our first house

Mike and I both come from families that have had a lot of problems - they're better for the most part and very functional now but ya know, we both had it a little rough growing up. We decided before we got married that no matter what, our relationship would always come first. This has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. No marriage is perfect but our relationship is so strong and we really are the best of friends. We agreed that one sure way to maintain a strong and healthy relationship is to take time every week for
"date night" and I am happy to say that (in our whopping year and a half of marriage) we haven't missed a single week!

Below, you will find our very first Christmas date of the year!

yes, it was disgusting but don't let him fool you...

it didn't keep him from eating it.




That's right. this house was made in memory of the late great Michael Jackson... just kidding Mike and Jess FTW!

Mike and I both love Christmas. We love thinking of the perfect gifts for others and anticipate watching them being opened. In my teens I had a friend whose parent had this AMAZING idea that for Christmas (since they had a large family and kids tend to get jealous over presents and what not) they would buy a specific wrapping paper for each child and only the parents knew which paper (and present) belonged to which child. Now, Mike and I a ways away from having any children but we both love this idea and so we decided to start the tradition. We each picked out what wrapping paper we wanted (well... i let mike pick from a selected few. I refused to let sponge bob make his home under our Christmas tree this year). Mike chose gold and I chose this cute green damask print that sort of resembles our curtains. THANKFULLY not enough to be tacky.

This year (after getting this FABULOUS idea from a friend of mine Tigan Robinson) I decided that in my quest for perfection ( it'll be a LOOONNNGGG quest) I would make all of our Christmas bows. Below are pictures of a few of them and then you can see the cute sparkly bows i made for my presents (they are in the pictures with the tree)

*side note* i would quickly like to apologize for the poor picture quality. as you may remember reading about our mishap in Peru, my camera (and all of my other tech-y gadgets) were stolen. My wonderful uncle was nice enough to give me one of his old android phones; however, the camera on it doesn't have a flash so... a lot of my pictures are blurry for the time being.