Catch Up

It's been a little while since I've posted. A nasty cold, food poisoning and Christmas, all in quick succession, can really put you behind. So, now that that's all over, it's time to catch up a little.

So, what have we been up to?

Yard work. Two large Mulberry trees plus a significant winter storm left our front yard looking like this:



One of the culprits, looking innocently empty after dropping all its leaves:



The clean up has been somewhat complicated because we fill up the yard waste bin without making a dent in the carpet of leaves covering our front lawn. We bought two extra garbage cans and filled those up with leaves and still it looked like we hadn't done anything. We ended up just leaving the yard like that until the next garbage day when they emptied our bins and we refilled them. By then, the leaves had dried out quite a bit and were much more compactable. We now have just a small pile of leaves waiting for the next garbage day.

Getting our new bed. In my last post, I talked about our awesome new mattress. Well, we finally got an awesome new bed to put it on:



This isn't actually a picture of our bed. I'm too lazy right now to go take a picture of our bed. But, this is the picture of it in the Crate & Barrel catalog. So, imagine that bed in our room with our bed linens. Lovely, isn't it? Someday I'll take a picture of it and post it. This bed I've had my eye on for awhile. When I saw it, I fell in love with it and I wanted it. So, I started requesting Crate & Barrel gift cards as gifts to put towards the bed. We were fortunate to be gifted a little early this year for Christmas from my mom and my sister, so we got the bed and got it set up and were able to wake up in it on Christmas morning. And when I woke up and looked at it, I said "Merry Christmas to me!" Needless to say, I love it.

Christmas.



I was pretty fortunate this year. I was on top of my Christmas preparations and had most everything done before I got all sick and gross. However, after I came out of my head cold haze and then my food poisoning grossness episode, there were a few last minute things to be done. It kept me busy enough that no baking happened this year. I feel a little like I should be disappointed by this, but in actuality, I couldn't care less. I finished my last minute things and then enjoyed the holiday spirit.

Christmas was lovely this year. I had family in town, so that was fun. We woke up and opened our own presents at our house and then headed up to my parents' for the Christmas festivities. Here's our Christmas tree on Christmas morning:



Scout quickly found her stocking because there were treats and a squirrel coming out the top:



We opened presents at my parents' and my sisters and I compared our matching cupcake potholders that my mom had made for us:



Then we sat down to our Christmas breakfast. It was a combination of traditions. We had our normal Christmas sausage bread (think garlic, sausage, and cheese stuffed into bread. Mmmmmm!) and we also had Strawberry Crepes which is my visiting sister's family's Christmas breakfast tradition. It was divine:



The rest of Christmas was fabulous, but we, apparently, took no more pictures of it. We had more rounds of present-opening as more family arrived and then we enjoyed a yummy Christmas dinner.

And, that's what we've been up to. We've also been having fun since Christmas, but that is for another post.