Happy Valentine's Day!

Today the world celebrates love and we celebrate the day before we got engaged 9 years ago...

Saying Goodbye & Hello

January 2012 has been a LONG month for us!

Early in the month I was in an accident and my beloved 2005 Toyota Matrix, "Trixie", was totaled. To say that I was devastated would be an understatement. I had just paid my car off in July and it had just turned over 100,000 miles (literally, the car had 100,005 miles on it when the accident happened), and I truly LOVED that car. Thankfully, everyone involved was uninjured and I would much rather have a totaled car than injured people.

So after an exhausting (to say the least) search today we bought a Honda Certified 2008 Element AWD. So far I am IN LOVE and it breaks my heart that Honda quit making them this year. So we'll just have to keep "E" as we are calling her for now, on the road for 800,000 miles like the owner we found on one of the Honda owner forums!

Welcome to the Family Element!

Happy 2012!

We're cozy enjoying our last few hours before going back to work tomorrow.

More to come in the coming days!

Christmas is Coming...

Christmas is only 5 days away?! How is that even possible?! In so many years this year has been a long one and in others it seems to have flown by in a flash. The past 6 months in particular with all of the house stuff, job changes, and other commitments have kept us super busy. We have been so very blessed in so may ways this year. To say I am thankful is a complete understatement.

I won't go into all of the excuses, indecision, and ultimate silliness that made the decision we would not send out Christmas cards this year. I will however, share the picture that was to be our card and a few pictures of our home all decorated for the holidays! Enjoy!

Happy Holidays, Love, S&E

The Living Room all dressed up with the "big" tree!

The "Little" tree in the family room. The "Charlie Brown" tree also lives here.

The Dining Room with a few pretty red trees!

"Kickin' Hot Chocolate" for Holiday guests!

Macabean says hi too... although, he's pretty much hibernating :)

So, We Fried a Turkey...

The long and the short of it is that we bought a turkey fryer for canning (instead of potentially ruining our ceramic cooktop) and the occasional fried turkey deliciousness. We are also hosting Chapman Christmas in January where we would like to serve said fried turkey. So... we beta tested a turkey on our friends and it was a huge (and fun) success!

Shane Injecting the turkey with yummy.

The guys assessing the situation.

Shane's hands covered in turkey seasoning.

Fried Turkey Deliciousness.

The turkey was good but the time with friends was the bestest!

Christmastime...

has come to the Chapman household after a wonderful Thanksgiving spent with family!

Pictures to come!

We're Cozy!

We have been enjoying a busy and cozy fall in our new house! We still have a handful of larger projects to go but we've been enjoying being in our house, entertaining guests, and generally NOT doing house projects for a little bit :)

A few of our favorite things to do in the fall are take a drive to Nashville, Indiana and bum around the pretty trees and visit Tuttles Orchard near Indianapolis. This year was no exception. We scheduled it so we were able to do both in the same weekend and wow was it great! Here are a few pictures (a tad late) from our annual fall date weekend.

Last weekend we also enjoyed a trip to Chicago for my birthday! Shane proved even further that he is an amazing husband by walking all over the Structural Objects and Functional Art (SoFA) show!

So, in other words, we have been enjoying a beautiful fall together! Yah!