4:: Annual Christmas Picture

Merry Christmas from our little family:

18:: give each child a new ornament that represents something important they did that year

Pretty important...can't wait to meet you baby boy! 

15:: potluck christmas dinner party with friends

Our first annual Christmas dinner party was the best night. Julianne and Smith hosted and provided the most delicious turkey soup and chocolate chess pie ever created..ahhh dying just thinking about it!  The night was so festive and fun - it represented the start of this new phase of life where chaos and babies are the norm instead of cocktails and small talk. I loved every second of it. I am so thankful for these 3 couples! They truly feel like family and I am so excited to live life with them!

3:: christmas movie night with seasonal treats

Ben and I got to check this one off a few weekends ago with Matt, Linds and their newest addition, baby Wrenn! It has been so fun and so surreal to watch our friends become parents. Holding little Wrenn made it hit home that we are going to have one of our own so soon! 

In the midst of taking care of a brand new baby, Martha Stewart Winters made us the most impressive spread of fruit, cake, pretzels, marshmallows and chocolate fondu you've ever dreamed of. Obviously we killed it...every last bite...while watching Elf. Best combination ever! 

6:: Attend “A Christmas Carol” at Memorial Auditorium

As a part of my birthday request this year, I asked my family if we could go see A Christmas Carol - it is such a fun tradition for my family and I just can't seem to let go of it. There are so many memories associated with this play for our family: my dad grew up in teeny tiny Enfield, NC with a tight knit group of friends who all seemed to move to Raleigh at some point. One of those friends is Ira David Wood who plays Scrooge - so growing up the Enfield crowd would always go support the play and it became such a fun way to kick off the Christmas season. Another one of my favorite memories at this play was my first real date with Ben. My whole family and the entire Enfield clan were planning on going to the play and to the Angus Barn for dinner afterwards - so what better way to introduce Ben than to throw him right into the craziness! It was one of the funniest nights of my life because Ben was SO shy and my family was having the best time embarrassing him - poor Ben - not much has changed. 

This year did not disappoint, the play was amazing as usual and we went out to dinner after to celebrate my birthday with family - such a great night. Thanks Mom and Dad! 

21:: take a family trip to the mountains

Our Christmas plans have been totally altered this year because of the little man growing in my belly. Even though I am SO beyond excited about him coming soon, I will admit that I was disappointed about how much Ben and I wouldn't be able to do this year for the Holiday's. We usually spend Christmas night and a few days after with the Wright's at Windy Gap and it is one of the highlights of our year. This year, obviously I can't travel that far so close to my due date, so we decided to go to the mountains the first weekend of December to kick off the season. 

Ben and I arrived in Brevard on Friday night and spent the night catching up with Megan and EJ and dreaming about the day when our families will live in the same place...one day please, Lord! Saturday morning we went to Grandmerle and Pop Pop's for a big breakfast with more family. It was so good to get to see so much family since we won't be seeing them over Christmas. Then we headed uptown to the cute shops in Brevard where I lusted over clothes that I will probably never fit into again in my life. 

After lunch, Megan, EJ, Ben and I headed to Asheville and toured the Biltmore House. Oh my gosh, the Biltmore in general was amazing but add Christmas decorations and forget about it - I was in heaven. I loved stepping back in time and imagining the family living in this house - it was like Downton Abbey on crack. 

After the Biltmore tour, we all headed into downtown Asheville for dinner. It was so much fun to get to spend such good time with just Megan and EJ. We are so blessed to have family who are also our best friends, who get us and love us so well. After dinner we headed to Windy Gap where Robert and Ann were head leaders for the weekend. We got to see so many friends and being at Windy Gap was so special - we spent the last half of the night after club sitting in Blue Ridge in front of what has become my favorite fire place of all time catching up with friends and family. 

Before heading back to Raleigh on Sunday morning, we stopped in Asheville to have breakfast with Ryan and Christina and finally meet baby Carson! She was the sweetest, most beautiful little thing in the world! We love this little family SO much and can't wait to get Carson together with her boyfriend when he makes his arrival :)  

Our mountain weekend was a HUGE success. We loved every minute of the time we got to spend with family, friends and mountain weather! 

Birthday Girl

Ben and I were out of our minds sick a few weeks ago for days and days. I can't remember being that much of a baby over not feeling well in a longggg time. Finally after pumping myself full of all of the doctor approved meds for a solid week, we kicked that nasty sickness and disinfected every inch of our house...never again do I want to feel like that!

So, since we've been MIA, there's lots to catch up on! First of all, I want to thank my amazing hubs who went out of his way to make me feel celebrated on my birthday last week! He scheduled out our whole week to make sure I spent time with as many people I love as possible.

On my actual birthday, we went out just the two of us. I hadn't realized how much I missed that kind of night until we were at dinner. We got dressed up and went downtown for dinner at buku where we ate the foodie wannabe dinner of our dreams!

1st course: Chicken, coconut, curry, and mushroom Hot Pot & 2nd course: Pierogi and Cochinita Arepa

3rd course: Chicken breast on red wine and goat cheese risotto, asparagus, and shallots

Dessert: Chocolate Soufflé with almond ice cream

It was so fun to have a nice dinner, feel pampered, and just get to talk to each other. I love nights where I am reminded that we really are best friends and there is no one else I'd rather spend quality time with. Thank you for always making me feel special, Ben! I love you!! 25 is going to be a good year :)

DIY:: Sprucing Up the Living Room:: Part 2

Project #2: Pallet Art

We have a huge wall over one of our couches in the living room that needed some sort of statement piece. I had seen lots of uses for pallets all over Pinterest, so that is what inspired this next craft.

-Materials:
8 pieces of 1” x 2” x 10’ slats
nails
glue
wood stain
sand paper
white paint
“ABC” stencils
paint brush

We made our pallet 3 ft tall and 4 ft wide, so we cut 3 3ft. pieces and the rest of the slats to 4 ft pieces. Use the 3ft. pieces and 2 4ft. pieces to frame the pallet. The 2 4ft. pieces are the top and bottom of the frame, the 3 3ft. pieces are the sides and middle - nail and glue these together. Use the rest of the 4ft pieces to create the flat slats across the front of the frame. We used 1 inch gaps between each slat.

*Builder Ben says to avoid the shape of your pallet warping, make sure you nail each slat alternating from top to bottom and work your way to the middle. You can also measure the distance of your top right corner to your bottom left corner and make sure it consistently matches the opposite corner to corner measurement.

Next, stain and sand your pallet and decide what you want to write on it!

We chose one of our favorite Bible verses. I used individual letter stencils for this and a teeny tiny paint brush. It took forever but we loved how it turned out! 

After letting the paint dry, we lightly distressed the letters by hand. We're so happy we chose to make this ourselves, I think we'll love it forever!...sorry for the blurry pic, I'll get a better one ASAP! 

DIY:: Sprucing Up the Living Room :: Part 1

When we first moved into our house, the previous owners had the living room set up in a way that made zero sense to me - it was also painted a pea soupish color green. So, this room became my number 1 priority since it would be where people gathered and the first thing you see when you walk in our house. Obviously, it needed some help.

I was pretty compulsive and went out and bought a new color for the walls by just picking one I thought would look good - I wouldn’t recommend ever doing this - but just this one time, it worked out! Painting made a HUGE difference. I already liked the room better and the color set the tone for the rest of the room. After adding our furniture and rearranging 10 million times, we settled on the set up of the room.

Then, the fun part. We got our DIY on:

The Shutter Table:

The entrance to our house needed some kind of console table, so instead of going out and buying one - we decided to brainstorm a fun way to make our own. During a quick trip to the Habitat Restore, we found our inspiration. We bought a set of 2 shutters already painted a great color blue for $15. After that we headed to Lowe’s and bought the rest of the materials:

-4 spindles (the vertical things on stairs :) super cheap, $1.50 each!)
-1” x 2” x 8’ batting (4 pieces)
-sand paper
-wood stain
-wood glue
-nails

Then Ben went to work on the actual building and here's how he did it:

Cut the batting into 4 6ft long pieces (This was the length of our shutter, make sure to cut the batting to match the size of yours. In other words, the width and length of your shutter will determine the dimensions you use to cut the batting). Hold on to the 4 2ft. long off cuts - these will be used for the frame of the base along with your 6ft pieces.

Make the base of the table by nailing and gluing the batting to form 2 identical rectangles using 2 6ft pieces and 2 2ft. pieces for each. Then, nail and glue 1 spindle inside each corner, to the batting, at the top and the bottom. Sand all the edges and stain the base whatever color you choose. We chose to sand it again for a distressed look to the stain. Next, nail the shutter to the top of the base.

And there you have it!

25 Days of Christmas

Like I said before, this year is the last year Ben and I will celebrate the holidays as a family of 2. As exciting as that is, I also want to make sure we intentionally enjoy this season of life as it comes to a close. I'm also a sucker for the holidays and traditions in general, so this will hopefully get the ball rolling on establishing some family traditions for the future! So here is my list of Christmas fun to get us in the spirit and take full advantage of soaking up the season:

25 Days of Christmas:

1. Create a CD, Pandora station, or iPod playlist with our favorite Christmas songs.

2. Participate in Operation Christmas Child

3. Christmas Movie Night with seasonal treats

4. Annual Christmas Picture

5. Journal in the Family Christmas Book

6. Attend “A Christmas Carol” at Memorial Auditorium

7. Christmas Cookie Decorating – give to neighbors

8. Drive around and look at Christmas lights

9. Visit a Living Nativity

10. Attend a Christmas Parade

11. Visit a tree farm and choose and/or cut down our own tree.

12. Decorate our Christmas tree while sipping hot chocolate or cider and listening to Christmas music.

13. Annual Christmas Cards

14. Open a present on Christmas Eve -- new pajamas!

15. Potluck Christmas Dinner party with friends

16. Have a special, traditional Christmas breakfast

17. Make Christmas crafts and homemade decorations

18. Give each child a new ornament that represents something important they did that year

19. Attend a Christmas Eve Service

20. Advent Calendar 

21. Take a family trip to the mountains 

That's all I have for now - we'll see if I can come up with others to add to the list and how many we actually get to cross off this year! 

thankful.

I can't believe Thanksgiving has come and gone. This year more than ever I have looked forward to the Holiday season - it's always my favorite time of the year - but this year it's the last time Ben and I will celebrate with family and friends as a family of 2. I've been brainstorming ways to make this year extra special and intentional and it's looking like most of these ideas are going to have to happen between now and Christmas because true to form, the Holiday's are FLYING by.

Even though it came and went too fast, Thanksgiving didn't disappoint - it was full of family, food, rest, football, shopping, celebrating etc. Ben and I spent Thursday with my family and ate our weight...probably more...in every kind of starch, casserole, southern, fallish food you can imagine.

I wish I could say that overflowing plate was Ben's...in my defense, I'm almost 8 months pregnant. After some recovery time on the couch, the boys continued the tradition of a basketball tournament in the backyard. It's mostly friendly competition, but there was blood and a Pistol Pete jersey involved this year. 

We ended the day by skyping with my cousins Michael and Kathleen who were traveling in Barcelona over Thanksgiving - you were missed!! 

Some went back for round 2....  :) 

Friday afternoon Ben, Laney and I headed to Concord to spend the weekend with the Wright's where we celebrated Ben's 26th birthday! Ben was loved on all weekend by friends and family and got to play 18 holes of golf with his dad and brothers, eat all of his favorite foods, and nap on his favorite piece of carpet in front of the fireplace (when it wasn't occupied by others).

In the midst of celebrating, Ann and this hypochondriac got their flu shots like good girls.

Celebrating Ben's birthday was such a great way to end Thanksgiving because it reminded me of how much I have to be thankful for. God has blessed me so much with this man! I truly believe we were created for each other and I am so thankful that I am more and more confident in that every year. 

I am so thankful for you, Ben! You are my best friend and I can't wait to share this next adventure together - how are we going to be someone's parents?? I have no clue, but I do know that you will keep me sane and point me to God's grace. I am so excited to meet our little boy and to watch the way you love him and become his hero. I love you!! Happy 26th!! 

-girls weekend-

i had been looking forward to this past weekend for months and months and now that it's over i have no idea how to summarize it. i have been so blessed by these friendships over the years. now that my life looks very different than it did a few years ago and my friends and i are all growing up and moving away and becoming real people with jobs and bills and houses and boyfriends and husbands and now a baby - i have become aware of how rare the relationships i have with this group of girls are. i have known these girls for a long time - some since i was an insecure baby middle schooler and some since college, but all have had a significant impact on who i am. 

graduating from college and going our separate ways has made me thankful for these girls in a way i didn't recognize before. when i say we have known each other for a long time, i really mean that word. knowing someone has brought on a whole new meaning since not being surrounded by these girls in my everyday life. i am confident that these girls know me, they know my ugliness, they get my sarcastic humor, they challenge me, they show me Christ, they pray for me, they celebrate life with me, they care for me through struggles, and they are the people that i know will love me and my growing family the rest of my life. 

they are also the people that i laugh with the most in this world....seriously, they are WEIRD and i love every second of it. we have done a trip once or twice a year throughout college and these trips make up some of my favorite memories:

back to this past weekend - thank you so much for making me feel so celebrated! i really am so thankful that you could all (almost all! we missed you elisa, virginia and katy!) make it. a big big thank you to kate comer monts for getting all of us together and planning such a great weekend/shower! 

a few of my favorite things from the weekend:

-7 personal shoppers 

-discovering charlotte - who knew it was so big?? 

-mustache pacie's 

-kate's reaction to me wearing ben's men's L shirt in public 

-fat Amy

-pregasaurus references 

-shirley temple's

-friends feeling baby boy move for the first time

-cookie butter

-a murder scene in the freezer, thanks merry

-eating all day every day

-Jesse

-cowfish

-constantly looking for emily maynard 

-cozy lounging at the wright's 

-family style breakfast at the grown up table 

-caitlin's hour long conversation with a stranger 

-sour patch kids 

-talking, talking, and more talking to my favorite girls in this world 

-fall weather 

-getting a gift certificate to get a massage! 

i love you all so much, can't wait for baby boy to meet all of his aunties!!