Christmas Festivities

“Uhhhhh”

Yup, that pretty-much sums up how I feel about myself after all the holiday festivities this past weekend.

I ate sooo much good food I officially have what Matt calls a “slut gut.”

Uhhh…

Ever heard of this?

The first time those words came out of Matt’s mouth I was all, “A whaaattt?”

Matt had this long explanation of what exactly a “slut gut” is, but to make a long story short (Matt’s stories are always reaaaally long) it’s basically when a girl has a beer belly.

Now I didn’t drink me no beer, but I of course indulged a little a lot into my wine collection this past weekend.

Let’s face it, the holidays and family sometimes does that too you.

So now I am stuck with this “slut gut” until I have officially ate all the cookies and drank all the wine in my house.

It’s all good though. Matt’s rockin the same “slut gut” I got.

Anyway, enough about me feeling like my jeans are two sizes to small this morning.

Matt and I had a great Christmas with all our loved ones!

We ate, drank, laughed, played and enjoyed the freakishly warm weather here in Baltimore.

(I wonder if it will even snow this year? I feel like I just jinxed myself by typing that…)

I even made my very first ham and we had our fist Christmas at our new house with the Bogdan family!

I was all, “I don’t know how to make a ham!! Ahhhh!!”

Well, it’s actually probably the easiest thing I ever cooked because all you do is put it in the oven.

Girl, that’s my kind of cooking.

Matt says I get really stressed out and bitchy when guest are coming over.

Me? No waaaay…

After I had my typical melt down of “people are coming over! I have to make a freakin ham and you just dragged mud in the house!!”

I calmed down and drank wine with my soon-to-be sister in-law all day Saturday. It was my kind of relaxing Christmas day.  

I think Christmas was a success and everyone raved about how cute our new house is!

It is totally cute all up in that house of ours. I’m loving the house!

We really enjoyed ourselves this weekend!

We had some fun with the new camera, behind our house, Christmas day!

 Christmas morning we walked over to my sister's house to watch Travis open his gifts!

                Travis was cute playing with this toy computer. He would stretch his neck to see the screen!

 A picture of our Christmas tree with gifts. Notice Chase? So cute!

 My In-laws opening their gifts at our house Christmas afternoon.

 Matt and Travis at CeeCee and Boss' house Christmas night. (My parents house)

 The Webster Family

 Matt and I with the cutest nephew in the world!

 Cee Cee and Boss with their Grandbaby!

Christmas night we went out to eat at a local Chinese restaurant. It's a Kearns tradition that we do with my parents every year.

Overall, I think we had a successful Christmas.

Now bring on the New Year's Eve Party!



Baking with the Webster Family!

Thursday both my sister and I had off work (praise the lord!) so we decided to bake our little butts off. 

Travis, my nephew, had told my sister "I make cookies and pretzels at Mandy's house, Mommy"

(Pretzels because he had helped me make chocolate covered pretzels on Thanksgiving- aww melts my heart that he remembers that!)

I didn't object. I love having my little binker nephew over and LOVE that he likes spending time over my house!

My sister and I went a little overboard with the cookie making. (We made about six different kinds) And tell me why we were sooo over it, after the fist batch was done- ha! 

We are not bakers, or cookers....I guess we get it from our Mama who really doesn't like cooking/baking either. 

But we stuck it out and made all the cookies. It was an ALL day event. Travis was alseep on the couch by the end of it.

Lets be honest, Travis just liked decorating/eating the sugar cookies!

 You HAVE to have a major sweet tooth to eat these bad boys!

 I don't know when I deemed this awkward bun on top of my head appropriate. I feel like this is what happens when making cookies with a 2 1/2- year-old. Be prepared, hubs, for many awkward hairdo's when I'm a Mommy.

Baking with Travis and my sister was so fun! It def. is a new tradition!! Love having them four doors down from me! :-)

During our "lunch break" from baking my sister and I made Travis go outback and let us take pictures of him!

Tell me why, it was 60 degrees in Baltimore Thursday- on the first day of winter! In the words of Travis, "What the??" 

 

My sister, "Trav, put your hand on your hips" Awww. 

 Travis, "Wook Wook, Wook at dis wock I found"

 Travis, "Wook, I'm gonna fro dis wock"

It's been GREAT having off work these last couple of days!

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas!!

Weekend in Review:

This weekend was actually kind of relaxing.

Friday I spent the evening with my sister, my nephew, my sister’s best friend and her son.

It was a total Essex/Dundalk night.

We ate dinner at Baltimore’s famous Pizza John’s, where we enjoyed some greasy-good pizza and an abundance of soda.

My sister’s best friend, Traci, somehow managed to accidentally steal a whole pitcher of soda and four cups. And then on top of that, she got her original order of an apple juice and medium soda. And my sister and I already had our two drinks. We were really giggly about it and then had to pee a lot during the night because of all the soda consumption.

After dinner, we took my nephew, Travis, and Traci’s son, Brennan, to the train garden at the local fire station.

 Brennan and Travis in pure amazement!!

Yes, those are the golden eggs AKA the Poop Factory. I don't know why or who made those but made me laugh outloud. Only in Dundalk...

It was really crowded but def. worth the wait since the boys were all about the trains. The train set-up was awesome! I can’t even imagine how long it took them to set all of those trains and the villages/towns up.

Saturday Matt and I worked on the house some, did some last minute Christmas shopping and spent some quality time together.

Even though money is tight, we treated ourselves to Panera Bread for lunch. You know your newlyweds/ new homeowners when Panera Bread is a real “treat.”

But I ain’t gonna lie, I love me some Panera Bread so I was happy to go with the hubs and spend the day with him! We’ve been so busy with the house that we haven’t spent a lot of time together. It was def. nice to eat, shop and laugh together!

It was as nice weekend and went way too fast, like they always do.

Here are some photos I took with my new camera of my nephew, Travis, Friday night!

My sister and her best friend- I don't know why my sister is laughing so hard, but I love it!

PS. I am so excited and ready for all the Christmas festivities to begin!

Did I mention, Santa came to visit our neighborhood last week on the fire truck?! I look forward to seeing him every year!

Sorry about the not so great pictures, I'm still learning how to use this new fancy camera. Any tips?

Pss. T-Minus (after today) 1 more day of work! Yay! Then 5 days of baking, cleaning, celebrating, drinking, laughing and gift exchanging!

Scenes From The Bogdan Household

Some friends and family members have been asking to see some pictures of the new house, so I figured I’d post a few photos from around the house.

I mostly took pictures of the living room and kitchen since Matt is still in bed and I didn’t want to wake him with the camera flash. How nice am I?  

It’s starting to look like a home! 

 An outside view of the house with our Christmas decorations. I can't wait till spring, so we can finally plant our gardens!

 This is what the house looks like when you walk in the front door. (Note: My $6 Christmas Tree from Goodwill. Okay, it might be time to invest into a new tree since we actually have the room now!)

This is our "accent" wall. It actually is a light green color but you can't tell in the photo.

 We still need to get curtain rods, but for now the curtains serve their purpose.

 I love these pillows. They are exactly what I was looking for and I found them at Walmart for $10 each.

 We use this lamp (found at Target) to display our unique pieces from Jamaica.

 This is our eat-in kitchen. I'm dying to get a new bigger kitchen table that will sit six, but for now our apartment table will have to do.

 Our wine bar. This really comes in handy when we have guest over. I think this is one of my favorite pieces of furniture that we have.

 The kitchen, view from walking in from the living room.

 Matt's band came over Saturday night to see the house before their gig. The one guy said, "Wow, this is so domesticated in here." Ha!

I took that as a compliment. I think it's looking super cute in here!