giving thanks

we went to my Aunt's house for Thanksgiving ( and Drew was here too!)

I was in charge of pies ( I love being in charge of pies)

 ^ I had to mess with the contrast and brightness because the flash made my face completely disappear. 

 I might be a vampire.

all done

merry everything.

at least they did it right before it rained.

because nobody else on our street did

and we only know grown ups

I'll be there opening night (obv)

the URL is everybodyloveswhales.com

enough said.

season's greetings

um... we already started this:

there are no rules.

we decided November 16 was a great day to set up our first Christmas tree

ghost of Christmas flash:

Monday night craving

I keep making things

in totally unrelated news:

I keep wondering why I look a little thicker in pictures.

bacheloretting

I've participated in some quality bachelorette festivities in my days.

for example:

 but I had never done bacheloretting on the level I did last weekend for my dear friend Ashley.

we arrived in Vegas on Saturday morning, and left Monday afternoon.  It went something like this:

 Ashley wanted to be a queen for her party, and wasn't interested in cutesy veils or tiaras. 

she wore the crown all weekend.

 while planning this party a few months ago, we decided it would be fun to wear black and white dresses and crazy-colored wigs.  Ashley would wear a black wig because her hair is normally white. 

 we were right, it was fun.

Ash's nickname is "Smash", so we also decided to have shirts made that say "Smashing Vegas". 

we wore those on Sunday.

We played hard and I was exhausted when I got home, but it was good fun with my favorites, so it was totally worth it.  I can't wait for her January wedding in Denver. 

it was

a couple days before our wedding, my mom hosted a lovely brunch for the girls (Matt’s mom, sisters, my sisters, and me)

I received one of my favorite gifts from Matt’s mom: a collection of hand-written McDowell family recipes so I could make Matt some of his favorite things.  love.

The other day I asked Matt to go through the recipes and choose the one he wanted me to make first.  (I know... four months later ... slacker wife)

He chose banana walnut bread.  I was really nervous about making this bread.  I hadn’t ever made banana bread before… and of course I needed it to be perfect on my first try.

The recipe says it has to bake for 70 minutes!  It looked normal and breadish after about 40 minutes, and smelled good… so I spent the next 30 minutes checking the oven every 1.8 minutes to make sure it still looked like bread.  When it was done...

it looked like banana bread

it smelled like banana bread

it tasted like banana bread

it was banana bread.

:patonback: