This has seriously been an amazing year. One of my most favorite. One of my best. One that has had many "firsts". So, in this case....a post-filled post is quite necessary.

The year started off wonderful because I became a homeworker. I was also promoted this year. It was the first time I had ever helped plan a baby shower and our family welcomed two beautiful baby boys. I went home to South Carolina plenty of times this year for many reasons: for a wedding reception & a trip to the lake, for 4th of July, Kimbug & Taz's birthdays, to meet baby Jude, for annual parties, and just to see my dearly missed family. I also had some rough times this year, but thankfully overcame them. My sister Nancy also had a blessing this year. I had such great times in Alabama too, like when we had the Slanketfest and went to the Greek Festival. My friend Leslie got married. I also went to Gadsden a lot and there I visited Noccalula Falls for the first time, ate steak, went fishing, watched a football game, met his mom for the first time, and had little adventures. This was also the year that sweet cupcake and I started our love story. We made priceless adventures so far to Gatlingburg and Mississippi. I saw my first musical, thanks to him. He also moved closer to me, changing a one hour distance to 15 minutes. I even had someone to dress up with me for Halloween this year and I never dress up ever! Thanks to my love, I also had one of the best Christmases to date. We watched so many dollar theater movies this year! That reminds me...I will miss that place once I move since it won't be 5 minutes away anymore. I also started posting about our anniversaries from 6, 7, 8, and 9 months. I hope to do more for his birthday next year because I had such a blast celebrating mine in Atlanta. My blog has had many firsts this year such as; my one year blogversary, reaching my first 100 friends, hosting my first giveaway, posting my first vlog, having a guest blogger, doing my first blogger swap, and actually winning someone else's giveaway. There is so much more that I can include, but from the looks of it...my year was near perfect. I couldn't have asked for a better family, boyfriend, or friends to spend the year with.

Wow. After writing, linking, and rereading this whole summary...I am blown away at how much has happened over the course of 12 months. I am so ready and can not wait for the next 12 months. I am in Gadsden for the rest of the weekend and will be counting down with sweet cupcake, his family, and our friends. Cheers to a brand new year and many more great memories and adventures to come!

Ok, this is my last batch of Christmas photos. Phew...I tried my best to get all of these photos uploaded and edited before the new year rolls in, which is SOOOOON! 

Nancy, myself, and Taz stopped by a Japanese restaurant after a little shopping and sister time. Seriously one of the fastest serving restaurants of all time. Haha. We were there literally for 15+ minutes! Imagine that!

We celebrated Christmas Day around 2 am because we were all going to be super busy the next morning. Ok, here goes! 

Kimbug is so spoiled rotten. With 5 big sisters, who can blame her?

My pops enjoying his new dress shirts and Caroline possibly tripping? Haha.

Taz got an awesome makeup palette. This is perfect for her since she vlogs about these kind of things. Check out her Christmas vlog here.

Jay and Nancy photogenically showing their excitement with their gifts.

The bag reads: "To Nancy and Tasee and Michal [Michele] in the same bag." Haha...I love my Kimbug!

Nancy got Kimbug some boots. This girl LOOOOOVES them, if you can't tell here.

[My dad was my mom's present...how silly!]

So, I forgave Kimberly for misspelling my name.

She gave me candy! Woo hoo!

...and good smelling lotion. :)

Kimbug drew my mom this beautiful ballerina. Kimbug seriously gave the best gifts this year! Haha.

My momma is so beautiful. I really do hope that I inherit her aging genetics!

A little story about these Sponge Bog Square Pants pajama pants. I bought them for myself years ago when he first came out. I was in love! Haha. Since then, they have been passed on to Nancy, Taz, and now Caroline. I can't believe I used to fit those and how about a good and durable set of pajama pants!

I can not believe that all of these amazing holidays have come and gone again! Soon the new year will be here and we will be celebrating again. I still find it hard to grasp how fast time flies. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday and for many great ones to come! 

So apparently when you put women and parties together...you get a LOT of food! For the party, everyone was supposed to bring one dish or more[optional], a drink, their outfit, and their gift. These are pictures that Taz took of most the food and I just felt like posting it. What I loved most about these dishes are that they're mostly comfort food! Woo hoo for that!

Absolute credit to all of the talented and wonderful ladies that cooked this feast[minus the scraggly bacon/turkey wrapped asparagus...I made that, haha].

Time has passed, but if you recall this post about me heading off to SC for a Christmas party...here are the pictures finally! Thanks mainly to Taz for the pictures and thanks to Judy for the group picture. I love these ladies so much and would never trade them for the world! My life has been so blessed with such strong, beautiful, and independent women. Any time we're all together, we all have such a good time. I am so excited for next year's party already and hopefully the following year, it will be hosted in Alabama so there will be no traveling for the three of us that have to drive. Also, this party had a costume theme. If you didn't notice already with the picture....we all [expect for maybe one person and the babies] dressed up as our favorite Christmas song. Ok, enough yapping...here are the pictures!

Taz dressed up as Grandma Got Run Over By The Reindeer, I had two songs: O holy night in the front & O Christmas tree in the back, and Nancy dressed up as Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree. My sister's costumes were SO awesome! PS. Taz won the costume contest too! :)

My Aunt Jane was dressed as Silent Night. Aren't they just gorgeous?

 Ying was All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. She was so cute!

We played this awesome wrapping paper game, where a box is wrapped several times and under each wrap there was a truth, dare, or prize. This would be so fun for birthdays, baby showers, and bachlorette parties too.

Connie was dared to give someone a piggy back ride. We were kind enough to volunteer her neice Kat. Haha. Priceless!

Alee wore Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, and coincidentally enough she was dared to paint her nose red!

Judy was The Christmas Song and she was dared to write her lover's name visibly on herself in a gangster font. Haha. Too funny.

Nancy was dared to be wrapped up like a gift until the end of the game! I felt so bad for her...we had to turn on the fan because she was burning up! She was such a good sport about it though.

I wish I had more pictures from the night, but I didn't want to bombard you all with TONS of pictures and honestly...I couldn't quite remember all of the girl's songs because there were so many of us! I hope none of the girls get offended if I didn't post their song.

Since I had two songs, here is the front and back of my shirt. I made my headband as "Oh" instead of "O" because I really didn't want to look like a Teletubbie. Haha!

I hope you enjoyed! More pictures of ALL THE FOOD soon!

I will be posting the giveaway when the new year rolls in. Since I do feel that a fresh start and free stuff is appropriate for that time of year! I'm so excited y'all and I hope you are too! Just a bit of a spoiler, but I also feel that more than one winner sounds just about awesome too!

My apologies for being a bit out of the loop about the giveaway and taking so long to take action on it. With all the holidays and traveling going on, my mind is forced to not remember every thing going on with this little blog of mine. While writing this post, I started thinking about this little giveaway thing ma-jig and to me, it can sort of be perceived as me paying you guys to be my friends? That's not a good feeling at all....so after this promised giveaway, I have decided that from now on I will be randomly hosting giveaways and also hosting them during sweet times like these to celebrate my friendships. I hope you all know that the only reason why I do giveaways is because I appreciate you all. The blog world has always brightened up my days[minus the couple losing of followers] and I only wish to make plenty more new friends and continue the wonderful friendships that I have now!

So, while we wait for this new year to come along...check out this super awesome flip book that you can get your own pictures on for a really great price! Wouldn't it be a wonderful gift idea or a fun party favor? You can find out more and get yourself one here.

I hope you all are enjoying your hump day! I only have one more day of work tomorrow, then I'm off for a three day weekend! High five for those!

I know that logically it may be quite a dream to wake up and have hair like one of these three hair goddesses, but I will vouch from my own experience...this laid back, but gorgeous look is very possible. I'm not sure if many of you do this or if it's just me, but I use a straightener to curl my hair. I typically don't like to use a regular curling iron because it makes my hair way too curly and I'm not a big fan of ringlets. Anyway, this is how I do my hair to get this look and here is a picture so you guys won't think I'm some big fat liar. Haha. If you're a FB friend...you've probably already seen this picture of me before -- sorry for no new pictures, but oh well! Happy lazy hair! :)

My lazy weekend hair: After washing and blow drying your hair, take about 2 inches of hair and wrap it around a hot straightener/curling iron from eyebrow-level, or about 1/3 of the way down, so your roots are still smooth. This prevents you from having fake-wavy or too poufy and gives a kind of slept-on effect. Also, I prefer not using the clamp on the straightener/curling iron. Just wrap it, count to 10 or so, depending on how thick your hair is, then after a few shakes and a flip -- voila! Laid back, simple, but beautiful hair.

By the way --- I normally do not use any products for frizz control because most times, it will make my hair look too oily or it just doesn't work. Recently though, I have become a fan of Garnier Fructis Sleek & Shine. I love this stuff! I just put a dime/quarter worth [depending on how thick your hair is] in my hair after I towel dry it and my frizziness is pretty much gone. The product definitely makes a big difference. Plus! It smells really good. I just had to share with y'all because when something is so good, I always want to spread the love!

Hope you're having a great hair day!