Wishful Wednesday

I'm late on this Wishful Wednesday but I loved this one so much, I just had to participate.

'I wish' .... I could relive one particular holiday experience over and over again, and it would be watching my parents, sisters and brothers-in-law slow-dance to Christmas music in the living room.

I can only remember a few Christmases that they actually did this but I can so vividly remember the warm, happy, secure, hopeful way it made me feel.

My amazing Papa is not a dancer at all. In fact those Christmases and my wedding are the only times I've ever seen him dance. Each time was so special.

At the time I didn't realize that I would lose one of my brothers-in-law to cancer and the other two to divorce, I just knew that in those beautiful moments, my family was together and happy.

And it made me long for the day I would be able to join them, dancing with my husband.

My family will most likely never dance together at Christmas again, but they will forever dance in my memory.

Thanks to Kelsey for hosting Wishful Wednesday!

You Can Call Me Pablo

Picasso, that is. Because he's the only artist I can think of at the moment who painted anything besides fuzzy lilly pads and flowers. Oh and Van Gogh but I think he's the one who chopped his own ear off and that's just gross. Not to mention psy-cho!

This year, our supervisor (with prodding from some of us super cool underlings), decided to have our annual holiday party at a painting class! (Of course, this was decided after I'd already bought a gift for our usual White Elephant gift exchange, but that's beside the point.)

None of us are anything close to creative (we're in research, which leans more toward anal-retentive than artsy) but we knew we'd have fun trying! Since we were a private party, we were able to pick the painting we wanted to do, and there was a leader walking us through each step.

For me, it was extremely relaxing and fun but some of my co-workers got a little twigged out when their paintings didn't come out just so. I'd for sure go again. I don't care that my picture's not perfect, it's something I created all by myself, which is so rewarding. Our painting place is called Corks N Canvas and I'd highly recommend checking it out if you have anything similar in your area!

{Ahhhhh. Who doesn't love a clean slate?}

{Me and Natalie, one of my BFFs from college. We work together and our offices are right next door to each other. Awwwww!}

{Work in progress}


{The group with our masterpieces. I love that everyone's paintings were similar but unique.}


{My finished product.}


I'm really happy with the way mine turned out. It's not great by any means but it's better than what I expected! It's a picture of a local bridge so it's a special piece of home. We plan to hang the paintings in our new offices, which should be built and ready to move into this summer, so we'll have a nice reminder of our fun time together. Not bad for $35!

Friday Night Fun and My 2nd Guest Post

Friday night JD and I went to a Hornets game (New Orleans' NBA team). We got some great tickets that we couldn't pass up even though we were both super tired. I actually don't remember all that much from the game because I was sitting there half asleep the whole time. I think we had fun, though!

{Notice the Honey Bees' outfits in the lower left corner. Mmmmm klassy.}

On our way back it started snowing! It's only about the 3rd time in my life it's snowed where I live. We tried to get some good pictures but there wasn't quite enough snow to actually be pretty so go here if you want to see some LA snow pics (not something you'll see very often in your lifetime). Those are from our real snow encounter last year... which pretty much shut our cities down for a couple days while we all scratched our heads and tried to figure out how the heck we were supposed to function with SNOW on the ground.

Off the subject but equally as exciting, please go check out my guest post over at Pursuit of Happiness! Malin is the cutest, sweetest international student ever, who's currently studying in Mexico. But she's off having even more traveling adventures for the next few weeks, this time to Yucatán, Belize and Cuba! She asked me to do a post about any Christmas-related topic while she's away, so head on over and see some of my favorite things about Christmas... the things that give me those warm fuzzies we all love so much. If you know me at all, you've probably guessed that there will be pretty pictures from we heart it. I just can't get enough!

About Durn Time

As I mentioned in this guest post, we've been trying to decide for approximately a year where we wanted to go for our December vacation. We've gone back and forth and around and around, even thinking at times we would just skip the vacay and save the money (I know, how boring, right??). Well we're preeeety sure... like 90% sure, I'd say, that we're going to... wait for it... drumroll, please...

New York City!

We went right before Christmas 2007 and got to do lots of fun stuff so now I need suggestions on new things to do. We plan to see at least one show, maybe two and we want to take a ferry to get some good pics of the Statue of Liberty but other than that, I think we're pretty plan-less.

I'm super excited to be in the city again but I am not looking forward to the cold. If anyone has any jackets, gloves, scarves, long johns, etc. you're not using, I'm currently accepting donations for the "Keep Amber Warm and Cute in NYC" cause. And I'm only mostly kidding.

Some friends of ours will be there at the same time so we'll do some stuff with them but we're open to ideas. If you have any, please share!

Here are a few lots of pics from our last visit.

{Santa ice skating at Rockefeller Center}


{Wish we could've gone to a game here!}

{Loved the decorations in Serendipity!}

{And of course the frozen hot chocolate.}

{My handsome man}

{We were on top of the Rockefeller Center and I had no idea I would be proposed to on top of the building behind us later that night!}

{Better view of the Empire State Building}

{The ring of my dreams! Could not, for the life of me, get a good picture of it.}

{Walking around Central Park, calling everyone to tell them I was engaged.}

{Ice skating in Central Park. They wouldn't let us take pictures on the rink! Meanies.}

{Washington Square. This reminds me of August Rush.}

{Our last meal at a cute Italian restaurant.}

{We saw this show the night we got engaged. Loved it!}

{Showing off my new bling on the way to celebrate Christmas with my family.}

So... ya got any suggestions of things for us to do while we're there this time? I really don't care if we just walk around the city aimlessly looking around in awe but it probably wouldn't hurt for us to have a few things planned.

Insert Title Here

Yeah, how's that for a post title? I'm just fresh out of 'em today.

I was going to write a detailed post about our Thanksgiving weekend, which we spent in Gulf Shores, AL and the last-minute 12 AM shopping adventure we decided to have on Black Friday but it's already Wednesday and I'm kind of over it. So here are a few pictures from the weekend and then we'll move on.

{Headed to shop. At 11:40. Can you sense the sarcasm in my thumbs up? I'd had about 2 hours of sleep.}


{I'm gonna need a big pretty mirror like this in my house (with better lighting) to take outfit pictures from now on. Mmkay? Kthx.}



{Dinner at Jimmy Buffett's sister's restaurant. Again, stinky lighting.}


{The spoils from our trip. We went to Christmas shop and there are oh, approximately two presents in there. The rest is all ours... including all 10 seasons of Friends, which were a total impulse buy on the way back home. I'm telling myself our kids will love to watch them one day. Only, by then DVD's will most likely be obsolete, so I guess that's not really a great justification. Whatev.}

Anyhoo, on to more exciting news! Well exciting for me, anyway. I've been having kind of a blah week (nothing bad, just blah... kind of funky) but that all changed in a flasharoo when my lovie Liz texted me and told me to check her blog. I thought, "Surely I didn't win her completely amazing givieaway. Nah She probably wants me to see the latest pair of fabulous shoes she's found." Which she did. And they're pretty mind-blowing, I must say. But I also won the giveaway!! I am be-yond excited. Talk about turn my frown upside down!

Something else that made me smile last night? This.

Those puppies crack me up. They sat there like that the whole time he was eating. They know momma's kind of stingy with the table food (she likes to keep it all for herself) but daddy will totally fall for the "butbutbut I'm staaaarving no one ever feeds me I will die if you don't give me a piece of that right this instant" face every single time. I love my little family :-)