It has become a bit of a tradition for our family to have a Mother’s Day brunch at my house every year. My sister and I cook and everyone comes over to hang out, eat entirely too much, and just be together.

We had an awesome spread this year, and I always have so much fun when we have a big group over for a meal…I love utilizing my giant table!

Perhaps my favorite part of the spread? The make-your-own-mimosa bar. I probably could have had a liquid lunch, if you know what I mean.

But, um, I didn’t. There was plenty of food consumed.

What did you do for Mother’s Day this year?

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Have you voted for the Creating With the Stars final round yet? You have until 10:00 tonight to vote, and tomorrow morning the winner will be revealed! The projects are gorgeous, so if you haven’t seen them yet you need to! 

I’m not gonna lie – I find it a bit hard to believe that this past weekend was Easter weekend. Already. Where is 2013 going?

Of course, I’m not complaining – the faster we move right now the faster we get to summer. Then maybe we can figure out a way to slow time down a bit. Deal?

Our weekend was not the relaxing 3-day weekend I had really hoped for – thanks to the final round of Creating With the Stars, we were insanely busy all day on Friday and Saturday. Between setting up the project, photographing, and then cleaning our house (which has been neglected for the past, I don’t know, MONTH), there wasn’t a lot of room for resting. But on Sunday we were finally finished, so we headed out to my grandmother’s house for Easter lunch…

(and a fabulous cake made by my sister)

…some easter egg hunting…

(done inside for the FIRST TIME EVER due to a freak hailstorm that covered my grandmother’s backyard with hail in about 25 seconds)

…and now that I’m an adult I have to help hide the eggs instead of searching for them. Lame, right? Especially because there’s money in some of them now…we never put money in them when I was a kid!

It was a great way to spend the day, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. And, yes, I managed to resist the urge to knock my nieces out of the way and steal the eggs full of money. Just barely.

How did you spend your Easter weekend?

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I may have mentioned here and there that Corey and I got somewhat addicted to the show Dr. Who this year. We had been hearing about it all over the place from people whose opinion we trust (like, you know, the Bloggess) so we just had to give it a try.

Going into it, I had no clue what it was about. When Corey told me the show would be about time travel I was…skeptical, to say the least.

But, um, about two episodes in? I was addicted. We now watch an episode every night before we go to bed, and I frequently find myself cheering, yelling at the television, and yes, even crying. It’s probably my favorite show ever. Which is why it should surprise no one that Corey and I had a bit of a theme in our Christmas gifts this year…

Yeah. We have a problem.

We both surprised one another with several Doctor-related gifts – I got him a t-shirt and a sonic-screwdriver-slash-pen (it even lights up and makes the same noise as the one on the show!), and he got me a license plate frame, a Tardis iPhone cover, and a makeup bag covered in Doctor-related images that he found from Etsy seller MarfDaze.

I’m the first to admit that we’re a bit geeky when it comes to stuff like this, but I’ve gotta say I’m pretty excited about all of my new Dr. Who gear – I can’t help but smile every time I pick up my phone now!

Anyone else get any nerdy gifts for Christmas? Any other Doctor devotees? I know we can’t be alone in this!

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Now that school is back in full swing again (boo!) I’m already seriously longing for the relaxing days of Christmas break. Call me spoiled (I know I am!) but I’m used to getting a full two weeks off for Christmas break, and this year the break was a whopping two days shorter (boo hoo, I know), and it felt like a significant difference. It probably didn’t help that we spent a big chunk of the break visiting family, which is never quite as relaxing as I’d like it to be.

Anyways, I’ve been daydreaming about how wonderful the break was and how much I love having some extra time off, so today we’re going to take a quick peek at what my break looked like, via Instagram. Because we haven’t done anything particularly exciting recently, and Instagram is all I have to show for what I’ve been up to lately.

This is the view from my grandmother’s back porch, taken on Christmas Eve. I look at this and am sad about how low the lake is (damn drought!), but if I look past that I’m struck by how gorgeous the view is and how I never really notice it when I’m there. Love.

After Christmas we headed up to Dallas for a few days to visit Corey’s family – this is the Christmas tree in the Galleria there. I kind of wanted to try to convince Corey to steal it and bring it home for our living room next year, but something tells me it might not fit.

I also got to play Trivial Pursuit with the family (hardest! game! ever!)…

…and wear some of my cute new clothes (that I got as Christmas gifts)…

…and do a lot of this…

…(and so did the puppies)…

…and Corey got to try out his new waffle maker I got him for Christmas to make me the most amazing dinner ever…

…and on the last night of the break, we went all out and cooked some steak, shrimp, scallops, and risotto for an end-of-the-break dinner. It was fabulous.

And that’s my break in a nutshell. Wonderful, too short, and over. Wah.

How was your Christmas break? Any other teachers have a shorter-than-usual break this year?

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I’ve shared that Corey and I love to go shopping the day after Christmas to snag some good deals on decor for the next year – and of course, this year was no exception! We were heading up to Dallas the day after Christmas to go see Corey’s family, so we had a limited amount of time to get our shopping done, but we were determined to squeeze it in!

We got up bright and early and dropped the dogs off at the vet, where we were boarding them over our trip. And then? We got to shopping!

We hit up Target, Crate & Barrel, and Pier 1 – I just have phone photos as we were checking out because I haven’t had a chance to take better shots, but here’s what we came home with:

From Target, we got those adorable knit trees (they were less than $5 each, thanks to the sales!), some tree-stump candleholders, an adorable Christmas-y tray, a decanter (we’ve been drooling over it since they released it after Thanksgiving – probably won’t just use it for Christmas, but it was 50% off!), and a ton of gift wrapping stuff so we’ve got a good start on next year. Everything was at least 50% off, so we got some pretty amazing deals!

Crate & Barrel was pretty picked over by the time we got there – I think they may have started their sale earlier than they did last year – but we did manage to find some gorgeous napkin rings at a steep discount, and we got enough to use on our Christmas table next year – they’ll go perfectly with all of our other stuff!

We didn’t buy anything from Pier 1 – they had a ton of really great stuff, but the line was about 7 miles long and it just wasn’t worth the wait!

I’m pretty happy with what we found this year, and I’m excited to store these decorations away and bring ‘em out next year – this year I had forgotten about half of the things we grabbed last year, so it was a complete surprise when we got them out of the garage in November. These are going to look super cute with what we already have, and I’m excited about what a good deal we got on everything!

Do you do any post-Christmas shopping?

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