Holiday Decor 2012

I cannot believe another Christmas has come and gone already!  With the busy holiday season, I haven't had much time to blog so here I am finally! We wanted to share our holiday decor again this year.  I will admit, I relaxed a bit and everything isn't so matchy matchy as I would normally prefer.  My hubby loves lots of color and gravitates towards twinkle lights and tinsel {if you get my drift!}. This year, I gave in and have to admit I am still loving all the color and festivity around our home.  And with our two sweet new kittens playing with the low hanging ornaments on the tree {but thankfully not climbing it!} there hasn't been a dull moment. And we like it that way. : ) We'll keep our decorations up until New Years to enjoy it a teeny bit longer.

 

 

Our Advent "Crate"
We took an old coca~cola crate from our farm down south and turned it upright on its side and filled it with ornaments with numbers on them for each day of December.  The little faux tree in our dining room houses the ornaments.  So each day leading up to Christmas, Dylan and I added the ornament of the corresponding day of December to the tree.  Quite a fun, new tradition!  The advent crate starts on Dec 2 because the star on top of the tree was labeled for Dec 1.  {See topper with a 1 on it on pic of the tree below}.

 

 

We had a wonderful Christmas with my family and my mother~in~law who came along with us to South Georgia!  Hope all of you had a great Christmas as well! Happy New Year!

As always, I'll leave you with some pet pics!

Pasta with Creamy Pesto Sauce, Tomatoes & Olives

This recipe is a Kelly Bowden original.  To me and most carb~aholics, pasta + any type of creamy sauce = bliss!  I could eat pasta every night if necessary.  Unfortunately, for my waistline's sake, I cannot indulge quite that often. When I do, though, I do it up right.  Enter: Pasta with Creamy Pesto Sauce, Tomatoes, and Olives.  I just went with what sounded good to me and it turned out delish! {pat on back}.  Simple to make, cheap to buy, and yummy to boot. If you're like me and have the same affinity for creamy based pasta, you'll truly enjoy this recipe along with the ease of making it. Here we go...

Ingredients:

Corkscrew Pasta {or rotini}

One can diced tomatoes with green pepper & onion

Classico Pesto {I used almost the entire jar!}

1/2 cup heavy cream

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese {plus extra for topping if you like livin on the edge!}

2 Tbsp butter or margarine

Salt and Pepper {check out my cute, fat Mr. Salt shaker}

Pitted kalamata olives {as much as you desire...or use black or green olives if you prefer}


 

Step One. Cook pasta until al dente
Step Two.  Heat heavy cream and butter in a small saucepan on medium heat. 
Step Three.  Add jar of pesto to the creamy sauce and stir well.  Reduce heat to low.

Step Four.  Add in 1/4 cup of parmesan and stir. 

Step Five.  Drain the pasta and reserve a little of the pasta water in case you need to thin the sauce out to your liking.  Add in the can of tomatoes and stir gently.

Step Six.  Pour the creamy pesto sauce over the pasta and tomatoes. Gently stir.

Step Seven.  Add in your kalamata olives, salt and pepper to taste. 

Step Eight.  Plate your yummy pasta and sprinkle extra parmesan over top.  Dig in!!

December Cheer!

Soooo, as I mentioned in my Friday Favorites post, we have some pretty cool news to share from over the weekend.  We brought home two sweet, cute, adorable, loving, spunky kittens!  Pause for reaction....  : ) To make a really long story as short as possible, it all started with a stray kitty {not really stray just lost from our neighbor's house} coming up to our door last Monday.  I had been so sad about losing Sushi that I never thought I'd get another kitten...EVER.  Well, the little lost kitty that walked up to our door was like a holiday miracle!! Not only did I make it my mission to help that kitty {feed it, try to get it back to it's home safe, etc}, I realized I could, in fact, open my heart again to having another kitty of my own.  My sweet husband saw the excitement and joy in my eyes when I saw this little lost kitty and my desire to help it and said that it was time for us to get another one.  So in true Bowden form, when we were told by the Atlanta Humane Society that they had a "special" going on...we simply couldn't resist!  Adopt one kitty and you could get another without a fee.  Especially seeing these two, we were sold.  

Without further adieu, here are our sweet little ones....Buster and Bootsie Bowden.



Bootsie Bowden
2 1/2 months old
She enjoys chasing everything, napping, and eating!



Buster Bowden
2 months old and teeny tiny
He enjoys cuddling, sleeping, and eating!

 

Lots o cuddles and naps!! Pls excuse my slightly haggard appearance! 
I was busy running around after these two all day. 

Lots of play time too!! 

 

 

 

Bootsie adores Abbey and Abbey adores Bootsie.  Buster is not quite sure yet and plays it a little closer to the vest! We let them be around Abbey for 15 minute over the top watchful supervised increments at a time.

 

More cuddles!



Sleepy as can be!!

 

Curious kitty!

  

Friday Favorites

Happy Friday!!  Time for weekend fun!  Our definition of fun this weekend will be to finish up decorating for Christmas {we already have our tree, check!}, do some light cleaning, and hopefully have a little date night if I can convince hubby to step away from watching football or at least work around the game schedules in some way to have a meal out with me.  I mean, that's only fair ; )  We have one other item on our to do list that will remain secret until we "check it off the list" and can't wait to hopefully share that on Monday!

Here are my Friday Faves:

1. Blue Christmas Ornaments.  Since our couch is light blue, I like to incorporate blue into our living room tree and fireplace decor.  These over sized glittery blue ornaments just make me happy!  They give that extra little sparkle that makes the tree twinkle even more than the lights alone.  Target and Walmart both sell these ornaments. 

2.  Home for the Holidays Soy Candle.  This candle came by way of South Georgia from a precious little store called Alice and Jay.  Dylan and I visited this cute little shop during Thanksgiving weekend.  I wanted to take home nearly everything I saw but we settled on just two affordable items, one including this candle.  Smells like Christmas!  At only $12 it was a no brainer and we've burned it every night this week! 

3.  Avocado.  I have been craving avocado lately and had some last night along with our homemade chicken enchiladas {as mentioned in this post }.  I just threw in some avocado into the homemade salsa that we had leftover from the enchiladas and ate it with tortilla chips.  Delish!  And avocado is healthy fat so I didn't fret too much about eating it.  : )

4. Nexxus Pro~Mend Split End Binding Cream.  I love this stuff!  I've noticed a difference in my hair already and have only been using in for a few weeks.  This along with regular trims at the salon are the way to go for healthy hair.  I just use a quarter size amount of this.  My hair is quite long so the amount you use depends on the length and condition of your hair.  Smells good too!  This is another product found at Target.

5. Little Green Earrings.  These festive little guys came from Dress Up Boutique in Alpharetta and were only $4.99!!!  I was shocked because they are soooo cute!  They are available in many different colors but I went with the bright green!