Christmas Break is busy!

Y'all I am sorry...I've been the worst blogger ever this month. Between schoolwork, final exams, traveling, and Christmas shopping...I have had nooooo spare time! Please forgive me!

I've left Starkville last Wednesday and have just been having a great time visiting friends and family and now finally relaxing at home after floating around the country! I'm finally done with my Christmas shopping (well...except for something little to include with my sister's...any ideas??) and I've had a lovely time going out to lunch and watching some of my favorite Christmas movies like this:

White Christmas

(I love that song "I wish I was back in the Army!"

This movie just kills me. Hysterical.

I hope y'all are also have a wonderful Christmas break and spending time with friends and family and pets and eating lots of Christmas cookies!!

I promise I will be better this week!

Also- Ashley Lauren (@ashlauren on Twitter) is an absolutely darling Texas girl and started her own blog! Please check it out and give her some support as she gets started! I loved her peppermint bark recipe!! Here's a link : Texas Prep

Christmas Quiz

I saw this adorable Christmas Quiz on Southern Cinderella's blog last week and I thought it was a cute idea!

So here goes!

1. Eggnog or Hot Chocolate?

I love both! I can only drink a little egg nog at a time though it's way too rich to drink a huge glass.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?

Santa wraps presents and puts them out when we are sleeping Christmas Eve! ;)

3. Colored lights or white lights on tree/house?

We use white lights so I tend to prefer white lights, but some people have really pretty displays with colored lights!

4. Do you have mistletoe?

Nope can't say that we ever have

5. When do you put your decorations up?

Usually the weekend after Thanksgiving

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding desserts)?

Dang desserts are my favorite...I would have to say deep fried turkey or roast and of course mashed potatoes!

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?

I always loved getting dressed up to go to church on Christmas Eve then going over my grandparent's house. We would eat and open presents and we would always fall asleep on the way home! I also loved my aunt reading The Polar Express...it's one of my favorites!

8. Do you open a Christmas gift on Christmas Eve?

Yes we do! Usually immediate family gives gifts to each other, then Christmas morning is Santa's gifts :)

9. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?

There's no Santa?!?!?

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?

We use white lights then decorate with all the ornaments we can fit on it! The ornaments all have some type of meaning, like things we were doing the past year or something that we love. I get a lot of Gators ornaments or Bulldog ornaments or Elvis ornaments :)

11. Snow! Love it or hate it?

HATE IT! I live in the south for a reason!

12. Can you ice skate?

Barely! I've been a few times but normally hug the sides of the rink for dear life.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?

Sure do-my stuffed zebra from my grandparents. I just loved him and I still sleep with him! I've had him for about 15 years.

14. What is the most important thing about the holidays for you?

The past few years it's been getting to see my family. I don't see them as often as I used to so I like traveling home and visiting for a couple weeks! I'm really grateful I have the opportunity to do this every year!

15. What tops your tree?

A glittery gold hummingbird in memory of my grandfather

16. What's your favorite holiday tradition?

Christmas Eve. The girls bake all day then we all get dressed up and go to mass then come home and eat! After supper we make mudslides and open gifts from each other then watch a Christmas movie!

17. Do you prefer giving or receiving?

GIVING! I love seeing the look on someone's face when they really love a gift!

18. What is your favorite holiday dessert?

Tollhouse pie!! Recipe here !

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?

I would say Angels We Have Heard on High. I just love that song! It's beautiful.

20. Candy canes! Yuck or yum?

Yum!

21. What is your favorite Christmas special/movie?

This is a hard one! I LOVE Elf! That movie just kills me. I also love The Santa Clause and Home Alone.

A Floridian Christmas Tree in Mississippi!

I was thrilled to pieces the other day to come home and find this gem waiting for me:

A light-up palm tree!

I know how silly they are but I love them. I have no idea why. So when I was in Bealls Florida in October, I told my mom how much I wanted one and she sent one to me last week!

So being Christmas season, I decided to decorate it:

Merry Christmas y'all!

A lovely gold sparkly hummingbird and my "We wish you an MSU Christmas" ornament

I have several others on there including a Gator, a Bully, and some orange and blue streamers!

I also got this fabulous Christmas palm tree 40% off at Bealls in October. Yay for bringing a touch of Florida to Mississippi!

In other news...my Florida Gators are going to the Outback Bowl in Tampa this New Years Day, which is exciting, and my Mississippi State Bulldogs are going to the Gator Bowl in my fabulous hometown of Jacksonville the same day!

I thought Florida would go to the Gator Bowl, SC would go to the Outback Bowl, and Mississippi State would go to the Chick Fil-A Bowl...I feel like Miss. State deserved a "better" bowl than Florida (I hate to say it sorry Gators I love y'all!) since they finished 8-4 and Florida finished 7-5. But hey both of my teams are bowl bound so yay! Who were y'all rooting for in the SEC Championship? I personally was going for Auburn. I love seeing SEC teams in the National Championships!

Happy Monday!

My favorite Christmas recipe/Rivalry Weekend!

With Thanksgiving comes Rivalry week in college football! I was able to watch the Auburn-Alabama game on Friday (Go Auburn!) as well as Boise State-Nevada. Both were great games to watch. As y'all know, my Florida Gators play the Florida State Seminoles during the rivalry week...

Obviously, I am NOT a fan of Florida State Noles...or the ending to the season they gave my Gators...
I still believe in the orange and blue! In all kinds of weather we all stick together for F-L-O-R-I-D-A! Go Gators! At least we are still bowl eligible...I just hope Coach Urbs gets it together for next season...maybe with a different quarterback? Just sayin'

In better news, my Mississippi State Dawgs played Ole Miss (known as TSUN-That School Up North in Starkville) at the Egg Bowl. This year the game was in Oxford.

And the Dawgs shut down Ole Miss!!

DAN THE MAN!! (It's b/c he used to be a Gator :) haha )

Hey Ole Miss! We just beat the hell outta you! :)

Mississippi State is also Bowl Bound this season!

And now for one of my all-time favorite holiday recipes:

Tollhouse Pie!

Ingredients:

9" deep dish pie shell

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup butter (=1.5 sticks, softened)

1 cup (or more!) Nestle toll house semi sweet morsels

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees

Beat the eggs until foamy

Add flour, sugar, brown sugar, and butter. Beat.

Stir in the chocolate chips, and pour into the pie shell

Bake 55-60 minutes

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream!

We store the pie in the refrigerator

Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving y'all! Be safe and enjoy time with your family and friends!

I colored my hair/need some advice!

I've been highlighting my hair for about 4 years now. My hair is naturally dark brown and it needed something to make it less mousy. After 4 years of highlighting, this past summer I decided to dye it brown. HUGE mistake, especially because I dyed it myself. So after I realized that was a huge error in my judgement, I had my hairdresser highlight my hair to get it back to blonde. However, since I dyed my hair, the blonde was more yellow than a pretty blonde color.

Before: Very yellow. Especially weird when I have a reddish skin tone. Not good.

After: My hairdresser added a LOT of lowlight to my hair to make it darker, and left some blonde in it so it would have some dimension. After the color chills out a little and is less yellow, I'll probably highlight again in the spring. Thoughts?

Also-I need some advice. I really need a diet/exercise program that works. I used to be a track/cross country runner but college and grad school has led to oh...about 60 pounds. I need a program that can be worked into a busy lifestyle. I don't mind working out at all, I just don't have that much time during the week. Any advice would be SOOOO appreciated.

Thanks girls!

A Shutterfly Christmas!

Hey everyone! Shutterfly has a great offer for bloggers right now! They are offering 50 free holiday cards for bloggers who let everyone know about their holiday collection! I am thrilled about this because my friends and I in Mississippi thought it would be fun to take a holiday picture and send it home to our families! They have tons of card designs and I already picked out which one we should use! The preview I saved came out great!

I just loved this design. I thought it was so sweet.

You can also get gift tags made! I love Rudolph so I thought this one was cute!

They also have a ton of products you could give as Christmas gifts. I loved the photo books and calendars.

I am so excited to get our Christmas cards! I know our families will just love them! Make sure you check out the details HERE soon so you can take advantage of these great holiday cards!

Color Spash iPhone App makes my day!

My friend George downloaded the Color Splash App on his iPhone! It basically takes your color picture, turns it black and white, then you color in the part you want to appear color. I was able to send him some of my pictures and look how they turned out:

Davis Wade Stadium-Mississippi State

Me at the Swamp in Gainesville

Group of cowbells with mine colored

All colored!

My favorite picture of MC, Liza and I!

Our tailgating group!

Sunglasses!

Didn't he do a great job?! I wish BlackBerry had an app like this! :)

Salt Lake City/Sorry for my Absence!

I have been such an awful blogger lately! After being away for almost a week in Salt Lake City, I came back to piles and piles of work on top of the piles I had left here!

I have 2 exams to make up, homework, grading, research, another conference, an interview...so basically no sleep. This is pretty much how I feel:

I hope y'all understand I'm trying! :) I still try and keep up with your posts every night.

So last Sunday we left for Salt Lake City. The 4 grad students in my group (me, Zach, Erick, and Ersan) drove to Jackson together to catch our flight. Due to mechanical issues/Delta sucking as usual, we got split up. Erick and Ersan went ahead to Salt Lake City through Dallas (instead of Memphis like we were supposed to...they had presentations first thing Monday) and Zach and I got sent to Atlanta overnight. At least Delta gave us some sweet hotel rooms and upgraded us to first class! We had to get up by 5 to get back to the airport for our 7 am flight...which means we got up at 3 am SLC time...
Our view of the mountains from the airplane.

We arrived late, tired, and...
...COLD! It was only about 35 degrees in SLC! As soon as I realized how cold it was I started layering on clothes from my suitcase haha! Think Sanka from Cool Runnings when he arrives in Calgary :)

Monday and Tuesday were spent at the conference, listening to the presentations and also having some great lunches and suppers while we were out there.
I also got to see Caitlin all week! She and her husband moved to Oklahoma at the end of October for his next part of Air Force training so I hadn't been able to see her in a few weeks! I missed her!
Where the conference was held.

Wednesday our advisor let us have the day to see Salt Lake City. We ate lunch at California Pizza Kitchen
Our desserts!

Saw the Temple City

The lab group in front of one of the big Temples...from left: Zach, me, Caitlin, Erick, and Ersan on the bottom
Caitlin and I in front of the Temple
Christmas decorations!

We saw an organ recital in the Tabernacle.
And did some shopping! I just loved being able to go to J Crew and Ann Taylor Loft!

Later that night we had our Wednesday night tradition of Italian food and ended the meal with Sambuca! (It's gross but part of the tradition...)
From left: Erick, Ersan, Zach, me, Caitlin, my advisor Dr. Walters, and her advisor from Clemson Dr. Hirt

Have a great week y'all! I'll try harder to be more consistent with posting! :)

Adventure out West!

Tomorrow I'm headed here:

Salt Lake City, Utah!

For this:

National American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting

(my dad calls it the nerd convention)

I've never been to Salt Lake City so I'm really excited to see the mountains and maybe even do something like snow tubing or some shopping!

Have any of y'all gone to SLC? Any suggestions for me?

My posting for the next week may be kind of sporadic (kind of like this entire semester haha) but I will try and post a couple of times and take lots of pictures!

I got a Tumblr!

I've seen lots of people on Twitter with Tumblrs!

Let me know if you have one! I'd love to follow you!

To follow me click here: Miss Ashley on Tumblr