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!









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?

A Different Kind of Christmas

This year for Christmas, my family decided not to do gifts.  I will admit we can go a tad overboard with the gifts sometimes, but who doesn't.  I was a little hesitant at first, but man does it take a lot of stress out of the holidays.  But I think I've realized that I'm having trouble realizing that Christmas is right around the corner because I don't have to worry about shopping and wrapping gifts.  I guess for me Christmas = stress haha. We still don't have our tree but we are hoping to take care of that next weekend. I think once we do our decorating I will start to get more in the Christmas spirit.  In honor of the approaching holiday I decided to do a Christmas Survey I found online:

What is your favorite Christmas song?
There's no Place Like Home for the Holidays by Perry Como

What is your favorite Christmas movie?
The Christmas Story obviously!!

What do you look forward to most on Christmas?
Seeing my family, especially my brother and sister who live out of town.  I also love seeing my sister's kids open their gifts!

Do you take part in secret santa?
I have 4 best friends from college and we usually do secret santa, but this year we've decided to give money to a cherity instead. 

Do you go to any Christmas parties?
Yes! This year I'll be going to my company Christmas party on the 16th and I just got invited to a cookie exchange party on the 17th. I cannot wait!

What is your favorite food at Christmas?
Peppermint bark is by far my favorite food. I can't stay away from the stuff.

My mouth is watering just looking at this picture. 

I spent my day today cooking my meals for the week. It took me about 2 hours but I'm glad to have it out of the way and not to have to worry about it during the week.  I started out my day with a trip to they gym.  I was ready for a longer workout.  I got in 40 minutes of weight training and 45 minutes of cardio split between the stationary bike (on random level 8) and the eliptical (aslo on random level 8). 
Dinner was easy tonight. I cooked a pot roast in the slow cooker all day and made some sweet potato cakes to have on the side.

All I did for the sweet potato cakes was microwave a large sweet potatoe for 5 minutes on each side.  Then I cut it in half and removed the insides. To the potato I added 1/2 tsp of brown sugar,  1/8 tsp of cinnamon, 1 tsp of whole wheat flour and 1 tbsp egg whites.  Then I formed 4 small cakes and cooked them in an oiled pan for 4 minutes per side.  Delish!