Tis the Season

Although I have been denying the "readiness" for the Christmas season since the consumer market started pushing it on us in October, it seems the season is here in full swing and since it's actually December, I've decided to embrace it.

I spent the Sunday after Thanksgiving decorating a house that is my very own (well, mine and William's) for the first time. I got to do what I wanted…to an extent. See, my mom so graciously donated 3 huge Rubbermaid tubs filled with garlands, holly berries, Christmas ornaments, lights, wreaths etc, so I did what I wanted, using what had been given to me. I did, however, splurge on some new festive PB candles (thank you for all the wedding gifts that have allowed me to milk those gift cards for 7 months!), a few table runners and a tree skirt.

Since we have officially received our first snow, I decided it was time to bring my Christmas spirit to my blog world…so here goes!

Evidence that it actually did snow in Dallas…some build up in our backyard that lasted about 2 hours…



My dining room table arrangement


My Willow Tree Navitiy (one of my favorites and entirely gifted from my friends in Plainview at our wedding shower!)


The Buffet Arrangement (thank you mom for the red globes!)


The top of the entertainment center. I was bummed that the lights in this didn't work but too lazy to re-srting them. Also, the nativity here was a gift from William's bosses and was hand carved in Bethlehem from olive wood found outside of Jerusalem. I thought that was very cool!


Another little garland arrangement on the bookshelves


And finally...the tree. This isn't a great pic b/c the lights aren't on. Also, we were given a bunch of red and gold ornaments to use while we build up our own collection...but I think it turned out pretty nice for just using what we had been given!


I still need to do some work on the outside of the house and that might get accomplished this weekend, if my sweet husband can help me a little bit (hint, hint!!)

Our First Thanksgiving

William and I spent our first Thanksgiving as married folks with his family in Tyler and at the farm in Pittsburgh. We had a great time celebrating with family and I enjoyed learning a few new family traditions from William's side.

For example, William's mom's family had a tradition of having a glass of "Cold Duck" to kick off the thanksgiving feasting. Here's Meredith and I with ours (fyi, Cold Duck is a sparkling wine that was believed to be an expensive thanksgiving treat until Will's mom discovered it was $2.50 a bottle)



William's mom made a "California-style stuffing" using water chesnuts and mushrooms, which was delicious! She asked me if I knew how to make gravy, so that was my assignment for the meal prep! Here's me making gravy (although you can't really see the gravy...just my face!)


Here's the family sitting down for dinner (minus Jamal who was taking the picture)


I also contributed a couple of pies to the meal (and, was very proud that I even made my pie crusts from scratch! Thanks Mom!) They were a big hit with the Moharer and Spencer families throughout the weekend!

We left Tyler on Thursday evening and headed to the Spencer farm in Pittsburg. We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out at the farm with Williams Dad, Aunt, 4 cousins, their 6 kiddos (all under age 10) and 8 dogs!! It was definitely a full house and there were plenty of funny stories and good times had. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures at the farm, so I can only tell you that we had a blast!!

Saturday, we packed up and headed back to Dallas to meet my family at Cowboys Stadium for the Tech vs. Baylor football game. Since my mom and dad went to Tech and my bro and I went to Baylor, it's a fun family rivalry that we've started to attend pretty regularly. William was a trooper and came to cheer on the Bears/Raiders despite having gotten up at 4am for three days in a row to go duck hunting! He did NOT, however, wear the green BU shirt I laid out for him. Instead, he wore neutral gray (see pic below)


Even though the Raiders got us in the end, it was a great game and the Bears made a good showing in Arlington. The Bears have played it down to the wire against Tech the past couple years...I think next year's our year to finally get the win. Here's a pic of our house divided...


I know this probably won't become a regular thing, but it was amazing to get in a little bit of time with all the families that William and I represent over this quick holiday weekend. We love them all and have such a great time with each of them. It was a great kick off to the holiday season and to celebrating as a Spencer! Love to all that helped make our first Thanksgiving a great one!

Who Needs Babies....

When you've got a snuggler like this!

Yes, that's Berkley asleep on her back snuggled up next to William and covered with a blanket. Pretty cute, and funny. She would have a hard road to adjustment if she wasn't our "only child."

Tweetly, Deedily Dee

Not too long ago, the words “tweet” and “twitter” were associated with things such as birds, Jackson 5 songs, the sound a whistle makes…etc, but most people today, when asked to do a word association with “tweet” would say the first thing that comes to mind is the popular social networking site Twitter.

I was recently pushed onto the bandwagon of creating a twitter account by someone in my company. We are trying to create a following on twitter for the Pro Football Hall of Fame Texas vs. the Nation Challenge (@TexasvsNation, if you’d like to willing jump on our wagon). I was scolded for not having a twitter account and supporting my company and the game that we are all so proud to be a part of. (I guess giving my time, talents and efforts to working for the game and moving to El Paso, Texas for months at a time wasn’t enough to show my devotion to my job, but the twitter account was the final proof of my loyalty.)

I’m surprised to report that I’m not completely addicted to tweeting, twittering twitting… whatever it’s called. I’ve been a member for a few weeks and I think I’m having take-it-or-leave-it emotions towards the site. I have found some interest in following some of my favorite speakers/preachers (@MattChandler74, @JohnPiper, @villagechurchtx) as well as following reports about my favorite sports teams (@BaylorAthletics, @ESPN_Big12)…but as far as following the average person, I really don’t find it that interesting. I also don’t think there’s anything exciting enough in my day-to-day activity to post updates very frequently. I try and do a few updates a week, especially if I’m traveling , but I can’t think of anything that interesting to post every two hours.

If you don’t have a twitter account, I suggest trying it out for yourself. I don’t want to form your opinions for you…if you were a member and following me (@tjspencer09) I guess right now, you’d probably see this message:

@tjspencer09 just posted a pretty boring update on my blog about twitter…

Weekend Wrap Up

This weekend was Halloween...not one of my favorite holidays but it was going to be a pretty good one this year because William and I were signed up to volunteer at our church's Trunk-or-treat festival. We were on the "entertainment" committee and were in charge of running a game station. Unsatisfied with any of the proposed games, William of course decided we would bring own out for the kiddos to play. Tie-one-on was such a hit among the kids at our wedding reception, we thought that the church visitors would enjoy it as well.

Throughout last week, I found myself fighting off a cough that kept getting deeper and meaner and congestion that did the same. By Friday morning, I was feeling really crummy and finally headed into the doctor for some help. After a chest x-ray, flu test (again) and multiple comments about the "concern" the doctor had for the sounds coming from my chest, I was diagnosed with bronchitis, a relief compared to the speculations of flu and pneumonia that he was throwing around when I first went in. After getting a cortisone shot and prescription for a z-pak, he asked me what my plans were for the weekend. He quickly canceled my volunteer plans telling me that not only would I probably be contagious, I would also have about a 90% chance of catching the flu again if I was around that many kids with my immune system weakened by the bronchitis.

I was bummed as I dressed William up in his funny trucker costume and sent him to man our game station solo, but the weekend did have a saving factor.

No one ended up needing our company season tickets for the Cowboy game this weekend, and since Cowboys Stadium is basically a glamorous, indoor sports bar, (and due to the miraculous effects of steroid shots and Z-Pak's) I decided I would bear the burden and go to the game. My brother, sister-in-law and their brother in-law went with me and we had a blast exploring our new access to the field level club and watching the Cowboys kick Seattle.

William and I wrapped up the weekend with some couch time catching up on the episodes of Flashforward we had missed and eating pizza...my favorite Sunday night activities.

Miscellaneous Cooking

I know my posts haven't been very personal lately, but this is just too good not to share. Have you ever gotten home from work and started staring blankly into the refrigerator wondering what on earth you can make for dinner with the large amount of frozen chicken breasts you bought from Sam's, 2 lemons, some eggs, garlic and frozen veggies?? This is almost a daily struggle for me and I usually end up going to the store to purchase some ingredients for a yummy sounding recipe I've been wanting to try...

I always thought, what if I could just list the ingredients I have at home and then find a recipe that is just as delicious sounding without making another trip to the store?? Bingo. Recipematcher.com.

Type in everything you find in your pantry/kitchen, identify what you want your main ingredient to be (i.e. Chicken Breasts for a main dish or mixed frozen veggies for a side) and BOOM...over 100 (depending on your variety of supplies in stock) recipes pop up for you to try.

I'm trying out the Smothered Bacon Chicken tonight... I'll let you know how it goes.

http://www.recipematcher.com/

Technology drove me into a lake…

Despite my love for The Office and Michael Scott’s very convincing arguments against technology (shout out to my blog title), I have found some really exciting uses and improvements in the technologies I use daily lately.

First of all, I’d like to take a moment to try and convince all readers of this blog to create a Gmail account. As a former user of many different free email hosts including yahoo, hotmail, and msn, Gmail is BY FAR the best I’ve ever known. I love this little host so much that I have even abandoned my office email outlook account. How can you do that, you ask? Well, my Gmail is so smart that I can set it up to both send and receive all my work emails (as well as any other email accounts I might still receive messages to) into ONE central account. Your next question, wouldn’t that be confusing to mix all your work and personal emails into one inbox. The answer: No, because Gmail is so smart that is automatically labels incoming mail from my account formerly known as outlook AND automatically reply’s from the account that the email was originally sent to. Genius.

I have recently discovered Gmail “Labs”, which are a lot like applications for the iphone. My two favorites are the forgotten attachment detector and “Got the Wrong Bob?” The forgotten attachment detector searches your emails to see if you mentioned “attached, attachment, attaching” in the text and alerts you if you start to send such a message without the attachment. This has proved quite useful for me and has greatly reduced the number of follow-up “oops I forgot to attach” emails that I have to send each week.

“Got the Wrong Bob?” will scan any email recipient list that I make and alert me if I’m sending an email to William, my client that it thinks I meant to send to William, my husband. How does it know who I meant? It cross-references past email lists to see which “William” I usually send an email to in conjunction with Leslie and Taylor (or whoever else is in your recipient list). Once again, Genius.

My other favorite new find is the AT&T Uverse TV Mobile Remote Access app for the iPhone. From this application, you can manage your Uverse DVR…it does everything from deleting old recordings to free up space to searching and scheduling recordings of all shows starring John Krasinski or Tina Fey. Another genius idea that helps make life just a little bit more convenient.

So, despite the occasional failures of technology, I’d say as a whole, it’s a great thing. I may change my mind if it ever drives me into a lake though.