Happy Thanksgiving!

Are you one of the lucky ones getting to be with family this Thanksgiving?! If so, count your blessings that you are able to spend time with your loved ones and please enjoy every second!

Since I will not be going home, I thought it would be fun to take a trip with the boyfriend instead. We are going to Las Vegas this year for a few days and are looking at it as a mini vacation! We booked a room at Mandalay Bay!! YoYo will be staying at the PetsHotel where he will {hopefully} be pampered like a baby and Mo will be on his own, guarding the apartment.

We are most excited about the delicious $6.95 steak dinner {seriously the best deal in LV...so good!}, seeing the famous Cirque de Soleil show, O, at the Bellagio, Midnight Madness at the Las Vegas Premium Outlets, and of course meeting up with Kate for lunch on Friday! I hope I remember to take lots of pictures!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Winner and some other stuff.

Hi all! So sorry to be late posting the winner of the Christmas Giveaway...I completely forgot! Thank you to everyone that entered. I enjoyed reading about what you are most looking forward to this holiday season! Bronco Mom is positively thrilled to see all of her new followers and is looking forward to getting to know all of you!! Without further ado, the winner of the giveaway is:

Congratulations Tille of A Nuttier Life! I do hope you enjoy everything included. I've sent you an email with all the information needed to claim your prize so please email me back at your earliest convenience!

-------------------------------------

I saw The Blind Side on Saturday and it is such a phenomenal movie. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend going! Every time I saw the previews for it, I would start crying, but when I watched the movie I didn't cry at all. It's really truly more inspirational than sad. I also taught myself how to apply fake eyelashes {YouTube rocks!} and I got a haircut! I don't really know why I'm telling you this, but I'm very excited to have finally found someone I can trust to cut my hair in California!!! I hope you all had great weekends...I am so excited about a short work week! I will share my Thanksgiving plans with you tomorrow!

I have such sweet friends {long post ahead}!!

My blog friends have been too kind! I have recently been awarded with a number of accolades, and I'm so excited about it. I have been meaning to post for quite awhile now, but I just keep getting pulled away from blogging to do other things, like papers and group projects {why, oh why??!}. This is way more fun though! Although my current paper on gender differences in the workplace and the effect it has on promotion rates really is very interesting.

Moving on, thanks to all of these ladies for thinking of me for these awards. It really is very sweet and makes me feel oh so good!

The lovely Ashley from The Ramirez Family gave me the One Lovely Blog Award! Please check out Ashley's blog - she is so darling! Her and her husband just got the most adorable little puppy too! I'm going to give this award to any of my followers that don't have it!! Thanks again Ashley!

One of my very favorite bloggers ever, The Luckiest Mrs., just reached her 101st post and created an award to go along with it! Don't you love it? It's the Happy 101 Award!!! Along with the award I have to list 10 things that make me happy and 10 bloggers that brighten my day, so here goes!

10 things that make me happy: sleeping in, tv, family, my pup, my significant other, good movies, food!, the holidays, friends, and pay day! and 10 bloggers that brighten my day: Kate {you better post this, I know where you live :)}, Jill, Gwen, Jules, Summer, Bronco Mom, Danielle, Britt, Phoenix, and Jenn!

The Luckiest Mrs. has a pretty awesome Mom too - Maria of Personalized Sketches & Sentiments! She awarded me with The Icing on the Cake Award! It's so fun that I want to give it to all of my followers that don't have it yet!! You all deserve it :)

Lastly, Emily, Leigh, Elle and Wendy all gave me the Sugar Doll Award! Thanks ladies! I am supposed to come up with 10 facts about myself, but I'm really not that interesting...sadly! Ha! I've seen this going around the blogworld, so if you haven't gotten it yet, please take it!!

And that's it folks! I've got an assignment to work on now so I'm off! I'm so glad it's almost Friday! I have school two nights a week this term and both of my professors like to keep us there until the clock strikes 10 pm {that's late after a full day of work}! Needless to say, it's a good night for some wine and catching up on my shows!!

Just a Reminder!

Don't forget to enter my Christmas Giveaway by tomorrow {lets say evening-ish time}!

All of this could be yours,
all yours!

monogrammed plate, festive labels, smell-good lotions...

Enter before it's too late!

On another quick note, I am ecstatic to have reached 600 followers this week! Thank you all so much for being my blog friends - I'm so lucky to have all of you! I will be doing a fun follower appreciation post next week (like this one!), so be sure to keep an eye out for your name to appear randomly on one of my posts! xoxo

PS - Don't forget to check out the other giveaways I have listed on my sidebar: Seashells and Sunshine is giving away a Christmas scented Yankee Candle {the deadline has been extended to Saturday so go enter now!!!}, the adorable Headbands & Handbags is doing a holiday giveaway every week until the beginning of December, and Ashley is having a 100 follower surprise giveaway {love these!}...go check them out and make a new friend while doing so!!! Win win!!

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas...

Giveaway is CLOSED!

Good morning BEAUTIFUL blogging friends! I am thrilled to announce that I have an amazing Christmas Giveaway to get you all in the holiday spirit! I have teamed up with Bronco Mom from Powder Puffs n Pearls to offer you the main attraction of this giveaway!

Oh, how we all adore TARTAN! This Boatman Geller melamine plate will be personalized with your choice of monogram or name AND shipped directly to you, just in time for the holiday season parties! Then it can be used to set those cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve!

This plate comes from Bronco Mom's Paper Concierge store. She has many other darling items on the site and is available to help you select that perfect product for all of your needs! With Christmas shopping fast approaching, wouldn't it be nice to have a little help in the gifts department?!

In addition to this wonderful plate, I have added a couple of items to make it an all around fabulous Christmas giveaway!

From Etsy store Little Bean Boutique, a set of 20 glossy stickers that can be used for so many different things during the holiday season!From Bath and Body Works (a very favorite of mine!), a trio of festive Holiday Traditions body lotions, that include Vanilla Bean Noel, Winter Candy Apple, and Festive Vanilla Fig!

This is exciting, huh?! I know that we still have Thanksgiving ahead of us, but Bronco Mom and I wanted to make sure that the plate has plenty of time to reach the winner before Christmas arrives!

If you'd like to enter the giveaway, please leave a comment on this post with your favorite thing about the Christmas season! For a second entry, follow me! And for 5 extra entries, simply follow Bronco Mom at Powder Puffs n Pearls!

There's a total of 7 entries for this giveaway, and you can leave one comment or separate ones on this post. Enter by this Thursday, November 19, for your chance to win. I will pick a winner on Friday!

Cupcakes...again!

I made cupcakes for my co-workers today! I went with the basic chocolate cake and tried a new peanut butter icing recipe. From what I hear, it was the best I've ever made! I thought I would share the recipe for the icing since it got such rave reviews.

Taken from Beantown Baker: Adventures in a Boston Kitchen {she's amazing!}, which she got from Mermaid Sweets, which she got from Food Network...or something like that...wherever it came from, it's a keeper for sure!

Kathleen's Peanut Butter Icing

• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/3 cup heavy cream

Place the confectioners' sugar, peanut butter, butter, vanilla, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on medium-low speed until creamy, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula as you work. Add the cream and beat on high speed until the mixture is light and smooth.

I doubled the recipe for 24 cupcakes and had a little bit left over. Then I cut up little Reese's and put them on top! Let me know if you try this recipe out!

I hope you all have a great weekend! We don't really have any plans, but it will definitely be nice to just relax :)

CMA Awards

I have never been that into award shows or the fashion that comes with it. But last night I got hooked on the CMA Awards. Did any of you watch it?

Wow! I'd just like to say that the transformation of Carrie Underwood has truly been incredible. I can't believe she is the same person who won American Idol only a few years ago. She has become such a popular singer and she definitely has the voice to back it up! I have loved all of her music and I am especially hooked on Cowboy Casanova right now.

Carrie then:

Carrie now:

Not everyone was quite so hot though! Kellie Pickler is now a redhead. Wynonna and Naomi Judd, I have absolutely no words. How in the world are you two related to Ashley?! Their time on stage presenting Best New Artist was also quite awkward. And Leann Rimes, you shouldn't be talking about how hot the male country singers are because everyone is afraid you are going to steal their man! Did you notice how no one laughed at her jokes???

Ooh, and I just loved Tim McGraw's performance. He's a favorite of mine from way back! I am very excited about seeing The Blind Side next weekend, but I didn't even realize that Tim was in it. I'm even more excited now! I also really enjoyed Martina McBride's performance. And Taylor Swift was the big winner, even taking home Entertainer of the Year!

If you watched, what were your favorite parts?
Who is on your Best and Worst Dressed Lists?

Spam!

I am so tired of getting this spam!

I have already enabled the word verification,
and I am somehow still finding these annoying comments
EVERY DAY
for the past week and a half.

I am going to start moderating comments,
even though I really don't want to.
Maybe it will stop and I can go back to word verification
{fingers crossed}.

I hope you all keep commenting
on future posts :)

Have a GREAT day!
xoxo

PS - Thank you to my dad and brother for serving our country and helping keep America safe. Thanks to all the veterans out there and their families for all the sacrifices made to serve our country and keep our freedoms intact. This day isn't about having a day off of work, it's about taking the time to realize what others have done and sacrificed.

Eye Candy!

It's no secret that I have a love affair with television. Honestly, I watch way too much of it, but that's the price to pay of having a significant other that works the graveyard shift! I thought I'd comprise a list of the actors that keep me coming back for more :)

#10
Alex O'Loughlin from Three Rivers

#9
Matt Bomer from White Collar
#8
David Boreanaz from Bones
#7
Robert Buckley from One Tree Hill
#6
Matthew Morrison from Glee
#5
George Eads from CSI
#4
Michael Weatherly from NCIS
#3
Chris O'Donnell from NCIS: LA
#2
Shemar Moore from Criminal Minds

#1

Mark Harmon from NCIS

all pictures via google image search

So after compiling this list, I realize I have a thing for tall, dark-haired men {and one silver fox..haha}! Any of your favorites up here?! If not, who makes your heart swoon every week?

Have a great day lovelies!!

PS - Can't wait to see the much talked about threesome on tonight's Gossip Girl!

Randomness!

Whew. It has been a hectic week! My brain is like mush yet I still have lots of thoughts floating around...

• I am extremely saddened by the rumor that Three Rivers is being canceled. I signed a petition today to keep it on the air! I have no idea who the lead character is {apparently he was on the show Moonlight - Alex O'Loughlin}, but I love how TR is different than other medical dramas. It focuses on the importance of being an organ donor and also the struggles the patients and families go through. I really hope it isn't really being canceled, but I think I may be outnumbered. Are any of you watching Three Rivers?!

• I love going on mini-vacations like my trip to San Diego last weekend, but I don't love how I still have yet to unpack my suitcase and I keep tripping over it!

• Sadly, I won't be traveling home for Thanksgiving {or Christmas for that matter} because of lack of vacation time from work and the ridiculous price of a plane ticket. Anyone want to adopt me for the holidays?! Haha :)

• I am super excited about an upcoming giveaway that I'm co-hosting with Bronco Mom from Powder Puffs n Pearls. She is just the sweetest and I'm so glad that we've become blogging friends and e-mail buddies! Giveaway details to follow soon, but think Christmas inspired!

• This is for my fellow One Tree Hill fans - I don't really like how they've added Hayley's sister, Quinn, to the mix. She has to be the most depressing character ever. And I really don't want her to date Clay, but in the previews for next week it shows them kissing!! Ick.

• Today is pay day!

Well ladies, I hope you are all having a fabulous day and are excited for the weekend! Anyone have any fun plans?!

It's Already November?!

Wow, time just seems to fly by...whether you're having fun or not! Luckily, I had a wonderful weekend in San Diego! The boyfriend and I are so lucky that his dad and grandparents live in Carlsbad. It's beautiful down there! YoYo was quite excited to be leash-less and able to wander the backyard freely.

On Friday night, we made it into town in time to eat at Pizza Port, which came highly recommended by my foodie co-worker. The pizza and beer were both so delicious and the atmosphere was fun too! It was a nice way to wind down after a day of work and a couple of hours on the freeway!!

On Saturday, we all went to Fashion Valley and I was so happy to finally see the Lilly store there. It was heaven and I could have spent all day there! The Originals Collection is just delightful and I tried on several pieces. When I saw the dresses online, I was sure that this Classic White Not So Crabby dress was my favorite, but my mind was instantly changed when I put on the "Aquamarine in the Slim" pattern in the Worth Shift Lace design. The picture online does not do this dress or pattern justice. I had to have it! So it came home with me in the prettiest green and pink bag that I kept hugging and petting while walking around the rest of the mall. I am a huge dork, but I don't care! I will be certain to post pictures of the dress soon because I want you all to see how beautiful it really is.

Outside the Lilly store with the boyfriend!

YoYo is trying to convince Dad to stay one more day...

On a completely different note, last Thursday Kate and I met for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. It's always fun to meet with her so we had a good time gabbing and eating yummy food. She brought me the cutest cupcake notepad and recipe cards. I'll have to remember to take a picture to show you all.

I hope you all had a great weekend and a good start to the new month! Can you believe it's already almost time for Thanksgiving?! Unbelievable!