Weekend Recap

Happy Monday! It was a jam packed weekend, and while it was mostly fun (had a little dramatic ending), I had a moment last night where I was like, I'm so glad this is over haha. Very happy it's Monday which is a nice feeling!

FRIDAY

I hung out at work a little later than normal, which would have been torture, but since I love my job, it wasn't bad at all. What a difference a few weeks makes--still can't believe it.

Sammy swung by and picked me up from work since we had a date night planned (since his birthday in February ;) ). We got some sushi before heading over to the United Center.

To see Elton John! His farewell tour dates came out right before Sammy's birthday back in February and he had casually mentioned how he would like to see him, so I grabbed some tickets as his big gift.

I knew he would be good, but I didn't know he would be THAT good. He was seriously incredible. I definitely forget how wonderful is voice is, like he's an amazing performer but just as a singer alone, he's incredible. And his band...omg. They are NUTSO talented.

My mom came over to watch Henry while we were at the concert (and the following night because have I mentioned my parents are saints?), so when we got home, she had all our mail organized and waiting for us haha. And I received the BEST surprise from one of my bridesmaids in the mail!

I mean...can you stand it? She has a dessert company as a side business and makes these incredible cookies. I can't believe she made these for me. The women in my life, man. I just can't believe how blessed I am.

I ended up saying goodbye to my boys so I could spend the night with my mom at her house so I could get up early the next morning and get started on packing up the remaining stuff in my room over there since we had plans to bring everything over our townhouse on Saturday.

SATURDAY

You think you don't have a lot of stuff but then you try to pack it all up and realize you have a TON of stuff. It doesn't look like much here, but it was a big truck haha.

My siblings and parents helped me move everything (again, saints) because Sammy had to work (lucky guy) and it took longer than I expected but that's because I'm an idiot when it comes to time management ;) we were actually rather efficient which was great. It was still a super long day because I don't know when to quit while I'm ahead. My initial plan was to just get the furniture and stuff into our guest room and divided up into closets/storage spaces and then organize/style everything over the next few days/weeks. But, of course, once everything is in the room, I can't stop myself, so I ended up continuing to work on it when I should have stopped because I ended up stressing myself out and taking it out on Sammy, per usual haha. UGH.

But I eventually had to stop so we could get ready and head downtown to our friends who were having people over for Halloween. Phenom couple's costume, right? At least they're both owned by Disney ;)

My girlfriend and I decided on being Boo & Sully because we're five years old. And took my favorite series of photos ever taken.

If it wasn't clear, we were drinking heavily.

And this is how your girl ended up. SHOCKINGLY (or maybe not so...) I wasn't actually that drunk haha. I just seem to always look it--how lovely. Love when we act like we're still 21.

SUNDAY

Even though I wasn't that drunk, I was still hungover Sunday morning and the last thing I wanted to do was bake, but we had Sammy's cousin's annual pumpkin party to go to and I had to bring something pumpkin, so I powered through and made pumpkin cream cheese muffins.

Christina has a pumpkin party every year where she serves pumpkin chili and cornbread and everyone else brings a pumpkin dish to share (and tupperware to take home leftovers!). And we all bring a candle for the candle swap.

It's one of my favorite days and she always does such a beautiful job hosting.

And I'm always taking pictures of their condo because her styling is absolute perfection. 

And after making a visit to Sammy's grandma, we came home to a sick little guy. Without giving too many gross details, he had an upset stomach and had an accident in his crate while we were gone and while we were cleaning him and everythinggg in his crate, we discovered some blood, so Sammy took him to the animal hospital, while I took care of everything at home which included boiling chicken for his bland diet.

Luckily all his well. He has an antibiotic for his stomach and will be on the bland diet for a few days.

I've mentioned that he's not a cuddler, except when traumatic things happen to him haha so we ate this right up last night. I even stayed up later than I normally do because I didn't want to stop cuddling! :)

So that was our weekend! It felt like I was going from one thing to the next all weekend without being able to take a minute to breathe, so once Sammy left to take Henry to the hospital, my emotions and stress level got the best of me, and I had to have a good cry haha. Needless to say, I'm happy it's a new week.

Sammy works Halloween, but since he's off today, we're going to have our traditional Halloween date night tonight :) In past years, I've made everything because he always came over to my house for it, but since we live together now, he said he wants to make dinner. I'll take it! 

Lots of exciting things this week: date night tonight, Halloween on Wednesday, my birthday on Thursday, and I leave on Friday for a little girl's trip to Florida. I have a feeling there will be many favorites to recap on Friday :)

xo

*linking up with Biana and Johannah!

Fall Decor 2018

I wanted to do a quick post showing a little bit of our Fall decor this year. This was our first attempt at decorating our house and I've been having so much fun.

I learned pretty quickly when we moved in that I didn't like furniture decorating all that much, but holiday decorating could not be more my jam. I just love it.

I put out a lot of neutral touches for Fall in September and have recently switched it up for Halloween, but we'll go back to the neutral/Harvest theme in November for Thanksgiving.

A few weeks ago our stoop looked like this with our lanterns, mums, and hay bale (and giant cornstalk I'm OBSESSED with).

I grabbed two bags of these faux pumpkins for $5 from Target for our bowl on the kitchen table.

Shoved my Crate & Barrel pot holder in our utensil jar and put little ceramic pumpkins I grabbed from the Target dollar section here and on our end table in the living room.

Our entry way table had very minimal fall touches because I knew I was going to go ham for Halloween, so I kept up with our Paris theme in prep for our trip.

I threw some old dollar section pumpkins on a random ledge...

And up on our floating shelves.

I've put some seasonal candles in a few rooms and displayed my Fall-looking magazines on the table which my brother now deems the "waiting room" look.

And for Halloween...

I really want a tiered tray for displaying festive decor but I can't find any that aren't super rustic looking, like a girl can only take so much galvanized touches. So I'm just using a cake dish for now and actually like how it looks a lot. I found these appetizer dishes in the Target dollar section, 2 for $3, and thought they'd be perfect for when I host Friendsgiving this year. Then I threw my black striped paper straws in a glass and added my favorite candle from Bath and Body Works.

I got these salt and pepper shakers at a shop in town and think they're hilarious and needed them.

I replaced the little ceramic pumpkins with these really pretty bowl I found at Target that I plan on filling with candy corn.

And I threw the ceramic pumpkins up on our shelves.

I added a bunch of stuff to our entry way table which is my favorite thing to decorate. 

And I replaced the other neutral pumpkins with a cauldron (also our trick-or-treating bucket for handing out candy) and spookier pumpkin.

And then for outside decorations, I put up some super lightweight ghosts since this tree is still growin'  and I didn't want anything too heavy on her branches. I found the two smaller ones at Party City for like $1.50 (someone in our neighborhood already asked how I made them--ha!) and my future MIL gave us the one with the witch feet.

Sammy's favorite thing in life is to get things for free, so he's forever asking his parents if they have any decorations they "don't want" ;) so he took that scary witch (I was pretty against any witch decor #feminism but gave up once we found out Target sold out of the other scary decorations Sammy wanted, so I let him have his scary thing) and the spider that climbs up and down the cornstalk that you can't even see in this picture haha, and the terra cotta pumpkins.

We left the hay bale and cornstalk and our lanterns (forever on our stoop because I'm obsessed) are a little hidden behind the witch (damn her). I moved the mums to the front so I could put our pumpkins on top of the hay bale. Sammy did an awesome job adding webbing to everything, and I half buried some bones in our now-bare garden area which turned out well if I do say so myself. And he insisted on caution tape...but all we could come up with was an X haha primarily because I vetoed tapping it all over the front door area.

Forever the queen of taking the worst pictures ever, I bring you a night shot haha. I bought a pack of fake candles with the flickering light inside on Amazon and put them inside our pumpkins and am impressed with how bright they are! I want to put one in each of the terra cotta pumpkins as well. And now you can see the spider lit up haha. 

I think that's it for our early Fall/Halloween decor! I have a white pumpkin and Fall candle in our downstairs bathroom, and some Fall-colored hydrangeas in our bedroom, but no other decor upstairs. I definitely want to get more (hoping to pick stuff up when things go on sale after the holidays pass) and add to our second floor, but it just didn't happen this year. Still hoping to pick up some Fall/Halloween hand towels for the downstairs bathroom though...

Like I said, for Thanksgiving, we'll strip everything back to Harvest-y mode until November 23rd when we go HAM for Christmas. I absolutely can not wait. Gotta start collecting that stuff now ;)

xo

Weekend Recap

Happy Monday, all!

Firstly, thanks to everyone who read and commented on Friday's post about our engagement. It's so fun to hear how excited everyone is for us.

We had a packed Saturday but we were able to relax (okay, semi relax) on Sunday which was nice. 

FRIDAY

Friday night we had plans to go to a mass dedicated to Sammy's grandfather who passed away about a month ago. I had some time to kill after work, so I surprised my grandma (my new office building is only about ten minutes from her condo) with a visit. She was SO excited to see me, as if I don't see her almost every week haha. I snapped a picture of her making me pastina like the amazing Italian grandma she is ;)

Sammy picked me up from her condo and we headed over to the mass. After the mass we went by his grandma's for some coffee and cookies and to spend time with family.

While the reason for the mass was somber, it was a nice way to remember and celebrate a wonderful man's life. It feels weird to mention something that was "fun" on this night, but it was fun to see family in person since getting engaged and show off my ring ;)

SATURDAY

Saturday morning we had a memorial service to go to for my SIL's grandmother. We went to church and then the luncheon afterward and it was a lovely morning and early afternoon celebrating her life. 

After that, Sammy had plans with his cousin, so he dropped me off at my mom's since I had plans with my girlfriends (who live by my mom). I hung out at her house a bit before running to Target (my first solo trip!!) to grab a few things before heading to my girlfriend's sister's house.

She and her husband were hosting a Hocus Pocus viewing party in their backyard and omg was it fun. They have two daughters who also invited some of their friends and it was such a fun event for all ages. *fair warning, it turns out I took terrible photos BIG SHOCK so please know these don't do anything justice*

When you walked up to the house, Sara had hung candles from the porch ceiling with like floss or something because it looked like they were levitating which was SO cool. But I mean could this picture be more blurry?...

She's literally the cutest human. They had bowls of candy out and served hot cider (that you could spike!), cookies, and popcorn.

They had glow sticks for the kids and just about the cutest little details all throughout.

The labels on the cups matched the invitations she sent out because of course they did.

Everyone brought chairs and blankets (it was pretty chilly that night, dipping into the 40s) and huddled around the screen in their yard.

And it's hard to see but all the little kids got up and danced next to the screen during "I Put a Spell On You"and it was so cute haha.

I left pretty soon after the movie was over because we had to get back to our boy. My mom is a saint and has stayed with Henry several times since we've gotten him whenever we've had plans that would mean he'd be in his crate for an extended period of time, so she had been with him since about 1 p.m. that afternoon. 

But he had the best day with her and fell asleep immediately haha.

SUNDAY

We deemed Sunday family day and really wanted to spend it just the three of us. We got up and did a little yard work after watching Ellen and snuggling on the couch for a bit. We had to pull up all our summer flowers, bring in some things for winter, and clean the front stoop in preparation for our Halloween decorations.

We headed out to Party City and Target to see what kind of outdoor decorations we could get before heading back home. I started on our dinner which I insisted be a crockpot meal because #FALL

I found a recipe earlier this week for creamy chicken noodle soup and knew that's what I wanted to make. Who can resist, right?

And I had my little sous chef who was on his best behavior.

I made some butter biscuits as well and they were pretty darn good. I'll be taking one for lunch every day this week though haha.

After I had the biscuits made and the crockpot going, I threw a pizza in the oven and we sat and had some lunch while watching the Bears game.

Then we headed outside to start decorating! I'm going to do a fall decor post this week, so I'll share inside and outside pictures later!

Our guy had a few mishaps while on the lengthier leash. He loves our neighbor (so do we!) and she called him when she came outside and he RAN to her and flew backward when the leash yanked him back. I couldn't believe how he cried (I was inside and Sammy was on the ladder, and our neighbor didn't realize he was on a leash because it's almost clear in color otherwise she said she wouldn't have called him like that). He bit his lip a tiny bit, but everything else seems okay. We think he scared himself more than anything, but I felt so bad for our little man. He was pretty chill the rest of the day because I think he was expecting a surprise at every turn haha.

I really liked how the soup turned out and would definitely make it again. It made enough for Sammy and I to have two huge bowls for dinner, me to pack a large container for work today, and to fill an even bigger container for leftovers throughout the week.

After dinner, Sammy ran out and got pumpkins (3 for $12 at Jewel people!) so we could do our annual carvings and our boy snuggled under our feet the whole time.

We normally take a cute picture with our pumpkins but this is the best we could get this year haha at least Sammy and Henry look cute! 

We watched Monster's Inc. while we carved and Under Wraps afterward because we are CHILDREN.

For the first month that we've had Henry, he has decidedly been a non-cuddler. Whether this is because of his age, energy level, or personality, we don't know, but last night, he stayed with us UNMOVING for several hours. It may have been his traumatic day ;) and he wanted to be by his "parents" so we'll see if it's a fluke, but we are majorly crossing our fingers that we have a cuddler in our midst after all. 

Sunday was the kind of day I imagined having whenever I thought about having a house. Spending time as a little family, holiday festiveness, traditions, being cozy, something warm on the stove (or in the crockpot), and that's exactly what it was. As always, blessings on blessings.

Last week was our first week back after our trip, and I was very happy to get back into the swing of things, but things were still so out of the ordinary with fielding calls from family and friends (which was amazing!) and getting ourselves organized at home (we still have an empty fridge!) that it didn't feel totally like our routine. I'm looking forward to the mundane this week and getting ourselves back to the familiar as the holidays approach.

Have a great week everyone! xo