roomies.

meet joee.

joee is one of austin's little brothers from the fraternity. he was was one of our groomsmen in the wedding. and he is our new roommate.

some way or another, joee and his soon-to-be roommate's leases didn't match up, so joee needed a place to stay until january when he can move in to his own apartment. so he's staying in our guest bedroom for a month or so. no big deal, we just had to do some rearranging, since most of my clothes/makeup/everything are in the spare room. oh and guinny, too. but we've moved things around so joee has enough space for his things.

oh, and also, meet copper.

he's our other new roommate, joee's dog. currently curled up next to me on the couch, he seems to be a pretty good dog. dinger, juliet and guinny may argue with me on that point, though. jules is just a jealous little thing who gets upset if we pay attention to copper. dinger just wants to be left alone. and guinny just wants to not be eaten. so far, copper has been pretty good about leaving the cat alone and staying away from the bird's cage, so fingers are crossed that things will continue to go smoothly.

the puppies had a little bit of bonding time outside in the yard and in... the snow! it snowed pretty much all day yesterday, but really not much of it stuck. we maybe had a quarter or half an inch on the porch railing, but it didn't seem that much stuck to the roads. i did read a bunch of status updates on facebook this morning about people having trouble driving in the snow, but i'm not sure i blame the snow more than the people not knowing how to drive in 1/4 of an inch of snow... just saying.

and as much as i usually love snow and the idea of a white christmas, i guess i'm hoping for a not-so-white christmas this year. bad weather is just about the only thing that could stand between me and visiting my family in virginia for christmas. so i know snow can be fun and pretty and all that jazz, but i haven't seen my momma since september, so i ask you all to be dreaming of a "not-so-white" christmas, please. :)

every who down in whoville loved christmas a lot.

i've slowly been decorating my house for christmas {since i was "allowed" to the day after thanksgiving}. it's still a work in progress, but i wanted to go ahead and share a few pictures of what i have up so far.

and let me just throw this out there: yes, our tree is fake. and yes, it is pink. being that this is both my and austin's first christmas in our house together, we don't have a whole lot in the way of decorations. but a few years ago i got this pink tree, so we're using it for now, there's no room in this house for a real tree. we know it's pretty cheesy, but we're ok with it. :)

our tree:

the christmas countdown i made:

wall of presents:

our stockings:

i love these shiny trees and the snow:

 another wall of decorations:

we also put some lights on the outside of the house, but i haven't got a picture of that yet. so those are our decorations, for now. i guess, as they say, it's beginning to look a lot like christmas.



they are here! they are here!

a bright and shiny orange box showed up on my front porch today! it's our holiday cards from shutterfly. as a blogger, i was able to write up a blog about shutterfly/the cards i wanted and i received 50 free 5x7 cards. i had to pay shipping, but it still ended up being a pretty good little deal.

and the cards are super cute. i really want to share what they look like, but then it would ruin the surprise when you all get them in the mail, so i'll just give a little sneak peek.

i also made cute little holiday-themed address labels to send the cards out. they look like this:

so that's that. i know that everyone is waiting with much anticipation for their holiday cards from the heards. be patient. you'll get one soon. :)

happy birthday to my daddy!

this is my daddy.

and today is his birthday.

and i love him so incredibly much.

 and i miss him, too.

 but no matter how much time...

or distance between us...

...i'll always be his little girl. 

happy birthday, daddy. i love you very, very, very much. 

i miss you and i can't wait to see you soon! :)

i love laundry.

when we moved into our house, the guy who owns it left an {ancient} washer and dryer for us to use. bonus, right? well, it leaked. so austin and his dad got a new part of some sort that was supposed to fix the leak, but it didn't. so, for the past six months whenever i wanted to wash clothes, i had to physically hold the basket in the washing machine each time it filled up with water. annoying.

but not anymore!

steve and gloria got us a washing machine for christmas! we found one that was a really great deal at a local store and they went ahead and purchased it for us so we could do laundry much easier.

and here she is!

it's top-loading, agitator-less high-efficiency washer. it holds a ton of clothes, it's awesome.

we are still using the home owner's dryer for now, it works, even if it hogs energy. so once we get some more money saved up, we'll buy a dryer, too.

i had a job interview yesterday, with a follow-up interview today. the interview yesterday went really well, the one today, not so much. see, when i went to leave for this morning, my car wouldn't start. great. fortunately, austin was able to leave work for a little bit to come pick me up and take me to the interview. i was only four minutes late and i had called to tell them the situation. and even though they didn't seem to mind that i was late, i was a little frazzled from the stress i suppose, so the interview was not all that great. so we'll see how that goes.

i also have another interview tomorrow, at a different place. hopefully one of these jobs will work out for me. i'm getting pretty bored sitting at the house all day.

and austin should be home soon for us to attempt to fix my car. we're thinking it's just the battery that needs to be replaced. joy.

we can live like jack and sally if we want.

we'll have halloween on christmas.

this saturday was the tim burton themed fashion show, put on by collective clothing as part of the mainx24 festival. we met at the choo choo downtown to get our hair and makeup done. i was to be dressed as sally from the nightmare before christmas.

and here's my makeup.

the fashion show was in the garden at the choo choo. austin and my friends sarah and tyler came to watch the show. here's me in my full outfit with sarah.

ok, so it's not exactly an outfit you'd want to wear everyday, but that's ok. the show included looks and characters from alice in wonderland, sweeny todd, sleepy hollow, batman, big fish, charlie and the chocolate factory, edward scissorhands, mars attacks, beetlejuice, and the nightmare before christmas, of course.

so that's that.

friday night, i met up with lindsy and sarah for dinner. we went to las mas to eat and then we headed to the big chill downtown to see brianne, who was working. when austin finally got off work (late, of course) we all went to rooftop and our friends joee and tyler met up with us.

lindsy, me and sarah keeping warm by the fire at rooftop.

sunday, austin and i went to church at the gathering again. then we went up to steve and gloria's so austin could help decorate their christmas tree. then our friend ben came over for dinner. i wish i had snapped a picture of austin and ben outside bundled up in coats and hats huddle around the grill trying to cook our burgers {veggie burger, for me of course}. ben also brought over some dessert. cheesecake, my favorite!

and i just got home from a job interview this morning, i also have another interview with a different company on wednesday. hopefully one of those will work out for me. think good thoughts, please!

well, i think that's about it for now. time to go eat some cheesecake.