christmas in florida

hello everyone. apparently I have to write everything in lower case. it looks better? so I am going to shed a little light onto our christmas trip to florida. first, this was our first ever trip to florida during christmas time. my side of the family moved down there about 5 years ago and had previously been coming up here to the chicagoland area.

the trip started out with me having to make a phone call the night before to the airline, because the next day there was supposed to be a large snow storm. even though there was supposed to be a snow storm the airline still made us cough up the extra $100 charge to switch our flight time. it was money well spent because we got out early and we wouldn't have made it with our original reservation.

once we arrive in ft. myers, it was fun to get off of the plane and head outside to the warm night time air. kind of makes me ask why we do not just skip the long, cold, snowy winters and live there instead? and my new company has an office down there, hmm.

anyways, it was nice to be there going between st. petersburg, where my parents live, and sanibel island.

when in st. petersburg, we got to eat at the best ever sushi place called osakas.

christmas time is near...

it was mark's turn to visit his family over christmas so we had a pre-christmas dinner with my dad, sis and ryan.

i wanted to make it special, with traditional polish foods my mom had prepared—and I think I actually may have pulled it off! with the many years of cooking with my mom I am forever grateful for the amazing lessons she gave me. her golopki (stuffed cabbage rolls) are a family favorite so i decided i'd try making them for the first time on my own.

i was so nervous if they'd even turn out right and everyone at the dinner table agreed they were delicious!

vintage christmas

usually during the warm months are home is sea-inspired with blues, sea greens, sunny light yellow, sandy colors and brown. for the christmas season i decided to decorate incorporate more cranberry red to our home—it's a cozy romantic color that warms up the home during the blah winter months. so i was thinking about how i would make this color scheme work without removing all my decor and starting over. this is the palette I wanted to work with:


so i was browsing eBay for something unrealated and stumbled upon vintage postcards. they were so beautiful and thought they were little pieces of artwork all on their own.

slap the cheeekun!!

wednesday is one of our favorite days of the week mainly because modern family is on. last night were two reruns but one was new to us!

m+m wedding blog favorites

our wedding pictures are up on miller+miller's site! what a great surprise on this crummy cold winter chicago day :) here are a few favorite among favorites:

snowfun!

mark decided that we should go outside and play in the freshly fallen snow. it had been fairly warm for snow temps so it was perfect "packing" snow. after a pretty painful snow ball fight (they were like ice balls flying through the air) we opted to make frosty our very own snowman. we felt like kids but it truly was so fun to do. here is our photo opp with our snowy friend!

prather wifi hotspot

we have internet! we gave in after a couple months of no longer being able to "borrow" from our neighbors. it was good while it lasted, but now i actually could work from home and mark could watch his ESPN3. so exciting!

johnson?! party of five?

for those of you who have visited, you know the story...it only took 16 months of living there, a new label-maker and a irresponsible property manager to "go away." we are thrilled to finally not be, "johnson?! party of five?"

rockin' the antenna

if if you've visited our home we've been rocking the tv antenna—yes, that's right we DON'T HAVE CABLE. when we first moved in, we were just going to try it out for a while because we had a bad experience with our cable company in the past. it's been over a year and we barely notice or are bothered that we don't have 250+ channels to scroll through.

michele + mark

this is our first post. i am very excited. i don't know what to write here i just know mark will make fun of me. :o)