November 2012

Less than one month until Christmas, I can't believe it! I love the Fall, but the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is my absolute favorite. I love all the lights and wreaths and decorations out everywhere, and with it getting dark so early, it's great to be able to enjoy them every time we go out at night. I love all the smells of the season too.....pine, peppermint, apple cinnamon, burning wood....and sometimes I feel like I can even detect the smell of snow in the air, even when the temperatures aren't below freezing. This is Toby's favorite time of year too, he spends hours outside, and smells like cold weather and firewood every time he comes back in.

Although I am really looking forward to Christmas, we had a great month in November as well. On Saturday the 18th, my friend Melissa had a "slumber party" at her house...let's just say, it was very similar to my bachelorette party, if you know what kind of slumber party I mean! There were about 5 or 6 of us total, and we had a great time! It's always fun to get a group of girls together like that and just let loose and be silly and enjoy yourselves. I had never been to Melissa's house before, but I really love it. She and her husband and daughter live out in the country in Front Royal, and I LOVE how her house is decorated, in a country apple sort of decor. I wouldn't mind living out there myself, except that I've been out of Beaverdam for awhile now and I've been spoiled by trash pickup and pizza delivery! But it is definitely a very cozy, very comfortable place to live.

Heading to the party!

Josh had never met Melissa before, but he had to work on Black Friday, so we decided to stay in the area instead of going down to Beaverdam for Thanksgiving, and Melissa and her husband were nice enough to invite us to their house for dinner! So we headed over there around 1pm that day.....not only were we excited about a delicious meal, but Josh and I are Cowboys fans, and Melissa and Jay are Redskins fans, so we were really pumped for the Cowboys-Redskins game. We ate about 2pm, and the food was SO good....it's always a little unnerving to eat Thanksgiving at a new place; neither Josh nor I have ever spent Thanksgiving somewhere besides one of our family's houses, but Melissa's cooking reminded me so much of my mom's cooking! We immediately felt right at home.....we had chicken, turkey, green beans, rolls, mashed potatoes, stuffing (my favorite, and it was JUST like my mom's, I was really excited), mac and cheese, and this AMAZING green bean casserole. Then apple pie and pumpkin pie for dessert, and cheese and crackers before the meal. It was really nice to have some touches of my mom's type of cooking, but also eat some new things that were really delicious. Strangely enough, while we were about halfway through the meal, the power went out! It was a beautiful, calm, sunny day, but out of nowhere, everyone's power went out in the neighborhood, it was really bizarre. Maybe someone deep-fried a turkey and blew out the power haha! Luckily all of the cooking was complete, and it was early enough that the sun was still out, but we were all keeping an eye on the clock because the game was coming on soon, and we definitely didn't want to miss it! It ended up being out for about 2 hours, but came back on 20 minutes after the game started. Unfortunately for Josh and me, the Cowboys ended up losing, but it was really fun to watch it with fans of the other team, who don't rub in the win but we can have some friendly competition. All in all, ended up being a really great day!!

My decorations