Adios 2010

Hi everyone! I know I said that the next post would be the floor reveal...but it's not. We slept in a little too long today, so they will be done tomorrow!

Until then I thought I'd do a post to ring in 2011! But first, an ode to the great year that was 2010....

We had SUCH a busy, exciting, and "full of change" year. Here is the month by month breakdown of it all:
January: I began my last semester as a college student, finished my last pledge week, bought a car all by ourselves, and Bryan turned 23
February: Bryan began is first season as a high school baseball coach, I had my last Master Follies
March: We started looking at houses, I was interviewed by The Knot Live for our wedding
April: We bought and closed on our very first home, I turned 22, we began the long journey of remodeling our home, I went on my last float trip and to my last club formal
May: I graduated college, Bryan finished his first year as a teacher and coach, I started a part-time job at Davidson-Taylor, I went to CO to watch Laura graduate high school
June: We traveled to Hawaii with Bryan's family, we (Bryan) redid the countertops
July: We traveled to Galveston with my family, picked up Louie and made him part of our family, and celebrated our first anniversary
August: Football began, I applied for a job at LCU, Bryan was non-existent (haha)
September: MORE football, Bryan's family came to visit, we found out that Alisha was pregnant, I was offered an event planning job at LCU (grown-up!), Kendra and Nathaniel came to visit
October: I went to California to visit Julie and my mom, I began my job at LCU, LHS football continued...but not well.
November: I had my first event, football ended, I wrecked my car, we bought a new one, we had Thanksgiving with my family in CO
December: My mom had surgery, we began working on our floors, we had Christmas with Bryan's family

...wow, that's a lot of stuff! I am so excited to see what God has in store for us in 2011!!

Happy New Year!!!!

Family and Floors

Hi everyone! Things have been crazy ever since we got back from Colorado Tuesday, so I'm just now getting a chance to post.

First off, we had a GREAT rest of our week with the Roberts family, but packed up on Tuesday morning to head home and spend some time with my wonderful, crazy family. They arrived about an hour after we did, and after a quick trip to Lujan's (our favorite mexican place), my dad and Bryan got to work on the floors! While they spent the trip covered in dust and glue, my mom, sisters and I shopped till we dropped. We also made it to round 3 of Harry Potter (last time...promise) before we headed home to my very messy house where we had our belated Christmas!

Weird.

Yes, it seriously looks like a bomb exploded in our bedroom (which is currently being treated like a dorm room....paper plates, granola bars, and cleaning supplies are all stuffed under our bed at the moment...yessssss). We just don't have enough space to put all of our presents (I know, how horrible! Too many presents!)! The good thing is that Bryan and my dad got a lot of work done with the floors and we (I mean Bryan) will hopefully be done with them by the end of the week, which means that I will hopefully have a clean room soon.

Here are a few pictures of the floor progress (yesterday):

Today:

They look great, right?!

It was really nice getting to see everyone and I am SO sad that our family time is over...but I guess we all have to return to reality sometime.

I've also been working on a little project for my mom. She has been wanting to start her own landscaping/staging business for a while and decided to kick the whole thing off with a gardening blog...so, I made her one! I also made her a logo that will hopefully be used when her actual business gets up and going.

You can go to her blog (make sure to follow her!) by clicking HERE. She doesn't have anything posted yet, but she will soon!

That's pretty much it for now. I will hopefully be posting pictures of the FINISHED floors next time so stay tuned!

Merry Merry!!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! We are hanging out at the Roberts and having a wonderful time! I've been hearing stories about Christmas with this family for YEARS, so I was very excited to participate this year. Let me tell you, I was not disappointed! We have had so much fun and I am so grateful to have such amazing in-laws.

Christmas Day went by in a blur, but it started out with the traditional Christmas morning and Santa visit. We all came downstairs to find and unwrap our many gifts. It. Was. Awesome. Everyone was spoiled to death with so many pretty things! Some of Bryan's gifts included a new driver, "work" clothes (a.k.a sweats), and golf shoes. He also opened my gift to him...a new table saw! Let's hear it for future home improvement projects haha! I opened SO many great things too--new books, clothes, jewelry, a Anthropologie candle (LOVE), kitchen gadgets and platters, and a Vera Bradley weekender bag and wallet! Bryan also surprised me with a gift card to get a new purse! (something that I have apparently mentioned the need for a few times.)

The parents and grandparents got a chance to open their gifts as well. I had to mention this because the sweetest moment took place when Nana (Bryan's grandma) teared up after opening her new Kindle. She was so taken by surprise and so grateful that she just couldn't help it and it was possibly my favorite memory from the day--I think all of us got a little choked up!

The Roberts also do a really fun tradition after everyone has opened all of their presents. "Santa" hides letters in the tree that are addressed to each kid with a poem that hints to one final present. This was so much fun to do and is something I know Bryan and I will incorporate into Christmas morning for our kids! We took turns reading our clues and then set off around the house to find our gifts. Bryan and I found ours in the basement but we brought them upstairs to open up in front of everyone. I have mentioned a time or two (or maybe more than that haha) that I have been lacking a camera of decent quality. Well, since I have the best family in the world I was SO happy to find out that my final gift was a Canon Rebel XSI!!  Bryan was also very surprised and so excited to open up a new laptop (!!), and spent the rest of the morning playing on it while I read the manual for my new camera and took approximately 344589243598 pictures. No joke.

Here are a few pictures of the rest of the day (courtesy of my new, amazing camera):

Bryan with his new toy (thanks so much Alisha, I will now be swatting this helicopter away for the next 6 months). Kidding!

Abby and I have matching cameras!! Ah, look at that clarity....I am never going back to normal cameras again.

Practicing a few landscape shots. Such a pretty Christmas Day!!

Sweet Judy serving our delicious breakfast!

The first of many details shots....yummy food! (my camera makes it look so pretty)

Haha I was going through my pictures and laughed when I saw this of Pop! I think Bryan took this haha. Playing with Nerf guns...silly man. This picture basically summarizes what the boys did ALL morning!

I have a gap between morning and evening pictures because we all headed upstairs for naps after all the gift excitement. I also got a chance to talk to my mom who I missed SO much all day as well as the rest of my family. Bryan took a few pictures of me on the phone, but those will never make the blog because they are AWFUL. Anyway, it was good to hear my mom's voice and all the noise going on in the background (I come from a very loud family haha). If you're reading this and are from my side of the family, I love you and thought about you all on Christmas Day!  I can't wait until Bryan and I can be with you all next year!

...And back to this year's Christmas Day:

Mr. Al (the faithful blog reader) on his IPad before dinner.

Getting ready for Christmas dinner...

Desserts!

The table all set for dinner....which was amazing by the way. We had such a good time talking and laughing and Al even got us all choked up with his sweet speech before we ate. (I've learned that I want to cry a lot when I'm with this family...happy tears of course!)

The beautiful Christmas tree!

Bryan playing games...I think everyone was just hanging around the living room at this point (and being my test subjects as I took about a thousand pictures of each of them).

Pop!

The helicopter that has terrorized every member of the family. Gah, I can't get over the picture quality!

I love this one of the Nerf guns and darts. What can I say, I'm a details girl!

This is the non-Cowboys game club. We all hung out upstairs. I think it got pretty intense downstairs, so I steered clear of that (and football bores me to death so of course I found other things to do).

What my future children will look like haha! I've always LOVED this picture!

Ha, more dessert. Homemade cheesecake! Judy was also so thoughtful and made a very tasty chocolate pie since my family always has that at our Christmas. We were eating all day!!

I liked this one of Alisha with her belly. Cute!

I took about a billion of this moment, but this picture was my favorite of the bunch. Judy, Alisha, and Hensley!!

More details...

The bell from the Polar Express. I love how this turned out.

Our day ended with a Chinese Gift Exchange which was a lot of fun and got a little out of control! We all received gift cards to different restaurants, but some people chose to scheme a little bit so they could end up with the gift cards I wanted.....I'm a little bitter. BUT it was all okay because we get to eat out all month now!

I love this one of Nana and Pop.

After the game we all headed to the basement to watch Despicable Me, which was SO cute!!!

So that about does it for our Christmas. I really missed being with my family, but am so thankful that I have Bryan's family who all make me feel right at home. We both are so blessed!

I hope anyone who is reading this had as great of a Christmas as we did! I am a little sad that it's over but can't wait for what the new year will bring!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Save the Dates!

As I've mentioned before, my friend (and bridesmaid) Megan Cox is getting married this summer! She will be having a big, gorgeous wedding and I'm so happy to be in it! I'm also getting to make all of the wedding stationery, so today I worked on her Save the Dates. Her and Westin are using the VERY talented photographer Alissa Joy to photograph their wedding, and their engagement pictures are STUNNING. I was able to use some of the pictures in the proofs I made her...check it out!

You may have noticed that a lot of these look the same...well, they are, I just changed little things about them! I wonder which one she'll pick!