Christmas, part one

Matt and I celebrated our first married Christmas together this past weekend (Christmas just the two of us). We spent most of the weekend just lounging and relaxing. Saturday night we exchanged a very small gift, kind of like Christmas Eve. I got him some licorice which he loves and he got me a 'mouthguard' thing for my little nalgene bottle which turned out to be too big since I have a small bottle, so we have to return it.

Sunday morning Matt went to church while I lazied around the apartment. When he got home I couldn't stand it anymore so we exchanged gifts. I got him a container of "Jack Daniels" coffee, some string pegs for his acoustic guitar, and the biggest gift was a new case for his Gretsch guitar. His Gretsch is one of his favorite guitars and he got it for a steal but without a case. So anytime we travel with it we have to be soo careful but now it has its very own case! I had to steal his guitar one night to take it to the music store to find a case and that was fun because all of the employees there were in awe of the awesome guitar :)

Matt got me a new water bottle for work (so I wouldn't spill on myself anymore!), the new Harry Potter book, and a big gift card for Ann Taylor Loft! So exciting since I don't go shopping anymore and I have been dying to go. I can't believe I actually get to go there and buy new clothes. We are going to go up to the Dawsonville outlets after Christmas to try to get the most of the gift card.

Sunday evening Matt cooked our delicious dinner of steak and grilled veggies (pictures at bottom). We also had some whole wheat french bread that I made with olive oil to dip in, and a bottle of Clos du Bois - yum!! We finished off the evening by driving around and looking at Christmas lights.

In other money saving news - we just went to Publix where I used my grocery game list to purchase $45 worth of groceries for $16! It included two large boxes of Bisquick, 5 boxes of gallon Ziploc bags, 4 cans of del monte veggies, two boxes of Betty Crocker potatoes, Domino sugar, and a huge thing of Maxwell House coffee. I think that's everything.

Tomorrow night will be spent with Matt's parents and John and Stephanie and then the next two days with all of the Moffitts for Christmas! We are very excited about seeing everyone and actually haven't seen John & Steph since our wedding day.

Oh and today we found out that the Harlans are having a baby GIRL!! So very excited for them :)

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Matt cooking and smoking up the kitchen
Yum!
The bread I made was HUGE.. this is about half of it
Bread, olive oil & yummy wine - in our crystal :)

I need a sippy cup..

I guess lots has happened since my last post. Sunday was Christmas Music at church and it was amazing this year! This was only my second year seeing it but it gave me chills the whole time. It was especially fun seeing Matt and both of his parents up there. Afterwards we headed to Matt's aunt & uncle's house, along with his parents and some other friends of his aunt & uncle's that we had not met before. We had lots of cheese, crackers, bread and olive oil, and delicious barbecue that Matt's uncle smoked on his big green egg all morning. We were stuff by the time we left.

We originally had driven from home to Buckhead to Virginia Highlands, back to Buckhead and back home where we got ready for our next trip of the day. We got changed out of church clothes, got our twice baked mashed potatoes (I couldn't get them back in the skins) and headed out to Snellville for a potluck with some good friends. It was so much fun to see everyone who I don't get to see very often. The boys fried a turkey outside while the girls socialized and played with the 2 month old baby (so cute) and we also ate a ton of fried pickles thanks to Matt. It was such a fun night and I wish we could see everyone more often.

Ok then it was on to Monday, where nothing too exciting happened. Except we watched a Charlie Brown Christmas special and Matt fell asleep on the couch at 8:30 so we went to bed at 9, nice. Tuesday was a funny day at work, mostly because at 8:30am I spilled my cup of coffee all over myself. And then at 11:30am I spilled my cup of water all over myself. This tells you just how clumsy I am! Tuesday evening I headed to Meg's house to watch the Biggest Loser finale which is always exciting, and found out that the next "season" starts January 6th, great!

Now it's Wednesday and my brother is staying the night with us. Matt and I cooked a yummy lasagna and tonight we are watching the new Muppet Christmas, I love those guys. Hope you all are enjoying your week leading up to Christmas!

Theme of the week: food & babies

What a week! It has been a fun one. Of course I already told you I had Tuesday off, which always makes for a good week. Thursday I did a little more shopping and found some fun things at Target.. of course I bought more than I had planned on. Thursday night Matt's parents came over for dinner! We made a pot roast in the crock pot with carrots & potatoes along with lemon tarts for dessert. It was nice to finally invite them over when the apartment is all clean and it's the holidays :) Then we watched The Office and the episodes have been so good lately!

Last night Chrissy, Chad, Lindsey & Brian came over for chocolate fondue and a tradition we are now starting of exchanging ornaments at Christmas. Lindsey, Chrissy & I are all close friends from college and all three of us got married this year so we had a fun first married Christmas together. The fondue was delicious and Matt and I got two fun ornaments. We also played Apples to Apples which is of course the greatest game ever.

And also this week, in keeping with the theme in my life that everyone is pregnant, I found out that three more of my friends are having babies! I think the count is up to 9 right now.. kind of unbelievable. I will have more friends who have babies in 2009 than friends who got married in 2008.. didn't think it would happen so quickly. But I am very excited for everyone! I guess I will have to budget for a lot of baby presents this year.. can't resist buying those tiny, cute things.

Now it's Saturday and Matt is at choir practice this morning until noon. I went for a run and am going to start on my twice baked potatoes for the potluck I am going to tomorrow. Tomorrow is busy as well with Christmas music at our church, followed by bbq at Matt's uncle's house, followed by the potluck.. I'll post on all of that after the fact, hopefully with pictures.
Today looks like a nice, relaxing Saturday to spend with my husband.
So happy Saturday! :)

Flex Day: My favorite day of the week

Today is my flex day off of work. My company started letting us work a flex schedule about 2 or 3 months ago. It is basically a 9/80 schedule: you work 80 hours in 9 days and have one day off, over the span of a two week period. The only caveat is that we don't do flex time in a two week pay period when there is a holiday, so Christmas, New Years and MLK day will kill the next few weeks worth of flex time but we still have time off for the holidays. I LOVE having time off of work, so today is one of my favorite days.

My morning started with sleeping in until 8 and Matt left for his German final at 7:45. Around 9 I was about to take a shower when I noticed a big spider in the shower! (Not uncommon in our apartment). I had a lot of errands to run and didn't want to wait for Matt to get home to kill the spider, so I ran my errands unshowered. haha. I think the clean clothes, winter hat, and tiny amount of makeup made me decently presentable. I am winding down the end of my Christmas shopping with maybe only one or two more things left to buy, it feels good.

Matt came home after his final to have lunch with me and kill the spider of course. So now I'm all showered, the apartment is still clean (dishes & laundry this morning), and I have the rest of the day ahead of me to figure out what to do. I am getting my haircut later today which I am very excited about, it has been four months since the last cut. I think I will spend some of this afternoon working on photo books. I like to use the website www.picaboo.com to make photo books and Matt and I want to make one of our trip to San Francisco and one of our honeymoon. They can be time consuming and if I don't start soon I never will.

Happy Flex Day!

Our first Christmas tree!

Before I post about the Christmas tree, I wanted to post this photo of a sunrise at work this past week. I got off the elevator and turned to walk into work and this is what I saw (looking down 75S to downtown Atlanta with cloud cover - sorry it is blurry):

Anyway, on to the post. So far the things in life that have made me feel like an adult (hm, besides getting married, working, etc), are handing out candy to children on Halloween and having my very own, live Christmas tree. Last night Matt and I headed out to find a tree that would fit in our little apartment. We called Big John's to see if they had any short trees (Home Depot didn't) and they did so we headed over. We ended up picking the first tree that I saw that I liked which is 5 feet tall, a perfect fit. We put the tree in the trunk of my Civic (it fit, no need to tie it on top! except for the needles in the car now), and headed to Walmart to buy a tree stand and some lights. Followed by Trader Joe's for some yummy wine, cheese & bread.

We came home and got the tree set up and I put all of the lights on, 2 strands of colored lights. I grew up with colored lights but Matt wanted white lights. He let me do my thing and I think he still wishes they were white, oh well. It is nice to have such a short tree because I could decorate the whole thing without having to stand on a chair. I got out my little collection of ornaments and we placed those on the tree along with these little handmade bluebirds that Matt's mom made for our rehearsal dinner. We even had an angel to put on the top thanks to Matt's mom who was going to throw this one away! After we put up the tree we watched Elf and I even was awake until 10:45 which hasn't happened in a while on a Friday night! (tree pictures below)

Today has been "get things done" day. I set my alarm at 8 to get up and begin completely cleaning the apartment because we have a few guests coming over this week. We haven't had people over in a long time so you can imagine what the apartment looks like. I have also cooked a lot today - boiled and cut up 2lbs of chicken, made some bread dough, and am baking oatmeal butterscotch cookies right now (for potluck at church tomorrow). The goal for the potluck was for me to make a dessert I already had all of the ingredients for. Of course I didn't have butter. My wonderful husband headed over to Kroger and brought back 3 packages of butter :) Later I will make some pizza dough so we can have barbecue chicken pizza tonight. Busy, busy, busy. I feel productive though.

Oh! And a nice surprise was that while Matt and I were eating lunch our wedding album was delivered by the mailman to our door! It is so exciting to finally have this in our possession and it looks amazing. Our photographer was Rebecca Cipolla (www.rebeccacipollaphotography.com) and I would recommend her to everyone for photos. Especially if you need any sort of baby photos, she does the most amazing job, I know Matt and I will continue to use her for portraits in the future. I am surprised to receive this photo album today because she just had a baby on Tuesday. She either mailed this right before that or right after, quite a trooper.

Anyway, on to the tree pictures :)

Putting the tree in the stand.. the tree was almost too small for it!

Putting on the lights

All done!

Living room view of finished tree (almost clean room!)

Back to the routine

It has been a good week so far. Monday night I had a lot to get done and magically, it all got done! Including going running (hooray for winter running clothes) and eating a delicious dinner of salmon, wild rice, sugar snap peas and a bottle of wine from our visit to Clarkesville (by the way, the dinner cost all of about $2 to make and fed us each 2 or 3 times)! Last night I had a board meeting at the Wesley Foundation which is always good to go to. I was very involved there in college and now am able to contribute back by donations and being on the board which feels good. I also helped them out today with their natural gas and getting a lower rate for them to help with the budget (even if I did tell them to go with a competitor of my company.. oh well). Mary and I carpooled down there together = haven't seen her in a while so that was good, and we saved a little gas, good for the environment :)

Tonight Matt is at choir practice so I've been piddling around the apartment getting a few things done (dishes, clean out fridge, laundry, etc). I also prepped a meal for cooking tomorrow. We are going to Matt's mom's Christmas show tomorrow night. She is an elementary school music teacher so we are going to see the show and Matt is going to run the sound. Which leaves us almost no time for dinner. I thought it would be a good night to finally use my crock pot which has been in the closet for 4 months. I have some good crock pot recipe books so I found a recipe with ingredients that I had in the apartment and ended up making sloppy joes! Yum, I haven't had those in a loong time, and I've definitely never made them. The only problem is I halved the recipe and it will barely fill up the crock pot so I'm worried it might burn or something. But Matt will be home tomorrow and can keep an eye on it and start it around lunch time.

So nothing too exciting to report on. Oh and today I received in my email the proof for our wedding announcement which is running in this Sunday's edition of the Augusta Chronicle:

Thanksgiving, part 2

Matt and I returned tonight from a whirlwind trip. As I mentioned before, our second part of Thanksgiving was spent in Tennessee. We woke up bright and early yesterday (Saturday) morning and headed to Clarkesville, TN. We continued to listen to Twilight on CD which was great. The drive was about 4.5 hours.. Clarkesville is four miles from the Kentucky border. Matt's parents were there as well as his grandmother, Mimi, and his uncle Eddie. The house is Mimi's sister's & her husband (Chris & Woodson). It is actually a farm that has been in their family and Chris & Woodson are now living there and leasing out the farmland.

Matt and I walked around the area to see the things he has been telling me about. We went to the tree on the property where the family carves their initials. Last Christmas Matt carved his initials with a spot waiting for mine, so we completed that :) We also went to see where Mimi's brother Woody's store used to be and also walked along the railroad tracks for a while.

That afternoon, we went to a local winery with Matt's parents and his uncle Eddie. The winery was very fun and we tried about 10 wines and left with a dozen bottles that Matt's dad bought.

As to be expected, we ate a ton of delicious food. Lunch was barbecue and dinner was amazing chicken stuffing, green beans, corn, rolls, cranberry sauce & sweet potatoes. Oh and I forgot to mention that football was on the TV all afternoon which I got incredibly tired of, but I did get to see Georgia Tech beat Georgia for the first time since 2000! That was awesome. Dinner was so much fun with the 8 of us sitting around the dinner table. Woodson and everyone else were hilarious and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. My stomach hurt and I was definitely crying from laughing so hard. After all of the good food, Matt and I ended up passing out earlier than the 'old folks' and went to bed in our separate twin beds (haha) upstairs around 8:30 (central time.. at least it was 9:30est!).

We woke up around 8 today (nice, long sleep) and ate another huge meal for breakfast. After another walk around the property, we left for Atlanta once again, having only been in Clarkesville for about 24 hours. The drive back was about 5 hours due to the traffic, but we enjoyed listening to Twilight in the car. We had to return the book before we had finished it so we actually read it out loud to each other this evening which was fun :)

Thus ends our first married Thanksgiving!

Matt carving my initials (it was too high for me to reach)

All done!

Us in front of the initials.. look above Matt's headWalking along the railroad tracks
The house from one of the fields

Thanksgiving in Augusta

First of all, one day I promise I'll make this blog actually look inviting. I've always been pretty computer savvy but since I have never done anything like this before, I haven't figured it out quickly and I haven't had the time to try yet. Kind of low on the list of things to do :)

So far this Thanksgiving break has been great. Matt and I headed to Augusta at about 3:30 on Friday (I got out of work early) but due to traffic, the drive took us 3.5 hours (usually takes 2)! We got home about 7pm and had dinner with the family. Thursday was spent with the house smelling delicious as all of the food prepared for our lunch at 2. We had 9 total: me, Matt, my mom, John, my sister, my dad, my aunt, uncle & cousin. Lunch was delicious and the dressing was amazing as usual. As was my aunt's broccoli casserole, another absolute favorite of mine. Matt fell in love with my grandmother's stuffing as well so I know I married the right guy ;-) Afterwards a few of us took a walk around the neighborhood (it was 70 degrees in Augusta!) and just lounged around for the evening. Matt, me and my sister went to see Four Christmases that night and were supposed to be joined by some other friends but they mostly bailed.. one didn't show and the others brought younger cousins who wanted to see Bolt & Twilight, so we split.

Today we lounged around the house until after lunch when Matt, Erin & I went downtown to go on the Augusta Canal boat tour. I went a few years ago and wanted to take Matt to see it since he is really into Augusta history right now and is currently doing a project on it for his history class.










Matt and Erin on the boat









Me and Matt

Our boat went through that hole!

Matt and I packed up and headed back to Atlanta tonight. On the way we stopped at Cracker Barrel because I heard that you can "rent" their audio books. You buy one at any Cracker Barrel and return it to any other one and you get back all of your money except for $3.49 per week that you had the CDs. We went with Twilight, partly because we couldn't agree on anything else. It works out nicely since I just borrowed this book from Erin and will start reading it wherever we leave off with these CDs. We meant to borrow one of the Harry Potter audio books from the library before we left but we forgot. Next time we'll do that.. it's free! But I'm ok with $3.49 :)

We got the book because tomorrow morning we are waking up bright and early and heading to Tennessee (4 hour drive) to see some of Matt's extended family. Hope everyone else's Thanksgivings are enjoyable so far!

New year, new budget

Matt and I just finished watching a movie called Secondhand Lions. Matt had seen it before but I had not.. I had never even heard of it. I would definitely recommend this movie! Very, very good and just what I needed tonight. Although I have to say they cast the wrong person for Haley Joel Osment's character.. he was just no good in the role or that good of an actor. But the movie was still great.. and helped me not think about the following..

Lately I have been thinking a lot about money. Today especially because it was the closing day on my credit card statement and seeing those numbers tends to make you think. Our idea of budgeting so far has just been to spend as little as possible. We eat in almost every meal, I try to find every grocery discount possible (through shopping at Aldi and also using The Grocery Game), and we basically just try not to buy stuff. I drive Matt's Jeep to work every day because my commute is 2 miles one way and his Jeep gets about 14 mpg. He drives my Civic because his commute is about 12 miles and the Civic gets 35 mpg. Those are just a few examples of how we try. I think this is a good method of going about things but I am sure we can do better. If we had a $ amount for each thing that we weren't allowed to go past each month that would actually force us to not spend money instead of just trying not to. I know a lot of families with kids on one income struggle and although we don't have kids, we are on one income which is a vast difference from some of my friends with their spouses with a double income.

So today I decided that my New Year's resolution will be a budget. Budgets have intimidated me thus far because it is a lot to figure out for each month but I think we have a pretty good grasp of how much we spend on what. I know it also means not buying some things we might want to buy which I don't like, but that's life. That will be our new challenge with the new year that is coming up very quickly. Additionally we will be applying for a mortgage and hoping to buy a house so lots of intimidating things coming up. Keep us in your prayers, it is going to be interesting!

"It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas..."

I would say this weekend has been pretty great so far. Last night Matt and I went to his parent's cabin in Jasper and spent the evening with them. We had a usual large Moffitt meal: salmon AND steak, potatoes, green beans, salad & dessert. With wine of course when means once again I fell asleep on the couch at 8:45pm. This morning for breakfast we enjoyed grits, eggs, bacon and an english muffin. I haven't really eaten the rest of the day, although I did have a bowl of cereal for a late lunch / early dinner. While we were up there, Matt's mom was putting out her Christmas trees (yes, plural) and decorating so I was really getting in the Christmas mood. We even listened to my favorite Christmas CDs yesterday and today - Sufjan Stevens Christmas collection.

I know I'm getting a little ahead of myself with Christmas here, but I even went Christmas shopping today and got the majority of it done. We are trying to keep the gifts low key this year in terms of cost but I am really excited about the gifts we have gotten. I am especially excited about what I got Matt for Christmas but you'll have to wait until after he finds out before I can post that here. I even wrapped all the gifts tonight that we've gotten so far. I also started thinking about Christmas gifts for co-workers. There are a select few I would like to give something small too, and in my book then I feel like I have to give everyone in my group something. I think I have decided to go the baked goods route and have found some great recipes. Everyone enjoys homemade cookies and candies and this way I can give to a lot of people without a lot of cost. Do you think this is a good gift to people, or if you receive something like this do you think of it as a cop-out? I think of it as thoughtful.. I'd love to hear your opinion on that.

Ok time to think about Thanksgiving.. :)

Madeleines

Tonight I am trying to play around with the blog and see if I can get it to look the way I want but I guess I still haven't figured it out. So instead, I thought I would try posting a picture or two and see how that goes. One wedding gift I was very excited about getting was a madeleine pan. I purchased one from Williams Sonoma with a gift card that we received. Tonight I finally tried it out. In case you haven't heard of madeleines, they are small french lemony tea cakes and you need to find some and buy them, they are delicious. We used to eat these in France all the time studying abroad, even better with nutella. I love to bake, especially when it involves a little bit of a complicated recipe. The first batch I overcooked (they are the darker, crispier ones in the picture) but the second and third batches turned out beautifully (learning curve)! Soft and fluffy:









And in the spirit of posting pictures, I finally sent in the picture and forms to have our wedding announcement posted in the Augusta Chronicle.. should be in there in 2 or 3 weeks I hope. Matt and I wanted a picture with both of us in it, this is what we decided on:













That's enough for tonight :) Happy Friday Eve!

Wednesday happenings

Last night we went to see Cinderella as I said in my previous post. It was nice to go back to the opera since we haven't been in a long time. What also made it nice is that we saw Kelly, my boss (random, I know, but yesterday at work they were giving away 6 tickets to the opera so he got 2 for him and his wife), and also Matt's parents. We didn't know his parents were also going until yesterday afternoon so that was a nice surprise to get to see them there, especially since we used to have the season tickets with them. As always it was a very good show and funny. We also got to sit on the floor level instead of up on a balcony so that was neat. It is a little sad how many empty seats there were though.. I think the place was about 2/3 full. I wish more people would take advantage of how great our Atlanta opera is!

Tonight I am making Matt's grandmother's vegetable soup (his favorite). It is my first time making it so hopefully it goes well! Mimi made me and the other girls in the family a cookbook of all of her recipes and that is one thing I received for our wedding gift, very exciting. So I am trying that one out. We will be enjoying it with "Mimi's sourdough bread" which is the same bread she has been making for 25 years. I got some of her starter and brought it home and have to feed it every week and make bread from it when I feel like it. If you don't know much about sourdough bread starter, there is an interesting article on wikipedia (although my starter does not look gross like the pictures).

Then it's off to Meg and Kyle's house to watch the Biggest Loser (they have tivo, it comes on Tuesday nights) while Matt is at choir practice and at another gig tonight. He is playing in a band called Midnight Risers (check out their myspace, although the music playing on there sounds.. bad). They have a gig tonight playing at a thesis show of an art major from SCAD. I am going to forgo attending this gig since they are playing late and save up my sleep for when he plays a closing gig on Wednesday, December 3rd, that will be a late night. You should come check them out sometime at a show, you won't regret it! They play some really cool music.

To end my post, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'd like to know which food you look forward to the most on Thanksgiving day? Mine is by far my grandmother's dressing. She passed away a few years ago so my mom makes it and every year I can't wait. I need to learn the recipe.. the one that is written down has many things left out that you just have to "know" while you make it. I have a funny story about my mom trying to make it.. I'll leave that for next time :)

Here we go..

Where to begin..? How about "welcome to my lame blog!" Who knows, maybe it will actually turn out to be a fun thing for me. I have become somewhat of a blog reader and often end up reading blogs of people I've never met (as most people do) and after thinking about it for a while, and being told by a certain friend a few times to start a blog, I've decided to give it a shot. Or perhaps the reason I am starting a blog is that I am hanging out at home tonight by myself and instead of folding the laundry in the dryer, the laundry in the bedroom, putting away the 5 coats I can see from where I sit, doing the dishes (etc, you get the picture), I can blog and put these things off, hooray!

I'll start by giving you a synopsis of what you will probably see me write about on this blog. It will hopefully be a look into my life as a young adult, newlywed, working wife, etc and a little of Matt's life too. I am originally from Augusta and made my way to Atlanta due to Georgia Tech. I graduated from there with a degree in Management in May 2006 and am currently working in my second job as a Business Analyst for a natural gas marketer. How much I enjoy my job surprises me sometimes since ultimately I have always wanted to stay at home with kids (and still plan to one day). Matt and I met in February 2007, were engaged in March 2008 and married on August 2, 2008. We are at the 3.5 month mark of marriage and enjoying every minute of it. Matt is in school studying history to become a teacher so I get the job of "breadwinner." I am happy to provide for us while he follows something he is very much enjoying. Not something I thought I would be doing, but we enjoy struggling and being frugal together. We still light up when we see each other and have ever since we met, something that I hope never goes away (ah the dreams of a newlywed) :)

We live a pretty routine life, though busy, so hopefully my posts will not become redundant for you. Even with the routine, we do a lot of fun things. For example, tomorrow night we are going to the opera to see Cinderella! We had season tickets last year for the opera but opted not to buy them this year because they are very expensive. But due to a very good friend of ours, we are fortunate enough to get to see the opera for as cheap as you possibly can.

I'll leave it at that for tonight.. I could probably write for a while about random things. Oh and also, I don't know much about how to use this site yet so I am sure the look and feel of this will be changing as soon as I figure that out...