Cherry eyes, carrot nose & toothpick arms! Lol!

The snowman was made as a joke. We got 3 inches of snow on Saturday & my Mom was teasing my husband saying he should make his 1st ever snowman. :-p

Happy New Year Everyone! Unfortunately I'm ending 2011 and starting 2012, with a yucky chest & head cold. I'm getting better, slowly.

F.B. & I will just be celebrating New Years quielty at home this evening. We'll have some cheese, crackers, pepperoni & Martinelli's sparkling cider at midnight! And watch the ball drop in New York on TV. New Years Day, I'll be cooking ham & sweet potatoes. And we'll get to try our chocolate chip panettone cake.

Christmas Picture of us both:


I ordered some more goodies. I ordered another one of these chairs from Walmart, because I absolutely love it and I want a matching set. The chair itself is really comfortable and even cuter in person!

Arista Arm Chair- Black and White Floral (Walmart)

Royal Opulence Satin Sheet Set: Zebra (Walmart)

Oh and I got the best deal on a 4 cup Pyrex meauring cup from Big Lot's last week! $6! (No more baking disasters now, yay! Lol!)

My husband thinks I'm crazy because I never take off my wedding band. I have a very slim 3mm titanium wedding band. I also have a "blingy" part of my wedding ring that I do take off when I come home. But the wedding band itself, never comes off.

I occasionally remove my wedding band to apply lotion. But I sleep with it, shower with it. It never comes off. (It never tarnishes either because titanium doesn't! hehe!) My husband takes his wedding band off to shower & sleep. But, I'm always afraid I would forget to put it back on if I did that, lol! I mean occasionally I forget to put the "blingy" part of my ring on when I leave the house.

So how about you? Do you take your wedding band off? Or am I the only crazy one. :-p

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to everyone! F.B. & I will be celebrating Christmas Eve at our apartment. This will be F's 1st Christmas in the USA, our 2nd Christmas married & our 3rd Christmas spent together. :-)

I'll be making alfredo pasta with mushrooms, bacon and ham for Christmas Eve dinner. Also Texas toast with cheese, and Pillsbury cinnamon rolls for dessert. Mmmm.

Christmas Day we'll be meeting my family at a Chinese Buffet for brunch. (3rd year we've done this tradition). Then we'll be heading back to my parents house to exchange gifts. F.B. & I will be exchanging gifts tonight.

I made a batch of cookies Friday night and two batches this afternoon. Of course I had some cookie baking disasters though... 1st off, I really need to buy a GLASS measuring cup- my plastic one melted while trying to melt chocolate in the microwave, lol!


And I really love Dollar Tree. My apartment is stocked with stuff I've gotten from there. But their cookie sheets... epic fail. The metal warped in the oven and my cookies ended up looking like.... brownies? The perfect cookie on the right is from the cookie sheet my Mom gave me. The cookies on the left... are from the Dollar Tree cookie sheet...


I made a batch of these White Chocolate Cherry Cookies:


And Thumbprint cookies with strawberry jam!

Today is our 2 year wedding anniversary! (Though "legally" our marriage certificate says December 18th. See why here). I get 2 hours of administrative holiday leave, so I am using it to leave work a bit early on our anniversary. We will be heading to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner!

I finally finished unpacking on Sunday! We have internet now too. Yay! January is going to suck with all the new bills being due though... I may have to call the electric & gas company to change my due dates once I pay the 1st bills, so that my one pay check will just be for rent, food, gas & my other check for all the other big bills.

We had my cousin Jessica over Saturday night for dinner. (Darn we forget to get pictures together!) We also Skyped with her sister, my cousin Chrissy who lives in Georgia. We ordered Chinese take-out and exchanged Christmas gifts, had some wine & watched 'The Social Network'. It was a really fun evening.

Our new apartment is really close to where I used to work, before our office relocated to Center City Philadelphia. It's a shame, because if we still worked at the old location I could probably WALK to work! The Chinese take-out place is one that my co-workers used to order from for lunch. :-)

My cousin spoiled us with some Christmas/Housewarming gifts!

Sparkling wine!

Christmas day, we are hopefully meeting with my family to have brunch at a Chinese Buffet & exchange gifts. For New Years Eve, I think my husband & I will just be celebrating here at the apartment. I already bought a small half ham, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, crackers, cheese, pepperoni & Martinelli's sparking cider. And a chocolate chip Panettone cake.

Moving day went fine. So exhausted and achy though! Almost unpacked, just some clothes to still hang up and put away. Returned the Uhaul truck this morning. My family helped us move yesterday and we were able to load up the truck for one trip. And then just 2 small trips for last minute items. We are using the internet from my cell phone until we get our Comcast internet. My T-mobile Sidekick 4G can be used as a router. I have "unlimited" mobile internet, but only up to 5GB a month so we can't watch any Netflix until our regular internet service is set up. Back to work on Wednesday. I'll have to use a different train station too. :-p

Also there's some things in the apartment that maintenance has to check out. Our bathroom sink is leaking underneath when you run it. And our shower doesn't work. The knob to turn for shower just gushes tub water out whichever way the knob is turned. Anyhow if that can't be fixed the way I want it- then I ordered this as a back up. At least we don't have to pay for water.

This morning we just ran the tub & used a bucket we have with a handle & spout to "shower" with. (Philippines flash back! The water pressure can be pretty low at times in the Philippines. So everyone has a big tub of back up water with a lid & a bucket or ladle to rinse/bathe with in their shower/tub.)

Here's some pictures of our apartment. We picked up a few Christmas decorations at Dollar Tree today.

A few more things I ordered for our apartment since it was payday! :-)

Arista Arm Chair- Black and White Floral (Walmart)

Throw pillows for our black sofa:

Danica Studio Cushion- Zaza (Amazon.com)

Brentwood Channel Stitch Pillow- Turquoise (Amazon.com)

Shower Mat (to go with our rubber ducky shower curtain):

Ginsey Rubbermaid Vinyl Bath Mat- Turquoise (Amazon.com) Was: $7. Now $11.

Had to take advantage of my free 2 day shipping with my 1 month trial of Amazon Prime! ;-) I got a free trial when I ordered my Kindle Fire, (which I love!) I ordered most of my Christmas gifts on Amazon this year. We are trying to pack a few boxes every weekend. Only 2 more weeks until the big move.

(I do use Amazon Associates, but not because I've made any money- because I haven't! lol! But I like that I can show a picture/link with a product when I'm blogging. Plus I do recommend Amazon.com for their low prices. That or Ebay!)

I borrowed $3,000 from Citibank for our furniture budget for the apartment- since we only had bedroom furniture. We stayed well under that. We spent under $1,000. So I was able to return most of the money I borrowed from Citibank. :-)

We are also thankful to my Dad in law & Mom in law, for helping us with the down payment on our apartment & helping us with the furniture we needed. Thank you so much! We really appreciate it! 

My parents gave us a microwave so we are definitely thankful for that since it's one less thing to buy! And my Mom said we could have some dishes and cooking stuff too. :-) (We have a few dishes, a coffee machine, coffee press & rice cooker already.) Most of our smaller items, shower curtain rings, mop, broom, bucket, cleaning supplies, etc, etc, etc; we will get at Dollar Tree or Big Lot's.

I did free site to store shipping for most of the items we ordered. We still have to pick some of these up. Walmart rocks! Here's some of the goodies we ordered!

Living Room

Atherton Home Manhattan Convertible Futon

Parsons 3 Piece Coffee & End Tables

Better Homes and Gardens Poly Resin Birdcage Lamp (2)

Linen Hardback Table Shade (2)

Open Sided 3-Shelf Bookcase

Curtis 19" Class LCD 720p 60Hz HDTV

RCA Digital Flat Amplified Antenna

 Dining Room/ Kitchen

Mainstays 5-Piece Wood and Metal Dining Set

Rival 2-Slice Toaster ($6.00)

Black & Decker Electric Can Opener ($9.00)

Hefty Swing-Lid 13.5-Gallon Trash Can

Bedroom

Mainstays 4-Drawer Chest

Mainstays Floor Lamp

Bathroom

Rubber Ducky PEVA Shower Curtain

Misc

Dirt Devil Express Quick Vacuum with Tools

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!