freedom

two more...... one more.........DONE!
Ladies and gentleman, I have just finished grading my three hundredth paper of the semester. How my eyeballs haven't rebelled and jumped out of my skull is beyond me.

I still have a few things I have to do around the office to wrap up the semester, but I've submitted grades to all relevant professors and my grading obligations are DONE.

You know what that means?

It's pretty much my Christmas Vacation.
Praise. The. Lord.

photo source

decked

Due to an incident involving spinach-artichoke dip that resulted in second-degree burns all over my poor husband, our hall-decking process took a little longer than anticipated this year {he's fine now, thank goodness}. However, garlands are lit, the tree is finished, and we're ready for Christmas!

Table Centerpiece and hanging bulbs created from leftover wedding decor. Repurposing for the win!
Christmas candle burning pretty much 24/7, since our fluffy tree isn't smelly enough.   

Christmas tree by day and by night (also a sneak peek at our Christmas Card photo setup!)

And hiding behind our tree is a wall of falling snowflakes, which were cut out and run through the sewing machine in about an hour. Such a fun project!
And also, our living room glows pink at night. Love it.
Merry Christmas {season}!

iweekend

This weekend was fantastic. Catching up with friends, hanging yet another string of lights in our living room (hey, what can I say, I love twinkle lights), ordering our Christmas cards (the ones I started in march), sleeping in. I love the weekend.

Did you do anything fun this weekend?

thankful

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I got really sick after Thanksgiving and didn't get a chance to wish you all a good one (thanks a lot for that one MOM). 

I jest, of course. I love hanging out with family, and this Thanksgiving was no exception. 

There was the usual shenanigans involving one or more of us ruining a photograph. This gem was taken right after my brother did something unspeakable at the camera. Shock and awe, my friends, shock. and. awe.

We also took candid photos. Those, believe it or not, can also be photobombed.

As is tradition in our family, there were turkey pancakes for breakfast with the leftovers from Thanksgiving Day. Don't knock 'em 'til you try em. Seriously, they're so.dang.delicious.

In addition to the three extra adults in our little apartment, there were TWO birds in residence for the weekend. It was a territory battle, folks. Think tiny pigeon divebombing an eagle. Spock didn't stand a chance.

 We explored town, walked the beaches, visited the Habitat ReStore {wondrous, as usual}, and just all around caught up. Because family is what Thanksgiving is all about.

 So Happy Thanksgiving, friends. Hope it was a good one for you, too.

it's beginning to look

A whole lot like Christmas!
Wahoo! Apartment dwelling doesn't mean you can't decorate for christmas. Despite the fact that we'll be visiting family on Christmas and the days before, we decided to go "all out" with our Christmas decorating this year.

Most of this impetus was inspired by the current changes that are in-progress in our living room, and the fact that we were really bored with what we had going on. But YAY!

This week, we picked out Tim's FIRST real christmas tree (he was really excited about it)

Then came the process of finding our vintage christmas lights (aka inherited from late relatives), untangling them, and replacing broken/blown out bulbs and fuses. Ohmahgoodness it was an adventure. At one point, ONLY the green lights were working. Huh?
 
The adventure continues tonight, because at the end of the long night, the tree still looked like this:

At least its fluffy. I do love me a fluffy tree.