Merry Christmas x2

Merry post-Christmas! I hope everyone had a beautiful holiday!


We celebrate Christmas in several stages: big family, small family, couple family. Christmas Eve is always spent with all of the sisters (and their families) at my parents' house. The kiddos are too excited about presents so we start with that.

I got my first registry gift: Juliska plates!

I also got great gift cards and Christmas socks for next year.

Our tradition for Christmas Eve dinner stems from my dad's mom- stacked enchiladas. They are very easy to make and good for a crowd. You need:

Corn Tortillas

Red Enchilada Sauce

Green Enchilada Sauce

Ground Beef

Baked Chicken

Lettuce

Cheese

Pico de Gallo

Pretty much any topping you like on tacos

1. Cook your tortilla for about a minute in either sauce. 

2. Layer with meat. 

3. Cook another tortilla in either sauce.

4. Layer with meat.

5. Add your toppings.

Easy enough?

I worked Christmas Eve so after dinner, I headed to the hospital.

Christmas morning, I went back to my parents for Christmas #2. There, I got my second registry gift: Kitchen Aid Mixer with Ice Cream Maker attachment. So beautiful!

I also got some more gift cards and a Juliska service piece. 

We finished the morning eating breakfast while watching the Disney Christmas Parade. We all spent the day napping, snacking, playing Chicken Foot Dominos and enjoying our gifts. For dinner, we had beef tenderloin with yummy mashed potatoes with green beans. 

Later that night, Johnny and I exchanged our gifts. He got me a great Macy's gift card so I could choose something from the registry. I got him a wallet (brown, tri-fold, lots of pockets as requested), Vinturi wine stand, and an IOU for a new watch. The one he wanted was out of stock online and unable to be found in any stores, naturally. 

How can I forget the best Christmas present of all? Gus! Who knocked over my "Gus-proof" tree stand and broke 3 glass ornaments. But I still love him.

Engagement Party!

This past weekend, my parents hosted an engagement party for us. We had a blast! I still had no camera (problem now solved, new camera arrived Monday!) so I am waiting on the Judy to upload her pics. Evan did a post about it so you can see some additional pics. 


We started the evening with tons of yummy appetizers and drinks. Story on the drinks: My mom and I went to Spec's on the Wednesday prior to place our order. They help you decide how much you need, order what you choose, and then they put it all together and chill the cold stuff. You can pick it up whenever you need. Naturally, we nominated Johnny to pick up the order and naturally he nominated me to go with him. When we got to Spec's on Friday and asked for help, the guy said, "Oh. Is this for that really big order?" Yes, yes it is.


For the food, we used Demeris Catering. Demeris is a Houston family that owns a BBQ restaurant and has expanded to large-scale catering. Our family has used them several times before for BBQ catering and this time we branched out to Pasta Alfredo with Chicken. I highly recommend Demeris. They are very easy to work with, always on time, polite, and bring tons of food! Yummy.


For dessert, we did a S'Mores bar. It was a hit! We had:
Graham Crackers: traditional honey flavor, cinnamon, and chocolate
Gingerbread Men Cookies
Chocolates: traditional Hershey's, Hershey's Cookies and Cream, Andes, Reece's peanut butter cups
Marshmallows


The worst part was individually unwrapping every. single. candy.


For the fire: I got a wee bit scared because we couldn't get it to light! (By "we" I mean Johnny, but I like to pretend that me standing 2 yards away giving my 2 cents was "helping.") We had 2 types of wood: 1. Given by a friend and 2. some that we bought from Kroger. "We" started with the donated wood and it (truly) was my suggestion to just use the Kroger wood and it lit! We had previously purchased camping skewers from Target to use. Everyone was able to make their own s'mores bar and it was so funny to see all of the combinations. 


The best part was that we had so many friends come! We had several out-of-town guests and that meant so much! We are blessed to be surrounded by such great people. I am looking forward to all of the festivities to follow!

Registering

I have recently been able to do one of the best parts of wedding planning: registering. I know that registering marrying your mate is the best part of a wedding, but getting to do some shopping is up there on the list. I love registries. I love looking at other people's registries. It is always so interesting to see what people have chosen.


I knew that my heaven, Williams-Sonoma, would be my first place to register. I think I decided that when I was about 15 years old. I love everything in the store. Johnny came along to Williams-Sonoma and Macys to help me pick out stuff. I know that this is about 100x more important to me than him, but I wanted to include him and I knew he'd like the registry gun. We just did the Crate and Barrel one online since I knew it would be short. It's weird, but for a split second, registering feels a little gluttonous. It's like, "Buy all of these things for me... NOW!" But then I got over it.


Here's the deal with each of my choices...


Williams-Sonoma:
Every kitchen gadget you can imagine. 
Macy's:
Good home stuff like serving platters, kitchen electronics, household electronics, luggage, etc.
Crate and Barrel:
I love their cheap glassware. The wine glasses we chose are literally $5 a piece. I really don't have that much on my registry there so I may just go and buy it myself and nix the registry. 
Neiman Marcus: 
Wow. My sister's friend, Brittany, is the manager of the home department at the Neiman's in Dallas (Northpark store). My mom, sister, and I made a field trip to go up there and make my registry with her. It was so fun! Brittany had it all set up for us when we got there and a list of what she thought I would want. She's so cute. We got to play with the choices, look at lots of different patterns and mix and match the favorites. I've had the Juliska dinnerware chosen for about 3 years. Brittany helped with coordinating the different pieces. For the china... I had another set chosen but was never 100% in love. When I saw this pattern from NM, I instantly loved it. I know it is more expensive than the other I had chosen, but I decided I would just spend the next dozen years getting one piece every few months. I put the pics below of the everyday dinnerware I chose as well as the china. I don't think the websites do them justice. 


Interesting fact: Dallas and Houston are the only stores in the country with a bridal consultant. 


Juliska

China

Final note: Johnny kept saying, "Are you ever going to use any of this stuff?" and "Where are we going to put it?" Answers: 1. Yes, I will use it all. I think I'll even do a blog series about using everything just to prove to the world that I needed it. 2. We will figure that out later.

The Proposal!

We're engaged! Here's the story... 

Background: I am an extreme planner. I want to know every detail of every event. When I asked him a million times what we were doing, what I should wear, etc., he kept saying, "You just need to go with the flow." 

Last Thursday, he sent me an email saying he won a trivia contest on one of the football message boards he frequents. Below is the letter. He told me I could pick what I wanted. I said either the tour or the koozie. Ha! PS- I couldn't figure out how to put a document on a post so here's a screen shot.

We went to Austin for the weekend to "visit his sister." We got in late Friday night and just went to dinner with his sister's family at Chuy's. Saturday, we got up, had breakfast, walked around their neighborhood, and then the two of us went to watch the Tech and Texas games. We ended up at a sports bar and watched the games with a billion other people. He told me we had to leave at 5:00 PM because he had a surprise. He said we were going on the tower tour he won. When we got there, they asked us to just hang out because they were waiting for a large group to show up. 10 minutes later they told us that the group didn't show so it would be the two of us alone. Below is us waiting:

When you go on the tour, they make you walk through a metal detector and Johnny went off! This was NOT supposed to happen. First, the person letting us through the metal detectors said really quickly, "Ohh let's just use the hand wand for him!" Then the guides at the end of the hall yelled at me to "come on down" to the elevator so Johnny could get frisked in private. Once we got to the top, they let us walk around the top and it was so pretty! We got lucky because we missed the rain by about 30 minutes. 


View of the south mall:

We made the loop and he stopped me, said all of these great things, and popped the question! Self-pic after: 

View of the ring. Every pic we took came out blurry! I saw a picture of a similar ring on the internet but never saw it in person. The ring on that website was not exactly what I wanted so we had someone make our ring with a few changes. Click here to see the inspiration ring. It came out perfectly! 

Another after pic! 

Where it happened

He had another surprise lined up for dinner but told me our reservations were not until 8:30 so we had an hour to kill. We went to Eddie V's for some celebratory drinks. I found my new favorite drink: ginger vodka, ginger ale, and lime. 

My surprise was dinner at the Vince Young Steakhouse! I had been dying to go there and even made a joke earlier in the day that he would never take me there. Johnny's friend knew one of the owners so Johnny let him in on the secret and they spoiled us all night. 

First, they treated us with yummy champagne. 

We started off the meal with a cheese plate and yummy salads. 

We both got steak and I had mine topped with Crab Oscar. 

Our surprise dessert! 

The meal was one of the best I've ever had. Highly recommend! 


Behind the scenes:
1. There was no large group we were waiting for. Johnny had purchased all of the tickets so we would have a private tour. 
2. Saturday afternoon, he packed a bag of my dress and my make-up so I could change before dinner. To get the bag to the car, he needed a distraction. He enlisted the help of his 6 year old niece, Avery. She took me to her room to show me her red coat. Random. 


The whole experience was amazing and perfect and I am so excited for everything to come!