I LOVE Sephora

I LOVE Sephora. Its a wonderful store filled with pretty makeup, good smells, and friendly people. I love makeup so much, so naturally, Sephora is one of my favorite stores. I have a lot of good memories with this place, including trips with dear friends. The first week I lived in Syracuse, I had Josh take me to the mall and we walked the entire length of the mall - I was convinced a mall that size had to have a Sephora - I was sadly mistaken :( But they have one now!

Today, I thought I would share 2 things I love about Sephora.

1. A trip to Sephora with lots of goodies. Check out this picture:

In just 20 minutes at Sephora, I can come home with peppermint body wash that will last me months, a new moisturizing mint lip treatment to help my dry lips (there is a definite mint theme going on :), 2 new Stila palettes, a hot pink Urban Decay Eyeshadow, and a touch-up makeup eraser for morning rush jobs. Plus some samples for my mom and a 20% off sale items after Christmas 12/26 - 1/1 (online only, code is EXTRA). AMAZING!!

2. I am lucky to have a Sephora at the Mall across the street from my apartment. Sometimes, a trip to the mall is more than I can manage (parking gets CRAZY on the weekends and around the holidays), so I order online. I love online shopping, but I hate waiting for my packages to arrive - which leads to my second Sephora love - their UPS delivery schedule. I live in a UPS 1 day transit zone. LOVE this.

I can buy the new eyeshadow I've been dying to have, and have it in my hands in 2 days.

Now if only I had endless funds....

*Slightly* obsessed

I'll admit it, I have an addictive personality. I'm addicted to pink, peppermint, glitter, makeup, sleep, among other things, and I'm a recovering Diet Pepsi addict. I'm also slightly obsessive if I find something I want - it usually becomes a need, and I obsess until I get my hands on it. I'm a little nutty.

This week, I obsessed about these cookies. For weeks, I've been seeing  candy cane Hershey kisses at Wegmans, but had no use for them. Yesterday at lunch, I went to Wegmans, hoping to grab at least 2 bags, but maybe more. I couldn't find a single bag!!  I went back to work, extremely disappointed, and plotted a trip to Target on my way home.

Last time I went to Target (about a week ago) I remembered seeing bags and bags of the Candy Cane Hershey Kisses by checkout. When I got there yesterday, NOTHING! I wondered to the back of the store where they had Christmas decorations and a candy aisle, but at first didn't see them either. I started to panic a little. I then saw a display with the Hershey milk chocolate kisses, and thought, what the heck, maybe I'll find a random bag of candy canes mixed it. And I did! This then resulted in me digging through piles of other candy in hopes of finding another bag. I'm sure I looked like a crazy person. But, as a result of my efforts I accumulated this:

This is what a bag of chopped kisses looks like:

And the finished product! They turned out really yummy.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!

For the past few years, I've been slightly bah-humbug about Christmas. I would give gifts, send Christmas cards, and bake cookies, but I wouldn't really decorated. It might be because I haven't really felt all that "permanent" with where I was living, and would usually spend the holidays someplace else. But this year is different. This year, Josh and I will be spending the holidays in our apartment in VA, and for the first time, I did some serious decorating. Well, maybe not serious for most people, but for my first real attempt, I think its pretty serious :)

I found a pink tree that I ABSOLUTELY love. I don't think I'll ever want another tree. Its perfect!

I made some holiday blocks:

And spent many many nights making this Christmas tree:

I put up some decorations I got from my mom:

And bought some cute snowmen!! 

Merry Christmas!!

Blessed

About a month ago, we moved into a new apartment. The move went really well. We hired 2 movers, and they did a great (and a quick!) job. What would have taken Josh and I days took them a less than 4 hours. Its surprising how much stuff you can fit in a 500 square foot apartment. But its nice to now have almost 700 square feet to live in. Below are some pictures of our beloved new apartment. Being in Virginia is great, being in this apartment is even better!!

Our bedroom. Looking a little bare at the moment, but a trip to Homegood would fix that :)

My favorite room! I love my pink bathroom.... and how big it is!! My honey is sweet to buy me pink towels and tolerate all the beauty products that are EVERYWHERE. See the wall mirror in the picture above? Josh did a surprise install of that while I was at work one day. I LOVE it. 

Dining room!! For the last year, we didn't have a dining room - or a table for that matter. The night before we moved, we went to Target and bought one. 

Here is the living room. When we moved in, Josh decided our TV was a little small for the new, larger living room so we decided to upgrade it a little. At first I was skeptical, but he was right, this one fits the room, and now, when we have friends over to play Mario Cart, everyone's race is clearly visible. :)

I also love our new kitchen. Lots more cupboard space, and a pantry!! Time to get cracking on some food storage :) 

We feel very blessed and lucky to be able to live in this apartment in Virginia. Even though we climb three flights of stairs to get to it. 

I don't cook...

But in the past 2 weeks, I've cooked 3 WHOLE meals (while being gone for 4 whole days). Does it count if I cooked the same meal two times (but for 2 different groups of people)? I hope so. Meal one (also repeated for meal 2) consisted of mashed red potatoes with green onions and sour cream, honey mustard chicken, broccoli and peas and dirt cake for dessert (thanks to Danielle for teaching me how to make this fabulous dessert!). Meal #3 was gourmet grilled cheese (the special bread from wegmans is what makes this grilled cheese gourmet) with tomato soup and salad and grapes. While I'm proud of the fact that I fed 4 or 5 people a total of 3 times in 2 weeks, I'm done. Sorry honey, I know you've gotten used to being fed, but I don't think it will happen again any time soon, unless you invite people over for dinner... then I guess I'll fed you. Or we could go to Chipotle for dinner tonight. I'm just saying.

Naked refrigerators

 Naked refrigerators make me sad. They are so lonely looking. See?

How boring is that?

So, after 5 days of staring at a bare refrigerator, I am happy to report that its is now fully clothed with 

Pictures of family, cards from family, magnets with important numbers (who to call when the toilet is  clogged, etc :), postcards from friend's travels, and shoe magnets!

and....

Inspirational postcards (we can do it!), an awesome picture of Jonathan, Alison as a little girl, flower magnets, family christmas cards.

and....

Works of art by little people that I love (Sawyer and Alison), a "congrats on passing your PI class" card, and snowflakes.

and....

Word magnets, flower magnet, and art work by Jonathan (its a monkey, like him!).

Now, whenever I open the fridge, I am greeted with nice memories of people who are important to me. Much better than a bare refrigerator, don't you think?

My born-again MacBook

For 2 years now, my wonderful MacBook has been sitting on a shelf, for all intents and purposes dead to me. I kept it around because I have a lot of memory and emotion (just ask Josh how many tears have been shed over this 1 computer!) tied up in it, and it holds on its hard drive all of my music and a lot of documents and pictures. I kept, hoping that one day, I would have $500 to fix it, or that I would have another Mac to which I could transfer all my love and affection (and music and other important stuff). But last night, my MacBook that has been dead for 2 years, came back to life.

It was a pretty normal Saturday night. Josh and I decided to go to the mall to see if Verizon could fix our phones which have been acting REALLY slow (they couldn't - said to wait till December when we were eligible for an upgrade). On our way out, Josh asked if I wanted to go to the Mac store, to which I responded (some-what bitterly) "why would I want to go there?" We decided to go, and Josh agreed to ask them if they could take the data off my hard drive of my broken Mac, and put it on a new one we have been eyeing as a potential Christmas present. As I'm looking at the pretty 13 inch MacBook Pros, Josh asks the sales person my question. He tells him that 2 years ago, the hard drive on my Mac failed, was replaced, and then a month later, the logic board died. The kid then checks with the Genius people and comes back and asks "are you sure it was the Logic Board that failed?" to which we responded, "thats what the Genius bar in NY said." According to the Geniuses in Fairfax, VA, it wasn't my logic board that failed, it was my hard drive again. Josh immediately asked to purchase a copy of Snow Leopard, and rushed me out of the store. We then hustled over to Best Buy where Josh got a $50 hard drive, and we were homeward bound.

Three hours and $80 later, I have my computer back. It doesn't have its documents or music yet (we have yet to determine if the failed hard drive "ate" my stuff or not), but I have my computer back. I'm trying not to be angry with Apple, for lying to me 2 years ago, especially since its now up and working again. Thanks to my genius of a husband.

Baking Catastrophe

It started off innocent enough. I stopped by Wegmans on my way home from work for some supplies, and came across this:

Yum, cranberries! One of my favorite Fall foods. I love cranberry sauce, cranberry muffins, cranberry cookies, and cranberry bread. I picked up a bag, intending to make a loaf of cranberry bread later this week.

I get home, unload the groceries, put them away, and put the dishes in the dishwasher from last night. I had a little room left in the dishwasher, and I don't like to run it when its not full - but I also wanted a container that was dirty and I'm too lazy to hand wash, so I decided to make a quick batch of cranberry bread (because baking IS easier than hand washing, promise). After putting the cranberries in the food processor, I discovered I had enough cranberries for a double batch - so I doubled it - so I thought. Instead of adding the butter for a double batch, I added enough for a double triple batch! It was too late to remove the extra butter since I was already beating the butter and sugar together. To make matters worse, I had barely enough ingredients for the double batch, so off to Wegmans I went AGAIN.

Here is my poor kitchen aid struggling with only HALF of the ingredients for my gigantic batch of cranberry bread.

Everything wasn't going to fit, so I dumped it in the biggest soup pot I had.

And, with the help of my huge wooden spoon (thanks mom! That was a great gift!), I was able to mix everything up.

Sorry about my thumb at the bottom :)

 Here is part of the finished product! Lesson learned, don't bake when hungry/tired/distracted or to avoid hand washing a dish.

We're moving on up!!

Since graduating from college, I've moved 5 times (thats 5 times in 5 years!!). And in less than a month, we'll be moving again. This time, we're not going far, almost across the parking lot. I'm excited because we'll have 2 closets and a pantry; Josh is excited because we'll have a fireplace!
Here is the floorplan of our new place

 

Getting ready to move yet again has caused me to reflect on the events (and adventures!) of the past 5 years.

I moved to Blacksburg Virgina without knowing a single person! It was a little scary, but also a chance to meet new people and make new friends. And I made some best friends for life (sorry ladies, you're stuck with me!)

Sunny and Rebecs, on a winter roadtrip to Maine

Eileen, the main reason I survived Grad School!

 

 

 

 

Blacksburg was a great place, with great people! I couldn't possible picture everyone I love from Blacksburg or this post would go on forever!

Next came a move to Alexandria, Virginia. What an adventure that was! I spent the first 3 months of living there completely lost most, if not all of the time. My first day at a new job, I was over 2 hours late. Luckily, they decided to keep me!

In Alexindria, I lived in a cool house with some really cool girls.

After Alexandria, Josh and I moved to Syracuse, NY. Humm, what to say about Syracuse... I think this pictures sums it up:

Naw, I kid (a little). Syracuse was also a great place to get to know these guys

Hanging out with Uncle Josh!

stealing some koolaid

Our favorite mischief companion

and my partner in crime (well, baking and other fun stuff)

 

 

 

 While in Syracuse, some really cute penguins came to visit

and I has some shopping and baking adventures with my wonderful friend Christina and some quality bug-hunting with her little boy (I'll admit, I had a crush on him - such a cutie!)

But, after a year and a half in Syracuse, it was time to move back here

and so we wouldn't miss Syracuse TOO much, our first winter back looked like this.