It's the most wonderful time of the year...

Well it is December and that can only mean one thing....Lots and Lots of Christmas decorations!  As always our house is done up from top to bottom in all things Christmas.  We have made a few new purchases and I think our decorations are finally starting to come together in a much more cohesive way.  You may also notice a few new pieces of furniture that I haven't blogged about yet.  I have been planning on doing a House post 1 year later but haven't had the time to get the pictures done and now that all the decorations are up- it isn't quite what our house looks like all the time so I promise after the holidays I will work hard on getting that post done.  So without further ado, our house in all its Christmas Glory:

Pretty in Blue

I am officially a delinquent blogger.  I just realized I never blogged about a pretty significant house update that took place this summer- oh in like JUNE!!!  We completely updated the master bedroom and bathroom including doors, closet, vanity, furniture, window treatments etc.  Again by we I mean Nick did it all while I was out of town for the week and it was fabulous to come home to.  Because I wasn't home for most of it I tasked Nick with taking pictures and I also don't have a lot of details to share so enjoy some before and after pictures of the rooms.

Bathroom Before:

 Bathroom After:

Bedroom Before:

Bedroom After:

We still have a little bit of work to do in terms of adding art, etc to the walls and we also want to build a more substantial bed with drawers for storage (which I will do my best to update you on when they happen), but I think this is a huge improvement and just feels so darn cozy!

A Fall Refresh

Yikes...I have again become a delinquent blogger.  We have been busy just living life lately; nothing too out of the ordinary just everyday life and I just forget to blog.  We did recently do a small house update that I think is worth sharing.  Last spring we replaced the front door on the house and the front of our house went from this:

when we moved in

to this:

new door that doesn't match

after a little of this:

Turns out replacing a door is not as easy as it sounds, but we managed to get it done.  After we lived with a mismatched front door and siding for far too many months we finally decided we needed to take advantage of the little bit of nice weather weekends we had and finally get on painting the front door.  In that discussion we also decided to paint the shutters and the trim around the windows.  Nick did all the painting, well all the work really so I can't take credit for that and I think it turned out pretty darn great!  

It was a pretty small project but it was nice to cross it off our list  

1 year later...

Monday Nick and I celebrated our first anniversary.  It is hard to believe it has already been a year since the big day!  We decided to just get away for a short little trip over the long weekend.  So we booked a cabin overlooking the river in Grafton, IL.  We arrived late in the afternoon and got dressed up for drinks overlooking the river and a nice dinner.

On the deck of our cabin

After dinner we went to another restaurant on the river and just sat and watched the boats.  It was quite nice not to have anything we had to do for a couple of hours.  We spent the rest of the evening rereading all of our wedding cards.  We also brought along a bottle of pineapple wine that we brought home from our honeymoon.

We had decided we would save it for a special occasion, but I think we may have saved it a little too long because we both took one drink and decided that was enough and poured the rest down the drain...oops!

The next morning we slept in and then decided to have some wedding cake for breakfast.

Nick's reaction pretty much sums up how the cake was.  It wasn't terrible, (much better than the wine) just not as good as it was a year ago nor was it good enough to really want to eat more than a few bites.  Nonetheless, I'm glad we saved it; it was a fun little tradition. 

We spent the rest of the day exploring the stores in Grafton and the little towns around there before heading home.  

It wasn't an elaborate weekend, but it was nice to get away from home for a little while with no agenda and just enjoy our surroundings.  

End of Summer Adventures

Unfortunately, with Labor Day weekend this coming weekend I think it is time to admit that summer is almost over.  The good news is we have been trying to pack in a few adventures while we can.

The first adventure was a trip to Indianapolis for a baby shower for my wonderful friend Gabie.  Nick stayed at home for the weekend but I had a wonderful time seeing college friends that I hadn't seen in almost a year!  Katie, as always, did a great job as photographer and captured these wonderful pics of the 4 of us:

 I hadn't seen Sarah since she became a mom to the adorable little Hugo almost a year ago so we had to squeeze in a little trip to see the little man as well.

Seriously, how cute is that little guy?

Any day now Gabie will be adding a second little man to the crew.  Hopefully it won't take me a year to meet him!  

When I got home Sunday evening Nick and decided to have a date night before he had to leave for the week for work.  The Missouri Botanical Gardens had a Chinese Lantern Festival all summer that we finally had some time to go check out.  It did not disappoint and was absolutely spectacular:

The only downside was that it was incredibly crowded but luckily we ran into a very nice volunteer on our way in who gave us some tips on what to hit up first before the huge crowd got there so it wasn't too bad.  

Our last adventure was a bit on the nerdy side.  Nick's brother is back in the states from his deployment in Germany and was going to be at his parent's house this weekend so we decided we would head to Decatur for the afternoon.  Since he wasn't getting in until early afternoon we decided to make a stop we have been talking about making for what seems like forever, The Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library in Springfield.  The museum was incredibly well done and very educational.  Most of the places in the museum you can't take pictures but we did snap one with Mr. Lincoln:

So there was the end of our summer fun.  Hopefully with the craziness of fall and the election we will still find some time to squeeze in some fun this fall that I will be sure to share as well!

Mustache Party

About a month ago we had a wedding shower/going away party for our dear friends Austin and Amanda.  Nick and Austin used to be roommates and Austin and Amanda were recently married and moved to Syracuse with the Army and for graduate school.  We did a simple mustache and lips theme with some diy decorations.

We also tried to serve food that reminded us of the two of them.

The whole spread

Austin's I'm too Poor PBI (in the shape of mustaches)

Raisin Bran Cookies
Don't Feed them to Wrigley Austin...

 Wrigley and Austin have a very special bond and when Nick and Austin used to live together Austin would regularly share his Raisin Bran breakfast with Wrigley which is where the Raisin Bran cookies come in.

Who doesn't love a Cupcake?

Amanda's Smoothie in Salad Form 

Cheesy Quinoa Bites
Healthy & Cheesy, just like Amanda

Amanda's I Make it Classy Chicken Salad (to compliment the PBJ ofcourse)

Our gift to them even stuck with the theme, matching mustache Tervis cups  and the mustache sandwich cutter we used for the PBJ sandwiches.

It was a great night celebrating two great friends who we already miss a lot!