It’s that time again friends, it’s time for NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS!  Are you making some for next year?  Do you have a good track record of keeping to them?  For next year, I’ve made a few new resolutions and here they are:

1) Lose 10 pounds.

I pretty much say this every year, but really, I need to lose that and more next year!  Our company has a weight loss challenge and the top 30 teams who lose the most weight get an extra week of vacation, HOLLA!!

2) Find balance in life.

I want to be able to find a good balance between my full-time job, blogging, etsy shop updates, sleeping, keeping the house clean and spending quality time with family and friends.  Sometimes I tend to focus more energy on work and blogging… while neglecting other parts of my life.  Finding the right balance will create a happy medium for myself and others.

3) Call/Skype with people more instead of texting/tweeting.

The more advanced technology gets, the less I have real conversations and interactions with loved ones who live far away.  Sometimes I get lazy and get into back and forth texting conversations with friends for hours on end when it would just be faster to talk on the phone for 5 minutes, I see you nodding your head right now!!!

4) Be more budget savvy when it comes to shopping.

Without getting into too much detail, I shop, A LOT.  And I don’t always wait for good deals or buy things when they are sale.  Which means I sometimes buy things for full price and keep the tags on and don’t even wear it until it’s on sale… not smart!  I need to be more budget conscious and savvy, my husband is totally loving this one.

What are your New Years Resolutions? I’d love to read them!

And lastly, before I go… for the year… I would LOVE it if all you bloggy friends could come over and celebrate the New Year with me!    But unfortunately, I’m not too sure how many of you would want to fly to Missouri for it… so instead, if I were truly going to have a party for you all, here’s what the lineup would look like!!

Invite:

A beautiful champagne silhouette invite by the all mighty Martha Stewart (a 2011 version of course) would be sent to all guests weeks before the party.

What Your Host (that’s ME!) Will Be Wearing:

First, I would get all glammed up in this pretty lace dress seen on Natalie Merrillyn.

And throw on these beautiful Christian Louboutin strappy heels (if only I could afford these).

Menu:

These little French Onion Soup Stuffed Mushrooms made by The Pioneer Woman would start the night by getting your appetite going!!

Followed by a Cranberry-Orange Glazed Brie snack seen on Ingredients, Inc. Brie is seriously one of my favorite foods… EVER!

And of course no party would be complete without cupcakes, topped with a anna and blue paperie free printable seen on pizzzazzerie.

And a glass of champagne with a strawberry would be in my (and your) hand all night long…

Decor:

A table full of gold and champagne and “clock” decorations are a must!

Paper pom poms to adorn the room like these made by pomtree would really be the dulche de leche on top!

Favor:

And lastly, you’d all be going home with a 2011 Plantable Desk Calendar made by girl in gear studio!

Please RSVP in the Comment section and let me know what you’d wear to my “would-be” party (and don’t forget to tell me your New Years Resolutions too)!

See you in 2011!!

Wow!  I can’t believe there is only a few days left of 2010!  This year has been an exciting one for me, as we finished our basement renovations, attended many weddings of family/friends, got a great promotion at work, and oh yea… I started this BLOG and ETSY SHOP this year too, minor detail really.    I had a lot of fun capturing all my life’s events with you all this year and hope to do so for many more years!  Your comments, emails, tweets, always put a SMILE on my face!!   So start off this recap, I just wanted to share some of my most memorable trips taken this year in month by month/picture form…

January

I began the year by helping prepare for my nephew, Evan’s, 1st Birthday Party, where I made Cake Pops for the first time! (Los Angeles, CA)

March

Our first of many weddings of the year was Robert and Roxanna’s Vegas Wedding Part 1 and Part 2 (Las Vegas, NV)

April

I attended my dear friend, Melissa and Chris’s baby shower (Canton, MI)

May

My brother-in-law and blog domain owner/designer got married! (Columbus, OH)

June

I attended my ex-roomies Navy and Peach wedding (San Francisco, CA)

Where I also happened to do my boudoir session with Bllew Photography too!

July

My brother, SIL and nephew flew out to visit us to surprise my husband for his 30th birthday!  It also happened to be my nephew’s very first trip to the states of Missouri AND Kansas!

Then we headed off to Pennsylvania for my friend’s beautiful wedding where I got to play bridesmaid (Doylestown, PA)

August

Melissa and Chris had a delicious Chinese wedding reception where I got to catch up with lots of college friends!! (Little Falls, NJ)

And later that month, we flew to Seattle for a sweet yellow and grey wedding! (Seattle, WA)

September

My brother got me and my sis-in-law last minute tickets to be in the audience (2nd row) of the Modern Family episode of Oprah! Did you see us on TV?? (Chicago, IL)

October

My husband’s cousin got married this month and it was a fun weekend spent with his family! (Stamford, CT)

And later that month, I met up with a bunch of bloggers and attended the wedding of the friend who introduced me and Marvin to each other!  And it was my first second shooting opportunity thanks to Anna Wu Photography! (Los Angeles, CA)

November

We spent our second Thanksgiving as a married couple in my husband’s hometown.  And we went to our first Michigan – OSU game ever (those are our alma maters), don’t ask me about the game please.    (Columbus, OH)

December

And finally, we ended the year with a cruise vacation in the Southern Caribbean (full picture recap to come next week):

There’s a recap of all the fun trips anyways… besides that, I did also make some trips out to the following locations for business purposes (some where I got to meet bloggers too!):

Cleveland, OH (multiple trips)
Orlando, FL (multiple trips)
Nashville, TN
Hamilton, MT
Ottawa, Canada

In between my busy travel schedule, my husband and I finished renovating our basement!!  As in… we began with wood paneling and water seeping through the walls in July 2009…

to foundation repairs, sump pump added, putting up drywall…

taping+mudding, sanding, priming, painting…

installing new light fixtures, new flooring+ carpet… and finally finished in August 2010!

Basically every weekend that was not spent traveling, was spent in our  basement, FUN!

And finally, some random statistics for year 2010:

Number of Times OSU has beat Michigan in Football since my husband and I have been together: 5
Number of Giveaways on Sandy a la Mode: 31
Number of Plane Rides: 46 (not including layovers)
Number of Blog Posts: 266 (including tomorrow’s post, the last one of the year)
Number of Blog Followers (via Google Friend Connect): 417
Number of Twitter Followers: 1069
Number of Tweets: 10,215+
Number of Comments: 10,350+
Number of Calories Consumed: 758,000 (estimate based on a 2000 calorie/day diet to maintain weight + weight gained LOL)

What is your best memory of 2010?

And it’s back to work, but thank goodness it’s only a 3 day work week, woohoo!  If you saw my last post, you’ll  notice that we had a WHITE CHRISTMAS!  For those of you who didn’t have a White Christmas and would like some resemblance of “white snow” in your life, I thought I’d share a recipe from my mother-in-law’s stash, it’s one that I shared with a few bloggers in the Pizelles and All Things Ami “Winter Recipe Exchange“!  I bring to you the delectable (and so simple to make)…

Pecan Balls

(also known as Russian Tea Cakes)

Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 cup flour

Directions:
1) Cream together butter and 1/ cup powdered sugar.
2) Add pecans, vanilla and flour. Mix well.
3) Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place on a baking sheet.

4) Bake in a 400 F degree preheated oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

5) Roll warm balls in remaining powdered sugar to coat all over.  Allow balls to cool and enjoy!

Linking up this one to Sweet Shot Tuesdays because looking at it makes me want to bake more!

Did you have a White Christmas?

Hi friends!  Hope you all had a very MERRY CHRISTMAS (for those of you who celebrate it).  Since my husband and I just went on our cruise last week, we decided to stay home for this Christmas/New Years and just relax and catch up on life.  It was a little sad not getting to visit either one of our families this time around but at least we have each other.    I must say, this was probably one of the most low key Christmases I’ve ever had… no decorations, no responsibilities, it was just like another weekend (not that it was a bad thing or anything)!  Here’s a few snaps from the day!

First we begin with my outfit for the day.  Don’t let my outfit deceive you though,  it was a frigid 15 degrees out AND we had a WHITE CHRISTMAS, HOORAY!

Shirt: Gap, Vest: Forever 21, Jeans: Salt, Boots: Department Store (a long time ago), Necklace: Allora Handmade

Lunch consisted of Dim Sum at one of our favorite restaurants, Pine and Bamboo Garden.  And yes, Chinese restaurants are one of those places that is actually OPEN on Christmas Day!

We pretty much ate like kings!  And I even got to have my favorite drink, Taro Bubble Tea, YUM (and I mean it came in a Bud Light pint glass, that’s pretty gangsta if you ask me)!  We then headed to the biggest Asian grocery store in Kansas to buy ingredients for our big Christmas dinner… actually, we just made and ate Shrimp Spring Rolls…!

And then we ended the night with a Skype date with my nephew and family which really made the day complete!

Isn’t my nephew, Evan, SO FREAKING ADORABLE!??!  Gahh!!  He makes my heart smile, foreals!  And he even showed us how he plays with his new Magnetic Fishing Set toy by Cerra that we bought him for Christmas, shared some of his goldfish he was eating with us too, and gave us a BIG kiss!!  <3

What did you do on Christmas??

We’re TWO DAYS away from Christmas, can you believe it?  This year has seriously flown by!  My husband and I don’t plan on doing a thing this holiday season, we actually didn’t even have time to decorate the house or anything like that (or else you know I would have taken some pictures to show you).  We’re going to a Christmas party with friends on Sunday, but that’s about it!  Besides that, we’ll pretty much just be taking a vacation from our vacation.  I’m sad we aren’t visiting family this time around but we plan to make a trip out to California early next year!

In the spirit of Christmas, here are some super rad trees that i found around the web/blogosphere!

1 don’t feel like getting a real tree?  create this bookshelf tree seen on swiss miss
2 i absolutely adore this heart bokeh tree!  picture taken by the talented georgianna lane
3 a stunning white tree seen on simplyvonne
4 a super cute beaded pink tree seen on sweet jessie
5 a tree made out of useless but pretty objects seen on greatfi
6 learn how to make a favor tree for your guests on martha stewart
7 make a mini tree out of pipe cleaners seen on martha stewart
8 super neat beer bottle tree seen on beer camp

Aren’t they all so unique and pretty?  Next year… maybe next year we will finally have time to put up a tree!  Well, friends, I’ll be taking a blog break for Christmas Eve and the weekend, but will be back next week to ring in the new year!    But before I go, here’s a little virtual card for you that I made from a Pugly Pixel download (photograph by City of Blackbirds).