Having a holly jolly Christmas

This year was probably the quietest Christmas I've ever had. Generally holidays involve a big group gathering including all 4 of my younger siblings, my brother in law, and my grandparents (sometimes both sets.) Well this year my sister and her husband stayed in Idaho and neither of my grandparents were able to come. It was a small group and very quiet. Now the reason this is strange is because growing up I've always had a big family, having me be the oldest of 5, and our house was NEVER quiet. Always loud and always something going on. Something you get use to and when you go from loud to quiet it's just not the same.

As a kid, Christmas was spent in La Grande. But as our family grew it became harder to travel. Lately Christmas has been spent at my parents house. But even though it was a small group this year, it's always nice to get together as a family.

Christmas morning came and I received a phone call saying that Santa had come so I headed over to my parents house to open presents. Ty and I were spoiled rotten this year and was given a large amount of money for our honeymoon as well gift cards for us to go shopping.

This was the first one we opened. It was in a box with this note sticking out

Ty loves his new hat!

Another one from my mom. She is so creative!

 When we got home we just had to open up my new movies and watch them! We later joined my parents again for a yummy dinner.

My sister's hair!

Playing with my Brother's new toy :)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. After being off all week it will be weird being back at work tomorrow for just one day and then having the whole weekend off again

Loving life!

If you follow me on Instagram you would have noticed that it blew up with baby pictures Friday night! As most of you know my baby fever has been going crazy. I work at a daycare/preschool and have many opportunities at work to visit the baby room, which I absolutely love. One of my co workers just recently had a baby in August and she needed a babysitter for Friday night while she enjoyed some quality mommy time up in Eugene. It was a lot of fun and he was the easiest baby ever. I wasn't sure how Tyrel would do, but I was pretty impressed with him and even caught him holding the baby while I made a bottle for him. The baby slept through the whole night was up bright and early at 6am. He stayed up whileI listened to Christmas music and enjoyed some breakfast. It's been a long time since I've been up that early on a Saturday but it was definitely worth it. As we cuddled up on the couch he ended up going to sleep which gave me a chance to get some sleep as well.

I ended up meeting my co worker at the mall and I got my nails done. I went to this place in Albany called Edith's Salon because I had a gift certificate for Shellac nails.

First time doing Shellac and so far I've really enjoyed it. I think the best thing I like about is that it's suppose to last 2 weeks. We will see how long they end up lasting because every time I paint my nails it always ends up chipping off 2 days later

Saturday Ty planned a date night for us and surprised me with a new restaurant he discovered in Salem. The Old Spaghetti Factory! The food was delicious and afterwards we the new Hobbit movie.

A snowflake made out of bells!

Now I'm enjoying the rest of the week by relaxing since I don't have work until Friday. I've already watched my traditional Christmas movie: National Lapoon's Christmas Vacation! Does anyone else have a Christmas movie they watch every year?

Wordless Wednesday: thank you

Tasty Tuesday: Homeade Granola Bars

This is a simple recipe that I've made twice now! They are delicious and chewy and better then any granola bar I've ever bought at the store!

Ingredients:
Granola (or rolled oats) 4 1/2 cups
Flour                             1 cup
Baking soda                  1 tsp
Vanilla Extract               1 tsp
Softened butter             2/3 cup
Honey                          1/2 cup
Brown sugar (packed)   1/3 cup
Chocolate chips              2 cups

Optional:
Raisins/Craisins/almonds/peanuts

Procedure:
1) Set oven to 325
2) Mix all ingredients together. I start with all the dry ingredients first.
3) After all the ingredients are mixed together add chocolate chips 1 cup at a time
4) Lightly press mix into a lightly greased 13 x 9 inch pan.
5) Bake for 18 to 20 minutes
6) Cool completley before cutting

That's it! Super easy and super delcious
Enjoy

Christmas tree!!

Holy cow it's been awhile since I've written two blogs in one weekend! I guess being stuck in the house has given me more of a chance to blog, which I really miss doing. But also Tyrel has been keeping himself playing his new game, allowing me to do more computer stuff.

Anyway, I woke up this morning in a really good mood and I decided that today was the day we were going to get our Christmas tree. I love Christmas and it just isn't the same without a Christmas tree. Last year and we went and got a big tree and we discovered it was just too big for our place so this year we picked a shorter tree and lets just say I'm so happy with it!

I feel so tall now!

We got in the house and instantly started decorating it! Well, I started decorating the tree while Tyrel hung up Christmas lights. Everything turned out so perfect, like it always does. I love Christmas lights and now they are currently all around the house. Can you tell that Christmas is my favorite holiday?

Look I can actually reach the top of the Christmas tree!

A closer view of some of my favorite ornaments...

Snow day and baking

I got an early text from my boss saying I didn't have to go into work on Friday. Which is probably a good thing because I was feeling like crap. A week and a half with this nasty cold. Ugh. Corvallis experienced some extreme snow Friday morning. They've been saying it was going to snow for awhile and I was expecting maybe a couple of inches.... like always. But I woke up to a good 5 inches of snow! May not seem like a lot to some people but here in Corvallis that's something to celebrate about it! Later on it continued to snow when it finally stopped.

I woke up today thinking the sun would come up and melt all the snow.... But I don't think it go higher then 28 degrees! Seeing as I didn't get to go enjoy the snow yesterday, I decided to venture out today. We have a "lake" at our apartment complex and I was curious if it had frozen over. Sure enough, it did.

I really wanted to go over to the lake and step on it... but being a responsible adult, I decided not to. Instead I walked around some more and took more pictures

I can't see my feet!

Big pile of snow!

I couldn't stay out for very long. My hands and face became numb and I figured that was enough snow for one day. Not to mention the cold air is terrible my lungs. I decided to go the store and pick up some things to do some baking! I tired a new recipe and made cake batter cookies!

Easiest cookies ever! The only thing I would change is reduce the amount of sprinkles.

Happy Saturday

Tasty Tuesday: My first turkey dinner

 

So some of you may have heard about my big turkey dinner I won. Everyone at work was entered into a drawing and if your name was pulled my boss provided us with a big turkey dinner, as a way of saying thank you. Well somehow my name was pulled and I brought home a whole collection of food as you can see in the top picture. I'm not much of a cook and have never cooked a turkey, or made mashed potatoes from scratch but I guess getting free food and one way to learn!

I provided green bean casserole for Thanksgiving dinner at my parents which was a huge hit as well as the cranberry sauce. Sunday was the day I decided to start cooking. I looked at the instructions on the back to figured out how hot the oven was suppose to be and to see if there were any tips on how to cook it (there wasn't). I then lathered up the turkey with lots of butter and garlic salt, put it in a 13 x 9 inch pan, set the oven, covered it with tin foil and let the turkey bake. It was a 13 lbs turkey and a website online said it was going to take 4 and 1/2 to 5 and 1/2 hours! So glad I put the turkey in early on Sunday

 

 

As it was cooking I did a web search and found a website about turkey roasting for dummies. (Ok the website didn't really say dummies, but that's how I felt haha) It told me to check it every 45 minutes and to keep doing this until the internal temperature reached 180 degrees. Uh oh... I don't own a cooking thermometer so when the 4 hour mark came I would just slice it open to see if it had been cooked all the way and if "the juices ran clear" according to the instructions. I had help from Tyrel but he approved of the coloring after 5 hours so I called it good.

I had to look up a recipe for mashed potatoes and the stuffing was the instant stuff so it was super easy. Overall great learning experience. I've been sick so everything taste kind of bland to me, but Tyrel approves!