Poinsettia, Sushi, Nail Art & More...

Hello there my lovely friends and readers! What's not so lovely is this stupid Monday morning. I'm super tired and I can't stop yawning, and I'm ready to bust out of this office, and it's only barely 11 a.m... Sooo, I've still got a quite a few more hours to make it through. I had an exhausting weekend being a part of the Singing Christmas Tree -- it was definitely good, but I'm glad it's over with since we've been working on it since the beginning of September! Now I just need to get some rest! My weekend was pretty much just jam-packed with that, but I did squeeze in a little bit of other stuff!

Also, last Thursday I decided that my Christmas-inspired mani needed a special touch for the Singing Christmas Tree this weekend, so I made a cute little music note on my accent nail! It's not perfect, but it's pretty dang cute, and I love it! And this is nail art #10 of my goal of 10 before my birthday! So that's another goal I get to cross off my list!

And now, here's what my weekend looked like...

Friday
Stopped by Kohl's really quick to pick up some stuff I had put on hold the other day so I could buy it with a coupon!
Had some Chick-fil-A with my parents
Sang in the Singing Christmas Tree!
Went over to my friend Lacey's house for a game or two of Pictionary

Saturday
Went with Mama & Megan to meet a friend & her cute daughter to pick out her flower girl dress for Meg's wedding
Went with Jeff to visit his Granny, cuz she's pretty sick right now :( Pray for her!
Got treated rudely by the tire department at Sam's so we peaced outta there...
Got treated great by the tire department at Costco, so I ordered some new tires for my Jeep
Enjoyed some delicious sushi for lunch!
Rested and watched a movie at Jeff's house (MIB 3)
Went home for some dinner and to pick up my Mama
Sang in the Singing Christmas Tree!
Hung out with Jeff afterwards

Sunday
Went to church as usual, and saw a pretty poinsettia, still covered in morning dew drops
Had lunch at Genghis Grill with my friends Sara and Kristen
Watched last week's episode of The Walking Dead with my parents
Hung out at Jeff's house for a little bit
Got some Taco Bell
Sang in the Singing Christmas Tree!
Went back to Jeff's house and watched re-runs of "Freaks & Geeks" on Netflix
Came home and passed out immediately...

Jeff's view from his seat on Saturday night...

During dress rehearsal last Wednesday night. Can you find me?! Haha :)

I'm hoping that later this week I can get some better pictures of the Singing Christmas Tree, but for now this is all I've got. So we'll just have to appreciate these! How were y'all's weekends? Were they busy like mine? Or slow and relaxing? Hopefully they were good either way!

Tonight is date night for me and the boy, and I'm looking forward to that. We're going fancy tonight and using this to celebrate our Christmas date, and it's also our 1 year and 4 months anniversary :) I'm planning to wear that outfit above I got from Kohl's the other day, so I hope I look cute! But I mean, why wouldn't I?! I'm sure we'll take some pictures tonight and so I'll share later this week!

Linking up today with all of the lovely ladies from: Covered in Grace, Glitter & Gloss, Pink of Perfection, Sami's Shenanigans, and Synfully Delicious.

Paper Snowflakes & More

Dear Boyfriend: Thanks so much for being excited about the activity calendar I made for us for this month, and being so great about participating in the things I planned for us! I had such a great time cutting out paper snowflakes with you the other night while we drank hot tea and watched a movie. It was such a lovely at-home date night :)

Dear Tallahassee: If you'd like to come hear me sing in our church's Singing Christmas Tree, it will be happening at 7 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, at Bradfordville FBC. It's free, so just show up! It's a great night of Christmas music, and I think you should come :)

Dear Throat/Voice: We've got a lot of singing to do over the next three days, so let's keep it together and not freak out. I'll be drinking copious amounts of hot tea, and I bought a brand new bag of cough drops yesterday. We gotta stay healthy!

Dear Fingernails: You looks so much better now that I finally got around to painting you! Sorry it took so long. But you're adorable and Christmasy, with a special twist for the Singing Christmas Tree! :) {And I'll have to share pictures on Monday because I don't have any right now, and I actually need to do a quick touch-up on one of them!}

Dear Housegirl Haley: Thank you so much for sending me those cute ornaments, for our swap Living In Yellow hosted! I'm sorry I forgot to post about them earlier this week like we were "supposed" to, but I do like them! I'll be putting them up on the tree this weekend :) And isn't it so funny and ironic we got matched since we have the same name, and live in the same state only a few hours apart?! Such a small world we live in :) Oh, and the teal box and burlap ribbon was just the cutest, it made so so happy when I pulled it out of the brown shipping box!

Dear Office: Breakfast this morning was super delicious.... BUT we're gonna have to slow down and chill out on the holiday snacks and parties, or else we're all gonna weigh a bajillion pounds by the new year...

Dear Pinterest: Thanks for yet another successful and delicious meal for me and my family. Yesterday's Crockpot Angel Chicken was so yummy, and I'll definitely be sharing the recipe with y'all one day next week! (My picture below doesn't look like anything fancy, but believe me, it's tasty for sure.)

Dear Influenster: I'm sooo excited I finally got my first box, and I'm so excited to start trying everything out! I am wearing the tiny new perfume today, and it really does smell great. Can't wait to see how the other products all work out as well! (Although apparently you're having some serious website issues today...?)

I'm off now to force myself to do some work for the rest of  the day...however I don't wanna overdo it or anything, so I'll still try to take it easy. And then I'll be singing for the rest of the weekend, with of course some fun and relaxation thrown in there as well! Oh, and a holiday craft show tomorrow!

Linking up today with Ashley at Adventures of Newlyweds for our usual Friday's Letters!

Peak of High School

OK, this will  be the second-to-last one of these memory lane walks - with the final one next Thursday, with pictures of my graduation present! This is the seventh one, so if you missed the first six, check them out at the following links...

Cheerleading // Prom // Senior Girl Presentation // Senior Trip // New Year's Eve // Homecoming

The Peak of High School is definitely graduation - I mean honestly, what else could it be? So here are all the pictures from my high school graduation, and the festivities and events surrounding it! (The ones I could find at least...) There are some from Senior Sunday at my church, and also when we went on a little mother-daughter lunch date the day before graduation! 

Everyone please check out the face my Dad is making... oh dear lordy...

Yay for high school graduations, and Mama/Daughter lunches, and Senior Sunday church services, and mainly just for making it out of high school, am I right?! There were definitely some fun times, but it was also a lot of drama. And I for one am thankful that I'm done with high school and it's drama! At least I had a pretty good group of friends to get through it together with!

How were y'alls high school days? Drama-filled or somehow drama-free? I wanna hear some high school stories!

Pinteresting Choices

Today will be my first link up with Michelle from The Vintage Apple, for "Oh, How Pinteresting!" Today, and yesterday as well for that matter, I'm feeling completely inspired by delicious food and recipes!

I have about a bajillion food pins on my Pinterest, and it's sometimes overwhelming knowing which one I actually feel like making. For one thing, I don't even keep it all on one central food board (the way some others, like my Mama do), I separate it all into a couple of categorized boards so it's easier to find a specific kind of thing later. For example, some of my food boards are: Pasta Is My Favorite, Breakfast at Halie's, Crockpot Craze, Yummies To Try, Healthy Yummies, Sweet Tooth and Cupcakes. And each of them have tons of pins. But at least I know I'll never be lacking in recipe inspiration!

So tomorrow night (Thursday) I'm cooking dinner for just my Mama, sister and myself, and so I'm looking for something relatively easy (well, that's kind of always my motto), and something that's not intended for an entire army. Here are a few of the things I'm considering, and I want your opinions - what do you think sounds/looks the best, and which one should I make?! Let me know below, and then I'll share later this week how it all turns out!

P.S. - I'm really feeling a crockpot meal, so that's what most of these are.

Crockpot Swiss Chicken Casserole

Originally from These Four No More, found on Pinterest here

Crockpot Cheesy Chicken

Originally from Food.com, found on Pinterest here

Buffalo Chicken Chili

Originally from ClosetCooking.com, found on Pinterest here

Crockpot Beef Stroganoff

Originally from Heather's Bytes, found on Pinterest here

Crockpot "Gourmet" Angel Chicken

Originally from Loved & Lovely, on Pinterest here

So I'm thinking five recipes is plenty to choose from. We love chicken in our family (well I mean, who doesn't love chicken?!), so that's why there are so many chicken options here. I think each one of these sounds absolutely amazingly delicious, and I'll be excited to try whichever one of these I end up choosing. It's just such a hard choice! What do y'all think? Ever had any of these before, or made something similar yourselves? How did it turn out? Was it a repeater? Should I try it too?! Was that too many questions? ;)

For more Pinteresting blog posts, of all shapes, sizes and varieties, head over to The Vintage Apple to check out tons more links! And don't forget to tell me which option you think I should make for our little girls night dinner!

Pot of Enchilada Soup

Hello there my bloggy friends! Today, I'm sharing with you a super duper easy soup recipe. I mean super easy people, so get ready to pull out your crock-pot, and reap yummy rewards, without much effort.

Slow-Cooker Chicken Enchilada Soup

Ingredients
1 can black beans (drained and rinsed)
1 can whole kernel corn
1 can diced tomatoes (I did the ones with green chiles for some extra pizzaz)
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
2 cans enchilada sauce (in the Ethnic food aisle)
1 diced green or red pepper
1/2 diced onion
1 1/2 cups milk
2 cans cooked chicken (if you want to put in a tad more effort, cook 2 chicken breasts, and shred them yourself)
Shredded pepper jack cheese & sour cream for topping

Directions
Throw it all in your crock pot, and cook on low all day, or approximately 8-9 hours! (Or if you want it for lunch, cook it on high.) And man this baby is so yummy. And hello? Easiest soup recipe, maybe ever. The "hardest" part is just some simple dicing of peppers and onions!

Then when you serve it, top it with pepper jack cheese if you like spice, or the Mexican blend cheese to tone it down a bit. And of course some sour cream on top doesn't hurt anything either :)

So there you have it! A quick and easy soup recipe, for anyone who is a Mexican/Tex-Mex fan! I personally loved the stuff, and my boyfriend and family happen to love it too, which is definitely a plus :) And I have already made this soup a couple of times since that first time. So give this baby a try on a cold day, and let me know how it turns out, and if you like it just as much as well!

Perch From the Top

So first up, I got 11 new followers over the weekend, which I was seriously shocked about when I opened up Blogger this morning! What an unexpected excitement! So welcome to all of you who just joined the last few days, I'm so glad to have you here. Pull up a chair, get cozy and stay a while :)

Now, moving on to my usual weekend recap post!!

Friday
Lunch time sushi date with my sweet man, which was super delish
Had some afternoon tea and a cookie at work
Finished the day at my Grandparent's house with the fam, for a joint birthday party for my sister, uncle and step-bro

A bit of delicious lunch time sushi. I'm ready for more again already! I'm becoming obsessed I believe...

I had the chai, and it was sooo good. And this tin was only $4 at Ross!

Grandparents said they needed this Snoopy to go with the Charlie Brown tree :)

Cute little sister

Peach cobbler for birthday party dessert

Saturday
Went to pick out our family Christmas tree in the morning
Finally cleaned my super crazy messy room, and it feels sooo much better in there now :)
Hung out at Jeff's house for just a tiny bit
Went downtown to meet Lacey for a late lunch at Po'Boys
Walked around downtown waiting on the parade to start, then watched the parade
Finished up the day at Lacey's house playing an intense game of boys vs. girls Pictionary

We got the one on the right, although I voted for the taller one on the left. But it looks good in our house still :)

Festival of Lights celebration downtown

He thought his card said "killer waffle" -- it didn't. Any guesses what it actually said?!

Sunday
Started off the morning with my family and coffee from Dunkin Donuts before church
Watched some super precious children's choirs sing during "big church"
Celebrated my sister's birthday with family lunch and presents at our house
Put up our Christmas tree and decorated the rest of our house
Went to Singing Christmas Tree rehearsal at church, and found out I'm on row 11 of 12, which is super high up
Then went to the ugly sweater Christmas party for the youth! (There were some really ugly sweaters by the way...)
Finished up the day hanging out at Jeff's house, watching re-runs of one of our favorites, "How I Met Your Mother"

One of four of our bins of ornaments!

First on the tree this year! "I" made this in pre-school, back in 1991, when I was three!

My view of the sanctuary in my Perch From the Top of the Singing Christmas Tree! So high up!

The youth that wore their ugly sweaters for our party. 

I'm sorry for another week of only iPhone pictures. I never realize how crappy some of them are until I put them in my blog, and then I'm mad that's all I've got. Maybe one day I'll learn... But anyways, it was a good weekend, and as usual I'm not super stoked to be back at work this Monday morning. Here in Florida, today is supposed to be a record high of 81, so that should be lovely in December... oh well! I'd rather have that than a foot or two of snow! So I guess I can't complain :)

Hope your week is off to a good start! And I look forward to reading/hearing about y'alls weekends as well!

{And today I'm linking up with Covered in Grace, Sami's Shananigans and Synfully Delicious.}