Christmas Shenanigans

First off, a side note to my cousin, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIFFANY! Wish you were here getting into trouble with us!!

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Christmas was wonderful, and it ain’t over yet.

We kicked off the holiday with my Mom’s birthday on Christmas Eve. I stayed at my parents that night and we woke up and did Christmas together. I got lots of fun goodies! I will share what I got only because I’ve already had some people say they expect to get a full recap on the blog. To say I’m blessed is an understatement. I know Christmas isn’t about the gifts. It’s really not. I know the reason for the season. But nonetheless thank you everyone for a wonderful Christmas Here’s the culmination of goods I got from my many Christmases and people who love me.

Earthwise Slate TOMS

Gift Cards for Lowes and VISA

Burberry Perfume that I’ve wanted forever

A Compressor!

Paint Sprayer!!

Jigsaw!!!

Blue & White Striped GAP Scarf. We all know my stripe obsession. (I’ve added two striped shirts since that post…sigh)

In Touch Weekly Subscription for my gossip fix

Candles

And several other miscellaneous goodies!

Can we just say I’m super excited about my Man Toys?

Not those kind. Get your head out of the gutter!

Tools. Glorious Tools!

Can you imagine the DIY projects I can do with a compressor, paint sprayer & a jigsaw?? Gah!! So exciting!

This has been on my “want-to-make” list for a long time.

Or this one.

Ohhh the possibilities!

With my VISA gift card to help the cost, I broke down and bought myself a Kindle. I thought I’d be able to read books on my iPad, and I can, but for $80 to have something that’s made to read books, and that I wouldn’t be scared to take out in the elements, I went for it. So far I’m in love and I haven’t even purchased a book yet on it.

I was off last Friday, and yesterday, had to work today, and now I’m off til Tuesday of next year! Whoo hoo! So for now a quick recap of what’s on my camera/phone so far…

Big Momma & Grampy got here Christmas day and will be here through the New Year. More family will be trickling in this weekend. Good times ahead

Me and the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet. Love my Big Momma!

Dad & I riding in the limo golf cart

Windblown!

My Mom has two pet turtles. Herbert and Kirby.

I know, I know.

I call her the Turtle Whisperer. She put me and Cole on turtle sitting duty while she was cleaning their tank because they kept trying to escape their temporary container. That’s all I have to say about that.

The Griswold Gray Family Christmas Tree, 2011 at my parent’s house.

Cole, Me, Dad

We spent Christmas afternoon at my GMa’s house with my Uncles and Great Grandparents.

Uncle Mike

GMa and her wine!

Oh dear.

PawPaw & Momi

Uncle Doug

Pretty table setting.

Thank you for dinner Grandma! It was wonderful as always!

Annnnd then we have Big Momma with some random deer legs. I cropped out the gross ends. It’s an inside joke but long story short our neighbor goes hunting and every year he gives Big Momma a pair of deer legs.

She has wanted to make this apparently, a deer leg rack.

She always has good intentions to preserve them and make something but instead they usually end up rotting on their back porch. Grampy just rolls his eyes and puts up with her silly ways because he loves her And the neighbor keeps bringing them to her every year because it’s funny, and well, she’s Big Momma

Happy (Belated) Birthday Momma!

My Mom’s birthday is on Christmas Eve. With the festivities and the holiday I am just now sitting down to catch up on a little blogging.

So with that being said, it’s a few days late but I wanted to give my gorgeous, amazing Momma some blog love and tell her HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Mom, you are the best mom a girl could have. I’m not just saying that because I’m biased, but because it’s true. I love you more than you’ll ever know. Happy 27th birthday again!!

Momma & Me, El Jalisco’s Birthday Celebration

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<3

Yummy in my Tummy

Can I just say, where have these been all my life?

via

Holy moly, can we, in the words of Uncle Eddie say, “that right there is Goooo-ood!”

Today I read on MckMama’s blog a recipe for Chocolate Caramel Toffee Crunch Bars. They looked absoultely delicious and I knew I had to try them. I also needed to make a little something for my employees so this seemed like the perfect cookie-alternative.

I went to Wally World and bought the ingredients. You can see MckMama’s recipe and instructions.

I had to tweak it slightly. For a large cookie sheet, I used 1.5 sleeves of saltines, 2 sticks of butter and 1 C of brown sugar. I used her recipe first but it wasn’t enough because I think I had a bigger pan and more crackers. So I quickly made some more caramel and made note on my recipe. Also, to make things a little more fun and because I love white chocolate, I used 1 bag of milk chocolate chips and half a bag of white chocolate. It all ends up swirled together in the end anyway but I love the taste.

Cracker layer.

Brown Shugah

Making caramel.

That can’t be healthy.

My assistant made sure I didn’t burn anything and was there to taste test when needed.

Caramel cracker layer, then you bake that baby.

And you wait. Approximately 8 minutes. And then your timer flies off your fridge and disassembles itself so you don’t know how much time is left and you have to wing it. Oh right, that shouldn’t happen but it did to me.

You take pictures of yourself because you’ve got nothing better to do while you wait. Although I liked the second one enough to make it my profile picture on Facebook. At least it’s not like the typical “my space” picture taken in the bathroom mirror:

Note, I do not know that girl, she was merely found on google.

Anywho.

Pretty enough to eat. And I did, a few!

Chocolate melted, heath bar brickle on.

Cooling in the fridge. A little heavy on the blur there, should have bumped up the aperture some. 

Loving the bokeh from the tree lights.

I’ll reluctantly be packing several of them up to take to work, but I’ll definitely be saving some for this weekend’s Christmas festivities.

How does that sharing concept go?

One for you, two for me…one for you, two for me…

I Have Two Brows Again

You know, versus one.

It’d been far too long since I plucked or waxed my eyebrows so today I bit the bullet and just got them waxed. It was worth every single 1,100 pennies spent (including tip) to let the salon lady tame the wild beasts my eyebrows.

I do realize this is probably not at all appealing to most people and more than likely TMI but this is my life, and if an eyebrow wax excites me and I want to share, then so be it.

My blog. Remember?

Now, for a little before and after.

Bahaha. Kidding. Although the real thing isn’t that far off.

Sidenote: You’d think I would put a little more effort into my hair. Le sigh…

Yes, it’s still red but if it stayed red forever it’d still be better than the before!

Remind me again, why I post pictures like this only to embarrass myself?

Oy.

Go Noles!

Because I think it's really cute, I wanted to share the new ornament I picked up at Garnet & Gold today. Love it!

Christmas Décor Tour

It’s Christmas time in my little rental and in case you don’t get a chance to come by, or you know, can’t come by because I don’t know you and that’d be creepy or you just live in another state, I wanted to share my Christmas decorations!

First of all let me say I am so happy to have a fireplace. I’ve had a fireplace everywhere I’ve lived for the past 17 + years or so, and I was ecstatic to have one again. It just makes things so much cozier

First things first though, I had to get my tree!

Okay let’s start our tour shall we? Come on in!

I have this candle burning EVERY single night. It’s almost gone since I took these pictures. It smells UH-mazing. I love love love Bath & Body Works candles.

Glitter balls in a bowl.

Market days find from 2010.

Found this book last year for $5 from Goodwill. It is in mint condition. Such a lucky find.

“Snow” cones. Found last year, Michael’s clearance section for I think 90% off at that point.

Thar she glows! And dang it my star is crooked!

Am I the only one who loves colored lights on a tree? Seems like I’m in the minority! I love white lights too but the colored just make me happy

New ornament this year.

Jingle Bell Mickey, love it.

Food Network and a fire - cozy.

‘Tis the season! Oh and it looks like my maid hasn’t come in a while. See that layer of dust on the table? She’s fired!

…oh wait, I don’t have a maid. In that case, it can stay!

Oh and I stumbled across this photoshop tutorial for editing your Christmas tree pics. Can we say wow? Thank you for sharing Brandi! (For those of you who aren’t aware, SOOC means “Straight Out of the Camera”, as in not edited).

 

Here’s a few family Christmas pictures from this year.

On a side, and very-vain-not-related-to-Christmas-decorations-at-all note, I can’t help but notice how round my face has gotten and how ehrm large other areas are as well. Yikes. Hopefully this time next year I will look like this again! Aye yi yi…how did I let myself go?!

May 2009.

Friggin’ depressing.

Anywho! Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Because it’s absolutely amazing, here’s a house in our town that won Good Morning America’s BEST HOLIDAY LIGHTS IN AMERICA! I’ve gone to see it twice, both thankfully before it won because I heard there were two hour waits just to get to it after it aired!! It is absolutely breathtaking.

Click the link here to see another picture and a video. Turn up your volume! The music is what plays on the radio station that you tune into in your car…I get goosebumps watching it. Please do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to check it out! You won’t be sorry!

God Bless Our Troops, and Merry Christmas Y’all!!

PS- If you like to listen to Christmas music, Pandora’s David Crowder Band (Holiday) Radio is awesome. I’ve got it on every day!