Holiday Spirit!

Hi everyone! Hope you had a great weekend. I am doing decently well, as well as can be considering I've been battling one of the worst colds I think I've ever had for almost two weeks. I think I have experienced just about every symptom, from sore throat to congestion to coughing (at one time, I'm pretty sure I coughed up a little blood, eee!) to sinus issues. After coming back to Madison from a lovely few days at home for Thanksgiving, all I wanted to do was rest and relax. Fortunately for me, L is so wonderful to me and immediately started nursing me back to health. He gave me tea, water, chicken soup, and more. I fought him hard on the amount of water he made me drink (three 32 oz. bottles in one day), but I really do think it helped a lot. While a few of my symptoms are still lingering, I think I'm finally on the mend. Woohoo!

Me being on the mend meant a few things for us this past weekend - we went to Target on Saturday to check out a couple sales (one of which involved me getting 20 rolls of wrapping paper. Uh.....yeah.), we went for a 3-mile walk in the brisk air, and we spent some good time relaxing. Great day! On Sunday, we laid around for awhile in the morning, went to Target again (yes, we have a problem) to get some cooking supplies, and then we ended up spending much more time in there than we expected because we got caught up in the Christmas decorations. That was my fault because I just wanted to peek, but then L informed me that our apartment complexes do a holiday decorating contest each year, and top prize can get $100 off their rent. Once we talked about that, he got super excited and we basically filled our cart with stuff to decorate my balcony. We just pooled our resources and are decorating my place rather than decorating his and competing against each other, so we went nuts! After we got home and started decorating the balcony, we realized we didn't have enough lights to do what we wanted. So, we ended up going back to Target AGAIN to get more stuff. Lucky for us, both of us went shopping at Target on Black Friday (we went separately), and we each got a 20% off coupon for purchases this week. We made good use of those coupons, as well as my Cartwheel app and 5% discount for using my Target debit card, so I went from about zero holiday decorations to about a million! ;) We haven't finished decorating quite yet, so I'll wait to provide pics, but we're pretty excited. On the night the apartments get judged for decorations, L wants to be outside on my balcony in a Santa suit to add to the affect, so that'll be hilarious. Just for that night, we'll also move the Christmas tree out there so it'll look extra awesome. I really think we could win, or at least place. I hope so. It'll help make up for the cost of everything we bought, ha! Beyond all of this, L also brought over his artificial tree, so we put that up last night and decorated it, so I'm super excited. Definitely in the Christmas spirit, probably more than ever! Not sure what's gotten into me this year, but I've felt more into the holidays for one reason or another. Kinda fun! And I finally have enough money that I was able to by everyone in my family something for Christmas. Can't wait to give everyone their presents!:)

Take a look at a few pics from Thanksgiving and from our holiday adventures. Can't wait to share more!

 The start of pictures with all the kiddos! Here's me with Drew and Nash!

(Sorry in advance for the blurry quality of many of these. :-/ Sad.)

 Uncle Randy with Homer!

 Me and Drew!

 Me and Lia!

 Me and Peyton!

 Me and Tayt!

 Me and Austyn!

 Goofing around with brother and uncle Jake!

 Me and Meg!

 The best Homer would give me;).

 Me and the sisters-in-law, Casey and Courtney! 

(And my new nieces and/or nephews in each of their bellies;))

 Drew opening her birthday present from Aunt Nae Nae!

 Minnie Mouse!!!!!:)

 Me and mama!

Now onto a few random ones from the weekend back in Madison!

 L trying out his Santa pajamas from Target. HA! I can't even tell you how much I love this:).

 Homemade chicken soup (yum!), water, and tea is just what doctor L ordered!

 All my Target wrapping paper! On Saturday after Thanksgiving, all their trees were 50% off (we didn't get one), and all their wrapping paper was buy one, get one free. Since I usually buy their more expensive stuff, this was such a steal!! Even when it goes on clearance after the holidays, I think I still will have gotten a better deal at this sale. How can one go wrong?! :) I'm seriously still so excited!

 After getting our first round of decorations, we got dressed up in Christmas colors to help us get in the spirit of decorating. We may or may not have looked exactly like this when we went back to Target a second time;).

 

Sneak peek of the balcony! This isn't anywhere near the final product, just a teaser. :)

 The tree lit up after we decorated it!

 Here it is again, but now with some presents under it. How fun!

 Feeling a little extra inspired this year, I decided to create a Christmas banner of my own. I often see them in catalogs like Paper Source, and after some thought, I figured it would be pretty easy to do it on my own. It wasn't tough at all. Just took some circle stencils and traced out some circles on tan, red, and green cardstock. After I cut them out, I glued each circle onto the next. For the letters, I simply printed them on regular computer paper and cut circles out of them too. For the string, I just taped it through the back of the circles. For the future, I may consider creating small holes in each circle and looping some twine in them so they stay in place a little better, but we'll see. For a first try, I was pretty excited!

Happy holidays, everyone!:)