Merry Christmas!

We hope Santa treated everyone well!

Love, Brad & Courtney

Free Christmas Cards ... Yes Please!

This year Shutterfly is offering a promotion for bloggers to receive 50 free Holiday cards. Awesome! Who doesn't love Christmas cards, especially free ones?! You can find Shutterfly's holiday card collection HERE. There are 803 different options. After deciding what we kinda wanted our card to look like, we choose to only do a card with 3 pictures. And guess what? You can narrow down your search options number of pictures (1 to 12), format (flat or folded cards), paper type (card stock or photo paper), card size (5x7, 4x8, and 5x5), price (first 50 FREE), color, and designer. Anyways, we narrowed down our options to a way more manageable option of 269, and we finally found a favorite.

Won't this look awesome with our fabulous pictures?!

 Aside from traditional Christmas cards, Shutterfly also provides countless other photo sharing options and gifts like personalized calendars, photo books, and thank you cards.  Check them out!  And find out more about Shutterfly's awesome holiday card promotion. But hurry, because it ends on December 10!

Love, Brad & Courtney

A Day to Remember

Two years ago today the love of my life took me on a fantastic snow shoeing trip.

And on that very day we decided to get married when he surprised me in the best way possible. Tears streaming down my face, I couldn't help but say "YES!"

Happy 2 year engagement anniversary babe! I love you!

Love, Courtney

Happy Birthday Elizabeth and Grant!

Happy late birthday baby sister!

Happy late birthday nephew Grant!

love, Brad & Courtney

Halloween was a month ago...

Halloween was a month ago, but I just finished my Halloween craft THIS MORNING, November 24. Better late than never, right? Thank goodness I didn't have work today or this may not have been completed until Christmas.

Come next Halloween, this will be proudly hanging on our front door.

Love, Brad & Courtney

Birthday Wishes All Around!

So, I've been a terrible blogger lately. My last post was over TWO weeks ago! I guess we just haven't been all that exciting during this wonderful month of November. I've been super busy with work, school, and my new Young Women's calling, and Brad's been super busy trying to keep himself busy while I'm gone every single night of the week. But four exciting things have happened this month!

Numbers 1 and 2: Ryan and Chloe's birthdays!

http://www.vandersenphotography.com/

Ryan turned 2 and Chloe turned 5! They're getting SO BIG! I can't even believe it, and I know their momma can't either. Brad and I were super bummed that we didn't get to see these two munchkins this year for their birthdays, seeing as for the past two years we have. We sure do miss them.

Number 3: Lori and Jared's one year anniversary!

http://www.vandersenphotography.com/

I completely forgot to even ever post about Katherine Croft!! On September 25 (my mom's birthday) Lori and Jared were blessed with a sweet baby girl.

Welcome to the world baby Katie! We can't wait to meet you!

And Number 4: My brother Phillip's birthday which was yesterday. He turned 18! Just saying that makes me feel old. I can't imagine how my parents feel.

Not the nicest face, but I think this is a funny picture, so I'm sharing it.

This was after Christmas one year when Phillip and I both got new LG Chocolates - his was baby blue (like his cast) and mine was red. We were both learning together how to work them. This is definitely not the best picture of either of us, but it's a dear memory.

So to Chloe, Ryan, Phillip, and Katie - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! And HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to Lori and Jared!

Love, Brad & Courtney

Halloween!

Halloween is my all-time favorite holiday. I don't know what exactly it is that I love so much, but boy do I love it. Maybe it's the fact that for just one day the whole country is united in a celebration for children. Regardless of parties or whatever else people do, I think most everyone will admit that Halloween is solely about little munchins dressing up as whatever they want and going around to neighborhood houses seeking candy. How great is that!? And people go all out for this fabulous holiday. Seriously, some people are fanatics. I secretly hope to one day become one of those people. My goal is to buy more and more stuff on sale each year after Halloween, so maybe just maybe one day in the far off future I can be a Halloween decorating fiend. I also have a ginormously humongous and all around really big sweet tooth. I always have candy around. We even have a special drawer in our kitchen reserved solely for candy. Pathetic, yes. Fabulous, you know it! Don't be too jealous. Anyways, I just LOVE LOVE LOVE Halloween.

Unfortunately, this year Brad and I just simply didn't have the time to be creative with our costumes. :-( (But our 2011 costumes are already in the making and will be mind-blowing.) So, we borrowed from family and friends, pulled apparel out of our closet, make a few small purchases, and came up with this: 

In a word, fantastic. Except for several people giving me the evil eye and saying, "Well, I guess it is Halloween." First, I would like to say to those select individuals: Really? Is Tennessee really worth that response this year? It's not like we're really any competition. Second, I guess I must be a true fan. Third, YES, I know Tennessee lost on Saturday and has only won 2 games this season. Do you really think I can be dressed like this and NOT know that?! And fourth, when Tennessee is back on top in a couple of years (and they will be) don't come to me saying you're now a Tennessee fan. I might throw up on you. Needless to say, I was a little irritated that people didn't appreciate my plethora of UT goodness. Brad got a couple eye rolls from people who honestly couldn't believe that he grew up in Georgia and didn't bleed bulldog red.

I'm a little bummed because we neglected to get a picture of us dressed up with dogzilla. Maybe next year, right? We took Killer to Brad's parents' house on Sunday night for a walk around their neighborhood. I really wanted to go knock on doors, say trick or treat, and train Killer to bark after I said that, but Brad was way too embarrassed to do such a thing and wouldn't be embarrassed by me doing it by myself. So, we ended up just going on a late night walk with a dog dressed like a dinosaur, admiring the costumes, jack-o-lanterns, and decorations.

On Saturday night, we went to a church party. After dinner there was an activity called Trunk-or-Treat where all the kids walk around to all the cars parked in the parking lot. It's like going Trick-or-Treating but to car trunks instead of doors. We had a lot of fun! We even decorated our trunk for the occasion.

There was a competition for best decorated trunks. We knew we wouldn't win, because there were some pretty dang good decorated trunks in that church parking lot, and we literally just grabbed some decorations from around the house before running out the door. Well, guess what?!!

We won all-around favorite car!! Hooray! We were literally shocked! We got an amazing smelling bar of soap and matching candle, some stellar chapstick, and a $20 gift card to Target. Awesome! Our decorating materials didn't even cost $20. Score!

We hope your Halloween was a fantastic kick start to the holiday season. It definitely was for us! Enjoy all that sugary goodness as long as you can, but if you run out feel free to stop by our house. There's a candy drawer awaiting you.

Love, Brad & Courtney

A Date:

Last week we went a date to a corn maze in North Georgia. I found a 2 for 1 deal on Groupon that allowed us to go on a hay ride (which ironically had no hay) and do the corn maze and 3 other attractions.

One of the "attractions" we did was an apple sling shot. It was so fun! Brad kept saying that when we have a backyard he wants to build one.

A camping trip:

Just this past weekend we went camping with some friends up near Amicalola Falls. Unfortunately, I had class on Friday until 6, so we didn't get up to the campsite until about 8. We set up our tent in the dark and just talked around the campfire for a while. In the morning we hung out in our tent and let Killer play with her most favorite toy EVER.

She's so spoiled. 

It was still pretty chilly when we finally got up and started getting breakfast ready, and poor Killer was shivering so Brad did everything he could to keep her warm.

Before we had to leave and pack everything up we went on a hike to the falls. It was gorgeous!

 

Both the other couples also had dogs, and Killer had a great time playing with two new friends. In fact, after only about 10 minutes on the drive home she fell asleep.

Stay tuned for Halloween pictures!

Love, Brad & Courtney

Vote for Killer!

For all of you who were worried about our poor Killer and thinking about reporting me to puppy services...she is liking her dogzilla costume much better. We've forced her to wear it for about an hour or so every day so she can get used to it by Halloween.

Don't even tell me that's not the cutest thing you've ever seen.

Anyways, we entered her (in costume) into a Petsmart costume contest. The grand prize is being in a commercial, which we could care less about. But some of the runner-up prizes include gift cards to Petsmart and cash prizes. So if you could all kindly vote for our sweet pup, we'd greatly appreciate it.

http://apps.facebook.com/petsmartcontest//showentry?entryurl=%2Fcontests%2Fshowentry%2F566625%2Fnull%2F4&fb_page_id=77978885595

On a side note, she's still loosing teeth. Not quite so rapidly anymore though. However, now we've moved on to bigger teeth, like this monster fang.

Love, Brad & Courtney

DOGZILLA!

When we first got Killer I swore I wasn't going to be one of those people who humiliates their dog by dressing them up in ridiculous outfits. Like this:

Well, it turns out I am one of those people. One afternoon I was looking on Amazon and decided to just browse the dog costumes. Bad idea. As I'm sure you know (or can tell from the current state of my blog) I LOVE Halloween. The reasons why could be their own blog post (which I will write at a later date). So after seeing so many adorable Halloween doggie costumes I just had to get one, which I justified by the fact that it was only $5 and Killer would only wear it a couple of times unlike the dogs pictured above who are probably tortured every day by this nonsense. This is the costume I bought for poor Killer:

 

DOGZILLA!

Adorable right? I mean if it's cute on this dog, mine will definitely look good in it.

Well, dogzilla arrived in the mail a few days ago. Brad and I immediately opened it and proceeded to force our puppy to wear it while we took a video of just how much she hated it.

Killer probably isn't going to enjoy Halloween quite as much as her mommy does...

Love Brad, Courtney, & Dogzilla

The Zoo

We got a free pass to the zoo in the mail a while ago, so we finally decided to use it last Saturday. The weather was perfect for zoo exploring.

Definitely wouldn't want to encounter that tongue. It was probably as big as my face.

Hey there Mr. Komodo Dragon.

Isn't that just the cutest thing you've ever seen (besides Killer of course)?! It's a little red panda sleeping in a crate 30 feet up in a tree.

Brad loves otters, and every time we've been anywhere that has otters they are ALWAYS sleeping, so he never gets to see them play. We walked by their habitat, and they (no surprise) were sleeping. So after visiting the reptiles we swung back around and found them playing in the water!

If you look really close you can see a leg sticking out of momma kangaroo's pouch. She just had a joey a couple months ago. I kept waiting to get a picture of baby's head, but whenever he tried to peak out she would push him back in there (well all of him except his leg anyways).

Love, Brad & Courtney

Recipe of the week (actually made a few weeks ago)

First, it's always fantastic when Brad not only makes dinner but offers to do so! Second, Brad's dinners are always delicious (an added plus). A couple weeks ago he made a Pachuca, Mexico special: chalupas! They're so easy and so yummy!

First you have to make the tortilla dough. You have to have corn flour. We use this ma se ca stuff. Just follow the directions on the back of the package. Instead of all water we put in some lard as well. Gross, I know, but it makes the tortillas really pliable, which is a must.

Roll your dough into little balls. You'll want them to be pretty small, because your tortillas won't be very big at all.

We use a tortilla press to flatten our dough into tortillas, but a simple rolling pin would work too.

Now it's time to bake those little guys. You know they're done when both sides gets bubbly like this.

In the meantime of making tortillas, have potatoes boiling to later mash.

Cook and shred some chicken.

Chop up some radish and cilantro, and shred some mozzarella cheese.

We put everything out like a little assembly line so it would be easier to put it all together.

Tortillas, mashed potatoes, shredded chicken, chopped cilantro, chopped radish, shredded cheese, green enchilada sauce, and red enchilada sauce. If you only like red or only like green sauce just pick one. Brad likes green and I like red, so we used both. At the end of your assembly line you'll want to have one frying pan lined with hot oil and another frying pan that's hot with no oil.

It's time to put the chalupas together!

Flatten some mashed potatoes on top of your tortilla. Sprinkle on some chicken, cilantro, and radish. Put some shredded cheese on top of that. And lastly, dribble on some sauce. Place in the oil pan for about 20 seconds and then transfer over to the hot pan for about one minute.

Enjoy your yummy chalupas while they're hot!

A special thanks goes out to my wonderful husband who made this delicious dinner. I love you, and appreciate all the simple things you do that show your love for me.

love, Brad & Courtney