{holidays}: christmas morning

 I LOVE making christmas candy, and this year I tried out a zebra carmel popcorn-so GOOD!!  And of course-toffee, fudge, and some 7-layer cookie!!  I love christmas candy!!

 The cat once again was not sure what in the world we were doing.  She's always loved Christmas because she gets a big tree to hide in.

Paisley wasn't sure about the orange...

 But she LOVED her coal!!  It took forever to convince her to let me take off the wrappers first..

Our Christmas dinner was YUM-I love ham!  We had a nice, quiet, relaxing holiday.

{holidays}: valentines

I can't help but post these now...I'm sure I'll make more for actual valentines day, but happy valentines in the meantime.  I keep seeing all these cute valentine art projects and I just want to play!!  It's amazing to me that everywhere I went was already putting out valentine decorations the day after Christmas!!!  Oh well, we have to have something to pull us out of winter.  ♥♥

 If you want any of these to print just let me know and I'll happily send the file!

{the hair}: more fun?

 So, it was time.  I had gotten stagnant in my hair coloring and I haven't been blonde in a really long time, so I figured, if I was going to go blonde, I really should go blonde for reals.  I actually wanted it as close to white as she could get it...and she did an awesome job!!  I'm lucky having short hair because you can fry it all in one session and go straight to platinum.  Those of you out there with the long hair are not so lucky.  Did I mention my hair feels like straw?  It does.  It's actually really weird because it really did make my hair a different consistency.  Luckily, I have the hair to do that too-it has survived worse.  I was super worried it was going to wash me out really bad and that my eyebrows were going to be terrible, but it didn't really wash me out to bad at all-I actually think this isn't as bad as all the times I've dyed it black.  Oddly enough I think Paisley has seen me in wigs and weird make-up enough that it did not phase her one bit when I came home from the salon.  She just giggled and pointed at me (I hope that 's a good thing).  We'll see if it's true about the "more fun"...

{resolutions}: a new year

This is always so hard because I'm so typical....but here are the resolutions:

• I'm not saying lose weight out loud.  I'm not doing it.  Neglecting a diet and enjoying zumba has been great-I haven't gained any weight and currently I'm at a good milestone that way.  When it comes to weight loss, nothing ever works for me and if I don't think about it or talk about it too much, then at least I don't gain weight.  I have found that when my desires are to be healthy (such as the case of the candida) I have been much more successful-but if I say I want to lose weight out loud and I do things that most people do to lose weight, I tend to gain.  So I just want to be healthy...that's all.  So resolution #1 is to be healthier.
• Along with resolution #1 I want to do a triathalon.  My sis-in-law Shannan is doing one in May and I want to try and participate.  I haven't made a final decision on this because I'm really enjoying Zumba and in order to train I will have to pick between the two-I'm sure I'll post more on this later.
• Daily Scripture Study is another important goal for me.  Jon and I really have gotten out of this habit and we're working to get better at doing this nightly.  I finally realized that even if he needs to stay up all night to work on things, I can handle going to bed by myself and read my own scriptures. 
• Earlier Bed time-Jon and I are nocturnal.  Seriously.  We can stay up until 3 and 4 in the morning like it's no big deal.  And I can feel it slowly killing my body.  I'm thinking with the increased physical activity this will become less of a problem...
• Drinking more water is also something I want to focus on more.  I used to do really well when I worked-I had to have water with me all the time but now that I'm at home I forget.
• Taking greater advantage of the awesome outdoors we have around us.  This one I am SUPER excited about.  We sat down and mapped out where we want to go this summer and when.  It's going to be awesome!!!  This is the other reason becoming healthier and more active is so important to me-I want to hike, bike and swim all over!

So these are some of my resolutions for the new year...I'm sure I'll post updates on all of them as we go!!  Happy New Year!

{treats}: an unusual sight indeed

I still can't get over this snow!!  I've been sick in bed for 2 days now barfing up my guts (speaking of new years resolutions-I've lost 5 lbs!!) and today is the first day I've been out of bed...well kind of out of bed.  I knew that this was such a rare occurance that I had better go photograph it so I ran over first thing this morning in my weak state and snapped a couple of photos.  I still can't believe it.  Happy snow day!!