Merry {Belated} Christmas!

Merry belated Christmas to everyone! I'm having a VERY merry one thanks to this guy:

Isn't he HANDSOME?!?! He makes my Christmas merry and fulfilled. Having him home is the best Christmas present I could have asked for.

The second best Christmas present is the one he got me: a Canon Rebel digital SLR camera!!! I've been wanting one for years now so I was so excited when I opened it on Christmas day. I've been having a blast taking pictures of everyone and everything....

Libby giving me the stink-eye.

Libby watching Alex's dad shovel snow...I love this one.

The close-up, detail pictures are my favorite!

I can't wait to take pictures of my food...this camera makes everything look delicious!!


Snow + Christmas + Husband = Best.Christmas.Ever.

It has also been a very...eventful...couple of days, but that's a whole new blog post that I'll have to take time to write out later. Let's just say it involved a blizzard and a LOT of time on an interstate. :)

Bliss.

He's home.

My life is whole again.


And I'm happy.

I don't know the people in the photo...I just liked it.

For now, blogging is taking a back burner to reconnecting with my husband and spending the holidays with family. I'll be back soon enough.

Cry Me a River

Alex's homecoming is coming up very soon. I don't like to mention dates on my blog, for fear of violating OPSEC, so I will just leave it at "very soon". And of course I am beyond excited. But emotions are also starting to escalate and anxiety seems to be setting in. And it doesn't help at all that work is extra stressful right now too.

Today I cried "happy tears" 3 times in an hour with almost no explanation. The smallest thing sets me off. In those cases it was a blog I was reading {completely unrelated to military life}, a touching moment in last night's Glee episode I was catching up on, and a glimpse at my husband's Facebook page. That's it. That's what set me off.

I am slightly terrified at how I am going to hold it together at my friend's homecoming ceremony that I am attending tomorrow. I'm so not a pretty crier....my face gets red and splotchy and I make a really ugly face when I'm trying to hold back sobs. Ugh.

And of course now that we're in the downhill slide, some things have to fall apart just a little bit to remind me of how much I *hate* being without my husband. Last night I woke up in a fit of anxiety three times throughout the night. I don't even know what I was dreaming about...all I know is I was scared. I have struggled with bouts of anxiety when I'm sleeping all throughout this deployment but I can't remember another time when I had THREE bouts in one night. Ugh x 2.

One of those times after I woke up in a panic and was just starting to fall back asleep my precious dog woke me back up. I noticed she wouldn't stop shaking her head over and over and she was scratching her ear. Great. An ear infection. She has NEVER HAD an ear infection but of course now is the PERFECT time for one. So she kept me awake off and on for the rest of the night with that awful feeling of knowing that she's uncomfortable but that there's nothing I can do to make it better right away. Ugh x 3.

You truly don't realize how much you need your spouse around until he's gone. I know he would have calmed me down immediately if he were home and witnessing my nighttime anxiety. I also know that he would have made me feel better about poor Libby's ears and told me not to worry. I just miss his calming presence in my life like you wouldn't believe. He's my rock....and you better believe I am ready to get my damn rock back already!!!!!

Ornament Wreath

I had seen several variations of this ornament wreath all over blogland lately. I knew immediately that I wanted to try making one so I bought all the supplies. Then, one night this week after work when I was getting anxious about Alex's impending homecoming, I sat down and got to work.

First you have to hot glue all the ornament tops to the ornament balls. Some of my ornaments that I bought seemed pretty secure so I tried to skip this step....bad idea. The tops started popping off of the balls and that is not good. So, a word of wisdom: Don't be like me. Do this step. Or else you'll be doing your wreath all over again when the tops start popping off.

My thumb looks so fat in this picture...haha. And please excuse the really old, nasty looking hand-me-down-from-my-mom hot glue gun.

Then you take a wire hanger and form it into a circle. I forgot to take a picture of this step but see the link at the beginning of this post for one. FYI the circle doesn't have to be perfect....the process of putting on the ornaments will kind of mess up your circle anyway. The main reason behind doing this is to smooth out the wire in the hanger so that the ornaments will easily thread on.

Once you have the circle, untwist the hanger's hooky part {that's the technical term} and do your best to smooth out the kinks in the non-hanger end. You know what I mean, right? Right. This part required me to bust out my pink needlenose pliers...yes I really do have a set of pink tools and I loooovvvee them. They were a gift at one of our wedding showers so if you gave us the pink tools and you're reading this THANK YOU! :)

Anywho, just start threading the ornaments on! I had a bit of a hard time figuring out what pattern to thread the ornaments on so that it looked as perfect as the Eddie Ross version. I never figured it out but I basically alternated between a large ornament, medium ornament, small ornament, repeat. I think......I don't know. Just do what you want. :)

Keep threading ornaments on until you start getting close to the end of the circle. Keep pulling the two ends together to see when you have formed a nice, full circle of ornaments.


All I did to secure the circle back together was to bend the non-hanger end of the wire back into a sort of "hook" and then I just hooked it around the hanger end. Once again that probably makes no sense. But that's it! Then I just added some poorly tied ribbon "bows" and hung it.

As you can sort of see in the above photo, I left the hook part of the hanger in tact and used it to my advantage for hanging purposes.

It turned out a big more oblong than circular and it's CERTAINLY not perfect, but I still love it! :)

Cool Etsy Product Alert

It's a purse organizer! It keeps things well-organized, easy to find AND it makes it super easy to change your purse! Just take out the purse organizer and place it in the new purse.

I literally only change out my purse every 5-6 months or so because I am ENTIRELY too impatient to move all my purse crap on a regular basis. I always wonder how people have the patience for doing that all the time, but this purse organizer is the perfect solution!

The best part is it's only $28, which I think is pretty reasonable for a homemade purse organizer! I really want this thing, but I've already made my extensive wish list and at this point buying anything for myself when I should be buying Christmas presents would just be irresponsible. So for now, I will hold myself back from the instinct to buy that sucker faster than a hobo eats a ham sandwich. {sorry, that was bad}

P.S. I originally saw this purse organizer mentioned on the Failed Feminist blog. It's a great blog so check it out! And she may have even inspired a "What's in my purse?" post for me. We shall see.

Under Pressure

Let me introduce you to little Ashlex, our future child, according to www.morphthing.com: drumroll please.................................................................

I think Ashlex is pretty cute, in a semi-creepy kind of way! I had never done one of these "What will your baby look like?" things so this was fun.

But the most fun part was the email I sent to my mom with the subject line "Our Baby" and the photo attached.

You see, my mom is...hmmm how shall I say this....OBSESSED with the idea of being a grandma. Aren't you supposed to DREAD being a grandma?!? Well...she doesn't. It's ridiculous. And she tends to get just a teeeeensy bit jumpy at any mention of ANYTHING that could POSSIBLY be related to Alex and I having a baby.

For example, I say "Ugh I feel nauseous." Mom gasps and says "Morning sickness?!?!?"

Or I look at a very cute baby in church and say "Aww...cute." Mom's response: "Not nearly as cute as YOUR baby will be." ::wink::

My dad isn't much better either. In fact, he could even be worse, considering his speech at our rehearsal dinner involved him holding up a baby cousin of mine like she was Simba from the Lion King and saying something along the lines of "THIS is what you and Alex need to produce now." WE WERE NEGATIVE 24 HOURS MARRIED AT THIS POINT. So you can only imagine the pressure we get from him now that we are 2+ years married.

OH! One more story. {I could go on for hours about my parents baby-centric antics.} Our first Christmas as a married couple came about 4 months after our wedding. My mom put a PREGNANCY TEST in my stocking. She claimed she "just wanted to see the look on my face" but we all know that this was actually a thinly veiled plot.

Want proof? Here is when I looked in the stocking and saw what it was. I'm looking at her with the "I can't believe you did this" look.
And here I am giving the death stare and holding up my precious "present".

I've since learned that the best plan of action against this is to do nothing....other than roll my eyes. Because if I try to explain how we're still young and we're not quite ready to be parents yet they just come back at me with 25 reasons why we SHOULD be ready.

So anyway, when I sent the "Our Baby" email to my mom I knew it would get her all flustered so I was anxiously awaiting her response.

Her response was "Don't ever do that to me again." hahahaha

Sorry, Mom!! It was just too easy.

{And in all honesty, it actually makes me happy how excited both of my parents are for future grandchildren because I know our future children will be SO LOVED by Grandma and Grandpa. But they could be a little more discreet about their excitement for pete's sake! :) }