January date night.

To go with our New Year's Goals we squeezed our January date night in the nick of time right before February arrives. For dinner I cooked up some Baked Beef Ziti! This recipe was super delish and tasty!

Next I planned for us to spend some {cheap} quality time together. We learned in sunday school that guys typically feel loved when you spend time together side by side. With that being said, I went to redbox to try and find a PS3 game we might could play together. Of course ALL the games were shoot 'em up games, except there was one- Spiderman. I thought that would have to do. It was kind of a dud but still provided many many laughs and Matthew continuing to prove I will never beat him at anything! (and I like it that way :)!)

Thankfully I had planned one more activity to save the night when the Spiderman didn't work out! Homemade Doughnuts!!!

They were easy-peasy to make! And SOOOO delicious! I'm sure this will become a regular at our house! They were yummy right after making them and then again this morning after being warmed for about 10 sec. YUM. So Matthew being the great great hubby that he is let me document the occasion with a fun picture!

So I think we both count our January date night a success... I told Matthew he's got to out do me next month... lucky for him whatever we do for Valentines will count :)

January date night: $5 ... can't beat that :)

Feed My Starving Children.

Saturday we volunteered with our sunday school class for a 2 hour session to pack meals for an organization called Feed My Starving Children! It was such an easy way to make a big difference. In our 2 hours our whole group packed a years worth of meals for 155 children!

We got the added bonus of getting to wear lovely hairnets! So funny!

In each group there were two people pouring ingredients, two others holding the bags and weighing them, and two more sealing them up. One last person packed the bags in boxes. A team effort for sure!

Through the whole event (Wednesday-Saturday) our church packed over 500,000 meals to go out and be delivered to hungry kids! We learned that there is more than enough food being produced in the world to feed everyone but some countries have such a surplus and we just need to get it over to where they need it! Feed My Starving Children is doing a great job at doing just that! They make it easy for people to volunteer and provide the "man power" and then they deliver it to missionaries around the world to distribute to children in need! Pray for this great organization and the kids who receive their help!

Ff5.

{Friday's Favorite Five}

#5. Burt's Bee Grab Bag!! Yesterday I saw a deal for a BB's Grab Bag for $15... regularly $50. I had to snatch it up :) You get 5 full sized products and several other sample sized! I'm pumped- not only do I love Burt's Bees, I love a good deal!! I'll post about what fun surprises I get later!

#4. Fish for dinner! On Tuesday I made Parmesan Crusted Tilapia (found from Kristen's blog!) It was so yummy! We haven't made fish since we've been in Birmingham so it was a nice change for sure!

#3. Wednesday Night MIT! I got to work with the 1st grade girls again! They are so cute and fun! I'm looking forward to getting to know them and spending time teaching them!

#2. Going to lunch after church with our sunday school class to celebrate Baby Parker and the Northingtons! Abbey is due mid February and we are beyond excited :) We also got the surprise of finding out another couple in our class is expecting- such an exciting time! (We really need to work on taking some pictures together class! ha!)

#1. Saturday! All of it! We went to Auburn to meet Mammaw and the fam for some bbq! Then headed to the Auburn basketball game where we beat South Carolina! Next we went to Wetumpka to meet up with some family for Grandaddy's 70th birthday dinner!! After dinner we met mom and dad at Krispy Kreme in Birmingham! It was great :)

Good week :)

2012.

I realize this is a late post, but I wanted an update about our "New Years Resolutions"

I put that in quotes because we aren't much of resolution people. Being the wife that I am, I sat Matthew down to figure out some goals for this year. I loved it, I thought it was great to look ahead to the whole year and seriously think about what we wanted to do and have done in 2012.

That's one of the special things about being married- it's not just goals for Summer, it's for the Watfords! Our goals included personal and shared tasks. I won't go in to much detail but I wanted to share a few of them with you.

First of all... I'm an out to eat junkie. Give me some fast food Chinese or Chickfila and I'm a happy girl. This is neither healthy or money conscious. So we thought what would work best for us is to only eat out once a week. This is extremely difficult for me!! So far we have done a good job. It's crazy though planning because a lot of things we do/people we hang out with like to go out to eat. Success so far.

Another one, since we are doing our best to save money every month, is that every other month me and Matthew will switch back and forth to plan a date night. If you want it to include dinner, that's fine- but it's the one time for the week. I like it because it gives me a chance to plan something fun for us to do. Typically thats the guys job while we are supposed to cook and clean for them :) Looking forward to 12 wonderful dates in 2012!

So there are more but I will leave it at this. Looking forward to spending 2012 striving to accomplish our goals. What a great feeling that will be!

Ff5.

{Friday's Favorite Five}

I literally have not done a Ff5 since October!! Matthew asked me what I was going to do this afternoon and I excitingly answered my Ff5 blog!!! So truth be told, I've missed it!

#5. Just finally getting back into a routine. The past month has been quite hectic and crazy... and as much as I hate to say it, I do enjoy getting back to the same 'ole- same 'ole.

#4. Getting internet!! This is huge! And exciting! And wonderful! I feel reconnected. It's a good feeling. The reason we finally got to get it is because AT&T started servicing our apartment complex... We were both beyond pumped!!

#3. Skype! I love the technology that we get to enjoy! On Sunday night we got to skype with Michael and Stacy up in North Carolina! They showed us around their apartment and we got to catch up a little bit! I also get to skype with Tatum and mom occasionally! I love seeing that sweet Tatum's face!

#2. Going to Shades on Sunday! We went to church on Christmas but didn't have sunday school and we were out of town for the rest of them since Dec. 11th... So going and seeing our class and everything was refreshing. Looking forward to a fun year ahead with church!

#1. Our new TV stand! It's been a long time coming and we are so excited to officially have a real piece of furniture in our home!

(Sorry for a lack of pictures... I need to do better to document our life!)

Newness.

There is something about bringing in a new year that makes me want to go organization crazy! I suppose it has a lot to do with my obsession with pinterest and all the January edition magazines that are all about organization! Along with getting everything straightened up, I'm also into making things look new. This is more of a challenge since we are on a strict budget.

I tackled the newness in our den area easily... For Christmas me and Matthew got money to go toward a new tv stand. We found one we loved at Target.com and it arrived late last night! It had everything I wanted in a stand: lots of room for storage and no glass! We got started putting it together around 10:30pm and finished right at 1am.

We love it!

I was super excited about it because my baskets fit inside. When you open the doors its not crowded and packed in there... it's pretty. I love pretty organization!

So besides that, I've been through my closet and desk drawers. Whew, reorganizing! I'm probably not doing much at all but I enjoy shifting everything (even ever so slightly) for a newness!

Besides that I've been thinking about wall decor and how I would like to change it. Now pretty much, this is crazy talk. We moved here at the beginning of August, I'd say this is a little soon to be thinking like this... I can't help it! Here's my latest pinterest crazes:

Oh to have all the room and money to organize... one day! Hope to be back on Friday with a come-back Ff5!

Christmas #3.

Sorry to be so late on this post, but the internet roller coaster ride continues. We planned to get internet through AT&T on Wednesday night but with SO many problems we didn't have it up and running until Saturday afternoon. So I'm back- hopefully back to the consistent blogging days!

Let me tell you about our 3rd and final Christmas. I considered skipping out on this post but I thought about how horrible I am about doing what I say I'm going to do with this blog. SO BAD! So here I am, catching up... again.

On New Year's weekend we planned for all of my siblings/spouses/babys to head to Huntsville to do our Christmas! We went to Taylor and Heather Stallings wedding on Friday night (which was beautiful, might I add!) then headed to Huntsville right after. That Friday night being our Christmas Eve we just enjoyed hanging with everyone and preparing the stockings for the next morning. Saturday we woke up to a wonderful breakfast prepared by all the men of the family :) And then it was time for stockings and presents! My mom is an avid believer of stocking stuffers. She does such a great job and is one of my favorite things about Christmas morning. Me and Matthew got a new tv! I had schemed with my parents to surprise Matthew... it was difficult to keep it quiet that long, but well worth the wait! He was excited :)

We planned to do a late lunch since we ate such a big delicious breakfast. So of course we needed to keep Tatum entertained, so we took her to Bridgestreet to ride the carousel! She loved it! And it made great pictures!

Sunday we went to church and then later went to go see Sherlock Holmes (soo good!)! It was a fun weekend to just relax and enjoy being all together!! Now we're trying to talk my dad into taking us on a Disney cruise for next Christmas! fingers crossed!

We got to stay till Monday since me and Matthew were both off for New Years. Mom got to keep Tatum, so we had fun enjoying a little more time with her!