Life in the Busy Lane

It has seemed SO busy around here lately, and I know things are only going to pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the holidays. Here is a brief re-cap of everything we've been up to lately. In reverse chronological order because that's how the pictures uploaded (as always!).

I had a Star Wars party at work! It was a HUGE success, but I take no credit because all you have to do is mention Star Wars and the kids come flocking! I do take credit for being brave enough to have it at all because my knowledge of Star Wars is lacking to say the least. But I survived, and the kids didn't even know how clueless I was!

My brilliant co-worker had the idea to frame the party as Jedi training, and the kids had to complete four phases of training to earn a Jedi certificate. It was chaotic (we're talking 35 kids, their parents, costumes, the whole nine yards), but fun!

Here is my book display:

And here is half the snack table (we also had Wookiee Cookies :-)

We also put up our Christmas tree earlier then we said we would. Well, earlier then Ben said we would. :-) I talked him into dragging it out on Sunday night! And we are SO proud of how it turned out. We still need a tree skirt, but we're getting there.

The final product

After the craziness of not working last Christmas and going home early for a wedding, it was so nice to start Christmas traditions here together. Definitely something we'll remember forever.

Putting on ornaments

The first ornament we put on

Ben bringing the tree in! :-)

And I can't talk about decorating the tree without mentioning that we wouldn't have a tree at all without our very best friends' generosity! They gave us their tree last Christmas and we hauled it up here in the trunk of Ben's car. They got a new one to better fit their nice space in their house, and we got the most wonderful hand-me-down EVER. Thank you best friends!!! :-)

I also finally pulled out my Thanksgiving/Fall decor.

Turkey towel!

I realized I never got out most of my Halloween stuff at all, so we went to pull out the Christmas ornaments, I grabbed our fall towels, too. I haven't set our Thanksgiving table yet, so the towel is pretty much all we've got for now. But it does feel festive! :-)

We also went home in the middle of the month for my grandfather's memorial service. It was a sad reason to go home, but the unexpected time with my family was a huge blessing. The service was beautiful, my sister wrote the most wonderful piece for us to read together, and I made it through without completely breaking down. She did WONDERFUL up there (and she's the shy one!). I wouldn't have made it through any of that without her.

Later on in the weekend, we went bowling together! :-)

Sweet Carter/Isley women

Benjamin T. bowling

I may or may not have been terrible at bowling. Hard to say. :-)

I snapped this picture on our way home from the airport

And who can forget my Junie B. Jones luau at work?

Book display

HANDMADE palm tree

The luau was a blast to decorate for because we had lots of luau stuff leftover from a past party. But the palm tree was definitely my pride and joy because I am so UNartistic sometimes. :-) They pinned coconuts on it!

And that pretty much sums up what's been going on here for the past couple of weeks. I am already well into my Thanksgiving prep work that I want to accomplish this morning before I head into work this afternoon. I can't wait to get our whole meal together and EAT.

Time is Flying By!

I have no clue where this week has gone, and it's basically over!

I've been super-busy at work. Books for Babies on Monday morning, workshop Monday afternoon, Junie B. Jones luau Tuesday, meeting all Wednesday morning, special needs story time Wednesday afternoon, local chamber of commerce meeting this afternoon.....it is reminding me of summer. And I thought this was supposed to be our slow time!! Maybe things will calm down a little around the holidays.

Ben has been busy all week with school stuff, too, and I feel like we've barely seen each other. We speak briefly in passing--while he's still asleep in the mornings, and when I'm basically already asleep in the evenings. :-) I keep telling him to appreciate every little thing about school since it's his last time (for a looong while at least!) to have fall semester stuff. I'm sure he'll be appreciating the 3 week winter break when it finally arrives!

Anyway, maybe I'll be back soon with some pictures of my cute luau at work. And with a yummy recipe for quinoa (it was our first time eating it!).

Happy Thursday, y'all!!

And, of course, Happy Veteran's Day to everyone who has served or is serving. Thank you.

Wish List: Bedroom Edition

We recently got actual bedding for our bedroom thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law! Before, we had a very nice and functional glorified fleece blanket as our bedding. And some high thread count sheets, of course (Ben is high maintenance about sheets).

This is our new bedding:

(image courtesy of Crate and Barrel, not our actual bed!)

We got the comforter set, standard pillow shams, and some white sheets to go with it. It looks great (and SO much better than before!), but we're still missing a little something.

Like some Euro pillows for the back:

And some nice, plain white shams to go on those Euro pillows (which may or may not exist...haven't found any yet!).

I've also just found out about HEATED MATTRESS PADS. I've been wanting an electric blanket for a while now, but I think an electric mattress pad would be even better! So cozy! (I'd post a picture, but they're not very exciting to look at).

Teal is our accent color, and we need some more things on the walls too!

Something like this:

Or this:

Or any number of other options, I'm sure. My tentative plan is to spray paint some things. I already have the spray paint! And I'm sure I could find some random things to put up.

And, in my dream world of the future, we'd have pretty much everything in this picture for our bedroom:

Except maybe the grey walls and grey floor. LOVE the Brighton furniture at Crate and Barrel! But who knows what I'll love when we're actually in a position to buy furniture? :-)

It's Friday!

Fall tree at our apartments

I am just so glad Friday is here. This week hasn't been too long, but I've felt a little bit like I've been spinning my wheels trying to get things done. Luckily, I had a very productive day at work yesterday, I'm prepared for next week, and should be ORGANIZED for the coming months. Silly as it is, really, I've been feeling all disorganized because I got a new planner for 2011 (Yes, 2011. No, I can't believe it!). So some of my stuff for our next quarter was in my old planner, some was in my new, and I couldn't keep it all straight. And my old planner has been my LIFELINE at work for almost a year now. As in, if it got lost, there is seriously no other place all my commitments are written down (scary, huh??). So I wasn't in a huge hurry to give it up. And my new planner, although gorgeous, wasn't working for me like I had envisioned it would. SO, I sucked it up and gave up some of the features of my new planner, made it basically the same as my old planner, transferred EVERYTHING (yes, I checked and re-checked), and now I'm ready to roll for the next few months.

Yes, this is my life. Why, yes, I am a librarian. Organization matters!! :-)

Anyway, since you're probably now bored to death from all of that, here is a slightly less boring visual.

Old, standard planner

This month's stuff

Shiny, new PINK planner

This month's stuff

I have a workshop today for work, so I'm hoping it will be useful and fun. And it means I get out EARLY instead of staying my usual HOUR LATE for Fridays!! Woohoo! And we have plans to try a new recipe for dinner tonight. So I'm looking forward to today.

And I can't leave without wishing my very best friend in the whole world a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY today. I so wish we could celebrate together, Jen Leigh, but I hope you have a wonderful day just the same. Love you!! :-)

What's Up

We've been eating! And shopping (just a little). And relaxing (of course).

Sunday we made delicious chili (Ben's mom's recipe).

Then we added in some Paula Deen biscuit bowls. SUPER EASY and delicious. Recipe: here

And here is the slightly blurry final result! Super yummy. And of course the leftovers were wonderful for lunch the next day.

While out shopping for gifts this past weekend, I picked up one thing for myself. A nice reusable cup! With a lid, so I can maybe avoid spilling cold water on myself in the car on the way to work. Now I just need the reusable coffee mug, and I'll be good to go! :-)

And of course we've been resting around here when we can. Which is most of the time for Bella. She's got the good life! :-)

PawPaw

James Moore Carter

9/8/1919-10/31/2010

Thanks for always making us laugh.

Thanks for being proud of ALL of our moments, big or small.

Thank you for your true and ever-present unconditional love.

Love you forever, PawPaw.

It's November????

Well, practically November? That seems impossible! This whole year is just flying by.

We've been busy lately with pretty much the same ol' things. Working, going to school, hanging out together and doing fun things when we can.

This past week, we carved a pumpkin (which I don't think turned out as neat as last year's!).

Pumpkin 2010

Pumpkin 2009

We've been burning our apple cider candle that we picked up at

Wal-Mart.

I've been debating how many pumpkin baked goods are too many (so far it's only been scones...I want to make muffins. And pumpkin bread. And pumpkin pie.)

We've been relishing the cool but not-to-cool weather which means NO AIR CONDITIONING and NO HEAT and LOW LOW LOW electricity bills (we're enjoying it while we can! :-).

We've been walking places instead of driving. The grocery store is totally walkable (in nice weather...for only a few items).

We hit up a corn maze eaaarly in the season so we wouldn't risk getting rained out like we did last year.

GORGEOUS day

And now that Halloween is (almost) over, I'm wondering how early I can get away with putting out our Christmas decorations. ESPECIALLY since we have our own big tree this year that I'm just dying to decorate! We bought ornaments in 2008 to use for our first married Christmas (which we didn't use since we weren't here over much of December), and we got TONS of cute ornaments as gifts last year. I just can't wait to pull it all out.

To blog or not to blog?

Well, that's not much of a question at this point, since it's been almost 3 months since I last blogged. Every time I think of blogging again, I feel slightly overwhelmed and slightly like my life is getting more routine and less interesting.

I am SO thankful for routine and being at work 8 hours a day, but it doesn't make for very interesting blogging material. Of course, I wouldn't think being broke and unemployed would make for very interesting blogging material either, and I still managed to come up with a few things. Every now and then. I'm just not very good at being a blogger who regularly updates, even though I know those blogs are the most interesting and fun to others.

I'll try again for now and just see where it goes. No promises!

In random order, here are some things that have been happening.

I finally ordered some prints of our guest-taken wedding pictures. After six months. I now have some framed and around, and it just makes me happy. The one below is one of my absolute faves--the one the photographer took is just awesome, too. Thanks Matt for capturing it! :-)

Rings and bouquet

Speaking of which, we were also able to pick up our wedding album from the photographer while we were home for Christmas. And then take it around NC to show to all of our friends and family. That was so much fun, and I love having it here with us now, too! :-)

I made some Valentine's cards to send out this year. I still haven't tackled ANY scrapbooking since the wedding (which means that I'm behind on scrapbooking stuff from our engagement forward!), but I've been into making cards lately. It's quicker and easier and I love to send cards anyway, so it's been a lot of fun. This was my first batch, and I've been working on some less themed "hello" cards too! :-)

Valentine's cards

Ben planned a surprise weekend away in Kansas City recently. Home of the world's largest badminton birdie. :-)

Badminton birdie and Ben

Um, oh yeah, I GOT A JOB. Woohoo! I found out about on December 18, and started on January 5. I'm a children's librarian, and I could not be happier to be working and doing what I spent so many years preparing for. It's a huge learning curve, and I feel like I'm all I'm doing (still!) is asking questions and making mistakes, but I'm enjoying myself and doing the best I can.

Me, on my first day of work

So yeah, that's a brief look at some of the stuff we've been up to. I'll try to be back more often with updates!! :-)

Christmas Tour

Woohoo! I've been waiting for today since the Thanksgiving. You can head over to The Nester's site to see more awesome decorations. And by "more awesome" I mean definitely more elaborate and beautiful than ours. But I love ours just the same!
Christmas decorating this year was a little different than I imagined it would be. We bought a bunch of decorations after Christmas last year to use on our first Christmas tree, but it's looking like our first Christmas tree will be NEXT Christmas. Since we're not going to be here at actual Christmastime, it didn't bother me as much as it could have. And I put a lot of those decorations to good use anyway!
OK, enough talking. Here is a look at our apartment, room by room! :-)
Also, sidenote. I totally planned this post to have the rooms shown in order as you would walk through them in our apartment. Til I got to the very end, and I just ran out of patience for moving pictures around. :-) Therefore, you'll see our bedroom first even though (shockingly) you don't walk right into it from our front door!
BEDROOMI just put up a few random things around our room. Things that did not require too much moving of other things!

Ben's dresser with snowman

Cute snowman

My "dresser" with Santa

Cute Santa (he was a gift from my sister....thanks, sister!)

Ben's bookshelf, with ornaments and Nutcrackers

My bookshelf, with flower arrangement

Pretty flowers

My mama gave me that pretty little arrangement several years ago when I was decorating my tiny one bedroom apartment. It's made it through several moves and lost a couple of berries along the way!
LIVING ROOM
Front wall of our living room

Shelves above the T.V.

Candy cane ornaments hanging from ribbon in the center shelf

Close-up of side shelves

Yes, the would be our cute small trifle bowls filled with some of the ornaments I bought for a small tree. And that would also be leftover wedding ribbon used for the bows! I didn't have any small, clear candle holders or vases or anything similar, so I figured the trifle bowls would work for this year. And I'm already planning on bringing back some of the vases we used for the wedding reception to fill with decorative items next year! :-)

Cozy corner

I love the small metal tree up on the DVD shelf. We got it last year at Hobby Lobby (you will see that is a common theme with these decorations!). It was on sale after Christmas, and it's actually an Advent tree with numbers on each of the ornaments. So cute!

Now for the opposite wall....Lights around the doorways

Close up of side table 1

I love the silver Christmas tree. I got it at Target several years back, and I would love to have MORE of them and BIGGER ones too! And the little pink acorn ornaments came from my sweet mother-in-law. I love the way they look with the white candles.

Side table 2

Cheap green ornaments from Target last year. The unbreakable plastic ones, which are AWESOME.

The tables flank each side of our couch, by the way. I should've gotten a picture of that whole wall, too! Oops!

DINING ROOM/KITCHEN

I didn't do much in either of these two spaces, mainly because we don't have much room in them as it is. And I don't have a lot of cool stuff to do an awesome centerpiece all down the middle of the table, but that is DEFINITELY a goal of mine for next year after seeing a lot of beautiful examples on other blogs.

The extent of the kitchen decorations....cookies! :-)

They're already gone, of course

Dining room table with ornaments

Close-up of the bowl

Pretty ornaments

Those ornaments were another Target find from last year. Not unbreakable, but I love the different shapes, sizes, and patterns on them! :-) Plus, they're basically Carolina blue!

HALLWAY

I found that the door that hides our AC unit at the end of the hallway was the perfect spot for Ben's stocking that I bought him one year a while back.

Slightly crooked view of the whole hallway

The stocking

We still want to get matching/coordinated (non-sports team!) stockings for ourselves. We didn't see any we liked last year after Christmas, but we'll be looking again this year!

OFFICE/SECOND BEDROOM

This room houses our Christmas tree for the year---my pink one!! Ben actually bought it for me years ago, and I've had it in all of my apartments since then! I usually buy a new set of the small ornaments for it every year, but I already have more than enough, so I didn't this year.

Tree!

Close-up

I love all of the ornaments on it, but I think the bright blue ones are my favorites. I bought those last year at Hobby Lobby. All of the other came from Wal-Mart--there are tiny candy canes, snowmen, and Christmas light bulbs. I just love this little tree! :-)

BATHROOM

When I uploaded all of the pictures, I realized the bathroom is one of our most decorated rooms! That cracks me up!

Towel shelf with present and ornaments

Gift box up-close

More of the Target ornaments that are in the living room. And the silver, sparkly gift I got at Hobby Lobby last year. Silver and sparkly are apparently two of my holiday decorating themes!!

Candy cane ornaments (also Hobby Lobby last year) (also sparkly)

P.S. That bowl sits on the back of the toilet. You're welcome for that information!

Second shelf display

Ornaments and Christmas sign

I love the polka dot ornaments...love them! I'm pretty sure they came from Hobby Lobby last year, too. And I made the sign with some scrapbooking stuff and the front of an old card. I've saved old cards for years meaning to make seasonal signs out of them, but that's the only one that I've made so far. I think it's cute!

Thanks for stopping by to see how we adorn our place for Christmas! I am so excited about seeing all the other decorations!