Just a Canary Bird...

I decided a few years ago that donating hair to programs who make wigs for cancer patients was a great cause I could contribute toward. Both mine and the Hubby's families have had someone who suffered from some form of cancer. BEFORE I have always been told I have beautiful hair. I make a prime candidate to donate hair because I don't color my hair and because it takes forever to dry and style, I don't use the hair dryer or straightener every day. I took the plunge 3 years ago right after our wedding. I chose to donate 9 inches of hair and then started to grow my hair back out again. Yesterday I took the plunge again and cut off 11 inches of hair. It feels great! I chose the Pantene Beautiful Length's charity. You only have to have a minimum of 8 inches to donate. AFTER I feel like it's a great way to show my support for cancer survivors or people dealing with cancer. Self confidence goes a long way for making people feel go...

I hope everyone had a great holiday! I know we were SUPER busy but it was a good busy. Our holiday week kicked off on December 20th when I hosted the Hubby's family for Christmas. It was our nephews first Christmas and I'm pretty sure he got spoiled! The Hubby surprised me on Tuesday with tickets to see the Indiana Pacers. I was so surprised, he is a planner and this was totally not planned! It was a lot of fun! We traveled down to my parents house for Christmas this year, so we drove down on Christmas Eve. It was great getting to see both sides of my family. I even managed to get a good picture with my sister! We got a ton of stuff, but one of my favorite gifts this year was from my parents (really my mom, but still). She made each one of us a lottery ticket bouquet. It was so much fun scratching them off. The Hubby and I won $17. We came back home to watch the Hall of Fame Classic basketball tournament that our town hosts. We house the world's larges...

Happy Friday! Another Friday is here and it's almost Christmas! We have a full weekend of basketball ahead of us, so there will be no rest this weekend. My wonderful mother bought me a new scarf. I LOVE IT! I love Olaf from Frozen. I think is cute and funny. I hope you have a weekend full of holiday fun! Here is "Do you want to build a snowman?" from Frozen. I just think this movie is so cute! Until next time, Kara

I have said before, I am an official nerd. I will 100% own up to that. In all the Harry Potter books and films, they always refer to Hogwarts during Christmas time. It always seemed like a magical place to be at Christmas. I was inspired to make a Butterbeer inspired cookie for our Christmas party.  I also submitted this recipe into #CreativeCookieContest being hosted by Cookies & Cups  and Confessions of a Cookbook Queen . I hope that Harry Potter fanatics like me can enjoy it this holiday season! Hogwarts worthy Butterbeer Cookies Ingredients For the cookies: 1 ¼ cups all purpose flour ¼  teaspoon salt ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature ½ cup powdered sugar ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract ½ teaspoon butter extract For the ganache: ½ cup heavy cream 5.5 ounces butterscotch chips Directions Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and line your baking sheets with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, combine together the flou...

I know everyone has their favorite Christmas movies. My sister literally watches every Christmas movie she can. She has probably watched 50+ so far this holiday season. However, I don't have a tradition to watch a certain movie every year, but these are some great options if you are looking for a Christmas movie tradition.  1. Elf I just love this movie. It's just so funny. We just watched it the other night. If I had to pick one movie I got to watch each holiday season, it would be Elf. Some of my favorite quotes from the movie are: "I just like to smile. Smiling's my favorite!" "The best way to spread Christmas cheer, is singing loud for all to hear." "SANTA! Santa's coming! I know him. I know him!" 2. Frosty This is a classic movie. I just love it. I know the animation is way out of date, but I just love this old movie. Our nephew is almost 8 months old, so this year he got a sing-along tape for Christmas from all the...

Happy Friday!!! I so happy the weekend is here and it's my half day at work! I am getting ready for our Christmas party tomorrow. My plan is to clean and bake today! Here is Baby it's Cold Outside to enjoy from Lady Antebellum. I love their music and this time of year I am always listening to "Lady Antebellum Holiday" channel on Pandora. Have a great weekend! Until next time, Kara *I do not own this video or the content of it.

This is my favorite time of year. I love to decorate my house, to cook and bake, spend time with family and friends, and the overall atmosphere that Christmas has. We are hosting a Christmas party this weekend for our friends and then we will be hosting the Hubby's family in 2 weeks. Last week was great. It was a short work week, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and a long weekend to relax.  The Hubby went shopping with me a few years ago on Black Friday and said he would never go back. Well after we saw that there was an hour guarantee on a 50" TV, he decided that he would give it another shot. We actually had a great experience while shopping. We were able to get our TV, plus something for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. They didn't want to go into the madness, but if we were going...they wanted stuff from the ad. Luckily we were able to get everything people wanted.  Here we are headed out on Thursday evening to get our TV! Here is the TV set up at the house...

I start decorating for the Christmas holidays, the day after Thanksgiving. I just love to have the tree lights on and enjoy the atmosphere! This is my favorite time of year.  Here are a few digital prints that I have created over the past couple years to decorate our house with. I hope you can enjoy them as well. Until next time, Kara

Wow it has been forever since my last update! We are busy, busy, busy! Basketball season is in full swing and so are the holidays! The Hubby's team is currently 1-1. I'm dressed for the game. I love that his team's colors match my favorite college team U of L. Makes it easy to have double duty with my clothing! One thing that I can say is that I am completely done with Christmas shopping! I don't know if I have ever completed shopping before Thanksgiving, but I did this year! Online shopping is a life saver. I pretty much bought everything that way this year! The Hubby and I went on a date night this past weekend. We went to eat at Firehouse Subs and to see the Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.  It was a great night. I had never ate at firehouse subs, but it was really good. Then how can you go wrong with any of the Hunger Games movies? Jennifer Lawrence is a great actress. I just love her in all her movies! I cannot believe I have to wait...

The Hubby and I are determined to set ourselves up for the future. Times have changed and raises are hard to come by now. We want to plan for our future, which requires some effort and planning on our parts. We set a goal to have a rental as one of our future investments. Now we can check this off our list. We are officially done with the rental property....well I say officially, but we still have a few things left to do, but our renter moves in tomorrow. The other changes can wait. This has been a long journey. I feel like the house now reflects the potential we saw in it. When you walk in the front door, you enter the living room. A reminder to what the house was before: smelly, dark, musty, and dirty. No we went for modern, fresh and clean. Once you are in the living room, you will see the connecting dinning room. You still had the dirty carpet and dark paint. Once you are in the dinning room, you can walk directly into the kitchen. The kitchen had old ...

While everyone is busy with last minute Halloween plans, I'm already thinking about Thanksgiving being just around the corner.  I don't have too many Thanksgiving or fall decorations, because I go straight from Halloween, to a short time period of Thanksgiving decor, and then on to my favorite holiday, Christmas.  I love to add new pieces of digital art each year. Here is a printable piece of digital art I created! Enjoy! Until next time, Kara

We haven't had much going on since getting back from Las Vegas, but I thought I would do a quick post to catch everyone up! 1. We have been trying to relax before the Hubby starts coaching basketball again. This year he will be coaching 8th grade boys. This should be interesting to see, because he also teaches these kids.  This year it seems that I will trade in my stat sheets for the game book. We will see how this transition goes! But I would rather go to all the games, keep the book and see my husband, rather than go home and wait until 10:00 pm to see him. Let's hope that I'm a fast learner! 2. The rental property is in the last stretch of completion. We move our renter in next week. I am hoping to get all the tools and supplies out of the way this week in order to do my final walk through pictures! I can't wait to post the results. I think the property looks fantastic. I am so proud of our results. 3. The Hubby has always been fascinated with Las Vegas ...