Christmas

It's Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you & yours! :)

It's our first Christmas and we are very happy and excited about that :)

Here we are in front of our lovely Christmas tree at 12:16 a.m on Christmas 2010!

It has a few less presents under it in this picture than it did a short few hours ago when my family was over for our Christmas Eve tradition of exchanging gifts we've gotten for each other. We do the in-family gifts tonight and the "Santa" gifts tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will wake up together for our first Christmas in our house just US :) We decided to do that this year, but in the future we may stay at one of our parents houses on Christmas Eve, we'll see. Then after we have a little time here, we are heading to my parents' house to open the "Santa" gifts, then to my dad's parents' house to do lunch and Christmas with that side of the family, then out of town we go...to my mom's parents' house for dinner and MORE Christmas with the other side of the family. 

It's a whirlwind day that we repeat twice a year (Thanksgiving and Christmas) although, it is a little different for us this year being married! 

We love it. 

We love each other.

And that is what celebrating Christmas is all about...the LOVE that came into the world in the form of a little baby named Jesus that we remember at this time of year. 

I pray everyone enjoys the holiday festivities--Christmas and New Year's, too! And that everyone stays safe! 

Here are a few more pictures we took over the last few weeks, most are from tonight...

Our friend Annie not only MADE our bow, but she put it on the tree before she left E.City, too! :)

Us in a snow earlier this month :) one of the THREE so far in winter 2010!

And this was the picture of the tree BEFORE we started opening presents tonight!

A couple weeks ago, right after we set our tree up for the first time:

    

 And tonight, Christmas Eve:

Sorting out presents...

 

It took forever to get them all to stop eating, talking, etc...and SMILE! 

But when Joe finally got in there...success! I love my beautiful family!

Kara says, "Daddy rub my back!"

And now *almost* all the family has gone home...time for some Christmas early morning hour pictures....

 Ahh, but one "member of the family" remains..

The "adopted" brother, Daniel :) 

He's one of many we've adopted into the Pipkin/Cartwright crew! 

New Orleans ornament...special memories!

Mistletoe Ornament! MUAH!!

And the Snowman Ornament Grandma Peggy got us from Niagara Falls! 

These are just a few of the many...but for some reason, this day I decided to take a picture of these. :) 

Oh and tonight we watched Dennis the Menace Christmas & a veggie tales Christmas movie in addition to opening up our gifts. 

 This is a random post, but I've been doing many things while posting...and it's Christmas! So, I'm not putting one more minute into it...I'm going to snuggle with my HUSBAND on CHRISTMAS, for the first time ever. 

Good night & Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas music

When I was younger I didn't like Christmas music. Now, I LOVVVEE it.

It hasn't stopped playing at our house in the past couple weeks.

Right now I am digging this song :)

 
I just discovered it through target.com. They have a free cd of Christmas music you can download. That is one of them I really like! You can see all of them here. You can pick individual songs so you only get the ones you like.

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Hopefully I will do more blogging after this Friday.
Right now it's exam week.

And on that note...it's back to school work for me! :)

Husband

 He's a hottie.

&

He's pretty funny, too.

And I love him.

Dining In?

That's what you get asked when you walk into many fast food restaurants, "Will you be dining in or is this to-go? Well my challenge to myself (and you, should you choose to accept the challenge) is to "dine-in"...in my home. 

We have always tried to dine-in because obviously it is just plain CHEAPER. And let's face it, two full-time college students are far from "rakin in the dough!" :) But, that's okay because we're making it work--one frugal decision at at time! However, there are times when we slip up and head out to eat, mainly due to convenience and I want us to work on doing a better job at saying no and staying home. I was reminded to try harder, and encouraged too, tonight when I was checking my emails. 


 My mom has started forwarding me e-mails that she gets (essentially posts) from a blog called "The Simple Dollar" and below is a quote from a post he did while reviewing a book by Jeff Yeager, The Cheapskate Next Door--The Surprising Secrets of Americans Living Happily Below Their Means.

"Dining out might seem like a normal routine for some, but if you add up the costs of it over a long period, it adds up to a lot of money. If you eat out twice a week for $30 when you could eat at home for $5, guess how much that adds up to over ten years? $26,000. If you can trim those meals eaten out down to once a week, there’s $13,000 you didn’t have before. Figure out ways to eat out for less or cut back even more on dining out and you put even more money in your pocket."

Well, I guess you can see why it was encouraging!? $26,000 of my hard-earned money going to restaurants & fast-food chains? Ughh....that makes me sick! Although I think that estimate would be a bit high for us, a)we don't eat out twice a week and b)when we do we do NOT often spend $30!

So I'm re-energizing my efforts of "dining-in" our own home! Plus think about all the other fun things that come along with "dining-in" 

• No gas money spent on going to and from! More savings!!
• Enjoy time cooking with your husband (or kids in some of your cases, in ours ONE day!) 
• Learn new recipes 
• Improve old recipes
• Compost what you can that you would throw away...maybe I'll do this one day? 

 So what other bonuses can you think of to "dining-in?" And what other tips do you have about this topic?  

And if you want to see the other 15 tips he pulls from Yeager's book, click on the link above titled "The Simple Dollar," and that will take you to his review where he lists all 16 tips for living more frugally.