the Christmas adventure coming up, and I will hopefully have lots of pictures to share at the end of it!   

Our Thanksgiving Adventure (a little late)

So I know Thanksgiving was quite a while ago, but I've been meaning to blog about our trip since we got home and it just hasn't happened! To make up for it, I'll write two blogs because we've been having a lot of Christmas fun between Leslie's thesis, both of our work, and both of our final papers and tests! I officially finished with all of that yesterday, so I'm planning to take a few days to relax before even thinking about doing anything productive. Leslie still has to give some finals, do treatments for his baseball players, and take one final himself, BUT his thesis has been approved and he is set to start his research when we return from Christmas break. There is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Back to Thanksgiving! We made the 10 hour trip to Reform, AL on Sunday after church and arrived in time to eat dinner with Leslie's dad and brother at Jack's. Over the next days we were lucky enough to go to Tuscaloosa and spend time with friends who were still in town because of classes. We also got to eat at some of our favorite places!

We spent the week at Leslie's parents' house relaxing and hanging out with his family- and of course this little one, Belle. She's such a cutie, but very vicious as you can tell by the picture of her "wrestling" with Leslie.




 There are lots of kitties that hang out at the house which made me a very happy girl. They are so cute, but I couldn't convince Leslie to let me snatch one!

This one was relaxing on the car when it was time for us to leave...
She didn't even want to get off when we started driving!

We also got to go see the lodge that Leslie's dad works at one day. Leslie has obviously been there a lot, but I'd never gotten to see it before! I thought this guy was pretty cool, but I'm kinda glad he was stuffed!

 And Leslie and his dad had a friendly father-son game of pool in the new game room!

Back at the house, we cut up a tasty pineapple to snack on and learned a very cool trick! You can twist the top off of it!! Who knew? (Okay, so maybe a lot of people because it tells you right on the directions that come on the pineapple, but none of us knew!)

On Thanksgiving day we went to a get-together with Leslie's dad's side of the family for lunch. We had a great time hanging out with them and we stuffed ourselves sufficiently with some delicious food. We hung out there until it was time to stuff ourselves again at dinner with Leslie's mom's side of the family. It was a lot of fun, but I could kick myself for not taking A SINGLE PICTURE on Thanksgiving day! Thankfully, even though it was our first Thanksgiving as a married couple it was not our first Thanksgiving to get to spend together. However, I WILL be taking a lot of pictures on Christmas to make up for it!

And there will hopefully be several Christmas blogs to make up for my lack of blogging lately :)

Fall Fun

October has been super busy for both me and Leslie! Leslie took his comps last week and is working hard on his thesis, and the education department has a National Accreditation team coming in this afternoon that we've been busy preparing for. Hopefully things will slow down for both of us soon!

Even with all our crazyness, we've had time for some fall fun! Pumpkin carving was a must every fall for my family, so I decided Leslie needed some more pumpkin carving experience.

We were quite proud of our little jack-o-lantern!

When we got a cold snap, Leslie made some delicious chili for dinner :)

Mom made two prints of all of our wedding pictures and got albums so she and dad could have one and Leslie and I could have one. Unfortunately, the pictures were all mixed up and most were printed 4 times instead of two! It took a ton of time to get them all sorted, so I decided to take a little break from them before putting them in the albums :)

I finally found some fall-ish flowers that suited me, and two sweet ladies from church brought us some pretty roses when we joined :)

So, overall we're both doing great! I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween!

Fall Break

Last week we had Monday and Tuesday off for Fall Break and it was wonderful! Leslie's mom and grandmother came Friday night and took us to eat at our favorite place in town, Hana :). On Saturday, Leslie had to work most of the day. I went with Leslie's mom and grandmother to Front Street to the "Return to the 50s" classic car show. I'm not much of a car person, but they sure knew a lot! The weather was wonderful and it was fun walking around and looking.

Leslie was able to meet us for lunch and we ate at a place called Papa's downtown. It's attached to Mama's, and it's owned by a husband and wife. They share a kitchen, but Mama's is an oyster house and Papa's is a bit more sandwichy. We love going there for their fried onions and jalapenos!

After lunch, Leslie had to get back to get ready for the football game. Since he had to be at the game, we decided that we would go watch! We ended up losing, but it was a very close game!

We all got to eat dinner together after the game, and they stayed for church and lunch on Sunday.

Baseball decided to take part in the Fall Break, so Leslie didn't have to work AT ALL on Monday and didn't have to go in on Tuesday until the evening! We slept in on Monday and then decided to have a picnic lunch by the river. We were itching to use our adorable picnic basket and blanket that we had gotten from friends for our wedding! The weather was wonderful and we had time to relax and read and feed lots of ducks.

After that, we went to Chili's and to watch Courageous with some sweet friends from our Sunday School class!

It was a great weekend and break, but it went by too fast, as usual!





Some Pinteresting Dinners and Other Craftings

I know I've been terrible about posting on here lately, but Leslie and I have mostly just been working and busy with school stuff lately. Football season has officially started which means that Leslie is now going to be working all of the games as well as practice and he'll be traveling some with the football team until baseball starts. He had a work-free weekend for Labor Day and we got to spend it with my parents! We had a really great time being lazy, eating good food, and watching some Alabama football!

I feel like we've had the same list of things on our menu lately, so I decided to look to Pinterest for some new dinner ideas this week! Both were very successful :)

The first thing I tried was stuffed bell peppers. They're stuffed with ground beef and LOTS of cheese! I love peppers, so I really enjoyed this. I think Leslie approved, too!

Still working on the picture taking thing

If you click this picture, it'll take you to the recipe! (hopefully)

The second thing I tried was bacon wrapped chicken. It was a big hit with Leslie, and it was pretty darn tasty if I might say so myself :)

I forgot about the picture taking part until we were almost done!

Next I want to try stuffed jalapenos! Maybe I'll get into this cooking thing yet, haha.

I've also done some other Pinterest-inspired projects lately. I made something to go above our bed because it was too empty for me! It still needs some work, because it didn't stick so well, but here it is

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Romans 12:12

I printed out the words in a font I found online and then I cut them all out of scrapbook paper. I glued them to cake plates because they were much cheaper than canvases, but they seemed to bend on me! I need to try to flatten them out again.

Next, I took a pretty frame that we bought and never used and put a little Pinterest inspiration on it, too!

The words are the lyrics to "Lost in This Moment"- the song we danced to at our wedding. All of my wedding flowers are in Texas still, so I dried a rose from a bouquet Leslie gave me a few weeks ago :)

I also found a tutorial online for how to make a dress out of an old tank top and some fabric! My first attempt wasn't too great, but a belt covers it up nicely, haha. Unfortunately, Leslie says it's a bit see-through so I'm going to have to get a slip or figure out how to line it before I can wear it out!

I'm currently working on a skirt, but I'm finding the zipper part to be a little tricky. Hopefully I'll finish it before too long!

That's about all for now! Hopefully I won't wait so long to post again :)

Feeling Crafty and Other Happenings

Football camp has officially started for Leslie which means he's working from 6am- at least 10pm Monday-Saturday. This leaves me a bit lonely and very bored until work starts for me (which thankfully is next Thursday). Even once work starts, I'll have some time to sit around the house, so I'm very glad that my sewing skills seem to have improved! In middle school I attempted to make a stuffed dog that the BFF affectionately named roadkill... My sewing skills really couldn't go anywhere but up :)

So my two favorite projects so far involved button up shirts from Goodwill! I got the idea for both on pinterest (surprise surprise)! My first shirt of choice was a very manly shirt that I found for $3.99.

All you really had to do was cut off the top part, measure and piece together a waistband, pin it so it was a bit ruffly and was the same length, and sew! I skipped the cutesy little tie that was in the tutorial I used, and I ended up using a button instead of elastic because I didn't leave room for my waistband to stretch- oops!

Waistband and the bottom part of the shirt for the skirt part!

My skirt!  

I realized yesterday that all of my cutesy little bags to take to my books to class in had been left in Texas. Sure, I have a perfectly fine backpack, but that's not the point here. So I decided I had to find a bag on pinterest that I could make! I quickly came across a bag that was made from a button up shirt, and although there was no tutorial, I had such good luck with my last button up that I decided to try it!

I forgot to take a picture of the original shirt, but this one was thankfully found in the ladies' section :). When I got home and cut up the shirt I decided it was a bit too thin to carry my books around in, so I lined it with some white material I had laying around. Then I just sewed around the edges and added some handles and made a cutesy little flower, and ta-da! Bag!

Here are the links I used for my crafty fun:

Skirt from a men's shirt: http://www.craftstylish.com/item/44969/how-to-make-a-belted-skirt-from-a-mens-dress-shirt

Surprisingly easy little flowers: http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding-challenge-2010-fabric-flower

In other news, I was able to go back to Tuscaloosa last weekend to graduate! Our graduation was postponed because of the tornado that hit on April 27th.

April 27th was a Wednesday, and the tornado hit around 5:00 that evening. My roommates and I were very blessed to be some of the only remaining people in Tuscaloosa with power, but we were without cable and internet, so we were shocked to hear from others just how much had been destroyed. We found out several days later that finals had been canceled. School was over- graduation postponed. We were done with college. And that was it. Most of us stayed in Ttown to volunteer however we could, and we were very blessed that our church family at Calvary found lots of places to put us to work. In the evenings, we all got together at our college minister's house for dinner, fellowship, and prayer. It was a strange time, and it seemed as if everything normal had stopped and everyone was doing what they could to help. We had tons of people coming into town to help clean up, to donate blood, or to donate items and food. There were people from other states who brought truckloads or who decided that they would come to stay for as long as they needed to because they felt the Lord calling them to help. When I went home, my heart still wanted to be in Tuscaloosa. I felt like I should be going back again to finish school- but it was over.

I'm so glad that I was able to go back to graduate and that a lot of my family was able to be there :) It was a very nice ceremony and the families of the 6 students who died in the tornado were there to accept their diplomas. It was all certainly an experience that I will never forget!

Feeling Crafty- My First Project

Now that Leslie has gone back to work, I've had plenty of time to be bored. I don't do sitting around the house well, and now that I'm addicted to Pinterest, I couldn't help but feel crafty! There are just too many cute projects not to try any of them. After lots of browsing and thinking "I'll do this eventually" and "If only I had a sewing machine" (or knew how to use one) I finally found a project I could (and really needed to) do! So project number one was re-covering my Toms:

I was really lucky and found this pair of Toms at TJ Maxx for much cheaper than they're normally sold AND in my size! The only problem was that the only color they had was tan and that the soles were a bit messed up so they couldn't be washed. This led to some icky looking Toms pretty quickly!

I was super excited and set on spending my day on this project, so I was more than a bit disappointed when I got to Wal-Mart and found out that they were re-doing their fabric section and had very slim pickings. After wandering around Wal-Mart asking strangers where I could buy fabric in town (which apparently is nowhere) I ended up with this:

I hated to cut up the cute little people clothes, but they were each less than $3 and I was needing a craft. I used this tutorial to figure out how to do it, and it turned out to be pretty simple! I will say that other fabric would've been much easier and that putting denim on the toes of my shoes made them a bit more crunched up than they were before. My Toms are not as comfortable as they were before, but I'm hoping they'll stretch out nicely! I think they would've been cuter had I used more than 3 materials and if I hadn't had to cover the backs of the shoes (that's where all my holes were), but they look much better than they did before!

Ta da!

I've convinced myself I want to try sewing, and I may be getting my mom's old sewing machine at the end of the week! After looking at some tutorials, I'm not feeling too confident about my abilities (and I remembered how much I hated pinning and measuring and cutting things) but I will hopefully have a few successful projects to help me get into it! If you have any project suggestions for beginners, I'd love to hear them!

On The Road Again

Leslie and I have done lots of traveling lately! We just got back from a great trip to the beach with my parents to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. Thankfully, Leslie and I were able to stay 5 days so we'd had plenty of time to forget the 9 hour drive there before we had to make it again! While we were there we spent lots of time relaxing on the beach (we had great weather), ate lots of good food, and even found some treasures on the beach! It was a fun trip, but I think we're both glad to be home.



Eating at one of our beach favorites- Captain Anderson's



Enjoying the sunset on the beach

Sand Dollars and Shark Teeth we found!

Dad and I have gone deep sea fishing almost every summer for a long time now. Leslie got to join us last year and usually my BFF Katie accompanies us, but she now has a big girl job and couldn't join us this trip. BUT mom got brave and decided to join us this year! She was a trooper and baited her own hook with squid guts and caught quite a few fish!

Our fish!

Our fish were much more impressive than the ones we've caught in our backyard...

But our lake is just as pretty!

Cane River/Lake

Leaving Florida (and having fun with Instagram)

Now we're at home for a while until our trek to Alabama for my graduation! Leslie has camps to work and I'm planning on keeping myself busy volunteering, finding crafty things to try on pinterest, and re-reading the Harry Potter series. I know, very productive.

Hope everyone has a great week!