A Look Back

As much as I lament that nothing goes on in my life, this has been an incredible year for me. I really feel like I'm growing up and becoming a "real adult" and finding my place in the real world. This was my first full year as a salaried employee and I expanded my skills exponentially. I started this year with my love, my favorite place to be!

We went through Winter Storm 2011...

Which was quickly followed by a complete apartment meltdown, filled with repair after repair, and leaving us without any water in our apartment for almost 10 days. BUT in the middle of that, we escaped to Albuquerque to see Wicked!

In March, we saw Boyfriend's newest favorite band, The Black Keys in Phoenix!

Along with openers Cage the Elephant:

We went back to Phoenix twice more before July, once to see comedian Kevin Hart and once with our families for a little summer getaway!

Boyfriend gave me diamond earrings for our anniversary...

In July, we went to Vegas for our 2 year anniversary!

We stayed at Caesar's Palace...

Gambled....

Saw LOVE by Cirque d Solei!

And SHOPPED!

And ate!

One of my good friends Adriana got married, which meant we threw her a bachelorette party!

I turned 24!

And Boyfriend and I celebrated our third Christmas together!

It was such a great year, filled with so many memories. I have a feeling things will only get better!

Sun Bowl

When you read this, I'll be watching GA Tech and Utah State playing in the Sun Bowl!

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Hope your Saturday is filled with some college football, too!

Friday Favorites

It's time for more Friday Favorites! Hooray! Today I'll talk about my favorite nail polish colors. I'm currently OBSESSED with nail polish, because I think polish is particularly perfect during the holiday season. This is my favorite color for Christmas:


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The red is the perfect holiday color, plus the ruby red slipper-esque sparkles make it super festive and fun! I'm wearing it now!



See?

I also LOVE this type of polish:


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I am also obsessed with cracked nail polish. My friend brought me some from Sephora and I love it, though I find it hard not to play with (as in, I like to pick at it), so I don't wear it often, especially if my nails are too short! I keep my nails pretty short, because my whole job is on the computer, plus I write on the side, so I spend too much time with the keyboard to have long fingernails.


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This color is another one of my favorites. I tend to like nail polish for special events, which usually means SPARKLE.

However, I think THIS


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Is the one I'll wear for New Year's! It's so pretty and sparkly! It's the perfect way to bring in the new year!

Do you love nail polish?

Nerd

I'm a nerd. Case in point:

I got really, really excited to make eggs in my brand new saute pan (that I got for Christmas).

Nerd.

Wednesday Ramblings

• I only have a few minutes because tonight, I'm going with my family to see the NMSU Aggies play the UNM Lobos! Go Aggies!
• Josh bought me a diet Ocean Water from Sonic... and won my heart all over again!
• I worked yesterday. I worked today. I work tomorrow. Then I have four more days off for the holidays! Hooray!
• Boyfriend + Boyfriend's mom + Boyfriend's mom's boyfriend + Jenna = SUN BOWL on Saturday! I'm excited!
• Boyfriend and I have been seriously talking about our next big vacation and we think that it might have to be...

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CHICAGO! The Windy City!

I've ALWAYS wanted to go to Chicago. I'm super excited about this!

•  I'm currently watching He's Just Not That Into You... side story: when I went to see this with my girlfriends, they all walked out of the theater saying, "I'm the exception". For me, however? This movie ruined/saved my life. I walked out saying, "Oh my God, ___ doesn't really like me and ___ doesn't really like me!" Girls have such a tendency to rationalize everything (examples: Oh, D is just so confused after his last breakup... or M and I are meant to be together, he just wants to date around first... NEWS FLASH, past Jenna. Neither were really into you, even though they pretend to be into me now that I'm incredibly happy with Boyfriend. Take that).
• Boyfriend bought me the old school nintendo mario 64 game for the wii, plus the controller, because he knew how much I LOVED Mario 64 when I was growing up. He's such the best.
• I've had green chile about 200 times in the past two weeks. Am I sick of it? NO WAY.
• I gave Shadow and little Remix rib bones last night and they promptly hid them somewhere in the house. I have a sneaky suspicion that they "buried" them in my roommate's bed. Oopsie.
• Last night, I visited my 91 and 92 year old grandparents. My grandpa asked where Boyfriend was, and I told him that he was working. Then my 91 year old grandfather said:

"Gotta get that money."

Sorry, I didn't realize he was the most gangsta 91 year old man in the world!

Gotta fly!

The Holiday Rundown

Merry Christmas, Blogland! It's technically the 26th, but I took, a couple days off to enjoy time with my family. I spent Christmas Eve Eve baking pumpkin bread for our roommate's dad (slash landlord), for our holiday party and a loaf for us at home becaue I love it so much!

I also spent the rest of the evening trying to separate the millions of gifts that we bought into piles for my family, Boyfriend's family, my friends and his friends... plus what we bought for Shadow!

Christmas Eve is always our busiest night. Both families celebrate on Christmas Eve, which means we run back and forth between houses like crazy. We started at my family's (photos from my sister, Jessica):













(These our our Cindy Lou Who slippers!)

It was such a great night. My mom bought me a really nice saucepan and a really nice sautepan from Sur La Table, a massage, the new boots, new pajamas, and some money. My cousin Steph bought me a cute clutch and two great pairs of earrings from Forever 21 (LOVE!), and my grandma got me a gift card for Chilis. Jess bought me a cover for my Kindle! I'm so happy because I had been looking for one! Hooray!

It was such a great Christmas Eve. But as soon as the presents were unwrapped, we buzzed off to Boyfriend's family to celebrate with them. We played some Charades (competitively, I might add) and then started opening presents. I got an Amazon gift card from Boyfriend's mom, some Avon perfume and body shimmer and body cream from my secret santa (his aunt Sylvia) plus a 25 dollar gift card, and a really beautiful scarf and mitten set from his grandparents.

We didn't get to stay long, but we had a great, great time. The next day, we got up early and had Christmas tea and biscottis with Boyfriend's mom (she makes them herself) before rushing back to my family's for our annual Christmas Day breakfast: eggs with lots of red chile! Yum!

About two hours after that, we rushed back to Boyfriend's house for his Christmas dinner of prime rib and scalloped potatoes. THEN we scurried to the movie theater to see Young Adult, which was really good, I thought! Then we were allowed to go home and I napped for four hours. It had been a busy, busy weekend.

I'm not sure what the plan is for today, but hopefully it includes lots of lying around and relaxing! Hope your holiday was wonderful!

White Christmas Eve Eve

It's Christmas Eve Eve and it's snowing in Las Cruces, New Mexico!

We got a few inches last night (our second big storm this winter.... when we rarely even have one!) and woke up this morning to a blanket of snow. This is technically an on Friday for us, but I took it off anyway to bake cookies with my mom, so I got to sleep in without worrying! It worked out perfect, because they closed the base, anyway!

The snow is still coming down and I'm a little worried because my cousin is supposed to fly in tonight... I guess we'll see! Since the southwest is really unprepared for snow, we don't have all the necessary equipment: like I've said before, it doesn't make sense for a whole town to have a fleet of snow trucks and plows and snow chains for all official vehicles when this is the first year we've had so many storms.

I'm not sure if we'll get to exchange presents, but I'm excited to have snow for the holidays! It makes everything festive... and I'm in a much better mood than last time, since we remembered to let our faucets drip both hot and cold, and none of our pipes froze! Woo!

Familia

My sister came back into town yesterday (she goes to Law School at UNM [also, I think Law School is scary and important enough to be capitalized]). My cousin Steph comes into town tomorrow. And this weekend, we will be spending lots and lots of time with our family.

HOORAY!

I'm excited to have a weekend to have my family around. Boyfriend and I spend a lot of time with our families, of course, but the holidays seems even better. We'll be trying out best to split time between our families, which is always hard because somebody gets upset, but I think we'll figure out a way to be fair. The most important thing is that Boyfriend and I get to spend the holiday together, even if our quality time is spent shuttling back and forth between houses!

Las Cruces is supposed to get hit hard by some more snow tonight, but lucky I already took tomorrow off to bake with my mama and sister and then to exchange gifts with my favorite friends: Val, Thomas, and Boyfriend! We're all good friends and it's fun to all get together and exchange our gifts.

When you read this, I'll be at work, watching the clock until 4:45 when I can burst forth from the doors in excitement, but I hope that most of you are already off for the holidays! Have a great day!

Yay, Presents!

Tonight was a bitter sweet moment. I had dinner with my good friend Dani at Andales (yum!), where we feasted on flautas and tacos. We also exchanged Christmas presents (the sweet part!) and she gave me some AWESOME things, such as all of the colors that I need to create galaxy nails that I saw on Cup of Jo (photos from her page!):
















She also got me some Avon glitter eyeliner. She knows me too well: I love all things sparkly and all things eyeliner! I think this will be perfect for New Year's Eve! :o)



She ALSO got me a beautiful purple necklace/bracelet made from Kenyan women from woven grass. It's beautiful and I love it. PLUS, she got me a great candle. :o)

The bitter part of this whole thing is that she is moving to Chicago to spread her wings in one week and one day. I'll miss her; throughout everything, I can always count on Danielle to be there to talk to me or hang out with me when I need someone. She and I have been friends since before I can remember: we went to elementary, middle, high school, college together. We lived together at the dorms. She's a great friend and I'm proud of her for taking this step and being so brave, but hey, at least it gives me an opportunity to visit her in Chicago!

Ah, the first presents of the holiday season. Exciting!

Merry Christmas, Shadow!

I posted a few days about about wanting to find the perfect present. The next day, I found him tightly curled up on my body pillow and a light bulb went off.

Ding!

He likes his bed, but he can't get comfortable because it's too thin and no soft and fluffy enough anymore! Duh! So we should get him a new bed!

Today, Boyfriend and I wrestled him into his leash and strolled to Petco...

On the one day of the week they do pet adoptions outside. Which meant PANDEMONIUM outside Petco! Kennels of dogs all lined up and people everywhere. And as soon we we approached, a few dogs started barking at Shadow, who looked up at us with wild eyes like, "Mom... Dad... I'm going to go crazy soon and start barking and howling...!"

We scurried inside, tugging along a whining Shadow (he was whining as he precursor to howling, not because he was sad) and made it safely inside. Whew. However, he was still all riled up, which made picking out a bed pretty difficult.

When we picked out his first bed, we lined up a few on the floor. He sniffed them all, then laid down on one and licked it. He's a smart dog, so we knew that was his choice. This time, he was so hyped up that it was impossible to get him to even glance at the beds. We lined up a few on the floor and called his name about 300 times to get his attention, but he would barely look at us before getting distracted by another dog or another person or howling outside.

"Shadow," I said seriously. "You have to pick out a bed."

I know I sounded ridiculous, but he's super smart and sometimes, if we tell him what we want from him, he will respond in ways that always amaze us. I figured it was worth a shot.

"Shadow!" I said again. "How about this one?"

He sniffed it and then... to our amazement...

He laid down on the bed and wagged his tail.

Relief! We escaped from the store as soon as possible, with a $75 memory foam bed for our genius dog. Merry Christmas, Shadow! You're the best dog ever and we looooove you!

Friday Favorites!

It's time for the one, the only (yeah right, the most popular scheduled type of post...)...

FRIDAY FAVORITES! Woop!

Today, I'm going to post a Friday Favorites on my favorite Holiday Traditions. I figure this is appropriate with the holiday season swirling around us, so here goes!

One of my favorite holiday traditions is making Christmas cookies with my mom on December 23rd. We always have a Christmas Eve party for our close friends at my parents', so Christmas Eve is filled with cooking for that night. But on the 23rd, we spend the day making my favorite type of cookies:


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They look weird and a little ugly, but they are SO SO good... they're cinnamony and chocolately and fluffy pumpkiny. So great.

I also love eating red chile and eggs on Christmas morning. Last year, my parents' went out of town on Christmas Day to visit my sister in Oregon, so I took on the responsibility of making them for myself and Boyfriend. It was different than eating them in the house where I grew up, but familiar and still SO YUMMY.


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And for the past two years, Boyfriend and I spent Christmas Day watching a double movie feature with a big Diet Coke (for me), a bottle of water (for him), some Red Vines, some Sour Patch Kids, and some awesome movie popcorn.

This year, I think my choice will be



Or...


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What are your favorite traditions?

Weekend Starts for Me!

Since we have the every other Friday off schedule, my weekend starts TONIGHT and I couldn't be happier.

Today was a busy day at work, especially since I was given an assignment with about thirty minutes left in my day. Outside, I was like, "Oh, sure, no problem!" but inside I was like, "F&@*!" I just wanted to go home!

BUT I got it done and then rushed home to eat with Boyfriend. He's back at work, so I'm here watching old episodes of America's Next Top Model and enjoying my evening next to my beautiful Christmas tree!

With only a week until Christmas, it's about time that I start making time to dole out the wonderful gifts to my friends. I love this part! It's my favorite part of Christmas shopping and gift giving in general. Boyfriend's grandfather's birthday is this weekend, too, so we'll be spending Sunday evening with him at a great local steakhouse. Yum!

I'm excited about Christmas, but I'm a little sad to see this season going so quickly. It's been a crazy month, with Boyfriend being hurt and everything, so December is speeding by. But my cousin Steph is coming in and I'm excited to see her, so that's definitely something to look forward to!

I don't know why I'm messing around on the internet when I have a thousand gifts to wrap. I should go do that. Have a good night!


***Edit: also, if anyone cares, this is the ANTM that has Tyra FREAKING OUT on that girl Tiffany! I love Tyra freakouts!

True Love

You know it's true love when my handsome, manly, Martin-Scorscese-loving, Oscar-award-watching, movie reviewer/critic, never-watched-a-reality-show-before, masculine Boyfriend walks into the room and goes,

"Oh, it's almost 11, did you want to watch Teen Mom 2? That girl Jenelle is such a trainwreck."


<3

Beautiful Sundays

Today, I got up and made eggs for myself, Boyfriend and our roommate Thomas. Then we watched NFL Countdown and a little bit of Chopped, because I'm obsessed.


(tv.com)

It's been a nice, relaxing day after a busy day yesterday! Yesterday, Boyfriend and I got up and had lunch with his mom at Red Lobster. We LOVE Red Lobster... it's hard to find good fish in New Mexico, so Red Lobster is our main option here.

After, we went to get Boyfriend the new iPhone as a present from his mom for Christmas! His old phone was a POS, so he's so happy to have a phone that charges... and receives calls consistently... and registers missed calls. You know, normal demands of a cell phone.

While he was getting his new phone, I headed over to Marshall's for some Christmas shopping and I got some GREAT things!

I can't show them here, because some of the gifts I got are for people that probably read this blog. But I knocked out most of my shopping in one fell swoop, then came home and finished the rest online. Online shopping is the best, especially from Amazon!

So except for one small errand, I'm totally done with my shopping... only about 500 bucks later. But it's so nice to have money to spend on people for Christmas! Last year, we were super broke after months of Shadow treatments after our beautiful puppy hurt his back and was on crate rest, plus months of weekly vet visits and all kinds of medicine, which meant a loooot of money our of our pockets. THEN we also went to Boston, so that was expensive, too. Basically, last year, we were kind of broke.

The year before, we were both just poor students with no money, so we didn't have the option. This is the first year that I could really buy the presents I wanted to buy for my friends and family and I couldn't be happier with my purchases!

Are you done with your Christmas shopping?

FRIDAY FAVORITES!

It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday...

for FRIDAY FAVORITES!

Yes, it's the end of the week, so it's time for more Friday Favorites. I worked today, so by the time you read this, I'll probably be driving home, excited to start the weekend. Ah, weekend.

Anyway, back to the point. Today, I'm going to post about my favorite scents. I love perfumes, but I have a few go-to favorites that I'll talk about today.



My absolute favorite is Lola from Marc Jacobs. It's feminine and perfect for daily wear. It smells like rose, grapefruit and vanilla to me. Plus, I adore the bottle. Isn't it precious? My best friend Val bought this for me last year for my birthday and it came with a scented body cream and a tiny little bottle to carry with you in your purse. I just love it.



I also love Daisy, again by Marc Jacobs. I wore this all summer and even had a little stick with a roller ball, so I could carry it with me in my purse and reapply as necessary. It's super fresh and clean and it's another beautiful floral scent. And, again, I love the bottle design.



Boyfriend's favorite scent on me is Very Sexy, by Victoria's Secret. I keep this for a night scent since although it's a light spray, it's very rich and sexy. It's a great, sensual smell.

Don't make fun of me for this last one...



(photos via sephora)

Very Sexy... for Him! I used to wear just a tiny bit of cologne to work when I was a server, and men would always tell me how great I smelled. Plus, I kept smelling my wrists because good boy smell is the best. It's not too strong, like some colognes can be, it's very light and clean.

What are your favorite scents?