Christmas Craftiness

When Sean and I were sophomores in college we purchased an inexpensive Christmas tree, but could only afford two boxes of ornaments and maybe three 'specialty' ornaments. Well, we've had fun adding to those 'specialty' ornaments every year since then and now have a pretty good looking tree {despite the bare bones tree underneath!} Here's some before and afters:

Have any of you ever notices how ridiculously expensive Christmas tree skirts are?? Well, I did today whilst shopping and decided that I could pretty easily make my own. With about $15 in supplies and 30 minutes, I made this: (and saw one similar to it for $60 at Hobby Lobby!)I can finally make Sean's Aunt Teresa's annual Christmas ornament exchange this year and have scoured the internet for homemade ornament ideas. I did a trial one today and I think it turned out really cute! I will make half of them in more whimsical colors/patterns like the one pictured here and will make the other half in more traditional tones. They are pretty easy to make and come out to just about $1/ornament in the end!
The homemade Christmas gifts are underway, though still very much under construction! I'm looking forward to pushing through these next two weeks of class with much perseverance then having some time to devote fully to those projects. Tomorrow we're headed to Kansas City to watch the MU/KU game at Arrowhead stadium {the weather is supposed to be an amazing 62 and sunny!}. I'll post pics of that later this weekend...

Turkey Day at the Huddlestons

Thanksgiving was a success! PTL! Sean and I hosted his brother and sister-in-law, mom and her boyfriend for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Since Sean had to be at work so early today, it was so nice to not have to travel. Here's some pics from our dinner:

Carving the turkey...

Green bean casserole and cheese potatoes...














Deviled eggs... (not pictured: mashed potatoes, rolls and stuffing)















Not 10 minutes after we ate, this was the scene:




























Then we played some games (Cranium {won by Sean and I} and Trivial Pursuit {won by Beth and Bob})
I loved cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time! I'm so thankful for such a great and loving family to call my own! My next post will be a couple of Christmas crafts I got done today!

Shut. Up. (in a good way)

How could I be missing out on this for so long??? The art of couponing. (is that even a word?) Well, tonight, my friends, I spent some time on a few websites completely devoted to finding coupons. Even though we typically buy generic, there are a few items we 'splurge' on, such as TP. Here are a couple of my favorites:

http://www.coupons.com/

http://www.kcpennypinchinmama.com/

http://www.thekrazycouponlady.com/

Oh, man. This could be a bad addition for my cheap self. In other, more exciting news...my husband is making these delicious dry rub ribs for dinner tonight! Yum! My contribution is spaghetti squash.

Us lately

The busy season is definitely here! I think we can all probably feel our calendars getting busier, our priorities getting a little out of whack and our wallets getting smaller! The holidays, though full of great time with friends and family, can be a little stressful at times. (when compounded with house guests, work, the end of the school semester, etc.) We decided to do a little Thanksgiving here this year since Sean has to be at work so early the day after (Black Friday!). Sean's mom, brother and sister-in-law will all be in town...we're looking forward to having guests and I'm looking forward to trying new recipes!

The holiday gift making is going well...I have a couple finished. It seems that just when I think I have a gift idea picked out, I find a better suited gift somewhere else. I'm going to have to budget my time wisely over the next month to make sure it all gets done in time. Not sure why I feel the need to tell you that, but maybe it makes me feel better to get it out.

We went to a holiday party for my work on Friday (see pic above), hit up the MU football game yesterday then dinner with friends, the MU basketball game today and finally pictures this afternoon. I'll post some when we get them back from our friend who took them. I got a haircut this week and think it's too short, but will hopefully like it better in a couple of weeks.

I'm about to do round two of Facebook friend cuts. You should try it! It's much more fun to get updates on people you've talked to in the past year, lol.

I'll end this hodge-podge of a post with a few random facts about us:
1. I've only purchased one box of dryer sheets since we got married 1.5 years ago. It's a big box.
2. We were so cheap on our honeymoon that we purchased ramen noodles, garlic salt, and butter at a wal-mart in Playa del Carmen.
3. We are in fact so cheap that I packed that garlic salt to bring home and still use it! I should probably be embarrassed about that, but I'm not.

My trip to D.C.

I'm home! Well, for a few nights anyways. I had an excellent trip to DC this week with a good friend of mine. We were brought to our nation's capitol for a conference by the Association of University Centers on Disability, the parent organization of our internships this year. (http://www.tips4kids.org/) I learned a lot, both about the field of disability and also about the history of our country.

My most favorite tourist thing I did was a Segway tour of DC...it was seriously hilarious to zoom around downtown alongside taxis and jealous pedestrians. We got to see a lot of what the city had to offer and still respect our short trip timeline. We also visited (by foot) the Georgetown Cupcakes (yummy!), the National Archives to grab a glimpse of the Declaration of Independence and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. I saw the hope diamond there...it's impressive. Possibly more impressive than the Declaration of Independence, which probably says something awful about myself. I'll add a couple of pics to this post when I move them on to my computer. I also got to visit with my cousin, Aubree, and her husband over dinner -- a treat, since I haven't seen her in at least five years and she's pregnant with twins!

Another highlight for me personally was our time in the airport in DC. They were welcoming various Honor Flights in (veterans who are visiting war memorials) with balloons, a military band, a lot of people and much cheering. I teared up as these sweet older men were surprised by the level of respect displayed by individuals in the airport -- some of them for the first time ever. I'm thankful to be back with Sean, cooking my own meals and sleeping in my own bed!

Last night I cleaned out my Facebook friends. If you can still see my profile, Congratulations, you passed the first round of cuts.

This weekend I'm looking forward to:
1. The state highschool cheerleading championships. Sean is a trainer for them and I'm just a fan who should be too old to care.
2. The National Autism Law Summit I will be attending in STL.
3. Meeting up with friends in STL for a change of scenery and night out on the town.

Some of the cheapest people you know

Sean and I are both cheap (most of the time, anyways). We always eat all of our leftovers, hate throwing food away, buy off-brand products, shop sales like it's out job and LOVE free things. On Friday we decided we were going to have a date with only the money we currently had in our apartment. Turns out we had $30, so it wasn't as big of a challenge as we thought. We hit up the 2 for $20 deal at Chili's (note: dessert is included in this deal at Chilis, but not at Applebees. We researched it prior to the date)...adding in Sean's strawberry lemonade, the tip, and a redbox rental it was just at $30. We may or may not have rented Monsters vs. Aliens. I made the skirt I'm wearing in this picture from a men's dress shirt!

For halloween, I decided to be a hippie and Sean was the Mac guy (from the commercials). aka. he didn't want to dress up. I scored that awesome top at Goodwill along with two great Gap skirts for just $3 each! We did a booth at Tiger Night of Fun (indoor trick-or-treating) and loved getting to see all of the different costumes.

My husband loves him some Chipotle. On certain holidays they offer free burritos if you do something...on Halloween, you have to dress up like a burrito. Some people just put on a foil ring on and call it good, but Sean and I wanted to try a little harder to earn our free dinner. Here are our attempts: mine is a little hard to make out b/c of my psychedelic shirt, but it has all of my favorite ingredients. Sean went with a more realistic approach of whole burrito in the classic red basket.

Overall it was a successful cheap weekend. We're enjoying our time at home today catching up on housework and cooking a big pot of yummy chili!