A White Christmas

After living in Houston for nearly six years, you get sort of jaded to the idea of snow.  My little mind had forgotten however, that Longview gets the same weather as Dallas, so every once in a while it will actually snow.  We were playing games on Christmas evening, when we started noticing that snow was falling.  We all thought, well it won't stick because the ground is too warm, but low and behold, a nice white fluff filled the ground and stayed there through most of Wednesday.  It was beautiful!

Christmas Day

On Christmas Day, I woke up to find a very excited niece and nephew.  My 4 year old niece (five in just a few months) was so ecstatic that Santa had come.  Alex took a little longer to wake up, but we took a picture in our Christmas jammies.

We ate breakfast and opened presents with the family.

After lunch, Cody and I headed over to his parents house to do the same things.  We also played some games, which is a tradition with their family.  And y'all, I took a nap..I don't do that.  Baby Girl was exhausted and appropriately so, she was so spoiled this Christmas already and she is still happily playing along in my belly.  I cannot wait to have our own little one to share Christmas with next year! 

Christmas: Friends

I have been so blessed to see friends this past week!
Last Friday after school, I met up with Marianne who was in visiting from NYC.  What a blessing to have friends that you can just pick back up with even after not seeing them for a few years!

Once we got to Longview, I got to see Haley on her birthday at the coffee mill! (Lots of coffee - decaf of course- this past week!)

Later that day, I got to have lunch with Traci at Barron's before heading over to see our friend, Danielle.

That night we met up with the Redd's for their Christmas Eve Party!

LOVE getting to see all of these sweet faces that we miss most of the time!

Birthday!

My 28th birthday was this past Saturday.  28?!  We just keep inching closer to 30, oh my!  The good news though is that Baby Girl will be here to celebrate 29 with us next year : )
We started the morning with a layed back breakfast.  I spent a good part of the day shopping at the Galleria (found some amazing deals!) and checking out Pottery Barn kids with Hannah before heading back to have dinner with my sweet husband, sis-in-law, brother-in-law and in-laws at Carrabba's and a little fro-yo at TCBY.  Yum!

Christmas Pillow

My Mimi was my dad's mom.  She was married to my Grandpa.  They lived in Marlin when we were little bitty, but moved 30 minutes away from us to Tyler, so we got to see them a lot.  She was a very gentle and patient woman.  She always did needlepoint.  

 

To this day when you go to my parent's house at Christmas, you will see the stockings that she made for my parents, brother and I.  (Side note: We always tease my brother because all of our stockings say our names big.  His says "Merry Christmas" big and his name much smaller).  Mimi had done a needlepoint picture that also said Merry Christmas.  My mother gave this to us last year, but I had no real place to put it.  I decided instead to back it with some trusty burlap (of course) and turn it into a pillow, so now we have a piece of my Mimi's handiwork decorating our couch at Christmastime.

 

Do you have any "heirloom" pieces in your house?  They are just so much more special than the store bought ones!

19 weeks

(Excuse the dark quality of the photo.  The crazy wind storm from Thursday morning left us without power when we were taking the picture.)
How far along:  19 weeks
How big is baby:  Mango
Maternity clothes:  Still the same, although the maternity clothes are becoming far more comfortable than my regular clothes.
Sleep:  Sleeping better now that the school and grad school semesters are over : )
Food cravings:  I'm finally back to wanting to eat greens
Food aversions:  None really.
Symptoms:  Heart burn.  A sore tummy...I swear she is growing by the hour right now and my skin feels like it is already stretching so much. And I know I know I'm only 19 weeks and my belly will get so much bigger : )
 Movement: Yes! Finally! Its just funny little flutters, but I started feeling them last week.  Baby Girl likes it when I am calm and relaxed (or maybe that's just the only time that I feel her)
Gender:  GIRL!
What I’m looking forward to:  Christmas with the family! REST!
What I miss:  Hot baths during cold weather
Best part of the week:  Feeling little girl move and hearing her healthy heartbeat at the OB.

Glass Etching

I decided to try my hand at glass etching after seeing it all of Pinterest. 
At Michael's, I located a Martha Stewart glass etching cream (that came with a brush) and the corresponding stencils.  The warnings on the back of the jar make the process seem like it will eat away at your skin (which it well may), so as I didn't have plastic gloves, I used plastic bags to protect my hands (and plastic under the whole set up too in order to protect my counters).  I simply cleaned the glass, adhered the stencil, then generously applied the etching cream.  I let the cream sit for 15 minutes, then washed it off and my letters stayed.
The project originated as jars for some Christmas gifts (for some reason the etching is almost impossible to see in these pictures...).  These are hot chocolate jars (hot chocolate, marshmallows and crushed peppermints)

 

And the etching eventually turned to three of my pyrex dishes

 

For these, I thoroughly cleaned the pyrex dishes and flipped them upside down.  I put the stencils on the pan backwards (which was an experience as they are sticky only for the correct way for the letter to face) and then followed the same steps from above.  

It was really an easy way to personalize!