Christmas Decorations

I can't believe it, Christmas has already come and gone! We were super busy over the holidays, so I never had time to post about all of our decorations around the house. Well, here are some pictures of the decorations we had up around the house. 

Merry Christmas!!

It's been a long time since I've posted, but Merry Christmas! I hope you have had a wonderful holiday with your family and friends!

Here's our Christmas Card from this year:

Busy weekend!

We had a pretty crazy weekend! We had a rehearsal and wedding on Friday and Saturday and then we picked up our new puppy yesterday! I have lots of pictures, of course.

Rory!

Stretch!

Kevin and Rory

Taking pictures with a puppy is hard! Shake it out :) 

He will be a medium sized goldendoodle. We are so excited to see how he grows. He has a ton of energy and is getting along with Darcy really well.

New Sectional!

We got our sectional delivered this weekend (well part of it)! We originally ordered a three piece sectional, including a large regular sofa, armless sofa and chaise.  However, when the delivery guys tried to bring in the regular sofa part of the sectional, it was too big to get into the room! We couldn't get it through the doorway with the way our upstairs hallway is laid out.  The delivery guys also didn't want to damage our walls or the sofa, so I took it as a sign, and decided to just return that piece. Instead, we ordered another chaise to go on the left side of the couch. So, now we will have a long couch with two chaises. 

I actually think the new configuration will work even better than the original plan.  After I started to see the pieces in the room, I realized that the original sofa piece was just going to be wrong for the scale of the room. I love the chaise that we got, so it will be even better to have another one.  The couch is really going to be great for this room, I just can't wait to get the rest of the furniture and TV in here so we can enjoy it. Here are some pictures of the two pieces that we got delivered this weekend in the room. 

The other chaise should come in a couple weeks and then it will finally be complete!

Media Room Paint

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! We had a super busy week and weekend. Today, I'm sharing the new paint color that I painted in our media room about a week ago. It's a custom color by Sherwin Williams, a darkened version of Gauntlet Gray (140% of SW 7019). Here are some pictures. I really like it a lot. Oh and don't mind that outdated, gold fan, it has since been removed and replaced with something a little more modern ;) 

Thanksgiving Prep and Recipes

What are you doing for Thanksgiving? Have you already gotten it figured out or do you need some last minute help preparing?

We hosted Thanksgiving last year, and although we're not this year, there's still a lot to cook and get done before the big day. I love Annie'sEats Thanksgiving Prep series from a few years ago, this might be helpful for some of you:
Thanksgiving Prep Series 1
Thanksgiving Prep Series 2
Thanksgiving Prep Series 3

There are tons of other blogs with great tips and recipes out there, but I thought I would share some of the recipes that we've used (and loved) in the past.

Spinach Dip - I love this spinach dip, it's addicting and goes great with veggies or anything else you want :) 

Phyllo Cups with Brie, Preserves, and Pecans - These are great as an appetizer or snack. 

Roasted Turkey - A delicious recipe and lots of helpful tips for roasting your turkey. Perfect if you're cooking a turkey for the first time, it will walk you through step-by-step... so easy!

Roasted Brussel Sprouts - These have a really good flavor and texture. 

Alton's Green Bean Casserole or French's Green Bean Casserole - They're both delicious, but Alton's is a nice option if you don't want to use the cream of mushroom soup. 

Perfect Macaroni and Cheese - We made this last year, it was great. I love that it has Gruyere, too.  

Pumpkin Cheesecake Cake - One of my own creations, the perfect Thanksgiving dessert! 

Chocolate Chess Pie - Is there anything better than this... I don't think so! 

Here are my posts from last Thanksgiving:

Thanksgiving Prep

Thanksgiving Recap

I'm here... sorry!

I was really trying to get better at blogging more frequently, then I went MIA for 2 weeks. Sorry about that! I'm still here, just super busy at work and home getting ready for the holidays.

This weekend we are going to a wedding in Atlanta. It will be fun to get to see a lot of my family and celebrate!  I'm also in the middle of a few projects at home that I'll hopefully finish up in the next couple of weeks.

We're working on the media room, I can't wait for this room to be done, it's going to be cozy! Our sectional gets delivered next weekend! I started painting this week, I'm not done, but I'm loving the color. It's really hard to pick the right dark gray/charcoal paint color.  We ended up doing a custom color: 140% darker version of  Sherwin William's Gauntlet Gray.  Here's an iPhone picture from when I first started painting. You can see some of the samples of paint colors that we tried on the right.  I can't wait to get it done, it's going to be make this room so much more dramatic!

We also finally found out which puppy of the litter will be ours. We are so excited that to be picking him up in 2 weeks! It's going to be a lot of work with another puppy, but it will be so fun and I know Darcy is going to love him!

It's crazy how fast Fall is flying by, it will be Christmas before you know it!  I still can't believe Thanksgiving is next week!

Happy Halloween!

source

Happy Halloween everyone!

I hope everyone has a great day.  I'm excited to see all of the trick-or-treaters from our neighborhood tonight. There are always a lot of cute costumes, I just hope we have enough candy!  Darcy is being a skunk tonight ;) This is the picture from the package, hopefully he will cooperate and end up looking something like this too!

Weekend Recap

This weekend was really fun. Friday night we decided to go see a movie and saw Pitch Perfect.  It has been out for a while, but it was really cute and funny!

On Saturday, we woke up early to go on a drive to visit some puppies from a litter of goldendoodles. Yes, that's right, we are getting a new puppy this December!!!  We have been talking about getting a goldendoodle for years, and we finally found the right breeder locally that has some medium sized goldendoodles and decided that it was the right time.  These puppies will be ready right after Thanksgiving, so we'll probably get ours sometime between then and early December. This weekend, we decided to go visit them and meet their parents.

We don't know which puppy we are going to get yet, we won't pick for a couple more weeks, but they are so cute! Here are some pictures of the puppies we met on Saturday.

After we left the breeder, we stopped by Fearrington Village for lunch.  We ate at The Granary and it was the perfect little lunch spot.  We walked around afterwards in the gardens and talked to the cows ;)

On the way home, passing over Jordan Lake. 

We had a great rest of the weekend, watching lots of football and spending time with family. Hope you had a great weekend too!