12.28.2010

Whoops!

It has been far too long since I have updated, sorry about that. I'm sure that no one has noticed, but I'm going to pretend like EVERYONE is desperate for me to post. ;)

We left on Tuesday right after work to go to Utah to join my mom, dad, sister, her boyfriend and then a few days later my Uncle Pat and his son Spencer. I had the best time ever with my family, the trip flew by because we were always doing something or having something, or someone to laugh at. Way too fast, not enough time to spend with your best friend (my mom) but that's the beauty of life, you have to enjoy what you have and what you can get.

Wednesday my mom, sister & I spent the day at the spa, many thanks to our friends who gifted us that. Wednesday night went to a cookie decorating party, SO much fun!
 
seriously, so magical

our beautiful Cabin for the week of festivities


view driving down the mountain




on Christmas Eve we went on a sleigh ride through the woods. AMAZING!
myself, Gabe, Dad, Spencer


waiting for the sleigh ride,
me & my mama!


gabey & I all bundled up!


these horses were the biggest i have ever seen


Grinder & Pieces,
infront of the tree


Christmas Eve,
we're both lumber jacks & I look like a boy!


trees outside the window!


I GOT A PONY!
just kidding, Christmas Morning!


they look like little kids :)


our fortress, it was suppose to be as high
as the silver poll, this is the highest we got!


Rich, Uncle Pat, Dad, Spencer, Gabe.
"Santa's Elves"


what our kitchen table at home ended up looking like,
we didn't eat here once because we weren't home!


-Sometimes I can't stand this thing, it has a mind of it's own! That's all for now because it's not letting me do what i want to on here. One of my new "goals" (not resolutions) of 2011 is not to get frustrated as easily. So i'm using the skill of avodiance in this instance.
Have an amazing night everyone, love to all.

GodisLove,
Mrs.Grinder

12.19.2010

I can’t believe Christmas is THIS WEEK! I have spent the entire day wrapping gifts and taking care of other various Christmas related things, (such as purchasing the gifts, nothing like waiting until the last minute!)
This weekend was amazing, Friday Gabe & I went out to dinner, came back and curled up in bed to watch You, Me & Dupree and fell asleep by 9pm. Saturday we woke up early, went to a graduation party for my beautiful friend Becky, came back, cooked some food and did some stuff around the apartment. Then we went over to a “moving party” for two of our wonderful friends who are moving back to North Carolina. Allison and Rob are such great people and I’m going to miss having them this close, but I know that without a doubt they will be in my life forever. After their house, we went over to Bart & Nikki’s house and played some amazing games and spent some quality time with them and 2 of Bart’s friends from high school. I have to say, Pictionary is brought to a whole new level when you are drawing on a little white body.
This morning we got up nice & early, went to a beautiful Church service, ran a million errands and here we are back at home, wrapping, cleaning and finishing up some last minute “DIY” gifts. I’m totally tired, but it’s worth every second of it!
I figured since Christmas is so close, I should post some pictures of the apartment all spruced up for the wonderful season of Christmas.
tissue paper trees.

hated making them, absolutely adore them.

our little winter wonderland bar setup!

kitchen view, LOVE it!

i'm really bad at taking pictures,
but i think it's really cute :)

our "peace" tree

our "big"tree..
a whooping 4.5 feet lol

i added ornemanets for me & gabey!

Alright bloggers, that's it.. I have to go write out the Christmas cards. Yes, I do realize how late it is to be doing this.. but better late than never. And for the books, we purchased them in November. Also for the books, in about 2 weeks- i'm going to write them for next year.

Lots of love bloggers. Incase i'm MIA the next week or so, I'm in Utah- not dead. We are leaving Tuesday morning and we'll be there until the 26th. Lots of love, be good.

GodisLove,
Mrs.Grinder.

12.18.2010

I will say that having computer issues would come up high across my list of things that I do not like, closely followed by people who are annoying and also being hungry. Anyways, this morning I was in the middle of a blog and my computer froze up and caused the blog that I was writing to be lost in the land of no return. Story of my life.
But anyways, it was something along the lines of how I went to Home Depot the other day to grab something to finish up a gift, and I got completely side tracked when the man selling Christmas trees gave me the extra branches for free. Um, YES PLEASE?!
So, here are some pictures of what I made with some branches and some extra ornaments I had lying around, hope you like it all!
i tried to shape it into a Christmas tree

added about 30 ornaments :)

how adorable are these, Michaels- $3

Red ornaments- $1 for 15
silver ornaments- $.60 for 12

i added this one JUST for Gabey!

add some berries!

then i made these little guys,
the vases are from the wedding!




some pine needles in a bowl with ornaments and pine cones!

i took an old candle jar and added branches & berries.

I'd like to think that I made some cute decorations, literall for free! What do you think?! I love the Holidays! Stop back for more updates soon! Love yall!

GodisLove,
Mrs.Grinder

12.15.2010

Tonight’s plans didn’t go as I thought it was going to be and I now find myself sitting in a house full of guys watching Modern Family instead of in a dorm room full of girls talking about anything and everything. But you know, I’m not complaining. This gives me the perfect time to work on my Christmas gifts and write another blog! WOOHOO!
Okay, so we have had a few people over to the house over the course of the week and I have given them some of the cookies that I made this weekend and they have absolutely loved them, which makes me happy for 2 reasons. 1) they took literally 4 hours to make and 2) it always feels good to get compliments.
So here’s your task, make these cookies. THEY ARE SO GOOD! The recipe is Martha Stuart, but I was on cupcakes&cashmere and hers looked too good to pass up! I’m going to do a large amount of encouraging here because once you read the directions, you’re going to be discouraged. But seriously, PERSEVERE! It will be worth every second you spend doing monotonous tasks in the kitchen. They are perfect to bring to a Holiday party or give as a gift because the recipe says it yields 6 dozen. We made ours bigger than Martha calls for, so we got about 2 ½ dozen.
Okay, so I’ll stop talking and just show the picture, it does enough justice.
this is how many my batch made.

Okee, anyways.. I also just wanted to say that today is a GLORIOUS day because I got my license to sell insurance in the state of FLORIDA!! so yay for me, all that class work and studying paid off! Be good everyone, come back soon for more!

GodisLove,
Mrs.Grinder

12.14.2010

Gingerbread gone all sorts of WRONG!

Well, I guess it’s about time for me to write a blog, it has only been like a week! I’m sorry for the delay, my body was not use to getting up at 6:30 in the morning and last week I literally came home & went right to sleep. This weekend was so productive though, I’m really proud of it. Don’t worry, I took plenty of pictures to show you, but I’ve come up with a method to the madness.
I usually blog about 5 things at once in my blog complete with like 20 pictures. Instead, I’m going to start blogging more frequently but with less projects and more in depth that way my readers can know where I got my inspiration, how I made things, etc.
Anyways, I wanted to show something kind of funny that happened this weekend. Gabe& I were both really excited about decorating a Gingerbread house together this year, but when we found a “Gingerbread Village” we were ecstatic!
Lets just say, we won’t be featured on “Cake Boss” or “Cupcake Wars” any time soon, Gabe should stick to baseball & I’ll stick to crafting (minus decorating gingerbread houses). See below for proof.
Off I go to work on my Christmas gifts, really great idea in my head- absolutely insane when it comes to cost, time and effort. But, I will prevail & I will post pictures after Christmas J
Now… on to the Gingerbread blowup.


12.09.2010

blogs i LOVE.

Dear Bloggers,
It’s official, I feel like a wife. I get up way too early, go to work, come home & do whatever & I’m pooped out before 10. I’ve never been someone to crawl between the sheets before 12am, so this whole new, being tired thing is throwing me off!
A quick fill in on my week, not that anyone cares, but it’s a bit therapeutic, so deal with me. This week was my FIRST week in my first real job and it has been great so far. I am really loving Geico and all of the benefits they offer, the great work atmosphere and the awesome people that I’m training with.  Today was my first day of license training and there are few more days of that and then I have to pass the test & off I go to learn how to be a service person!
Now, moving on. As for the apartment, Gabe has been taking over the “chores” if that’ what you want to call them. I think he has dusted & vacuumed so far this week.. Apparently dusting is very time consuming ;)
The decorations have been put on quite the hold, the counter is literally half-way decorated, with gaping holes where I have planned for things to go, that I have yet to make. I re-did our tv stand, I took down the gaughty silver garland that I put up, I thought I was going to love it, but I just didn’t. I tried really, really hard to, I even left it there for several days, but I wasn’t happy. I’ll post a picture of the “re-do” in the blog to follow, my camera is in my car & it’s literally 30 out. (No thanks!)
I figured I would post a few blogs on here to keep everyone occupied while I’m busying being MIA. I would also like to throw in that I am sick as well, so not only am I the loud girl in the Geico classes, I’m also the loud girl who sniffles and coughs the whole time.
Ok, enough rambling.. here are the blogs!
ok, also i would like to state that i read so many more blogs then this, so if you're not on there, don't be offended.. these are the ones that have been inpsiring me lately. to be honest, i dont really know who posts what, except for cupcakesandcashmere because i adore her blog and i'd be here if i could, i think.
ok, off i go to attempt to sleep through the night and not choke on my own mucus. gross, i know.. but really true. :/ 

12.06.2010

I'm officially a WORKIN WOMAN!

Welp, it's official. I am grown. Today marked my first official day at a real job in the real business world doing real grown-up job things. Well, not so much on the real grown-up job things, because it was just orentation, but it still counts because I got paid for it.

About a month ago I got hired at Geico as a Service Rep. Which means I will be that friendly voice on the other end of the phone when you call the Gecko. Today was 10 hours of basically listening to people talk about our benefits (hich are amazing by the way!) and other various "work" things.

I just wanted to state that my job has a fooseball table, pingpong table, air hockey table and also a pool table in the cafe. HOW AMAZING IS THAT?! Also, you get to decorate your cubical however you want!!!! OKAY, that's when I decided that I had to work there. Who wouldn't want to have a cubical that you could decorate?! (So yes, I will be posting pictures of my cubical when I finally get one) Training is for the next like, 10 weeks.. So I have plenty of time to figure out what I want it to look like.

I know that I have been MIA on the blogs lately & I actually love having people write to me and tell me to update.. it makes me think OKAY!!!! lol

However, it is 9:41 and I have been up since 6:30. This is the first time I have been up this early since I can remember. I also have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow & every day following for the next forever of my life. Maybe i'll get use to it in a week or so, but not yet. So I'm going to go to bed. But I will promise a post complete with crafts before Friday.

Lots of love blogger world, thank you for being loyal & waiting patiently.

GodisLove,
Mrs.Grinder.

12.02.2010

Christmas Chaos.

Well it’s been about a week since I have updated, and now I am just so frustrated with blogspot because all of my blogs are missing from my “reader” which lets me know when all of the people I “follow” have updated their blogs. I had a huge heart failure for about 5 minutes because I thought that all my blogs were gone,  but I’ve now realized they are still there- just not in the proper place. So I guess life can now go on again.
I really have been meaning to update my blog every day for the past week, but I just get discouraged because the apartment is a MESS. Pictures below prove it. I have been doing lots of crafting, decorating, redecorating and so forth and so on, I feel that I’ve been very productive the past few days, but the apartment doesn’t really show it.
Yesterday afternoon Gabe left for baseball and I told myself that I was going to get the house cleaned up and decorated while he was gone. That didn’t work because I found myself eating an entire bowl of “Grilled Cheese Mac-n-Cheese” and talking on the phone with my mom. While we were in Pittsburg visiting family I didn’t have much time to keep up with her, so it was nice to actually talk! So while Gabe was gone, I just picked up the living room and placed a few more decorations in their permanent home.
So enough of my chatting, here is my proof that Christmas has actually vomited in Apartment #210.


the den has turned into the room where all the "stuff" goes,
gotta clean that up, Emily's coming this weekend &
she's suppose to sleep SOMEWHERE in there ;)


See, I seriously wasn't kidding. I had placed a few things in the perfect spot, but for the most part things are just floating from place to place. Then today I made the kitchen table (LOVE the 3rd one by the way) and it seemed to make everything look so much better. So here are some new pics of what I've done today..
we filled this jar with Peppermint Bark from William Sonoma..
basically Christmas in a jar

we had to buy an additional tree for my PEACE tree..
all of these ornaments either say peace or are a peace sign.
obsessed much?
here's the kitchen table, not done all the way
& yes i'm aware i'm missing a chair,
the cat likes to sit on it & watch people outside.
i've tried billions of times to rotate this picture correctly,
wont work.
ornament- $1
glitter- $4.99 (used for billions of projects tho)

this looks a little chaotic in the picture,
but in real life i like it.. i think.


Well, you know that's going to be it for the night. i'm upset at blogspot right now and my computer is running slow when it comes to adding pictures. oh, also my "w" key is not working properly, so i have to POUND on the keys every time i want to use the stupid letter w, which i'm learning is rather frequently.

be back tomorrow with more updates. be patient with me loves.
OH ALSO, i wanted to say thank you to everyone who openly admits that they stalk my blog, it really is flattering and makes me so happy that i do this.. i love getting fb comments or messages saying that people read my blog.
GodisLove,
Mrs.Grinder.