Holiday Sweet Tea

One of my and Mr. L's favorite holiday traditions is breaking out our "special" sweet tea, which we've affectionately nicknamed our Holiday Sweet Tea.

Now, this is definitely a relatively new tradition.  We both grew up drinking traditional, normal sweet tea.  There were no frills to it and it got the job done!  While we still love our regular sweet tea, we also love breaking out a new blend when the holidays roll around that just seems more festive to us!

Thanksgiving 2013 Recap

Hi everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and weekend this year.  I know we certainly did!

I had to drive to the North Shore to pick up one of the turkeys...I never get tired of this view!

We were lucky enough to have dinner on Thanksgiving with some really awesome friends (definitely more like family!) out here since we couldn't be home for the holidays -- darn you pricey plane tickets!  And since we also knew that we would cook WAY too much food (we did have TWO turkeys, y'all) we were able to feed a bunch of single sailors a wonderful, home-cooked, Southern meal while we were at it :)  Some of them told us how they hadn't had a good, hot meal in forever, so we were definitely glad we could give them a nice holiday this year!

Creamy Chicken Brain Dip

For Halloween this year, I knew that I was going to whip up at least one or two various "gross" dishes for the big day.  I just needed a little inspiration first!  I'd seen the infamous meatloaf hand last year, and the thought of using a mold intrigued me, so I went ahead and ordered a couple from Amazon (specifically these two, and FYI, I also saw brain molds on sale at Target recently!).  I didn't think I'd tackle the meatloaf hand (I'll probably use that mold for a dessert instead), but I knew the brain would make a great dip.  I just needed to find the right recipe first!

As I was flipping through a book of family recipes my mother had given me for Christmas, I came upon the recipe for one of my absolute FAVORITE dips, Creamy Chicken Dip.  I'm telling you -- I'm crazy about this dip.  I don't even like some of the things in it -- I despise mayo and I'm not a celery fan -- but I absolutely eat.it.up when it's in this fantastically delicious dip form.  I knew it was going to be the perfect recipe for my idea, especially after I realized gelatin was an ingredient, so I set out to make it happen!

Resolutions 2013

via 7428.net

I may be a few days late to the party, but this year, I've actually decided to come up with a few loose resolutions for 2013.  I'm not normally the kind of person to make resolutions though -- this is the first year in a LONG time I can actually remember making a list!  So with my anti-resolution tendencies in mind, I decided to make sure they weren't too specific or were relatively easy for me to motivate myself to accomplish.  Here's what I have so far:

Christmas 2012: DIY Christmas Ornaments

The other day, I came across my travel keychain collection in one of my drawers while I was reorganizing the bedroom.  It made me a little sad to think of them tucked away somewhere not on display until I figured, why not just turn them into ornaments?  So I pulled out my bag of extra ornament hooks and went to town!

Please forgive my poor broken Pisa keychain...the leaning tower used to be there, but it fell off and is forever lost.  I'm still hanging onto the rest of it though, as you can see!

Ornament Swap 2012

Thanks to our wonderful hosts, Laura, Whitney, Stephanie, and Jessica, I entered an awesome little ornament swap back a few weeks ago and ended up being paired up with Paula from Then Comes Marriage!

I received my package a few days ago, and I am in love with the ornaments she sent to us!  Not only did she give a nod to my aspirations to become a librarian, she also included my sweet little Schnauzers in on the fun =)

Ornament Swap 2012

This year I've decided to participate in an ornament swap this Christmas!  Laura from Luckiest in Love's is hosting her third annual ornament swap, and she's also teaming up with a few cohosts, including Whitney of Mr. & Me, Stephanie of Modern Vintage Wife, and Jessica of Jessica Lynn Writes (the blogger from whom I heard about this swap!).  I am very excited -- I haven't participated in this swap before, but it sounds like a lot of fun!

The sign ups will remain open until Saturday, November 17th, and the ornaments themselves will need to be shipped on or before Monday, December 3rd to give people plenty of time to receive and admire them.

If you'd like more information or want to know how to sign up, click here to head on over to Jessica's blog and check out her Ornament Swap post!  Here's to a Mele Kalikimaka for everyone this year!  =)

Nutella Ghost Cakes

After seeing this deliciously easy recipe over on The Pioneer Woman, I knew it would be an absolutely perfect way to utilize one of the new Halloween cookie cutters I'd just purchased, an adorable little ghost shape.  So I set to work assembling my ingredients!

Christmas 2011

Yeah yeah, I know, it's almost the end of January!  But I figured I'd recap our 2011 Christmas for everyone anyways, so indulge me ;)

Mr. L and I actually started our Christmas early -- like, a week early!  Since my brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece were spending Christmas 2011 with my SIL's family, they decided to open presents with my family early while Mr. L and I watched via Skype!

Laissez Les Bon Temps Rouler!

Happy Mardi Gras 2011 everyone!

Since today is Fat Tuesday (and unfortunately we weren't able to attend the festivities in Mobile) I figured I'd go ahead and do a post on our Mardi Gras parades we did get to see this year :)

Our first trip was a couple of weeks ago on February 19th.  Mr. L and I headed to downtown Mobile by ourselves to catch some goodies by ourselves.  His dad was already down there doing security work for a local hotel, so we stood with him a bit until the parade started.

The crowd waiting on the parade to start...it was pretty slow that day!

Bellingrath 2010

Every year since Mr. L has been stationed close to Mobile, he and I make it a point to attend Bellingrath Garden's Magic Christmas in Lights event around the holiday season.  I love walking around the grounds and looking at all of the lights BG's employees work so hard to put up and maintain -- they're so gorgeous.

This year, we had the pleasure of showing our tradition to our friend Joe who flew in to visit us for a couple of weeks!

Mr. L and Joe with some of the decorations at Bellingrath

Oh hey, it's January -- Time for Christmas recaps!

So due to my lack of posting for like...over a month, I think it's pretty obvious that Mr. L and I have had a busy holiday season!  I'm sorry about my lack of blogging :(  I'm going to try to do better this year, especially once the Hawaii ball gets officially rolling later this year!

So let's see if I remember everything we've done in the past month... (all photos mine!)

Christmas

Christmas Eve was the beginning of our two-day Christmas celebration.  We began the day driving up to Mr. L's grandparents home in northern Mobile County to celebrate with his mother's side of the family.

We ate yummy brunch food:

Shrimp bisque!  =)

And then proceeded to dig into all of the presents under the tree like there was no tomorrow!

Hello December!

So nice to see you again, you wonderful month, you!

So far Mr. L and I have actually gotten a tree and some decorations up!  It all looks so pretty and I'm definitely getting in the mood for Christmas now.

Reindeer Mr. L's mother made!

A Note to My Husband on this Veteran's Day...

(Sorry for the break between BlizzCon recaps, but this post is definitely worth it!)

Mr. L,

I just wanted to tell you thank you.

You've done so much for me over the nearly six years we've been together, and since you've been on this shore duty you've done even more than I could imagine.  This period in our lives has been a true blessing for us, and I'm so happy to have had this time with you.

But it's getting to the point where we're looking forward to the next chapter of our lives, and unfortunately in that chapter our country will call on you to leave me and the new family we've created to go defend the freedom to which we are so desperately clinging.

Before we get knee-deep in that new chapter and all of the emotions that will come with it, I just wanted to tell you thank you -- truly, deeply, and from the bottom of my heart.

People like you, with your bravery, courage, and eternal optimism, are keeping this country safe from threats across the world.  People like you are our protectors, and I honestly couldn't feel safer.

I love you with all of my heart, and thank you so incredibly much for serving in our country's military and making so many sacrifices to protect those things we hold dear.

Mizpah.

I would now like to take this moment and thank my family members, two who have passed on, for their courageous service to our country:  my Nandad, a WWII Army veteran; my Grandpa Roy, a Navy Korean War veteran; and my oldest brother for currently being a member of the Alabama National Guard and who also recently added another year onto his service contract.

And, of course, there are the wonderful friends Mr. L and I have gotten to know over the years who have either served or are still serving:  Joe, Ephraim, Shane, and Brendon.  You all hold a special place in our hearts.

Thank you all.

Awesomesauce Christmas Plans

We found out a few weeks ago that my parents were planning a pretty nice Christmas "getaway" for our immediate family.  At one time, we were talking about going to the North Georgia mountains for Christmas, but unfortunately, my grandmother isn't in the best shape healthwise so we opted for something a little closer to home -- the beach!

I love our beaches!

Having a Blast

Mr. L and I were fortunate enough to be able to go home for the Fourth of July holiday and spend time with our families.  We cooked some delicious food, ate said delicious food, fell into food comas, blew up cupcakes, shot rockets into the pond, had a fireworks rumble with some folks down the street, and of course, spent time with our loved ones.

I'll leave you to judge just how much fun we had with fireworks:

(Video courtesy of Smalls Productions!)

Happy (belated) Fourth of July!