Holiday Home Tour

On Sunday, A group of girls and I attended one of my favorite Charlotte events: the Fourth Ward Holiday Home Tour. It pretty much combines 2 things that I love which are home tours and holiday decorations. I love touring homes in general to get decorating ideas, and I love decorating for the holidays! This event has been a tradition in the Fourth Ward neighborhood (downtown) for 32 years now. It started with just a group of people in the neighborhood getting together to sing carols and visit homes in the neighborhood, and has evolved into a fundraiser for historic preservation of landmarks.

I asked all the homeowners before I took pictures just to be safe, but here were some of my favorites.

Christmas Carolers!

Morgan's first Christmas present

Morgan was the first one to get a Christmas present this year! My mom sent a few new collars down to her and one was a Christmas collar, so yesterday, she got to try it out.

It may be hard to see in the pics (click on it and I think it open larger in a new window), but it is red and green with little candy canes on it. Will go perfect with her red leash. The collar came from Up Country and I love their collars! They are all made in the US and can go in the washing machine, so they are pretty durable. Plus, I just like for her to look cute. My mom also sent 2 more that we will use in the spring, thanks Mom! I think she looks adorable in her new collar :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful thanksgiving with friends this year! We have so much to be thankful for and are lucky to have such wonderful friends to spend the day with! We hosted thanksgiving this year, and Sam and Samantha and Luke, Heather, and Abby came over. John smoked the turkey this year with his new smoker and it turned out great. Here was our menu:

Smoked turkey
Cranberry walnut chutney
Autumn Pudding
Herb Stuffing
Gravy
Roasted Carrots and Parsnips with fresh thyme

Champagne and Beer

Pumpkin cheesecake with homemade vanilla whipped cream

This was Morgan's first Thanksgiving, so we had to put a little of everything in her bowl to try. She ate everything, even the cranberries!



For the centerpieces, I made black-eyed susan flowers out of crepe paper and then just lit some candles and scattered some leaves around. Kept it pretty simple so everyone could see each other across the table.

I used my new dessert plates that my mom got when she was visiting, see mom, I think they look cute!

Robinson and Lily's Wedding

We went to our final wedding for the year last weekend, on Halloween. Robinson and Lily's wedding was here in Charlotte and was the first time I have ever been to a local wedding! The ceremony was at St.Peter's Catholic Church and reception site was at Bentley's on 27. Bentley's was a beautiful site (it is located on the 27th floor of the Charlotte Plaza Bldg) with great views of the city. I was curious to see if and how they would incorporate Halloween into the decor, but as you will see below, they kept it very minimal with just some pumpkins which was very elegant

Mom's Visit

Had so much fun with my mom in town last week!! I was able to work from home on Friday and finished up by about noon, so for lunch, we went to PF Changs and then went shopping (part 1) in the afternoon. We went looking for a bday gift for my dad, went to a new petstore to find some treats for Morgan, and then to Hobby Lobby for some Christmas decorations. After all that, the only things we ended up buying were for Morgan! She is so spoiled, but especially when my mom comes in town!

On Saturday, we got up and went hiking at the Whitewater Center. It was a a pretty cold and drizzly morning, and we only managed to get one picture:
Saturday night (Halloween), we had a wedding to go to, so my mom stayed home and passed out candy. I did not get a costume for Morgan this year, but I think I will next year.

Sunday morning, John left for China and my mom and I set out for shopping (part 2). This time we went to Southpark which is where we always have the best luck. Mom decided to spoil me and I got some Christmas decorations at Crate and Barrel and some dessert plates. Then I got a cute knob at Anthropologie for the night stand in the guest bedroom.
We went to lunch at The Cheesecake Factory and got a pumpkin cheesecake to share for dessert. It was so good, it inspired me to make a pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving this year instead of the usual pie. I have never made a cheesecake before, but it looks easy and I found a good recipe, so I hope it turns out. We made a final stop at the makeup counter at Belk and then went home.

Morgan's First Bday Paw-ty!

We celebrated Morgan's first birthday today with a paw-ty at the Dog Bar in NoDa. The Dog Bar is just that, a place where you can go drink and hangout with your dog at the same time. Great concept. We decided to have her party there since the idea of having multiple dogs in our backyard at one time kind of scares me. Especially because if it rains, there really is no back up plan since there is no way I would let that many dogs run around the house. So we celebrated here. Thankfully for all the guys they also have the NFL network so everyone could watch football at the same time.

A few weeks ago, I took Morgan to the local dog bakery to pick out her cake. She chose peanut butter and banana (yes, they had a tasting) and I think it was a hit.

For the adults, I made puppy chow and pupcakes.

Used junior mints and york peppermint patties to make the paw

I also picked up some treats from the dog bakery for the other pups to take home in a "doggy bag" Cute? I thought these things were great.


I wanted to try and get all the dogs in one picture with their hats, but I quickly realized that was a ridiculous idea, it was hard enough to try and get all 3 of us in one picture. The one below turned out best, but a dog jumped up right in the middle. oh well, it pretty much sums up the afternoon. After that, I decided to get individual pictures of all the dogs that came, they are below too.




And here is Morgan with her cake, and me feeding the dogs some leftovers.

Weekend in San Diego!

This past weekend, we traveled to San Diego for Amy and Bill’s wedding. As an added bonus, we got to see my friends Courtney and Harlan and stay with them for a few days.

We left after work on Thursday. I love flying west! We left Charlotte at 6:30 and landed in San Diego at 8:30, not bad! On Friday morning we got up and met John’s Uncle Walt and Aunt Judy for breakfast. They live in Escondido so we met them there, had breakfast at a diner and went back to their house to visit a bit before we had to go.

On the way out, we discovered the best beverage store ever, BevMo. In NC, all the liquor stores are state run and only sell liquor, so basically if you are having a party, you need to go to the grocery store for wine and beer and the ABC store for liquor. Well in California, if you are having a party, all you need to do is go to BevMo! They had quite an extensive selection of beer and all kinds of liquor and wine too. The best part was that they also stocked anything you would need for a party from paper plates to caviar and imported cheeses. We bought some champagne and some different beers for John to try.

Then we headed back to meet Courtney and went for a hike in Torrey Pines. It was so nice to see water and the 80 degree weather wasn’t so bad either. We had been having rainy and gloomy weather in Charlotte so it was nice to escape that for a bit. And of course I was anxious to get a workout in after flying 5 hours the day before.

Last time we were in California, I introduced John to In-N-Out so this time it was a must for lunch. Gotta love the menu, so simple and cheap!

I get the cheeseburger protein style so you get 2 wedges of lettuce for the bun instead of the bread. Yum! After that, we went to Courtney’s office to eat lunch and were planning on laying out in the afternoon at her pool. Until I got a text that there was a cocktail party for the wedding that I didn’t know anything about, so a quick change of plans and we were headed down to Hillcrest area for a cocktail party given by Amy’s mom. I really hate surprises, I have to have everything planned out, so this really threw me off, but I recovered and was glad we went.


For dinner, we had plans to go to Fidel’s Little Mexico with Courtney and Harlan, so we headed back north on “the 5” (sorry John) and ate yummy Mexican food. With all that driving around, it’s a good thing we had this trusty vehicle to get us around!
Seriously, what is the classification of this? Not an SUV, not a wagon, but not a crossover either? Hmmm... maybe a 4 door hatchback? I’ll stick with that for now.

Courtney put us up in her adorable guest house, isn't it cute?

And I had to get some pictures of the flowers around her yard too.

Saturday, Michigan State was playing Northwestern (Court’s alma mater) so we had plans to watch the game together. The game came on at 9 am pacific time so mimosas were in order. John quickly got into his element


and I quickly got into mine


After the game, it was time to say bye to Courtney and Harlan and head to Hillcrest to get ready for Amy’s wedding. On the way, we stopped by Pinkberry. It was as delicious as I imagined it to be. Once John discovered that they had Cap'n Crunch as a topping option, he decided to get some too.


Amy had a small wedding, only 1 bridesmaid (her sister) but she asked a few of us to be there when the photographer was coming at 3:30, so I took my camera along and snapped some pics of the gorgeous bride before she walked down the aisle.

The wedding was so fun! Got to see some old friends and enjoyed celebrating with everyone! Allison and I even managed to find some real wedding crashers and get them kicked out. I can’t believe that people actually do that! They have probably never had to pay for a wedding before and realize how much it is per person to buy a drink package, but we weren’t going to let it happen to our girl! Enjoy the pics, and take note of the fog in the background of the second picture. Should have been a clue that we might have travel problems in the morning, but no. We were up at 4:30, for our 6:00 am flight out, only to realize that no planes could land the previous night because of the fog. There were no planes at the airport! So we had to wait until 9 to get out, and made it home after 7. Spent 12 hours either flying or at airports on Sunday, no wonder I am feeling a little sickly