Happy New Year!

I saw several people tweeting about where they were for New Years Eve 10 years ago. It got me thinking and calculating back. I was a high school freshman and dating the man of my dreams. {all together now, aaaww.} We spent NYE together at a party at my high school bff's house.

I couldn't find a picture of us from that night. I'm sure there is one in my chest at my parent's house. This picture has December 1999 written on the back; probably the last day of school before the holiday break.

Oh those clothes! I can recall every piece: Gap button down shirt; leather belt from the Buckle and Lucky jeans. I'm probably wearing doc martens. ha!

Happy New Year!!

Christmas 2009

We knew we were going to have a great Christmas with our families, but it was even more perfect because it was a White Christmas! The news channels are calling it the blizzard of 09. It affected our whole state (and several others) from one end to the other. We know first hand because we traveled from one corner to the complete opposite corner.

Christmas Eve morning at Ty's parents' house.

The grandkids: Lillian, Nathan and Lucas

Ty and Lillian with the huge pile of presents behind the tree.

Sarah and Nathan; He was a sleepy boy.

The snow came down all day on Christmas Eve and the winds were blowing 50-60 mph, but that didn't stop the boys from riding 4 wheelers. I got out with Ty toward the end of the snow fall. My face was shielded from the pelting snow and ice with big sunglasses and Ty's body. After the snow had finished falling we all spent time outside riding 4 wheelers and sledding. I somehow managed to not get a single picture of the outside adventures.

Christmas morning

About to head to my parents house.

I'm so thankful our parents only live 10 minutes from each other. Otherwise we would not have been able to drive to my parents house with the road conditions.

Christmas flashback. (I'm on the right.)

LeAnn and I in our matching scarves from our parents.

My mom and sister made snow icecream. It twas delish!

Saturday afternoon (Dec. 26th) we headed to my Grandma's. The interstate was cleared for the most part, but there were areas to watch out for. I didn't get my camera out the whole evening.
My parents grew up in the same town, so Sunday afternoon was Christmas at my Nanny's house.

Nanny wearing her new apron I bought her from Williams-Sonoma.

Gage and Damen. They look like trouble, don't they?!

Ty and I were blessed with some great presents, but more importantly we got to spend quality time with our families.

Merry Christmas

This is not the card that got sent out to all my family and friends. There were lots of last minute issues and I had to choose a different style. At least this one gets to make the blog. :)

Ty and I are heading home as soon as he gets off work today. We can't wait to celebrate Christmas with our families.

Every year Ty's mom labels all the Christmas presents in code names. She did this while her kids were growing up so no one would know which presents to shake and snoop in. In the past she has used reindeer names, names of ski slopes of the place we were travelling to after Christmas for vacation, etc. This year she informed us that she is using a Twilight theme! hahahahaha! I can't wait to see which character I am.

My family has its own tradition of yummy snack food on Christmas day. We always eat a ton of french fries with different dipping sauces. When my mom and I visited NYC this past spring we ate at Pommes Frites and got several ideas for new sauces. Everyone in my family has to bring a new sauce to try out. I can't wait to stuff myself silly.

Merry Christmas!!

Holiday Goodies

{picture via google images}

Peppermint Bark

ingredients:

1 bag ghirardelli white chocolate chips

1 bag ghiradelli chocolate chips

1/2 cup crushed candy canes

directions:

1. melt chocolate chips. spread in an aluminum foil pan; freeze for 30 minutes or until hardened.

2. crush candy canes and set aside.

3. melt white chocolate chips; spread over hardened chocolate.

4. sprinkle candy cane pieces over melted white chocolate.

5. let chocolate harden then break into jagged pieces.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Gingerbread Brownies

I love this gingerbread cakelet pan from Williams-Sonoma. Instead of cake, I use brownie mix from a box. So easy and so cute.

I haven't done an update on W in a few days, because there hasn't been much change. She is still in a medically induced coma and the swelling in her brain keeps decreasing as long as she is not moved. (She has to be moved for scans, baths, etc.) Please continue to pray for her healing and for her family's strength. Ty got to see her today. The doctor he is rotating with worked with W at his main hospital. Dr. C does rounds at every hospital here in town and they stopped in to check on her today. Ty said she is looking good and her bruising is going away.

Another Blog Design

Thank you all so much for the nice compliments about the blog design I did for Sarah! I had several people ask if I could design their blog. If you are interested in having me design your blog send me an e-mail and we can discuss different options. sweetsimplicityblog(at)gmail.com

I finished up Cassie's new design on Saturday.

Her favorite colors are red, black and white. Great colors to work with!
She is doing a great doggie giveaway right now, so go check it out.

It's all about the packaging

If someone gave me butter for Christmas, I might be a tad disappointed. But if they gave me cinnamon honey butter in cute packaging I might be singing a different tune. At least, this is how I'm hoping people feel. I found this great idea on a blog that I read (can't remember which one)and it linked back to the original author. You can find the complete recipe here along with some amazing step by step pictures.

Chesley and I made these a couple of Saturdays ago.

Ty and I have eaten the butter on toast and we can testify to its yumminess!

{The original recipe author found her jars at Wal-Mart. My Wal-Mart didn't have any and I had to get a bigger size jar at a local grocery store. I used 8 oz. jars and using the exact recipe it filled 4 jars.}

Classy and Fabulous Design

I really enjoyed designing my blog. I had fun learning how to navigate through HTML. I needed a new project and I found a willing participant. I just finished up a new design for Sarah at Classy and Fabulous. She was great to work with and gave me some helpful feedback to get her blog looking, well classy and fabulous, just like her.

I love the sihlouette in her header.

W is still in a medically induced coma, but is improving each day. The swelling in her brain is slowly decreasing, but there is really no change. She has two CT scans in the morning. Please pray that these scans bring good news of healing. Tonight at church there were lots of prayers and wonderful stories about W shared. She is very loved and has a lot of people praying for a quick & successful recovery. {If you missed the what happened portion click here.)

A tradition & a recipe

Ty gave me an ornament as part of my Christmas present when we were high school seniors. I guess he ran out of ideas for me because I also received a dachshund calendar that year. (I was not a huge dog fan at the time, even though I grew up with a doxie.)

Being a girl in love I started day dreaming that the ornament would end up on our Christmas tree one day. The next year I was determined to build up our future Christmas ornament supply, so I bought Ty an ornament. We are on year seven of our tradition.

I thought this little guy was perfect for Ty this year.

I usually make him wait until our Christmas to open the ornament, but we aren't exchanging any gifts this year. I wanted him to open it early, so we could hang it on the tree. I bought him a doctor ornament last year too. I think it would be cute to have a whole tree full of them. Maybe for his future office...

Now for an addicting, finger-lickin good recipe:

White Chocolate Covered Popcorn

This is soooo easy to make.

Ingredients:

1 bag of popcorn

3 squares of vanilla almond bark

little bit of Crisco

Directions:

1. Pop a bag of popcorn according to the directions on the bag.

2. Melt 3 squares of almond bark, plus a little bit of crisco (half a tsp-ish) in the microwave.

3. Pour popcorn into a gallon ziploc baggie; pour melted almond bark on top of the popcorn and shake.

Don't forget to seal your baggie. But if you do forget I hope you have a "Nuts" around to help you with clean-up.

There are several things you can make with the leftover bark, because really

Christmas season is not complete without almond bark.

*An update on W: They found out she fractured her skull in three places and fractured the bone around her eye. The swelling in her brain has gone down, but is still there and there is still some internal bleeding. Please continue to pray for her. (If you don't know what I am talking about you can read the end of the post below.)

Weekend Recap & Turtle Pretzels

Now that we are down to the 12 days of Christmas, baking, presents, parties, etc. have taken over our lives. I love it!

I have decided that I am going to share the recipes of all the goodies that I am making this Christmas season. I love to discover new things via the blog world and I hope you all do too.

Making Turtle Pretzels; recipe found here. It is pretzels, rolos, and almonds. A must try.

Ty and I are part of Sharing and Caring at our church. Interested couples/families/singles are assigned to a group of about 8 that get together once a month for dinner. It is a great way to get to know people that you might not interact with on a regular basis. The groups change every so often. Today was our first get together for our new group. We had such a good time visiting with people and eating a delish meal.

A couple of hours later we headed to our Sunday School class party. A woman in our group was very concerned about another woman, W, who had disappeared from the dinner. No one had seen her for at least 20 minutes. The rest of our group just thought that she had taken a phone call and had gone somewhere else to talk. W is a nurse practitioner and works in a NICU. I guess everyone assumed she had gotten a phone call from work. Well, thankfully M was really concerned about W missing. M and her husband started searching the church building and finally found her lying at the bottom of a dark staircase. Our church has several wings and most of the lights were off expect for where we were meeting.

Ty and two nurses in our group rushed to help her and called 911. It was a horrible accident and she is in a medically induced coma. Hopefully, we will have good news in the morning. Please keep W in your prayers. She is a single mother and has a 3 yr. old little girl.

About Me

Welcome to my blog! I'm Lindsey. I am a 20-something, working girl just trying to enjoy the simple things in life. I love glamorous, girly things but my style tends to be more simple. Hence, Sweet Simplicity.

I married my high school sweetheart on May 19, 2007. We have a dachshund named Nuts, who keeps us quite entertained. Ty is pursuing his dream of becoming a doctor and I was lucky enough to get a great job at Ty's medical school in admissions and recruitment. We are extremely blessed. While Ty is studying all the time I like to dabble in different hobbies: blogging, sewing, baking, shopping, and er, working out. I love this big blogging world and hope that you will continue to read Sweet Simplicity.

Click here to learn more about me.
Contact me at sweetsimplicityblog@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by!

Kitchen Queens

Megan and I have been wanting to organize a Kitchen Queens group similar to the one that Tara and her family hosts. It always looks like so much fun. We held the first one last night at Megan's beautiful home. She is the perfect hostess.

Emily hard at work.

It's safe to say that we will not be opening a bakery anytime soon.

I'm trying to convince Chesley to start a blog. She's a follower, so maybe one day...

The whole gang: Kathryn, Megan, Camryn, Me, Emily and Chesley

The hostess with the mostest. I think we wore this litte pregnant lady out.

Megan had parting gifts for us all. I hung them on my oven door as soon as I got home.

glitter & lights and everything merry & bright

Welcome to our festive home. That is what you see as you walk in the front door.

Christmas napkins on the coffee table aka our dinner table by choice.

I picked up these serving pieces at Wal-Mart. LOVE the polka dots.

I can't wait to fill them full of goodies.

Kitchen windowsill

{our walls are not really a puke green color.}

I am on the hunt for some tall skinny candlesticks and stocking holders for the mantle.

I can't find any that I love. Maybe next year...

Wrapping paper is probably one of my favorite parts of Christmas.

I wish my camera could really capture the glittery sticks at the top of my tree.

I used the same things in my mantle garland. I love the glitter!