Thankful

Corn casserole prep

Due to the larger new house and the decision to move the LSU game to Fayetteville, I had the utmost honor of hosting Thanksgiving this year.  This is the first Thanksgiving in my 27 years that we haven't had dinner at my mom's house.  With all of the changes our family has experienced this year, I think we were all looking forward to altering traditions a little bit.  Plus, no travel and a house full of people celebrating my favorite holiday in my home?  Yes, please.

Mixing up her famous dressing

Mom, Dad, John, Nini and Alli (who spent the first part of the week in Little Rock) arrived Tuesday night.  Ryan and I worked on Wednesday, but I don't think it even came close to equaling the work that went on here without us!  Lindsey and John cleaned the house and Mom, Dad, and Nini started baking.  Nini made a pumpkin pie and a pecan pie, Mom made a pumpkin pie, and Dad make his pumpkin cheesecake with a praline topping (I die).  Needless to say, the house smelled delightful when I arrived home that night, but everyone was anxious to get out and grab some pizza.

The next day started early, because with a nearly 16 lb. turkey and double recipes for 4 casseroles and dressing to prepare before 3PM, you've got to get going quick.

Not everyone helped - some of us watched the parade

Fortunately, everything went off without a hitch.  Ryan cooked his first turkey (with some serious guidance from my dad, who's a pro), and Nini, Mom, and I coordinated our casseroles almost perfectly (thanks to Mom, who's also a pro).  We had sixteen people attending:  the eight of us (Nini, Mom, Dad, Ryan, Lindsey, John, Alli and I); my aunts (Vicki & Karen); my great aunts and uncles (Wanda & Philip, Joyce & Leon); and my mom's cousin and his wife (Kevin & Terri).  It was a house full, and we were so happy to have everyone and plenty of room too!

After wonderful family time, the best part is - we had a ton of leftovers.  I'm pretty sure I'm on my fourth straight meal of Thanksgiving, and I'm not tired of it yet.  Bring it on!

Friday we had tailgate-lite (only 2 tents and half the food) for the LSU game.  One of my best friends Lara and her husband Bobby came up for the game, so I got to spend some quality time with them.  The Hogs kept it closer than any of us thought they would, which was fun and depressing all at the same time.  I hate losing, but I really hate losing to LSU!!

Today we got up and hit Prairie Grove from some antiquing.  My great aunts came along and introduced us to Briar Rose, a bakery with delicious chocolate gravy in Farmington.  Then we forged ahead to do some serious thrifting.  There were 4-5 antique stores in a row down the main drag in PG, and boy did we rack up!  I got a metal horse statue, an egg basket, a sugar mold, a mason jar, and two bars of locally made soap. 

Totally goofy horse than now lives in my flower bed

I also had my eye on this table for a kitchen island, but I didn't pull the trigger.

After spending about half of the day there, we headed home to eat more leftovers.  I was pretty adamant about getting Christmas stuff out, even though I was afraid I was going to get too tired.  I popped in the Christmas music and got to work though, and two hours later - voila!

Yay!  One tree down, two to go!!  Doesn't this just look amazing in our office area?  I have dreamed about putting the tree here ever since we moved in, and I am so pleased with the way it looks!!

I better go grab a slice of the chocolate pie my mom made fresh for tonight - yes, we're fatties.  Yum-o!!!  I hope all of you had a wonderful time celebrating my all time favorite non-my-birthday holiday!!

Fall Family Photo Fun

I do love a good bit of alliteration, don't you?  I voted for Terry Taylor for Beaver Water District in the election last week on name alone.  I have got to get more up to speed on my local politics...

I digress, however.  Last weekend we scheduled a photo shoot with the wonderful Chris Blake to take our family photos for our Christmas card and to go over the fireplace at the new house.  Can you believe I talked Ryan out of mounting a TV over it?  Had to be because the opening was too small.  He got a new TV out of the deal, but I'm claiming a moral victory for home decorators everywhere.

Our last family pictures were for the Humane Society of the Ozarks photobook in June or July, and I loved them, but I didn't really want to send out pictures of Alli and I in sleeveless tops on the Christmas card.  So we set up a time with Chris that was perfect - it was a cool day, the leaves were changing, and I got a new outfit.  What could be better?  (Side note - this is a Piko brand top.  I now own 4.  I am OBSESSED.)

How fabulous are these?  I am so happy with how they turned out and I can't wait to send out Christmas cards (40% off over at Shutterfly right now...)

Where Did October Go?

I feel like I blinked and one of my favorite months of the year was gone!  And I didn't give the world a single update on it!  Fortunately, my all time favorite month is upon us, but just to keep everyone in the loop, here's an October recap.

• Football, and lots of it.  We attended every home football game the Hogs played in October, and tailgated for most of them, which means we had very few free weekends.  I love football, and I love the Hogs, but they really aren't making the time, effort, and money we're putting into them worth it this year.  Here's hoping it will pay off next year.  It's a good thing for us we have such great family and friends around to commiserate with.

• A field trip to the pumpkin patch.  It's really hard to believe that the last time Alli's school took a field trip to the pumpkin patch she was in kindergarten, and now she's in second grade!  I was able to go with her and it was so much fun.  The most wonderful thing about Alli's personality is that she thoroughly enjoys life.  So many kids on the field trip complained or didn't participate in the events, but Alli did everything that was put in front of her and had a blast the entire time.

• Halloween.  This is Alli's all time favorite holiday.  She's the kid who loves going in the Halloween store to see all of the scary stuff and swears she's not afraid.  I can't look at the demon babies, but Alli doesn't seem to mind them at all.  This year Alli decided to be a vampire.  We went to her school carnival the Friday before Halloween, and then went trick or treating in our old neighborhood with her good friends Addison and Samantha.  It was a great night, and I'm still sneaking her candy.  Someone stop me.

Here's to a wonderful October, and a warm welcome to the best month of the year, November.  Happy fall, y'all!

Cat-astrophes: Part 1

Remember that Dog-saster story about Cash?  Well this past Friday night, we had another pet panic moment, but this one was a Cat-astrophe.  And I again will hope there's only one.  Like I mentioned a few weeks ago, our family just moved into a new house.  The living room and kitchen area has really tall ceiling and hence, really tall cabinets.

Dear sweet Ginger likes to climb on cabinets, which has always been more of a nuisance than anything.  About a week after we moved in, it struck me to climb on the counters and check out the top of the cabinets to make sure everything was safe and secure.  I found a triangular opening on either side of the over, which is caddy-cornered in the kitchen.  I called in the tall one, who looked down the chute and confirmed 1 - this is a 9+ ft tunnel that drops to the floor from the top of the cabinets and 2 - The other cabinets are screwed into this chute, which means the opening is lined with screws.  We agreed that we needed to seal this opening up before Gigi found herself at the bottom of the chute or worse.

A few weeks passed and we sort of forgot about the opening, until last Friday night.  Ginger was up on the cabinets, and my parents and grandmother were up for the Rutgers game (sigh...just...sigh).  Ginger was sitting on the top of the over cabinet when a moth perched over the opening.  She lunged, airborne over the opening and the she plummeted to the bottom hiney first.  I screamed and everyone stared at me - no one else saw it happen!  Ginger immediately started howling, so Ryan figured out pretty quickly what was going on, but the rest of the family was confused.  I got Ryan the flashlight while I explained the problem.

While he checked on Ginger, I implored him to get a saw and saw her out.  There was no telling what injuries she had sustained, and I was anxious to check her out.  Ryan, however, upon seeing that she was okay, jumping to try to get out, and not laying in a pool of blood like I feared, decided to take a little time to get creative before sawing his new cabinets.

First, he fed a bedsheet down the opening, hoping she would grab onto it and he could pull her out.  Of course, she didn't oblige.  Then he had the genius idea of using one of Alli's pet nets from IKEA (seen here).  He thought maybe if he fed that down the tunnel with a little bit of turkey that perhaps Ginger would be enticed to jump in a cubby hole and be lifted out.

That little brat ate the turkey and didn't set a paw in the cubby.  Of course, by this point I was getting more and more adamant that we cut her out of there.  Ryan asked for one more shot, so I allowed him that.  At his request, I brought him rope from our move.  Using his expert army skills, Ryan fashioned a slipknot, which he fed down the chute.  I heard him say "Come on, girl.  Come on kitty.  That's it.  Stick your paw in..."  Then I saw him scrambling, and Ginger emerged at the top, thoroughly lassoed by her neck and leg.  I snatched her from him and checked her over - she seemed completely fine and had already forgotten about the whole incident.

Needless to say, some of our Sunday was spent at Home Depot getting plywood and officially covering the holes.  It's always an adventure around here...

Pressured for Perfection

Let me share with you a text that I just sent to Ryan:

"I need new clothes!  I need to get our new house decorated to perfection!  I want to be a great employee!  I want to be the perfect mom and wife!  And I want to make fun food and decor for the holidays!  Why am I so tired all the time?"

Do any of you other moms feel this way all the time?  I am pulled in one hundred different directions from the moment I wake up in the morning until the second my eyes close at night.  Most mornings I am scrambling to get myself and my second grader ready for the day in a timely fashion (failure rate: 70%), then I spend the majority of the day at my challenging and dynamic job, and then my evenings are full of cooking dinner, getting homework done, walking dogs, and doing all the things that keep the household running (cleaning, laundry, etc).  When do I have time to do anything else?  Where do these moms find time to interview their kids, put together scrapbooks, and bake cookies shaped like reindeer?

I have a fantastic husband who helps me every step of the way - his mornings, days, and nights look exactly like mine.  Where does the time go?  I don't feel like I give anything the attention it deserves because I'm always spread so thin!

Oh and the guilt.  Do they ever tell you about the guilt when you're a new mom?  Never.  They tell you about the exhaustion, the lack of patience, the weight gain.  But they never even begin to mention that new emotion that you're doomed to spend the rest of your life with: guilt.  "I should be doing this.  I should want to do that.  I should have done this.  I'm not doing that enough."  All.  The.  Time.

I blame some of this on social media.  When I'm on Pinterest, I'm pinning ideas that I know I'll never get to carry out because I'm to tired/busy.  When I'm Facebook, I'm looking at someone else's highlight reel while living my own outtakes.  And when I'm on Twitter, I'm indulging in sports talk and celebrity gossip (enter guilt).

When am I going to host a Southern Living Thanksgiving?  When am I going to be dressed like I walked out of Vogue?  And when is my house going to be decorated like an HGTV show?  And when am I going to realize that living and being happy means that none of these things will ever come true?  More important than a Southern Living Thanksgiving is one where I'm surrounded by family enjoying themselves (and a Cowboys win).  More important than being dressed like a super model is being there for my child and my husband.  And more important than a pristine and well-decorated museum is a comfortable, homey place for the whole family to relax.

And I need to give myself credit.  Cooking two days out of seven isn't that bad.  The house is usually pretty clean considering the zoo that resides there.  And I do just fine decorating most of the time (I think).

But until I learn the accept the above, this is how I feel most of the time:

Via

Hog 'til I die...

...but this season might kill me.  My hopes for the piggies crashed with Bobby Petrino's motorcycle in April, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a glimmer before this season started.  That all came to a screeching halt when we lost to ULM last weekend, but the Holloways and Lowes still love those Hogs, so we set up our first tailgate of the year in the rain for Alabama.

We had a pretty great tailgate despite the rain, and Ryan's friend Jake who recently moved to California showed up!  Check out the fashion statement --

All in all, great food, good friends, and a terrible game.

But today is Sunday, and it's a new day.  Go Cowboys!!

Movin' On Up

I've been keeping a secret from y'all.  I'm so sorry to have had to do it, but I'm so superstitious and I didn't want to get my own hopes up along with yours before it happened.  But we have a new Chateau de Lowe!!!

That's right, friends.  We rented our sweet little bungalow (I'm really making that house sound nice, aren't I?) and moved up the road to a bigger new construction in Alli's school district.  I know many of you are scratching your heads right now and wondering how on earth Ryan talked me out of a 1920s charmer off Dickson Street, but he really had nothing to do with it.

Something fabulous about Ryan is that he really does just want me to be happy, so if an old, tiny house that needed a ton of work would make me happy, he was willing to do it.  But after a lot of thinking, praying, and some tears, I decided the best thing for our marriage, our family, and our future was to put the old home reno on hold in favor of something bigger than our current home, still in Alli's school district, and that only needs my decorating imagination.

We've seen a lot of houses over the past year, so once we decided where we wanted to be, everything moved really quickly.  My stipulations were newer, lots of storage, Alli's same school, big yard & outdoor living area, pet area, and neighborhood amenities (I could list a thousand more, but those were the big ones).  Ryan's were outdoor living area, neighborhood amenities, pantry, plenty of space inside, and a bonus room.  We were lucky enough to find a house that meets all of the criteria plus some.  Seriously kids, I have a pool down the street AND a place for the litter box that's not in a single bedroom.  How happy am I??  You'll be getting lots of updates on it as we settle in, but here's a few pictures from the day we closed to hold you over:

Ryan outside the huge iron door - it's so heavy!

Ryan unlocking the door right after closing - he carried me across the threshold!

The best in the business delivering our fridge

So we closed the Thursday before Labor Day, and my fantastic parents and grandmother helped us move all weekend.  We only paused to attend the Razorback game on Saturday.  We are actually mostly unpacked, and I can't wait to share my plans with you!  I have another blank slate to start over with, and I could not be happier about it.  We have a long way to go, but I'm really excited about what the future holds for our family in a new abode.

Home Sweet Home