weekend shenanigans

So is anyone else aware of the fact that there are only nine shopping days left until Christmas? Because I just realized that!! This past weekend was a busy one! I did get a few little presents bought, but still have lots to do!

Friday – Friday evening after work, Chris had this whole date night planned out for us, complete with reservations to Ruth’s Chris for dinner since we never got to really celebrate our anniversary this year. I thought it was super sweet! I told him that we didn’t have to go there though. We ended up at J Alexanders and I ordered the Thai Kai salad which is one of my favorite things on their menu!

We went to Best Buy to take advantage of the buy two get one free game deal that they had going on. Chris basically doubled his collection of Xbox One and PS4 games! After dinner, the mall was still open as was Toys R Us so we did some more shopping. It was such a fun evening!

Saturday – Chris has been working on a Christmas mix for this company’s float for weeks. The parade was this Saturday. We found out at the last minute that we had to be there two hours earlier than we thought, so we hustled and got down there. It was freezing on the float, but we had a lot of fun! Their float’s theme was frozen, and they hired actresses that sing to play the parts and they did such a great job! Chris described it best, he said you could see Christmas in the eyes of all the kids that we passed that were so excited to see some of the favorite characters. There was also a snow machine blowing snow on us, which was Christmas magic for me too!

During the parade, my mom was texting me pictures of my new sisters, Molly and Maggie!!! My stepdad’s father had taken in a pregnant stray and they adopted two of the puppies. How freaking adorable are these girls??? Molly is the brown one and Maggie is the black one.

Saturday night after the parade we headed to Uptown to have dinner since we hadn’t eaten all day. There was SO MUCH traffic, we ended up giving up and heading to World of Beer! They had Frosty and Rudolph playing, WOB and Christmas movies? Yes, please!!!

We ate a quick dinner, then headed to Bottle Tree to premier party for the Dean and Company Christmas Special that we were in.

There I am in the middle 🙂 And here is a picture of two of the Dean’s doing some hardcore karaoke after the show!

Sunday – We caught up on some of our shows in the morning, then I headed out to the store to get our groceries for the week while Chris had his friend and his dad come over to help him hang his new TV he got as an early Christmas present.

While I was walking around Target, I had a hankering for some goat cheese. I went to the cracker aisle to find something to pair it with and found cranberry oat crisps. You guys….this is the most amazing thing ever. Ever!!!

Sunday afternoon we went to El Cazador for an early dinner and walked around Bargain Hunt then called it a day.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We have a busy week coming up with our food drive event on Thursday night!

Monday’s are always hard, but especially after having an extended weekend!!!  I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving, I know I did! I recapped some of my holiday in my Friday Favorites posts for those of you that took a bloggy break. Pictures of some of our Christmas decor and cute doggies are not to be missed!

Also, today Jana and I are announcing our secret collaboration! If you don’t want to read about my awesome weekend, at least scroll to the bottom of the page to check it out!

Thanksgiving was spent between Chris’s parents house for lunch and my mom’s house for dinner. It was great getting to spend the day with family!

Some pictures that were snapped at my mom’s house:

This was lunch at Chris’s parents house. I’m pretty sure it is obligatory to snap at least one picture of all the yummy that you ate.  Sweet potato casserole, pineapple casserole, corn souffle, green beans, mac and cheese, ham and turkey. There were even more things to choose from but ummm….no room! I even let me food touch, which never happens!

My mom had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce, spanish rice, stuffing, sweet potatoes, pepperoni rolls, lasagna and pumpkin pie and cherry pie for dessert.

After dinner, Chris and I went back to our house for a little while, then I met up with my mom at Walmart around 9pm to start our shopping adventures. We had the best time!

There was, what we will now call the boot incident of 2014. My sister had gone to Belk and bought herself about five pairs of the $20 boots. She was completely prepared, and had even gone to the store earlier that week to try them all on so she knew the exact sizes and colors she wanted. She secured all five pairs immediately Thursday evening and went home. Then Friday afternoon we received a frantic phone call.

Tracy – “Where are you guys?”

Me – “Shopping at The Summit”

Tracy – “Can you guys go by Belk and see if they have the Icon Boots in a size 9 pretty please? Color taupe. I went to try all my boots on when I got home, and there is one 9 and one 8 in the box”

Me – “Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha amateur!!!!! YOU ALWAYS CHECK THE BOXES!!!!!!!”

Tracy – “Nadine this isn’t funny, this is a matter of life or death”

Me- “Dramatic much? Mom and I will work our way over there in a few.”

We were literally four stores away and Tracy continued to text me things like “I neeeeeeed those boooooots.” My mom and I were like OMG FINE!!! So we went to Belk and found them in under a minute. We texted her this picture and told her not to be such an amateur next year:

And so was the boot incident of 2014.

My mom and I broke our previous record of 18 hours straight of shopping. This year we shopped for 20 hours. We didn’t even hit all of the malls in the area. I am not quite sure how we did it. No sleep, getting older, lots of walking. The only thing that is bothering my this weekend is my swollen feet and that is just because 20 hours of walking will do that to anyone!

The damage:

My finds

I seriously love these ones!!!!

Lots of stores had 50% off or buy one get one and what have you. I scored some movies and CDs from Target for my nieces and nephews, and a $12 clearance dress for myself. The boots pictured above were $29/$39/$19. The outlet sales were great but I was trying to refrain from buying too much for me….you know…because Christmas. We had so much fun!

Saturday was spent watching all of the football! The Iron Bowl was one hell of a game. We started out real strong, then I started to stress eat as Auburn did their Auburn thing. We came out raising all kinds of hell in the second half, Blake Sims got his shit together and we pulled out a big W. Big thanks to this guy:

Amari Cooper deserves the Heisman after that performance!

Now we can sit pretty with our Iron Bowl win and head to the SEC championship! Oh hey, we didn’t need a second this year Auburn.

Sunday – The day was spent meal planning, grocery shopping, and catching up on TV shows on the couch. I did manage to get a little more organizing done since it was the last day of the organizing month challenge.

Speaking of challenges, Jana and I have an Instagram challenge for the month of December! Remember this meme?

Well we decided to make it a challenge!!!! Use #inthedrawer and share your pictures throughout the month! Participate and enjoy all the awesomeness. I am whipping out my Barbies from when I was a child, so be prepared for epic 80’s and 90’s outfits!

Luckily, Jana made a good point that we didn’t want to put whore in the hashtag, you know…to keep the creepers at bay, so remember #inthedrawer and have some fun!

Be sure to follow us on Instagram!

Jana’s Instagram

Nadine’s Instagram

Friday – Laura and I decided to meet up for lunch Friday! We weren’t sure if we would have enough time but we figured Friday was as good a day as any to see if we can make lunch meet ups work! We went to Babalu’s and it was delicious! We tried the queso and added pork belly…any you guys….amazing! It was so great to get to see her for lunch!

Friday evening Chris and I stayed in, we chatted for awhile and had homemade flat bread pizza for dinner. It was fun.

Saturday – We were up bright and early Saturday morning to start filming for the Dean and Company Christmas Special. If you live in the Birmingham area, you have to check it out if you haven’t heard of it already! This is the 35th anniversary year! We always have so much fun with them. I gotta take it back to my old days and dresses as a cheerleader for one skit….and we were part of a party train skit also. Can’t wait to see it all come together!

Me in the changing area before going on. Don’t mind the rows of extensions and stuff behind me haha!

Gotta love the green screens! Choochooo here comes the party train!

After we were done filming, we headed over to World of Beer to meet up with our friends and catch some football games! I had to order the beer cheese tater nachos. Because yum! I also had the Cranberry Ginger Cider and the Raspberry framboise.

Such a great day of football!!! Alabama pulled out a W over Mississippi State, then my Dawgs beat Auburn!

Sunday – We caught up on some of our shows, then I meal planned and went to the store.

Sunday afternoon I made some snack plates for us, this is turkey sausage, bruschetta jack cheese and creamy havertti cheese with Pepperidge Farms Sweet Hot mustard. Yum!

I also prepped veggie soup for lunches this week.

And we had chicken enchiladas for dinner! Mmmmm!

I hope all of you had a wonderful weekend! It is a short week for me this week, as me and a few girl friends will be heading to Houston at the end of the week for a wedding! Lots to lots to do!