Christmas, Christmas Time is Here...

After Thanksgiving was over and the house was clear, we got straight to the business of decorating for Christmas. Since Matt is a December baby, he always likes it when the house is decorated before his birthday; I think he thinks it's just all part his birthday celebration!

First we put up the tree. The animals were less than thrilled about how long it was taking.

Matt came up with the good idea of setting the tv to the Christmas music channel. At first it started with some light humming. But not long into the stringing of lights and fluffing of the tree did I become a full blown singing machine. Matt was in and out of the house moving the empty boxes back into the garage. He would stand at the doorway laughing at Sadie and I. At one point I was making all the songs into Broadway musicals and Sadie and I were dancing through the living room and I was leading the animals in a marching band! Apparently I was full of the Christmas Spirit (or vodka).

I love our tree! It always makes me feel so good once it's up. I hate to see it go after the holidays. Our house never seems as cheery.

After the tree and the mantle came the ledges at the top of the living room. I love decorating for the holidays. I feel like it's the one time of the year that the home feels the most welcoming and comfortable. I wish there were holidays to decorate for all year long!

Birthday Time!

On the 14th Matt turned the big 35! As most people know Matt gets very excited for his birthday. We didn't have a big party planned, but I still try to make it special.

Matt really likes to have traditional vanilla birthday cake with strawberries. When he got home from work I had Sadie greet him at the door with a balloon! (she mostly kept giving it to Scarlet, but whatever)

Matt was excited with all his gifts and cards. We went to mexican for dinner and then came back to the house for cake.

Our House is Closed for Business

While we had a wonderful time hosting our first Thanksgiving and first family visit in our new house, Matt and I were definitely excited to get a little bit of peace and quiet this weekend. I unfortunately had to work on Saturday in the store, but Sunday was a whole lot of nothing spent lounging on the couch. Even the animals spent the weekend destressing.

Thanksgiving - Nashville Watson Style!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

We've had a good time hosting our first Thanksgiving in our new house. It isn't a holiday if you don't stuff a lot of people into one house and eat wait too much food!

We had a lot of stuff planned to do while everyone was here, but by the time the parents and grandparents got here, they were exhausted. They left Walterboro last Thursday and were in Asheville, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville until Monday. We spent a lot of time just hanging out around the house. Sadie was extremely excited that we had a house full of visitors. It only took 2 days though for her to be completely tuckered out. Not unlike the first generation! We have noticed that since they arrived on Monday the grandparents and puppy girl are only awake for about 6 hours each day.

Everyone has been thoroughly entertained with playing with Sadie. She demands a lot of attention and sits proudly on her thrown as the family princess. She had everyone doing exactly what she wanted, which included napping, watching tv and playing frisbie.

For Thanksgiving dinner we decided to not cook a turkey. Instead we had ham, sweet potatoe casserole, cornbread dressing, and macaroni pie. For dessert I made my pumpkin cheesecake and pecan pie. Everyone is completely stuffed and we have more then enough leftovers.

We are headed out soon to go see the Christmas lights at the Opryland Resort. The grandparents have been looking forward to it the whole trip. But before we leave we did stop and took a nice family picture.

We hope you all have had a great holiday!!!

Watson Extreme Home Makeover - Guest Bedroom Edition

Okay so we don't watch the TV show (Ty Pennington is not my idea of good tv) but we have another room re-do to report on. It's not completely finished but we are so proud we cannot stand it!

This is what the room looked like when we started out.

As you can tell we had already started our search for the perfect paint color.

We ended up choosing a color from Behr's line called Cup of Cocoa. It felt warm, soothing and comfortable to us. Everything a good guest bedroom should be. And who doesn't like hot chocolate??

So, after a Saturday spent painting a few weeks ago, it was time to decorate. I knew I wanted to get a new bed and dresser, but not really in our budget. So, I sought out some budget friendly options.

Metal beds are some of the most affordable on the market. I searched and searched and finally found one I liked on Overstock.com. Not only was it on sale, but I also had a 10% off coupon and love the whole $1 shipping thing!! Only issue was when it got here it was like an ugly silver-ish type finish that was dull and not cute. I said no biggy, we'll just paint it. The dresser that I kind of liked from Wal-mart (really only liked the price) went off sale so I had to go back to the drawing board for that. Luckily, last Tuesday we had a surprise sample sale at work and I ended up finding this ugly console table that I thought needed a good face lift. For $40 I wasn't really complaining (and the $ went to charity).

So I set out to paint both the console table and bed. This was my first pass at painting furniture so I had little expectations! I forgot to take good before pictures, but hopefully you can tell the dramatic transformation. Matt and I are very excited the change!!

And now for the big reveal...

We still have a few things to hang on the walls, but for the most part we are done. What you think? Like or Dislike? Any suggestions?

XO, Erin

What's Wrong Mom??

We had to share this with you. First the back story...

Saturday morning I woke up to Matt screaming from the kitchen, "come help me, something's wrong with Sophie!". Of course since Sophie is my #1 girl, so I lept out of bed as Matt was rushing her into the bedroom. She seemed to be okay, but her face and neck were covered in what seemed to be dried blood at first glance. But where was it coming from? How did it get there? I was so confused. Then it hit me...

Matt got me some flowers for my birthday which are proudly displayed on our kitchen table. The arrangement includes many lilies. Our kitchen table is situated in our breakfast nook, which is where our kitty girls nap. We finally figured out that Sophie got a little too curious and decided to investigate the flowers. She has pollen all over her face from rubbing on the flowers. I tried wipping it off, but it jsut rubs deeper in.

Poor Sophie!!!

Call Off the Search... We're Still Here!

Okay, okay, I know we've been kind of absent from the blog lately, but we have been SO busy for the past 2 weeks. Both of our jobs are crazy busy right now and probably won't slow down until right before Christmas. All of our non-working time has been spent focusing on house related projects. As some of you know Matt and I will be hosting Thanksgiving in the new house this year. We are very excited, but there is lots of work to be done. Let's go over the guest list... We have my parents, my sister and also my grandparents all coming from South Carolina to stay for 5 days and 4 nights. Yes, you counted correctly, 5 people total + us makes 7... in a 3 bedroom house..... poor hot water heater!!!

In preparation for our visitors we planned some projects to have done before everyone came. These aren't necessarily things that had to be done for their visit, it's just given us a good excuse to put our to-do list in overdrive. So below are the things that we have either tackled or will be completing (hopefully) before everyone arrives on Monday evening.

• paint the dining room - done
• paint the larger guest bedroom - done
• paint the guest bathroom - done (but not sold on the color)
• paint the smaller guest bedroom - done
• order new kitchen table and chairs - poor Matt spent 5 hours last Sat putting them together, a round of applause for the hubby!
• order new headboard/footboard for guest bedroom - it's here and we like it, just didn't come out the color we thought it would. So, yes we will be painting it this weekend
• order new dresser for guest bedroom - okay, so we didn't quite get this done, but luckily we had a sample sale at work this week and I snagged a very ugly console table for $40. This will be painted and dressed up with some new knobs this weekend as well. This and the bed will be my first experience with painting furniture, so fingers crossed!!
• get new shower curtain, etc for guest bathroom
• hang stuff on the walls - so, I think I have mentioned this before about me, but I am a hangaphobic (no, that's not a word, but my post, my rules!). I get so nervous hanging things on the wall because I feel like there is such a sense of finality to it - like it can never be changed. It drives Matt up the wall. We have so many mirrors, wall decor, art, etc just sitting in closets and the garage and it just keeps sitting there. We are going to do our best this weekend to try and find homes for them!
• cut the new grass and trim hedges and bushes - this is all Matt. I'm not a yard work kind of a gal. Truth be told too Matt gets very nervous when I "try" to help. I'm very clumsy and I think he's scared I'm going to take off a finger with the hedger.
• grocery shop - man, I don't even want to anticipate what this grocery bill is going to be. I've never fed 7 people for almost a week. We'll see what that's like I guess.
• clean
• clean
• clean
• did I mention we will have to clean?!?!!! Okay, admitidly Matt and I are not the biggest clean freaks, but we do like to have a sparkling home when we have guests. We aren't like nasty or anything, we just don't dust as often as we should and I hate cleaning a bathroom like no other thing in the world. And our floors are always dirty even though I vaccum frequently. Between the dog, 2 cats and fact that we both wear our shoes in the house, there's always dust and stuff on the floor. I was so excited when we bought this house that it was all hardwoods, but let me tell you, it's not that great. You see every strand of dog/cat hair, every dust bunny, every crumb, leaf, etc. Oh well, Matt made the horrible mistake of giving me a homemade gift card for my birthday. It entitles me to 25 "Non-Monetary" requests of my choosing. Hope he likes cleaning!! I will probably redeem all 25 this weekend :)

Okay, so there you have it. It's exhausting and all you had to do was read it :) We'll be back soon with many more reports. We have to dish about my b-day and we will have lots of material from Thanksgiving I'm sure.

XO, Erin

Yard Demo Update

Okay, so as promised from our previous post about the yard remodel, we are back and very happy to present pictures of our yard with lush, green grass - yeah!!!

Here is a little before and after of our yard story that began as a mutual hate-hate saga and has now evolved into a loving romance! Don't scrutinize too hard, it's still a bit patchy and is really long in places. We are still not quite sure if and when we are supposed to mow it??

So you decide... did you like it better with all the landscaping and walk-ways, or better with grass? We've gotten mixed responses from our neighbors. Some apparently really liked our "English Garden" as one person put and others were very excited with the change. You can put us in the excited boat. We love the change!!

Never Too Old or Furry to Wear a Costume!

We just experieced our first Halloween at our new house. It did not disappoint. We got about 100 kids we think. Picking out candy on Friday night was interesting to say the least. We spent much longer than anyone should spend on picking out Halloween candy. Although I must admit that it did feel nice getting this comment a few times last night, "Hey, my friend said this is the house that's giving out the good candy. Do you have Reese's cups?". Yes, Yes we did! And, coincidentally we did find out there is some what of a pecking order among candy these days. I decided to have a large bowl and allow the kids to pick 2 pieces each. We quickly found out what the favorites were.
1. Reese's Cups
2. Twizlers Fruit Flavorz
3. Snickers
4. Kit Kat
5. Hershey's
6. M&M
7. Skittles
8. Twix
9. Whoppers
10. Starburst

Okay, and so without any further delay, we have to show you the costumes. I got lazy this year and since we weren't doing anything this year besides giving out candy, I chose to not dress up. We were painting the guest bedroom all day and the last thing I wanted to do after all that was dress up. I also got lazy and didn't get the animals new costumes either. I did feel bad about that around 4:00. So instead I made them all put on their same ones from last year! As you can tell Sadie has gotten a lot bigger and hers doesn't fit anymore but it still made us laugh.














Scarlet wouldn't put on the wizard hat

Sophie hates the costumes the most. She thinks she cannot move at all and makes the sadess faces

And now for Matt. You decide, 5 or 35???

All it took was a cute little puppy and the Clone Trooper was putty in her hands. Why didn't George Lucas think of that! As you can tell it also drove him to drink, and then become suicidal :)