First Winter Cold

Last night's Holiday Party was a lot of fun!  The night actually flew by and I didn't get a single picture of Matt and I because I'm awesome like that. Here are some of the highlights from the party:

1.  I won a free month of executive parking!! haha.  I basically get to park closer to the building during the month of February.  I'll take it.

2.  Matt won a bottle of white wine.

3. I won a $25 Visa gift card. By the way...pretty much everyone won something. There were tons of gifts and the drawing to pick winners was almost an hour long.  Let's just hope the money they spent on our raffle gifts wasn't taken out of our bonuses!!

4.  There was a cheesey dance competition and Matt was selected as one of the top 5 dancers at the party hahah. He's just warming up for the wedding.

Well all was fine last night and then I woke up this morning with a soar throat.  Matt has been sick all week so I obviously know where I got it from. The first thing I did when I woke up after eating breakfast was head to the gym to sweat it out!!! As long as I'm not feeling absolutely horrible, I will go to the gym when I am sick.  I think it actually helpe me.  I was there for an hour and a half. I got in 40 minutes of weights and a 40 minute run.

I did a 40 minute interval run and boy did it feel good.  When I got home I made a cup of tea before my friend Stef came over. We went up to Wilmington to take more pictures of the wedding venue so we could have a reference for decorating.

We are going to attempt to decorate the ceremony space ourselves, but we'll save the reception space for the professionals.  I'm finally done making my "cookies" for tonight's cookie exchange!! Pictures and recipes will be up tomorrow!









3 Things Thursday

1.  I'm really missing my gym lately :( . This week has been chock full of things to do pretty much every day after work.  I tried to do a workout at home tonight and failed miserably.  I'm hoping that I'll have more time next week, but considering it's the week before Christmas...I'm guessing not.  That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to the weekend. I'll have time!!

2. I made homeade chicken noodle soup for dinner tonight and it was amazing! It was the perfect day for it and it only took about 20 minutes to make. Raining and gross out.

Quick Chicken Noodle Soup

1 32 oz container of chicken broth

1/2 cup chopped carrot

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped celery

2 1/2 cup shredded chicken

6 oz whole wheat pasta

salt

pepper

sprinkle of italian parsley

1 tbsp olive oil

Heat olive oil in a large pot.  Saute vegetables, salt and pepper for 5 minutes.  Add chicken broth and pasta and bring to a boil for 7 minutes.  Stir in chicken and parsley.

3.  Tomorrow night is my company Christmas party.  We're having a few of my coworkers over before the party so I've been trying to do some cleaning so our house doesn't look like a bomb went off in it.  

Matt and I at last year's holiday party. That bag in his hand is the awesome prize he won...a $10 gift card to dunkin donuts and a mug haha. The girl we were sitting next to won a $100 gift card to the nicest restaurant in town and another girl won plane tickets anywhere in the country. We got jipped!! Maybe we'll make out better this year.

Check, Check and Check

In the past two days I've worked 1.5 days, gone to see 2 different doctors, made a decision on a venue for my bridal shower and have attempted to not stress out in between. 
My day yesterday

• 6:45am appointment to get my blood taken to be tested from my checkup
• work from 7am-11am
• 11:30 appointment to get both my feet and ankles xray'd
• 1pm appointment to look at the hotel DuPont with my mom and 2 aunts
• Late lunch with the fam
• Home at 5pm
• Get dinner together (leftover enchiladas from last week)
• crash

Today:

• Work 7:15-3:15
• home to entertain the pup
• quick dinner of a salad and leftover pulled pork
• gym for a little over an hour!! I needed this!
• Home to work on grocery list for tomorrow and the blog

Matt and I have been pretty busy so we've been sticking to mostly leftovers this week.  Tomorrow night I'll be making a quick homeade chicken noodle soup that takes less than a half an hour to make. Finally some cooking!!

Besides Christmas I've had WEDDING on my mind lately. My best friend is home for a month so we're going to try and get some major planning done for the shower/wedding. Here are some pics of ideas that I love :)
For the ceremony:

I love these mason jars with floating candles. Maybe lining the aisle?

My bridesmaid dresses are dark purple so I thought these flowers were really pretty for decorating the chairs for the ceremony seating

We are getting married in a really rustic space but it's pretty empty so I love this idea for elevating flowers where Matt and I will be standing.

And I love something like this for the shower. Simple. Can you tell I have a thing for mason jars??

Just 2 more days of work until a fun weekend with my company xmas party on friday night and a cookie exchange party on Saturday! Can't wait!

Running Outside Brrrr

Today I was determined to actually run outside. I'm already getting tired of using the treadmill at the gym and spring is still soooo far away.  I got home from work and layered up in my underarmor pants and as many layers as I could put on my upper half.  I think I ended up with 4 layers on top...a little overkill I konw hahah. I also had some gloves and some ear warmers on. I just did my usual loop around our neighborhood that is exactly 3 miles. I finished in 28.30.  Today I used the My Tracks app on my droid for the first time. It worked really well.  After my run I could view my path, how far I went and my average speed.  I still haven't figured out how to send that map and info to my computer...but baby steps people.

I cooked dinner last night in the crockpot so all I had to do tonight was warm it up!  Thank the lord for crockpots!! I made pulled pork, one of my favorite meals.

Pulled Pork

3-4lb boneless pork shoulder

1 onion

2-3 garlic cloves minced

your favorite bbq sauce

2 cups of water

It can't get much easier than this. When I woke up on Sunday morning I put the Pork shoulder in the crockpot along with the water, garlic and half of the onion  chopped.  I let it cook on low all day. About an hour before I wanted it to be done I drained all of the liquid out of the pot, shredded the pork, added a good amount of bbq sauce and let it cook on low for about another hour. 

I have a busy day tomorrow! I'm starting off my morning with getting my blood tested. My appointment is at 6:45am. Can't wait....Then I'll be working a half a day, going to get my foot xrayed and finally going to look at a venue for my bridal shower. And maybe a bit of xmas shopping on the side if I have the time.

For now I'm just trying to stay warm:



Sometimes I feel like all the blogs I read are about people that live in Florida, California or the Carolina's. Let's just say I'm a little bit jealous...



Our Tree Is Finally Up!!

I started off my day with a trip to the gym...much needed after yesterday's cookie consumption lol.  Then I headed home and played with the pup a bit.

The rest of the day passed by quick with some cooking for the week and cleaning the house. Then we put our tree up!!! Just a couple of weeks before Christmas and our tree is finally up!

We went with a smaller tree this year to make our lives a little easier. It was the prefect size.  We decorated it after dinner while listening to some Christmas tunes.

Stockings for everyone

We had quite the collection of ornaments on our tree including some pretty sweet ones made by yours truly around the age of 8. Here are some of my favorites:

Champ's first family Christmas

Oh yea!! Looking good!

UD mascot front and center...with Bella and Edward creeping in on the pic haha!

My mom gives each of us an ornament each year. So I pretty much have one of every sport I've ever played.  Love this one.  I've kept the tradition going. Champ's ornament is new and we also got a running ornament.

Dinner was simple tonight. We hadn't had fresh fish in a while so I picked up some tilapia filets and cooked some sweet potato's for our side along with some vegetables

I cooked the fish on in a pan with some salt, pepper and olive oil. I sliced the sweet potato thin and mixed them with some salt and cinnamon, then baked them at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

Do you have any favorite Christmas ornaments?

Do you still put up ornaments that you made when you were a kid?

The Aftermath

Today was the big cookie decorating day with Giona and Mia. We started out the day with a trip to the Children's Museum in Wilmington.  They went back to my parent's house for a nap, then cookie madness ensued. I knew this would be messy, but I had no idea how messy it would get with a 3 year old and a 1 year old.

Mia working hard on her snowman with no head

Giona working on his G. I looked over at one point and he had the tube of icing in his mouth hahah.

They both got to eat one. Mia took the head off her snowman right when I gave it to her and then continued to decorate the rest of it.

Mia's headless snowman

Giona's "G"

Our finished cookies!