Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

We have flakes! It has begun to snow. Snow-age if you will!

Merry Christmas to you and yours! I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and gets to spend it with their family and friends. 

I'll start updating more after all of the holiday festivities start to die down. 

Promise. 

Love,

Me.

The place I call home.

You know the saying, "Home is where the heart is"? Well, home for me is where the water is.

Luckily, the water is right outside my doorstep.

Good gracious. It's sunsets like this that make me appreciate my teensy, tiny, rather expensive for it's size, apartment.

It has been raining all week, then all of a sudden the clouds broke up and the sky cleared just so we could all witness this beautiful ending to the day.

And then it got cloudy again.

Boo.


But the real reason I am here is to talk to you about these:

Doritos 3rd degree burn flavored chips.


HOLY MOLY. These things are HOT! I mean, I am definitely a wuss when it comes to spicy things, but geez.

Now, I may or may not have been warned about these by my wonderful fiance', and I may or may not have waited until he was not around to try them anyways. I also may or may not have been reduced to insta-tears after one bite. I can neither confirm nor deny these things.

But I can tell ya that they are hot. Feel the burn all the way down your throat, hot.

Gives me the shivers.

I'd much rather be eating these:

The end.


Also, while I'm on the topic of everything. (Wasn't I on the topic of everything?)

I got a little motivated and did my hair up real nice today. I'm not sure what came over me, but I was bored and felt like spending oh, you know, 20 or so minutes on my hair. (Really, what was I thinking?)

I've done this style quite a few times last year, and it was a hit every time.

But, boy, did I underestimate the power of small towners. I got SO many compliments it made my head spin!

It's a fishtail braid, and it took me quite a few tries to finally get it right my first time.

I honestly believe that people here have never seen such a thing. And I'm not gonna lie. That makes me a little happy.

Here are some of the things people said about my hair today.

"Oh my, that's just lovely, how in heavens do you do that??"

"Now, what do you call that kind of style? Is it a type of braid or something?"

"Well lookie there! That's a real nice thing you got going on with your hair there!"

I love hearing things like this from strangers. Especially strangers in the grocery store line who come up and touch your hair to feel its structure and softness.

Have I mentioned that I love small towns (probably once.... or twice... at least). I feel like the big city girl in this town.

"I think it's time we go our separate ways."

"What's that you're yelling, Bertha?....You're here to stay, whether I like it or not?? Well that's just not fair!"

Do I sound crazy yet?

Good.

Because I feel crazy.

My sweet, precious, super old, super rickety Honda is in the shop.

AGAIN.

So now I am left car-less.  The check engine light came on yesterday and I can't be havin' that whilst traveling all over NC for the holidays.

This is frustrating for a few reasons.

1. I have not yet made friendships close enough to ask people to help drive me to and from work and other miscellaneous errands everyday.
                - This duty will fall to Matt for now, and is not a good solution as it is difficult for him to just pick up and leave work, at part of his busiest time of day, to pick me up from work and take me home, then head back to work. Which, by the way, are on opposite ends of town. Actually, they aren't even technically in the same town.

2. I feel that Bertha (my Honda) has been to the shop one too many times (she's probably having a love affair...), and that this may be her last time.
                - This is not a good solution because I cannot afford a new vehicle. It simply is not possible right now, and I don't appreciate being cheated on with the repair shop. Really lowers one's self confidence.

3. I need a reliable car. The end.


I guess I should have seen another incident like this coming. Bertha's been having transmission trouble for quite some time now. I should have treated her better.


Sorry there are no pictures of her. It's dark outside, and in case you haven't heard, we had a bit of a spat. A lover's quarrel if you will.

What's a girl to do?

Welcome to the flower shop!

So I promised pictures of the actual flower store, so here ya go! This part of the job is a little more interesting. I get to walk around more, thus keeping me warmer. I am so tired of being cold!! Is it summer yet? Whew.

This is just one section, this place it pretty big!

My little working area. You can't see it too well, but check out those boxes. That's my work cut out for me right there! (note: it may not look like much, but what you don't see is the 40 million boxes stacked up behind the counter and in the back room. Just a'waitin' for me!)

This is my favorite part! The huge sparkling, lit up balls. The smaller ones actually spin slowly. It gets very beautiful when the sun goes down.

Close up ;)




Alright, alright. I didn't get off work to go talk about work!

Let's talk about how expensive school books are!! Good gracious, I am going to have to spend close to 500 dollars for just 3 classes! Thank goodness the grant will help pay for all this, otherwise we would be in some trouble! Anyone else think the price of books is ridiculous? I wish there was something we could do! I even ordered them from amazon and I am saving a lot, but not enough!

On another note, my best friend, Katie who is living in Alaska, is coming to NC for ALL of January. She is bringing the sweetest, most beautiful baby girl, ever, and I can't wait to finally meet this little girl, love of my life! I literally cannot express how excited I am to see her, and to meet that sweet girl!!

ALSO, in breaking news, my other best friend in Rhode Island is coming to visit in January, too. It's like all the stars aligned to have the people farthest away from me, come to me all at once! How wonderful!

Sorry this post is so scattered, my brain is scattered, so that's what ya get friends. Scrambie eggs.

Got the rainy blues.

Annnd, I'm sick.


I am sorry friends, I have been the worst blogger ever these past few days. I'm not even sure what type of sick I am. My left tonsil is swollen to the size of something it definitely should not be, and I feel extremely icky. That's the best way to describe it. Icky.

I don't have too many body aches (besides the usual ones) and the only other symptom is an on- again, off-again fever.

All of you genius diagnosis-er's (yes, I am aware this is not a real word) come on and let me in on what ails me.

Besides all of that, I should probably update and let you all know that I finally, finally, got a job here in tiny town. I am working for a silk flower company that ships worldwide (apparently, who knew?!) I am working in both their warehouse as an office assistant and will also be running their retail store a few days a week. It's not a glamorous job, but it's a job, and it will pay the bills until I am out of school! Woohoo!

So here are a few pictures of my office. YES, my very own office! This is a first people, mark it down in the history books!

The owners also sometimes bring their adorable taco bell dogs to work! So, so small and cute! I can hardly get any work done when these guys come around. I was only able to get pictures of one of the pups, and I do mean pup, this guy is a baby!

Dawwwwwwww!

That's all I got of the work life. I will try and take a picture of the actual store and post that later on.

At last, I will leave you with my latest food genius. I give you:

The homemade chicken and dumplings. Amazing. I will probably be making this again very, very soon. As in, tonight.

Small town Holiday Fun!

This past Saturday I finally drug Matt's behind out of the house to the local Holiday parade and flotilla. Granted, he only had to walk a block down the street, but still! I felt some minor form of achievement.

Such a lovely, small town parade. Have I mentioned how much I love small towns?

It was SO cold out that day! That's when all of NC was getting the crazy early snow. All of NC, but us, of course. But what else can you expect, living in coastal NC you won't typically be seein' much snow round these parts! (Sorry, my small town, southerness just came out.)

With the police leading the way, the parade gets going!

In good parade fashion, the participators threw candy for the little ones. The kids were eating this stuff up!

These guys were just too funny. Mini- 18 wheelers!

Ahh, this brings back the high school memories. Parades were the bane of my existence. It was always too hot, or way too cold. I wouldn't have minded this parade, I don't think. They only had to walk less than a quarter of a mile! Sheesh. What a life.

Oh yes, the real pride and joy of the small town parade. The souped up tractors. It's just not a real parade without them.

But everyone knows the best part is when Santa comes along. You can't help but to love that sight!

This past week in an unnamed superstore (get real, there's only one here.) I saw Santa fall backwards in his chair.


True story.


He was okay though.


We also went to the annual flotilla on Saturday night. Again, luckily, we only had to walk out our front door and two steps to our right to get there.

Such a fun, extremely cold, time.


I love the holidays.


I'm going to go drink my hot chocolate and make some chicken and dumplings for dinner.

Paula Deen would be proud.

Nutella Nuggets of delight.

Well, friends, I have survived Thanksgiving number 2 with Matt's family. We went to Wilmington on Monday to celebrate thanksgiving with our family and friends there because Matt had to work on Thanksgiving (boo!) It was absolutely delicious! It was really fun to catch up with his parents, and our friends, a lot of whom I haven't seen in a long time.

So now we are back in our humble abode in Beaufort. Matt is on vacation until next week so we will see how long it takes for us to kill each other.

I kid, I kid.


So this morning I got inspired and decided to make breakfast. I know, try hide your shock. It's hard to believe I am capable of doing anything pre-coffee.

These are my Nutella Nuggets of delight. Or, if you will, nutella croissants.

Simplest things I have ever made.

Start by pre-heating the oven to 375 degrees.

Then unroll your croissants from their tightly wrapped tube and break them apart into their individual triangles. (No easy feat if you are someone named Jennie who has never successfully, until this very morning, unraveled croissant rolls and kept all of them in one piece. Why was this always so hard?)

Then assemble your ingredients. It is very simple and goes as follows.

Yes. Nutella and Cream Cheese. 2 parts Nutella, 1 part cream cheese (just to thicken the hazelnut- and my midsection- up a bit.)

Then spoon the mixture onto the croissant triangles - careful not to overload them too much, as I wanted to do.

(Insert great picture of nutella mixture spooned onto the croissants here. I, in my full chocolate drunkeness, deleted this picture I had taken for your viewing pleasure whilst trying to upload it to my computer.)

After this, roll the croissants up, making sure to tightly close the side openings so the mixture won't spill out onto the cookie sheet during baking.

Then bake at 375 for 10 minutes. But I have to warn you, my stove is ancient. Like, 25 years old, it blew up in my face, see previous post about that, ancient.

It doesn't even have a way to let you know that it is pre-heated, it's that ancient.


So cooking times may vary.


Then, take a break (you are working so hard) and lick the remainder of the nutella mixture from the bowl..

No, there is no shame in actually doing that. Not even when your fiance' walks into the kitchen and stares at this mess of a woman huddling in a corner, scraping the bowl with crazy in her eyes.

After the rolls are nice and golden brown, take 'em out. They be done.

Now your only job is to devour them. Enjoy, but be careful, the insides are HOT!