A Very Pinterest Christmas

Christmas is here! I love all the décor that is associated with Christmas, whether it’s the lights in trees at businesses or personalized stockings in each and every home. With my new obsession with Pinterest, and DIY products, our house was transformed into a DIY Winter Wonderland. For a tiny budget anyways.

First, and most importantly, there’s our tree. My grandmother lives very close to my parents, and wasn’t planning on putting up her Christmas Tree, so my dad brought it home for us. It’s the perfect size for our tiny little apartment! I chose to decorate with all white, muted metals, and sparkles. Not to mention, I told Greg that I wanted A LOT (slightly excessive amount) of lights and he went to town. Putting all 500 lights on the tree took about an hour and wore Greg out. 5 strands of lights later on an almost 6 foot tall tree might be a bit dramatic, but I couldn’t be happier with the way that it turned out! Props to the hubs for putting up with my ridiculous demands!

All of our decorating garb.

Here’s some shots of our favorite ornaments on the tree. And our oh-so-perfect mercury-glass tree topper!

I'm in LOVE with mercury glass!

One of my projects for decorating our house this year was to make my own tree skirt. I tend to have “boutique” style, so therefore every decorating item that I am drawn to is naturally the most expensive product that I can find. Of course. So thanks to Pinterest, I was able to recreate a Ruffled Linen Tree Skirt out of a painters drop cloth, linen fabric, a glue gun, and some grosgrain ribbon. So easy and I completed it in an afternoon!

You can get inspired and make one too! I found my tutorial here.

Another project that I endeavored on (with TONS of help from my mother) was our stockings. Again, I had seen some burlap stockings on both Etsy and Pinterest that I was in love with. Being that we are newlyweds with two entry-level jobs, we obviously couldn’t afford to pay up to $35 a piece. And naturally, we needed three of them. One for Greg, one for me, and of course one for Moose. I did some research and found several tutorials on how to make them and told my mom we had a date with the craft store and the sewing machine. Again, they aren’t perfect, but I love the way they turned out. Rustic, simple, and oh so cheap! I spent WAY less than $35 bucks a piece! Victory!

Where our TV would be if we had one. But that would require actually watching TV.....

On yet another impulse craft day, I decided to make this CoffeeFilter Wreath just to hang in our house. Again, cost me $7, and I love the way it turned out. It’s currently hanging on the wall in our living room, but I think I might find a new home for it above our bed once Christmas is over. I’m not thrilled with the décor over our bed, so after Christmas, I’ll be crafting to spruce up our bedroom with pillows, a shelf, our monogrammed initials, and a pic of our wedding printed on Metal. Yet, I’m pretty indecisive so this will probably change.

The view of the wreath on the wall in our living room. 

The window that is hung over our piano in our breakfast room. My mom and I found an awesome metal snowflake garland at JoAnn Fabrics for half off!

Again, a close up of the garland.

  

Our own little elf who was so involved in the decorating process. 

I owe a HUGE thank you to my mother. Without her, we wouldn’t have half the ornaments on our tree, our tree skirt, or our beautiful stockings. My mother is creative, talented, and therefore I am greatly indebted to her! Thank you Momma!

A Sweet Baptism

A couple of weekends ago, we were invited to be a part of a very unique and special baptism. Greg’s cousins, Bryan and his wife Chelsea, decided it was time to make their profession of faith public to both their friends and family. Since their church only offers baptism 4 times a year and they had just missed the deadline for the most recent baptism, they decided that they were going to do a special baptism in Chelsea’s parents backyard.

Conveniently, Greg’s other cousin Craig (also Bryan’s brother), has just recently returned home for the holidays from doing year-long missions in Argentina. Since they have such a special relationship, Bryan and Chelsea asked Craig if he would be the one to baptize them. So sweet to watch one brother baptize the other.

So blessed to be apart of this special celebration and proclamation.

Love the expression on Bryan's face as his wife is baptized. So full of joy.

A Turkey Re-Cap

Our Thanksgiving week was so relaxing and such a nice break from the busyness of everyday life. Greg’s parents rented a BEAUTIFUL rustic house on Possum Kingdom Lake, flew in from California, and invited us and my immediate family to come out and enjoy some time together over the holiday. 

Greg and I both had to work on Monday and Tuesday, so Tuesday night, we packed up, grabbed Moose, and headed out the door to “The Chocolate Moose Lodge”. Time there consisted of sleeping in late, preparing for the big Thanksgiving meal, watching movies, playing guitar by the fire, hiking around the lake, playing lots of Texas Hold ‘Em (don’t ever play my sister in-law by the way… She’ll rob you blind!), playing Frisbee golf, and celebrating Meredith’s 23^rd Birthday. It was just what we needed.

I have officially taken on the role of baking all of the pies for the second year in a row. I’ve always loved helping my mom make the pies, because I’ve always loved how beautiful they are when they are done, and I love taking pride in that art form! So anyways, I took on the task of making four pies: Pumpkin, Pecan, Buttermilk, and Apple. Let me just say, I ascertained a new level of pie making this year. They were picture perfect, not to mention absolutely beautiful. Ok, I’m done bragging. But seriously, see for yourself. Obviously, I wasn’t in the kitchen alone. I had tons of advice and help from two expert bakers/chefs: Nancy and my mom. Boy do I have a lot to live up to! 

I tried a new recipe for the buttermilk pie this year. I used Paula Deen’s “Olivia’s Buttermilk Pie” Recipe. I was a little nervous at first because it’s a crustless pie, but it turned out wonderful and was the first pie to completely disappear. 

Another favorite of the week is Pioneer Woman’s Pecan Pie. All I have to say about this one is YUM. 

A couple weeks before Thanksgiving, Meredith and I schemed and decided that everyone should dress up in traditional Thanksgiving wear for our Thanksgiving meal. Yes, I do mean pilgrims and Indians. No, don’t ask me what we were thinking. Anyways, the girls were good sports, and we even got a visit by a 6 ft. turkey! My father-in-law had the brilliant idea to not show up as a pilgrim or Indian, but to show up as the turkey himself! It was a surprise to us all, and definitely the highlight of the meal. It was ridiculously hard to take anything he said seriously when he had tail-feathers, a beak, and talons!

  

The day after Thanksgiving, all the kids decided to go out and play some Frisbee golf. Disclaimer: I am terrible at Frisbee golf. So bad, that I cannot even fake it and play on the wii. It’s bad. But, we all went out and braved the wind and actually had a lot of fun. I even had fun letting everyone laugh at my expense at how terrible I am. No lie. We played the 9-hole course forwards and then backwards, and I must say, I did slightly improve by the end of it. And I did have fun so I would definitely go on another Frisbee golf outing if the occasion arose.

That day was also Meredith’s birthday. We had fun celebrating her dinner that night with a gourmet meal of grilled shrimp with a honey cilantro dipping sauce, a delicious vegetable medley, and last but not least, filet mignon. Oh my goodness. Delicious. It was so sweet to be able to be around to celebrate the life of Meredith. She is the kind of girl that everyone wants to be around because she’s fun and her laughter and goofiness draw others to her.  I always love getting to spend time with her. 

This is our second annual Foster/Roberts Thanksgiving, where our families have gotten together to do Thanksgiving. Last year, we went to Austin and stayed on the river that fed into Lake Travis. Anyways, that trip was such a huge success that we decided to start a little tradition! 

My family normally just invites my grandmother over, so combining with the Fosters brings so much more fun and joy to the holidays, not to mention, our families get along great! Greg and I have a hypothesis. We like to believe that if we had grown up in the same town, our families probably would have attended the same huge Baptist church, and since Meredith and I are the same age, our family paths would have crossed often and would therefore have been really good friends. I envision our mom’s being a part of the same bunko/keeno group. It’s that real of a hypothesis. Anyways, I say this often, but I am SO thankful for all my in-laws and that our families get along SO well. It is such a HUGE HUGE HUGE blessing as I know that in-laws can cause rifts between families. We got lucky!

I Give You..... FIJI.

As many of you know, Greg surprised me with this trip to Fiji. Up until the morning after our wedding, I had NO idea where we were going. I only knew that we were headed to a beach. Well, as you can imagine, I couldn't really grasp the fact that we were going halfway around the world to FIJI for our honeymoon. If you ever need anyone to plan a trip for you, call my husband. He's pretty incredible. 

Finally... the long awaited pics.

Greetings from Fiji

The infamous Ghost Crabs captured by the one and only, Greg Foster

Meet our friend. He hung out on our front porch alllll week.

 It's hard to see, but this was an orange and blue stingray that we spooked one day when we were walking down to the beach!

Sipping some wine on the front porch of our bure

These next photos are from our underwater disposable camera. We captured some serious photos with that camera. Don't judge the poor quality.

So we went on a little "reef fishing" adventure. These are the fish that everyone else was catching. 

And this just so happened to be the fish that I caught.

Me, holding my shark and almost pushing our guide into the water. Not pictured: me screaming like a little girl.

My man catching an awesome fish. 

Out doing some kayaking. Katie Craig, you'd be so proud.

Holding up a clam at the local clam farm! These suckers were heavy.

Greg, holding up an even bigger clam. 

 Shot of the clam farm. If only this dinky camera would have had the capacity to capture the vibrant neon colors that were inside the clams. Maybe next time....
There are 10 clams in this picture, just FYI.

 Snorkel Trip!

Hi, Mom. 

Snorkeling in about 50 feet of crystal clear water.  

It's Been a While

It has been a while…. A long while… And I apologize. Life has been pretty crazy with a lot of travelling and other oddities that have filled our time. But have no fear! We are back! I guess my first duty is to inform you of all the exciting (and subsequently, not so exciting) things we’ve been doing within the last month:

• Update: Due to schedule conflicts, we still have yet to make it to the Catfish Plantation for my birthday dinner celebration. Yet, we WILL be going soon. And when we do, expect a full report!
• Neely introduced me to crepes. And Nutella. And I’m in love.
• Greg and I have been able to spend some more time with our LifeHouse from the Exchange DFW and have absolutely loved getting to know this awesome group of people. There is nothing quite like getting to spend time with people who are in the same stage of life as you, specially some who have been married for a wee bit longer. Not to mention, everyone in our LifeHouse is hilarious so we spend a lot of our time laughing and enjoying each other’s company.

• My office (and my company for that matter) is very intentional about giving back to the community, which means so much to me. Instead of working one Friday morning, my office set-aside the hum-drums of Corporate America and we went and served at the North Texas Food Bank. Let me just say, my eyes were opened. After we arrived, we were instructed that we would be filling boxes of food that are taken to a local elementary school where children get to take these boxes home to their families. The boxes we were packing provide a family’s meals for the entire weekend. In 3 hours, we were able to pack over 700 boxes which resulted in over 14,000 meals! It was so much fun being able to serve with some of my teammates from The Hartford and I was impressed by the amount of meals we were able to provide by simply giving 3 hours of our time
• I successfully ran a 5k at a local elementary school. It was a successful run, but let me just say, that was the hilliest 3 miles that I think I have ever run. Or maybe I’m slightly dramatic. But it was hilly!
• In other news, I have officially decided not to run the Dallas White Rock Half.  It’s not that I didn’t want to, or that I don’t think I’m capable, but training was literally taking over my life, and therefore was becoming my life. And I didn’t like that part of it. This is how my day was during training: Get up, go to work, come home, cook dinner, clean up dinner, go running, shower, go to bed. The end. Boring. I felt like I was not getting to live life to the fullest because I was running. All. The. Time. Now, I still run, but I don’t have a strict agenda that I’m following and it allows me to have more free time to hang out with Greg and other friends.

• I finally graduated from training!! WOO HOO! After 18 weeks of learning all the ins and outs of the insurance world, I was able to travel to Hartford, Connecticut with the rest of my training class for a “Graduation Week”. We spent the week wrapping up everything we had learned and had a very nice“graduation” dinner where we were able to interact with a bunch of our top leadership. After approximately 12 tests, hundreds of hours on conference calls, several assignments, and lots and lots of reading, I am an official Underwriter for The Hartford. (Just in case you’re confused about what I do for a living, think Along Came Polly. The only difference is that I don’t do risk analysis on people, just businesses!)
• During homecoming weekend, we joined Greg’s family in Houston for his cousin’s wedding. We had so much fun getting to do some shopping, bowling, and not to mention getting one of the best pedicures I’ve ever had in my life (the boys sat out on this one though). I’ve been blessed with an amazing “in-law” family. They literally do feel like family to me and I couldn’t have asked for anything better! Can’t wait to spend some much needed time with both of our families over Thanksgiving!

• I’ve yet again put off reading Les Mis, and instead have started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. After seeing the previews for the upcoming movie, and hearing rave reviews of the book, I knew that it was a book that I wanted to read before the movie came out. We’ll see how it turns out!

Well, that seems to be a pretty boring and mundane list. But, I am going to attempt to finish editing photos from Fiji and post them! Wishful thinking… after staring at computer screens all day, its definitely a struggle to go home and work on a computer some more. Keep your eyes peeled!

-K