I don’t know if you noticed, but Valentines Day has come and gone.

My blog reader feed has been completely filled with hearts, flowers, red, and pink for the past several weeks and if I’m being completely honest, I skipped through most of those posts.

Gasp! I know. Call me a Valentines Day grinch, but I’m just not that into it. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Corey and I have an anniversary in January, so I’m all romantic-gift-ed out, but all I know is I’ve just never been a huge V-Day fan.

BUT! That doesn’t stop me from celebrating it. At least a little.

I saved this post until after Valentine’s Day because, obviously, I hadn’t given Corey his gift yet and I didn’t want the surprise to be spoiled when he read the blog. But, really, this is a gift that you could give at any time, for any reason, so let’s pretend it wasn’t a Valentines Day gift and that it was just a “Hey, it’s Thursday and I love you” gift.

Remember how last week I said that I’ve become a jar hoarder? And there was a red jar in one of those pictures that I encouraged you to ignore if possible? Well you’re about to find out what I did with it.

I won’t go through the process of how I got it all shiny and glittery because we’ve already been there, done that. So, let’s just jump in right about…here.

This idea is all over Pinterest, so I won’t pretend like I came up with it on my own, but I’m going to run you through how it’s done anyways. I grabbed a box of big popsicle sticks from the craft section of Target and, since I’m cheap and lazy and didn’t want to hunt down the pre-dyed ones, I spent 10 minutes coloring the edges and one side of them with markers in three different colors. It doesn’t look perfect, but it really doesn’t have to.

Then, I gathered up a quick list of date ideas. There are a billion different ways you could divide them up, but I put mine into three categories: At home (which also means super cheap) dates that require little to no planning, slightly more expensive dates that require us to leave the house (these are mostly within the $20-$50 range, but some are still free!), and big, expensive dates that require more planning (these range wildly in price, but the cost will really depend on how much we decide to spend when we’re actually doing the dates). Once I had my list of dates, I designated each color to a different category (light pink was stay-at-home dates, the darker pink was the cheaper leave-the-house dates and the purple ones are the you-need-some-money-for-these-dates dates), and I just wrote them on the popsicle sticks.

Then? I tossed them in the jar and called it a day.

Seriously. Easiest gift EVER.

And I’m pretty sure Corey liked it – it’s a great way for us to go outside the box a little bit with our dates and encourage us to try new things. And hopefully it will break us out of what “what do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” rut!

Since I can’t leave you hanging, here’s a list of the dates I used for the jar. Some of them are Austin-specific, but the majority of them can be done anywhere.

Stay at home dates ($)

1. Create a new signature cocktail
2. Take a walk to the park
3. Watch a movie we’ve never seen
4. Grab a bottle of wine and have a game night
5. Grab fast food for dinner and rent a movie
6. 1000 piece puzzle and pizza
7. Cook dinner with completely new recipes
8. Lay in the backyard and look at the stars
9. Play video games together
10. Try out a new television show

Going out dates, little planning ($$)

1. Buy each other gifts from the dollar store
2. Go watch the bats downtown
3. Go to a drive-in movie
4. Go try a new restaurant
5. Go to the dog park
6. Go see a movie at the dollar theater
7. Hit up a few thrift stores
8. Dinner/movie (Corey’s choice)
9. Dinner/movie (Amanda’s choice)
10. Hit up some garage sales

More expensive dates ($$$)

1. Visit a winery
2. Go explore a new part of downtown
3. Go see a movie at Alamo Drafthouse
4. Get a hotel room downtown
5. Shopping spree at the outlet mall
6. Go to 6 Flags
7. Go camping
8. Try a fancy restaurant we’ve never been to
9. Go antiquing in Gruene, TX
10. Go spend the day in College Station to reminisce

I’m excited to try all of our dates! I think it’ll be a blast to try all of these new things, and I hope we end up enjoying it as much as I think we will.

Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day? What about date ideas – are you great at coming up with them, or is it hard for you?

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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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Hi, friends! I missed you all this past week, and I’m pretty excited to get back. I have a ton of things to share with you, and a million project ideas floating around in my head that I can’t wait to get started on. I promise I’ll be sharing lots of fun new things throughout the month, but first…I’ve gotta get a bit mushy.

Why? Well, today just so happens to be mine and Corey’s two year wedding anniversary.

(Photo by She-N-He Photography)

Seriously. Two years. I’m having a hard time that it’s been that long since that gorgeous January day when we got married. It’s been a pretty crazy year what with a career change for Corey, a new job for me, a new car, and tons of other little changes along the way. I, for one, and glad this year past year is over – it was a rough second year of marriage (life-wise, not relationship-wise!) and I’m looking forward to getting started on our third year.

We don’t typically do a ton to celebrate our anniversary – it’s a mere two weeks after Christmas, so we’re usually out of ideas for gifts for one another and we’re also pretty low on funds. So, this year as in the past, we kept our celebrations small. On Saturday, we got ourselves all dressed up and headed out to our favorite restaurant, where we celebrate every little event that we possibly can, Melting Pot.

There’s nothing that says “I love you” like fondue, no? We also are total nerds and spent a few minutes geeking out over the fact that we just so happened to get fondue forks that matched our wedding colors. It was meant to be!

After we stuffed ourselves full of amazingness, we headed out to buy our gift for one another. Because we just had Christmas and bought one another a ton of gifts, it seemed silly to buy even more for each other, so we decided on a joint gift. And, since cotton is the traditional gift for a two-year anniversary…we decided to buy new towels!

I know. It doesn’t sound particularly exciting. But, um, our old towels were cheap-o Ross towels that we bought when we were first starting out in college…so they’re like 5 years old, and these aren’t the kind of towels that are meant to last for 5 years. So we upgraded to some fancy Target towels that feel like heaven in cotton form. Seriously, they’re so soft – I couldn’t wait to take a shower after we got them!

While we were at Target, we also found ourselves in the aisle that housed the rest of the Christmas decor that hadn’t been sold yet…and it was 90% off.

I’ll just let that soak in for a minute.

NINETY PERCENT.

We spent a good 20 minutes combing through the aisle and snatching up everything we could…we ended up with 6 bags of stuff for…wait for it…30 dollars. SERIOUSLY. I was positively giddy as we were walking back out to the car.

One of the things we bought was a Christmas dress for Hadley.

No, I’m not kidding. It was 99 cents, completely over the top, and it has a tutu. I couldn’t say no.

We bought an XL hoping that it will still fit her next year…it’s a good thing this dog loves to wear clothes, because I’m taking advantage of finally having a female animal in this house that I can dress up in ridiculous things.

So, all in all it was basically an absolutely perfect anniversary date. ‘Cause spending the evening digging through clearance Christmas decor and dipping stuff in cheese and chocolate is our idea of a good time. Since we already celebrated this weekend, the plan is to spend the evening tonight cooking dinner together, playing a few games, and relaxing. It will be perfect.

Do you do a small celebration for your anniversary, or do you like to go big?

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Well, 2012 is almost over and 2013 is upon us. Can you believe it? A few of my kids at school were telling me before the break that they refuse to let go of 2012 and that they’ll never write 2013 on any of their papers – I had to laugh and agree, not because I don’t want 2013 to be here, but just because it always seems to take me until June to remember to put the new year!

I figure since it’s the end of the year, it would be the perfect time to re-visit our 101 in 1,001 list (which we started February 1st of last year so, while it wasn’t necessarily a set of New Year’s resolutions, it’s pretty close!) and see how we did. Tomorrow I’ll be looking at the list again to  chat about some of the things we’re hoping to accomplish in 2013! We aren’t big on making official resolutions, but since we’re already working on this list, it can’t hurt to designate a few things we’d like to knock out over the next year!

So, let’s see what we took care of this year:

21. Finish watching Lost
25. Spend an entire day together with no technology
31. Try the dog park again

32. Get a kitten (we got a puppy instead!)
38. Join a church
42. Have a dinner party
49. Sponsor a child during Christmas
52. Visit a farmer’s market
53. Start recycling

62. Get our garage completely clean and organized - I have to laugh at this one, because our garage is a disaster again. But, it was clean for a while!
66. Learn more about my camera and become very comfortable with it
67. Learn how to use Photoshop (didn’t learn Photoshop, but learned enough about editing photos that I consider this taken care of!)
68. Get at least one paid sponsor
69. Host a giveaway on the blog
70. Learn enough about coding to do basic edits on the blog
71. Add a house tour/layout page (see it here!)
74. Blog daily for a month (31/31) – technically this isn’t finished, but it will be tomorrow so I’m counting it!
75. Research and purchase another lens for our camera (got one for Christmas!)
76. Purchase a tripod (another Christmas present!)
77. Reply to at least 3 comments for every blog post I write for a month
78. Be featured on a large-scale home décor blog (See it here!)

81. Replace my car
86. Learn how to use (and be comfortable with) my Cricut (My personal goal)
87. Get a job I’m happy with (My personal goal)
88. Create at least one item I would be proud to sell online (My personal goal)
90. Create a piece of art I’m proud to display in our home (My personal goal)
97. Join an intramural sports team (Corey’s personal goal)

There are also a few things on our list that are in progress – either we’ve done part of it and haven’t finished the rest, or it’s something we’re actively trying to complete. Here are the things that we’re started on but haven’t completed:

5. Go on 3 vacations (1/3)
10. Spend at least 10 days exploring parts of downtown Austin we’ve never seen (2/10)
11. Go to at least 5 Austin events (1/5)

13. Master at least 10 new cocktail recipes (1/10)
20. Try 10 new local restaurants (4/10)
22. Watch 20 classic movies that we’ve never seen (1/20)
39. Try at least two new recipes a month
41. Spend time with Audrey & Kyle at least once a year (1/3)
84. Read at least 100 books (38/100)

So, all in all that makes 27 items completed and 9 items we’ve at least started on. Not too bad for the first 11 months! I love having something like this, because I sometimes feel like we don’t really accomplish much throughout the year – but looking back at this it’s clear that we got quite a bit done that we wanted to!

Do you have a life “to-do” list? What did you accomplished this year?

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Another week of advent activities down, another week closer to Christmas! I’m so excited about Christmas, but I have to admit it’s so sad how quickly it’s flying by! I used to always hardly be able to wait for Christmas, but now I’m kind of wishing it would slow down so I could enjoy it a little more!

Let’s jump right into what we did this week, shall we?

December 6:

So, I’ll be honest – we didn’t do this. We had both had a pretty rough day at work and I didn’t think this through very well – we had no idea where to find mistletoe! Instead, we shared a really nice kiss and called it a day. We did glance around the next time we were out and about to see if we could find any, but we never did. I felt guilty at first, but then I remembered that the whole point of this activity advent is to enjoy ourselves, not to stress out over whether or not we complete it. So, no guilt allowed!

December 7:

I’ve already shared more detail on this, but it was an absolute blast. I adore wrapping gifts, and it’s always so fun to see how creative I can get with it. Our tree was looking pretty sad without any gifts underneath it, and it’s so nice to finally have a little present stockpile!

December 8:

Um, we cheated a bit here, as you can see. We had originally planned on heading to a really big outlet mall outside of Austin to finish up our Christmas shopping, but we were already almost done at this point and really didn’t want to spend an entire day out of the house. So instead, we plopped down on the couch and worked on cleaning out our DVR. It was so relaxing – Corey and Hadley even squeezed a nap in!

December 9:

This was a very simple one that I personally enjoyed a lot. It was nice to spend the day focused on ways we could be nice to one another, and it reminded me how good it feels to surprise one another with random acts of kindness. Corey vacuumed the house for me, I agreed to lunch at his favorite fried chicken place (even though I’m not a huge fried chicken fan), and we just spent the day trying to be a bit more gracious and nice to one another – I loved it! We also did quite a bit of relaxing and watching television again, which was awesome!

December 10:

This was fabulous. We plopped down on the floor in front of the Christmas tree, lit a fire, and enjoyed ourselves. We had to shoo off a curious puppy a few times (she still hasn’t learned that we will not feed her!), but it was so nice to sit and really focus on one another. For some reason sitting in a new place sparked more conversation that it would have if we were just in the dining room, and it definitely felt like we were doing something special. I think this will have to be something we do every year!

December 11:

Sigh. Another one we didn’t accomplish! In our defense, when I originally made our advent calendar and put it all together, Corey hadn’t been offered his new job yet – so we were still getting home from work at the same time. Now, however, he gets home about an hour after I do and it’s getting dark by the time he pulls in the driveway. Once we had finished dinner and were ready to go on a walk, it was completely dark outside and we were warm and cozy inside with another fire. So, instead, we spent the night grading papers together and enjoying our second fire of the week and some wine. Romantic?

December 12:

We totally needed this one yesterday. We both had an insane day, got home super late from work, and were completely exhausted. So we ate dinner, climbed into bed, and found a good Christmas movie on Netflix. It was so relaxing, and it was definitely a good night for us to do this.

And that’s what our advent activities looked like this week! I’m excited to see what’s in store for us over the next week, and I can’t believe how quickly we’re running out of envelopes on our advent calendar! I vote next year we start the Christmas season earlier so I can enjoy it longer!

Anyone else doing some fun Christmas activities this week?

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