Random Monday Thoughts

Every time I've sat down to blog in the last week, I've ended up messing with my blog design and in the process, I messed up my social media icons and can't figure out how to fix this. Before I drive myself crazy, I'm taking a step back and cranking out an actual post.

Because I just don't have it in me to actually finish writing one of the several posts in my drafts, I'm giving you a pretty random list of what's on my mind at the moment.

1. Friday nights are usually pretty laid back for us and especially after our first full week back to work after the holidays, we had no intentions of going out. Instead, we hit the bar in our house for champagne and a few games of darts. It's easily the coolest room in our house and we rarely use it when it's just the two of us at home. but the nights we hang out here just us are some of my favorites. Any bar where the drinks are always free and I don't have to wear a bra is always a good time to me.

2. We're kicking ass at our 2015 resolutions. Hey, I know we're only 11 days in and January 1-4 really didn't count because NYE and anniversary celebrations, but I'm still celebrating our success so far. I know I haven't shared my/our resolutions with you yet and I'll get to it, but I'll say we're off to a good start and that is absolutely worth celebrating!

3. We're heading to Cancun on Friday for my friend's wedding. It's an Indian wedding with 3 days of festivities scheduled and the rest of our time will be spent soaking up the sun and day drinking. It's going to be fantastic.

4. I've seen so posts raving about Yes Please by  Amy Poehler and now I'm thinking  just have to have it on my Kindle for our trip this weekend. If you've read it already, I want to know what you think!

5. I don't rave about beauty products very often but I decided to give Roden + Fields products a try. My mother is a consultant and she's been raving about these products for months and now I can see why! I wouldn't say acne is a huge issue for me, I breakout occasionally, but I feel like even when I get rid of acne, it never fully goes away. I'm using the Unblemish Treatment and I'm only 3 weeks in but can already tell a huge improvement! I'm breakout free and any post-acne scars I had are quickly diminishing. I usually avoid any skin care product that has more than one step, but the results have been totally worth spending a few extra minutes in the morning and/or at night on this. If you're curious, I would spend a few minutes on the site (https://ltucker6.myrandf.com/) and find out what treatment they recommend for you.

That's all I have for you today! I truly am working on some actual posts and hopefully I can carve out some time this week to finish those. I hope you all have a happy week!

Celebrating all the Things

Happy New Year!

It’s been months since I made an appearance here and I miss it, I really do. This year, I want to be better about writing and get back to blogging like I used to. You may even notice I'm changing up my design here to celebrate my return. It's a work in progress of course, but I'm excited.

The last few months have been so busy for us – full of weddings, trips, family gatherings and to be honest, we’ve also experienced some major heartbreak in our lives. I’ll catch you up on all of this eventually.

The holiday season has been full of absolute joy and fun for us – we hosted several holiday get togethers with friends, we were able to spend time on Christmas with both families, we hosted a huge New Year’s bash at our house and on Saturday, we celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary. I feel like we’ve been in a constant state of celebrating and it’s been pretty fantastic.

We were lucky enough to have our niece and nephew in town for Christmas this year, so we slept over at my in-laws house on Christmas Eve so we could wake up with the kids in the morning. It was pretty fun playing Santa and setting up all the gifts, not to mention getting to see the look on their faces in the morning. We opened gifts in the morning and headed to my do gifts and dinner with my siblings and parents in the afternoon. I worried a bit that we would feel stressed or rushed since my parents live an hour and a half from us, but everything worked out perfectly. It felt like a nice long day and I was so glad we made the effort to split the day between families.

We made the decision a few months ago to host a NYE party at our house to make up for not even seeing midnight last year. Don't get me wrong, last year was PERFECT. It was 2 days before our wedding so I wasn't about to get crazy anyway and we had my niece and nephews from Buffalo staying at our house. We watched Turbo with the kids and had a big sleepover in our bedroom -- I wouldn't change a thing about NYE 2014. 

With that being said, I was pretty psyched to go all out this year. I spent so much time on Pinterest getting inspiration for decor and whatnot. I even designed the invitation we mailed out to about 40 of our friends and family. We never expected this, but the RSVPs rolled in and next thing we knew, we were expecting about 50 guests! 

We hired a bartender, Jonathan bought loads of fireworks, we solicited help from friends for food and drinks and asked my mom to make her famous baked ziti for all these people. Thank goodness for everyone's help because I think we pulled it off quite perfectly. 

 
Last but certainly not least, we celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary yesterday. It's crazy to me how fast our first year went by and how much happened in such a short time! It's been pretty hectic lately with the holidays and prepping (then the super fun clean up) from our NYE party, so we kept things pretty simple which was just what we needed.

After a morning of snuggling, mimosas and catching a few more Friends episodes (Thank you Netflix, thank you!), we did a few things around the house and ran some errands together. We went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and spent the evening talking about marriage and our relationship. We talked about the early months of our relationship and all the fun things we've done together. When we got home, we opened a bottle of champagne and sat down to read all the advice our guests left for us at our wedding -- it was perfect and so much fun to read what everyone had to say to us. It was the most perfect anniversary celebration.

Sadly, it's back to work for me today. I haven't worked since Tuesday of last week and it's been glorious, but I guess this party had to end eventually. With that being said, in less than 2 weeks we'll be in Cancun for a long weekend to celebrate my friend's wedding. In the meantime, we'll be getting use out of our NutriBullet and getting back in the gym because while the last few months have been fun, they have not been the healthiest.

I hope the holiday season was full of joy for you! I'm excited to be back and in the next few days, I'm looking forward to sharing our resolutions for 2015 and talk a little more about our first year of marriage.

Life Lately & Fall Fun

Hello friends and happy October! It's still pretty warm here in Orlando but that never stops me from getting psyched once fall rolls around. Some of my favorite baking occurs during the fall holidays and the weather at least gets to the point where walking to car couldn't possibly result in heat stroke. It's all good stuff, but this year, I'm even more excited because aside from baking my pants off and soaking in all the fun this time of year brings, we have some super fun things going on in the next few months.

We've got a weekend trip to Boston coming up to celebrate my aunt's super special wedding day and as a bonus, we'll be up there for Halloween and get to take our niece and nephews trick-or-treating. We've got another wedding here in Orlando just after that and a weekend cruise in November that we've been talking about taking for months! I'm already thinking about all the Thanksgiving baking I can do this year and celebrating our first Christmas as husband and wife won't be far behind. As of today, we're also officially booked to travel to Cancun in January to celebrate with one of my very best friends from college as she gets married. To make all of this even better, we'll have newborn babies in our lives to love on as a good friend of mine is welcoming a baby boy to the world and Jonathan's cousin is due with a baby girl around the same time. This gives me an actual purpose for being in the baby section at Target, so I'm obviously beyond thrilled.

Carving pumpkins is also on my to do list and I want to make sure we spend more time outside since it will be a little nicer out! We may even dress up for Halloween and I rarely plan ahead enough to do that!

We have so much to look forward to. I got overly excited about all of it today after booking our Cancun trip and picked up beers on my way home to celebrate. Beers on a Wednesday night - that is how we get down around here these days when we're feeling crazy.

I can't complain about life right now though, life is good lately. Here's a few snapshots of what we've been up to:

We adopted another cat. Yes, another cat. The girl who used to hate cats now owns two. Who could have predicted this madness? This one is such a sweetheart and it's pretty often I wake up in the middle of the night and she is snuggled up right next to my chest. No more cats though, really this time.

My parents came to visit last month to celebrate my dad's birthday and we had a blast! Group selfies are fun no matter who you are.

Nothing exciting was happening here, but this photo makes me my heart happy. It was actually a Monday night after a stressful day a few weeks ago and this photo sums up how sweet it is to end every day with this man by my side.

We took a spontaneous trip to the beach a few Sundays ago and wondered why we don't do that more often. It's a short drive for us and we both enjoy days like this so much, but for some reason we get in a rut of feeling like we have to plan these kinds of things in advance. It felt so good to get up and go after church on a Sunday and enjoy the sunshine for a few hours.

We've become True American fanatics. What's True American? If you watch New Girl (and if you don't, you should because it's amazing), it's the drinking game they created. Basically, you chug a ton of beer and move around your home (or in our case, a friend's home) by climbing on furniture and pretending the floor is molten lava but they've actually created legit rules for the game that we kinda sorta follow. You can see those here if you want to join in on the fun. It's really a serious game for mature individuals if you can't tell...

Last weekend was full of celebrations. After the most perfect Friday night date night with Jonathan at one of our favorite spots, I attended my good friend, Lindsay's baby shower. Lindsay started out as a co-worker and has become such a close friend of mine. She helped me so much with my wedding planning and even though we don't work together, I'm so glad our friendship is still so strong. I can't wait to meet her sweet baby boy when he arrives in just a few weeks!

I also celebrated a friend's bridal shower over the weekend. Erin and I were roommates a few years ago and even though we don't see each other nearly as often as we used to, I'm so glad to have her in my life. She's getting married in just a little over a month and I can't wait.

Life has been full of so many fun memories lately and I can't wait for all the fun things to come in the next months! Hopefully I can get to a point where I'm back to weekend recaps instead of random photo dumps of what's been going on in our lives. 

What fun activities do you have planned for Fall?