Winter Love!

Now that Thanksgiving is over, here's the Winter Edition of things I love!

Christmas!! (duh)

Best thing about the winter season? Easy. Christmas. The warm glow of christmas lights, christmas songs, the spirit of giving, it's all so cheerful and loving.

Christmas Cookies!

Going hand in hand with the first one, christmas baking is nothing but theraputic. What is better than mixing up holiday flavors, baking them, decorating every cookie differently while singing to christmas music and then watching everyone melt over how amazing they are? Nothing. Except maybe eating them myself.

SNOW

I really love the snow. I love how it muffles all the sounds outside. It's like dancing in the rain, but you don't get wet (unless it's really slushy snow). Sadly, down here on the beach, we hardly get anything like this picture. It's crazy how in Maryland, you can have 6-10 feet of snow (remember snOMG 2010?), and only 300 miles south, we get maybe an inch and it's such a big deal...

Scarves!!

They are so snuggly and it's so easy to have a million (so you can match). I also don't like to wear hats so this is what keeps my head/face area warm.

Ice Skating

I haven't gone in a while, but I really love to skate when I can. Between the love of dance, and the Mighty Ducks being one of my favorite movies, I couldn't get enough of ice skating when I was younger. I got pretty good for a while there, but got too busy in high school to keep up with it.

Gingerbread Lattes

Can't go wrong with ANYTHING gingerbread flavored. But only when it's cold. It just feels weird year round...

A few things I mentioned in the fall category also applies for the winter including:
Sleeping, Relaxing, Fireplaces, Eating carbs covered in cheese, and Miller's being closed.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

So we moved! I think I'll take more now that there are some christmas decorations up.

Also, we got a DOG. His name is Murray. He's two years old, we found him at a shelter. At the current moment, we are fostering him (a test drive to see how he would be with our cats and how the cats would be with him). We are really loving him and the cats seem to be warming up to him slowly but surely. We were talking about getting him a sweater (for the christmas card) and a stocking, so it seems he will be staying and we'll throw an adopting party once we sign the papers.


And instead of one of my '25 things to do' being to run the half marathon, I've decided to be a little more realistic and go with running a 5k or 8k. Theres an 8k in March, a 5k in May and another 5k in August. I'm also going to change saving $10,000 to just taking care of our student loans, because that comes first. I don't want to get my passport anymore, so I changed it to lose 10 lbs... let's see how that works... I also want to change 'Take B/W pictures of baby' to just 'take black and white pictures'. Why wait? I just want to start taking some good pictures in general. While I'm at it, instead of worrying about taking a certain class for a certain job, I'm going to take that out and just put Get a good bible and read from it. (good meaning a kind with footnotes and easy to read passages). One of my biggest problems right now is that everyday I am worried about ever getting a 'real job' and it freaks me out. So I just need to live one day at a time and stop planning ahead. I trust that something with find it's way to me somehow, but until then, I just need to enjoy having hobbies and making little things into big accomplishments.

Speaking of hobbies, I started to crochet. A friend taught me how he does it, so it might not be the best way or even the right way, but I like it. I started on a scarf, but it seems that I am pulling my knots too tight which makes things very difficult to work with. I'm gonna call the one I was working on 'finished' and start over. Maybe I'll have a scarf for NEXT winter...

Movin' On Up!

Fifth one down! Two more to go!
Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix

By far my favorite book cover. It's so blue and swirly....
Anyway! I remember loving and hating this book, but I didn't remember much about the details. I'm glad I took my time to read it for comprehension this time instead of plowing through in two straight days to see what happened. This is one of the biggest books I've read (weight and page number wise) coming in at a whopping 870 pages and it's also one of my very favorites. I did indeed love it and hate it again this time around. We go through a whirlwind of emotions in this one. Harry is really going through his grumpy teenage phase and she writes it so well. Umbridge is difficult to read without wanting to throw the book out of a window... she is so horrible. However, the flasback moments were really wonderful to read and so many great things happen in this book to outweigh the bad. Weasley is our King!! Again, if you haven't read them. DO. IT.

In other news! Moving this week!! I'm so excited. I cleaned my ass off at the new house scrubbing the entire downstairs, wall to wall, every crumb in the kitchen, every corner of the bathrooms, and we painted our bedroom a really peacrful light blue. Today is scrubbing the walls upstairs and working on vaccuming the floors (if we get the power going today). Taking pictures! I will put them up as soon as I can.
(the computer is being packed up today so when we unpack it, I will upload!)

New Me November!

It's November! Which means Miller's closed yesterday and I now have 4 months to recharge and relax and enjoy my life!
It is also MOVING MONTH! We got the keys yesterday! The place looks great inside (will take pictures on moving day). We can't wait to get in there and start painting and moving stuff in! With all this free time we will surely get it done lickty split!

Ok, now for some winter goals:

Starting Yoga!!

I'm really excited for it. I've been once and it was amazing. My first class is on Wednesday. I'll let you know how it went.

Reading ALOT MORE!

I have to finish Harry Potter (almost done with 5 right now) and I have 4 more books on my list of MUST READS!

Working Out!

Gym three times a week! Get that running back up to where it was last winter before work started up again. Lose a few pounds? Sounds good to me.


Eating Healthy(-er)!!

I've been doing an ok job making healthy choices, but it's time to re-crack down! Although the more I think about it... the more I want candy... we need to go healthy grocery shopping!

Manage Money!

With all this free time, all we want to do is go out and spend money. It's a very bad habbit. We need to learn to budget, save, buy store brands, use coupons and enjoy what we have.

If I even do these things half-way, I'll be better than I was, but hopefully, I'll stick to it!