Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Top 10 Posts of 2014

I can't believe it is New Year's Eve already!  After being gone Wednesday-Sunday last week for Christmas, we are looking forward to staying home for New Year's this year.  

Today I am sharing my top 10 most popular posts from the past year:











I did a lot of work in our bedroom over the past year, and a few of those posts were some of my post popular of the year.  A wedding post even made the list!  

I hope the new year brings you health and happiness in everything you do!  I'm hoping to get more organized this year and finally complete some of the hundreds of little projects I've started and not finished, or have thought about doing, but haven't done.

What are your plans for New Year's Eve?  Did you make a New Year's resolution?

Monday, December 29, 2014

Christmas 2014 Recap

I was so busy enjoying all of our time with family over Christmas, that I didn't take any pictures.  Seriously.  Who am I?  I was able to steal a few from family members, thankfully.  

I did have a chance to make some Christmas cookies and snap a couple of pictures:

Oreo Balls

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
We had a busy Christmas time, as we always do.  Kevin worked on Christmas Eve and then we headed to his Dad's to have his Christmas there.  Then we all headed out to dinner.  We then headed to my parents' to have Christmas with them and my sister.

Christmas Eve dinner
Christmas morning we headed over to my Grandma's for a big family Christmas party.  That afternoon we went to Kevin's Grandma's for a family Christmas party there.  That night we went to Kevin's mom's to have dinner and Christmas.  My mother-in-law got this awesome picture of all of the dogs wearing the Christmas bandannas that she made for them:

Admiral (our dog) is the one in the middle.  Everyone says he is posing and smiling haha
The day after Christmas I went shopping with my mom and sister and stocked up on wrapping paper, tissue paper, ribbon, and all other things Christmas.  That night, my dad and I headed to the casino.  We gambled for about seven hours and I only lost $3.00!  I call that a win in my book!

My mom sent me this picture of Admiral and Rambo (their dog) while we were gone at the casino.  They were just hanging out!


Saturday was another family Christmas party with Kevin's side of the family.  That night was low-key and we just hung out with my mom and sister and played some games.  We headed back home on Sunday to watch the Lions game and put away some of our gifts.

I hope you had a great Christmas!

You can read about our Christmas tree HERE and our Christmas decorations HERE.

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Our Christmas Home Tour 2014

I love reading/seeing home tours from other bloggers, so I thought I'd share our Christmas 2014 home tour with you today.

We will start with the outside of our house.  I LOVE hanging things on our doors, and luckily I have plenty of doors to fill with things.  Our front door (that we never use) has fun jingle bells, our main door has a beautiful real wreath, and our back door has an "L" that my sister made for us last year.  I also have a little flag holder in our front yard with a fun Christmas flag on it, that my mom gave me this year.





 I don't do much in our kitchen to decorate.  I just add some Christmas towels and a rug in front of the sink.  I added a fun santa to our wine holder and I hung a wreath Christmas card holder in our kitchen/dining area.


In our bedroom, I just added a fun little Christmas pillow (from Target).


The main area that I decorate is our living room, because that is where we spend most of our time.





pillow from Target




ornaments made my sister

That's our little Christmas home tour, hope you enjoyed it!  Did you share your Christmas decorations on your blog?  Leave the link in the comments so I can check it out!

After Kevin gets out of work today, we are heading to see our families for the start of our Christmas celebrations!

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

O Christmas Tree, Why Do You Cause Me So Much Stress?

Setting up and decorating this year's Christmas tree was quite the event.  Let me explain.  We have a fake tree.  I grew up having real trees, but it's a lot of work to have a real tree, and I am perfectly happy with a fake one.  Anyway.  We keep our tree stored in our upstairs attic storage space.  So, the day after Thanksgiving, I hauled the tree out, one section at a time.   I pulled it through the little attic area and downstairs to our living room.  Getting it out of the attic and hauling it downstairs seemed like enough for me, so I thought maybe we would have a "natural" themed tree this year haha.


I took a break from the tree and hauled out our tubs of Christmas decorations from the attic and put away all of our fall decorations.


After seeing all of the Christmas decorations, I was excited again to decorate the tree.  So I started with the lights.  If you noticed in the first picture, I put our tree in a corner between our couch and love seat.  It's really the only spot we can put it in our living room because this year, we have an extra chair (you can kind of see it in the photo above) in our living room and that is where I normally put the tree.  The tree looks fine in that corner, but it makes it really difficult to decorate, because it is not easy to get the lights around the entire tree in that small space.  

So like I said, I started putting the lights on.  I had a few strands on, when all of a sudden half of one strand decided to go out.  I already had part of that strand on the tree, so I didn't want to take them off (because I'm stubborn).  So I went light by light and found the one that was causing the problem and fixed it.


I got the lights working and eventually got all the lights on the tree.  Everything was working great.  I then put all the ornaments on and I also did some bead garland this year to add a little more to the tree.  I put my sparkley snowflake topper (from Target) on top and admired my work.  A few minutes later, this happened:


The bottom lights went out!  I couldn't believe it.  I already had all the ornaments and garland on, so I couldn't just pull the lights off, I'd have to take the ornaments and garland off too.  And I wasn't about to do that if I didn't have to.  So I messed around the with lights and got them working again.  I think it is the plug on that strand that caused the problem, so I'll throw that strand away when I take the tree down.  But since that day, they have worked fine, so I'm leaving it!

I finally got the lights all working and I really love our tree.  It's nothing fancy, but I love it.  The ornaments are mine and Kevin's from when we were growing up, and some that we have received since we've been together.


This photo is from the day after Thanksgiving.  Tomorrow I'll be showing off all of our Christmas decor, along with more photos of our tree, which now has presents under it.

Do you ever get stressed when decorating your tree?

Monday, December 22, 2014

Lately....

Since I didn't show up here at all last week, I thought I should do a post about what I've been up to lately.

- I'm slowly getting used to my new schedule with my new job, so hopefully the blog won't suffer much longer!

- This past weekend was lots of fun.  It included a gender reveal party for my friend Melissa and her husband Justin, a MSU basketball game, and wrapping presents.

 


My mom saw us on TV and took a pic and sent it to me haha

Admiral was watching me wrap presents and couldn't stay awake!
- I have this week off from work, so I'm hoping to get out a few blog posts that I've been meaning to share, including our Christmas home tour.  Those are some of my favorite posts to read so I can't wait to share mine.

- Today I plan on baking all of my Christmas treats.  This week I'm also getting my new car starter installed, my oil changed, and a hair cut...talk about productive!

- I'm loving the fact that we don't have any snow right now.  I know that is going to change in the next couple of days, but it's been nice without it for awhile.

What have you been up to lately?  Are you ready for Christmas?




Bella And The City

Friday, December 12, 2014

Friday Favorites: Christmas Treats

Happy Friday!!!  After having a few busy weekends in a row, I'm looking forward to a productive and relaxing weekend.  I'm pretty excited that Christmas is coming up, but time is running out for me to get everything ready.  I still have some decorations to put up, shopping to do, and all of the presents to wrap.  I also need to do some baking, so today I'm sharing five yummy treats on my "to make" list this Christmas.

ONE.  How cute are these Candy Cane Hearts from One Little Project At A Time? And they seem pretty easy to make too.
Candy Cane Hearts!
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TWO.  I made these Peppermint Chocolate Cookies from Two Twenty One last year and they are AMAZING!  I'll definitely be making them again this year.
Peppermint Chocolate Cookies
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THREE. I have seen these all over Pinterest, and I think they are super cute and healthy option for Christmas.  I'm thinking about making them to bring as a snack for some holiday parties.
How cute is this! Grapes, Bananas, Strawberries, and Marshmallows :)
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FOUR. This Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn Munch from Yellow Brick Road looks addictive and delicious.
Chocolate Peppermint Popcorn Munch
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FIVE.  I will be consuming lots of hot chocolate this winter and these giant Peppermint Marshmallows from Barns and Noodles will be the perfect addition.  And maybe some kahlua ;)

Homemade Chocolate Peppermint Marshmallows

So this list really shows that I love peppermint, but it's just so good.  My husband doesn't really like peppermint, which means more for me!

What are your favorite treats to make this holiday season?




Linking up with Momfessionals for Friday Favorites!
Momfessionals

Monday, December 8, 2014

Weekend in Cincinnati/Indianapolis

After I got out of work on Friday, Kevin and I headed down to Cincinnati to his brother and sister-in-law's apartment for the weekend.  

We headed to the casino Saturday morning and then went to lunch at Pompilios where I ate way too much delicious Italian food.  Later that afternoon we headed to Indianapolis for the Big Ten Championship football game.  We ate dinner at Mo's in downtown Indianapolis and then headed to the game.

It was my first time in Indianapolis and my first time at Lucas Oil Stadium, so I was pretty excited.  The game was Ohio State v Wisconsin.  Since I'm from Michigan, there was no way I was cheering for Ohio State (sorry to all of my Ohio friends).  However, Ohio State killed Wisconsin, so that was disappointing.  Even though the team I was cheering for lost, I still had a great time.  We had great seats, and the energy at the game so much fun!



 It was fun to see the OSU marching band do their thing!







And an awesome photo bomb





Bella And The City