Christmas With Friends

Tonight we celebrated Christmas with our friends Lawren and Robert. Each one of them got us very cool gifts, that both happened to be very personalized!

Below is a recipe binder that Lawren got us. On the front and side, it says "Nutt Family Favorites"!


And the picture below is of a hammer that Robert had engraved for us with "J & A" on it. He also attached a Home Depot gift card to it which I'm sure we'll be able to use on something for our business!



Merry Christmas! Tomorrow is Christmas Eve!

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Lately...

It's almost been a month since I last blogged.  I was informed (by Lawren Todd) that we need to update this a LOT more than we do. So here you go Lawren- this blog is dedicated to you today! Enjoy!

I'm so excited and happy to say that our business, J&A Designs, has successfully taken off!! On November 13th, we had a booth at the Holiday Market in Olde Towne Clinton. The couple weeks leading up to the market were probably the most stressful weeks we've been through! They were full of many LONG nights, but it was so worth it. I guess you could say this was the debut of our business and all of our items. We are so blessed to be able to say that it was a huge success! We've been spending all of our free time working on orders from the market and other orders we've had since the launch of our online store. I'm so happy to say that we are finally finished with the last of our orders just in time for Christmas!

We spent Thanksgiving in Nashville with Jonathan's parents. It was the first time I'd ever traveled on a major holiday since all my family lives in the Clinton area. We had fun and it was so nice to leave Clinton and everything behind for a few days. We ate a lot, shopped on Friday and did a lot of relaxing!


Before we left for Thanksgiving, we decorated our apartment for Christmas! Jonathan LOVES Christmas and everything about it, so he was very adamant that our house would be decorated when we came home from Thanksgiving. Although we don't have a mantle, and we don't have a lot of places to decorate, I think it turned out really cute!

This past Sunday Jonathan and I celebrated 6 months of marriage! I can't believe it's already been that long!  But we've loved every minute of what has turned out to be a very busy 6 months! The picture below is before we left for dinner at Julep to celebrate.

Anna

Christmas Cards- It's time!

We were very excited to find out about the offer that Shutterfly is promoting for bloggers! Jonathan and I have been looking forward to sending out Christmas cards since last year, when we started to look forward to our first Christmas as a married couple! We have so many cards that we want to send out this year from our friends to our family. Shutterfly always has the cutest cards! So I am excited to be using them this year. Although, this is our first year to use Shutterfly for Christmas cards, we have ordered photo prints, a photo book and a calendar.  I've attached some of our favorite things, including cards! I really liked this card and this card and we love this one a lot. Shutterfly also has the best gift ideas for everyone on your list. Our favorites are the calendars and photo books.  


If you already got your Christmas cards, Shutterfly has cute cards for birthdays, moving announcements, etc. Check them out here. Also, if you are a fellow blogger and want to see more information on this amazing offer, click here!

We've already put up Christmas decorations at our apartment and we are looking forward to the holidays! I'll post pictures soon! Have a great week!

J&A Designs

I'm so excited that I can finally blog about what Jonathan and I have been spending all of our free time doing lately!!
I told Jonathan one night that I needed a hobby. After 4 years of being really involved in college (especially Senior year), I wasn't used to having free time at night. I needed something to actually keep me busy in my free time! I kept seeing handpainted wooden picture frames in stores and thought surely I can make these! So, that's pretty much where J&A Designs came from. I knew that every year Olde Towne Clinton hosts a Holiday Market where vendors set up booths and handmade or home grown items and that it would be the perfect place to sell these picture frames that I wanted to create.
Jonathan has been SO amazing in helping get this up and running off the ground in time for this Holiday Market.  I guess I never realized how much work this would be and what all would really go into this venture when we started. But, I am proud to say that he has learned how to use a power saw and cuts all the wood himself. At first, we let Home Depot cut all the wood, but finding someone and then actually having them cut the correct measurements has never been easy!  He also sands most of the wood, although I have recently started helping out with this some. He says all the time now, he needs a bigger tool box thanks to this!

Thankfully, Jonathan also has a love for graphic design (he created all of our wedding stationary) and so he's been hard at work perfecting a logo and inserts for the picture frames! He also has been taking the pictures you see of our products. I guess our Marketing degrees are coming in handy! :)
I do most of the painting and sanding and he actually does the assembly and finishes the frames, but occasionally he will help out with the painting if I need him. I love being crafty and feeling accomplished when something is actually finished, so this has been a lot of fun for me!
If you haven't seen any of our finished products, check out our newly created Facebook fan page "J&A Designs". We have a whole album of frames, and other home decor that we have finished and currently we are hard at work getting ready for the Holiday Market so we will have some new pictures to share soon!

The Holiday Market in Olde Towne Clinton is Saturday, November 13th from 9am to 2pm and we'd love for you to stop by and see us at our booth! Christmas is coming up and our items would make perfect gifts!
I'll leave you with a couple of pictures of our finished work!

This is one of several different schools we can customize. Others include: Clinton Arrows, MSU, Ole Miss, USM, University of Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida State University, University of Florida, Ohio State University. And if you want another school, we don't have listed we can try to make it!

We love to bake!

When the fall decor went on sale last year, I bought several Halloween and fall cookie cutters - so last night Jonathan and I decided to make homemade sugar cookies (pumpkins, ghosts, and leaves)! We also made his favorite glaze icing that his mom made anytime they baked sugar cookies.  Here's the recipe if you want to try it!

The Best Rolled Sugar Cookies:
 Ingredients
-1 1/2 cups butter, softened
-2 cups white sugar
-4 eggs
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-5 cups all-purpose flour
-2 teaspoons baking powder
-1 teaspoon salt

Directions:   In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight). 
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely. (Says it makes 60 cookies, but it depends on size of cookie cutters)

Glaze Icing
Ingredients:
- Powdered sugar
-Almond extract
Directions: Pour powdered sugar into a bowl. Slowly add drops of hot water to make powdered sugar dissolve into a glaze. Keep repeating until you have enough to cover all cookies. Add almond extract to taste.

Proud of my purchase!

Hey guys!

It's Jonathan and I wanted to blog about something we purchased recently.  I was looking on CraigsList recently (just for fun) and found a really cool retro office desk for the awesome price of $50! I contacted the seller that afternoon and went to look at the desk that evening- and of course, I came home with it!

In our new apartment in Chrestman Hall at MC- which we will post more pictures of soon- we have a lot more space in our 2nd bedroom. Therefore, this desk that sat in an office building for 25 years fits great and we really like it! Check out my pictures:

I got my shelves put up above it!

The last 2 weeks of our lives have been a little crazy - several really big things have happened!
I'm so proud to say that my not so little sister  was a Sophomore Clinton Homecoming Maid 2 weekends ago! I just can't believe she's old enough to be in high school. Some days I feel like we were just in high school. Here's a picture of the family the night of the Homecoming game:

A few weeks ago we spontaneously decided to take a trip to NYC over MC's Fall Break. We never do things this short notice, but we figured now is the perfect time to plan fun, random trips! So the day after the Clinton Homecoming game we made the trip to NYC for a few days!  We stayed with Jonathan's sister who lives in NYC and it was fun to hang out with her and her boyfriend, Jamie, while we were there.  When we got to the city, the first thing we did was buy tickets to see our favorite Broadway show - Mary Poppins! It was my 2nd time to see it and Jonathan's 3rd time. The other show we saw was Billy Elliot- which was also fabulous! The rest of the 2 1/2 days we went to Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building, High Line Park, Central Park, shopped and walked all over NYC. My feet have never hurt that much!

So excited to be at our favorite musical- Mary Poppins!

At High Line Park- a Park on top of buildings 

Me and Bekah resting in Central Park

Statue of Liberty - taken from the Ferry 

View from the top of the Empire State Building on a rainy day

My purse decided to break on top of the Empire State Building and I was really sad
(ignore how gross I look from the rainy weather)

Times Square

The biggest change that happened in our life these past couple of weeks is that we have ONCE again moved to a new apartment. The position of Resident Director for Chrestman, the freshmen guy's dorm, recently opened and after much discussion and prayer, Jonathan decided to take the job.  This meant we had to pack up for the 3rd time since we've been married (4 months today) and move.  Thankfully, with the help of several of our amazing friends and my family we were able to move this past weekend and almost unpack everything. We are really excited about this change and I know Jonathan will be an amazing Resident Director for the freshman guys. When we get the apartment completely unpacked and mostly decorated I'll post some pictures!

MC Homecoming is this weekend so both of us are really looking forward to seeing friends that we don't get to see that often anymore!

Also, happy 4 months to my husband! I'm cooking Poppy Seed Chicken and a Pumpkin Cake for dinner tonight to celebrate!

It's been a while...

Well, A LOT has happened since the last time I blogged. It's definitely time for an update!
As you can see from the last post, we both graduated from MC and we got married! In the past few months since that - so many things have happened! You would get bored and quit reading this post if I wrote about everything in detail, so instead I thought it would be fun to catch up on the life of the Nutts with pictures and captions! Enjoy :)

Jonathan and I during the bachelorette / bachelor trips- our trips overlapped
and one night we all hung out together!

The boys.

The girls at our condo.

June 12th-  An absolutely perfect day!
We finally became Mr. & Mrs. Jonathan Nutt!

You may kiss the bride!

One of my favorites!

Wedding party!

I was slightly obsessed with our cake and flowers!  I didn't want the normal everyday
roses and round cake. They turned out PERFECT!

At the reception, we had a Fotobooth set up thanks to the best photographer ever - Robby Followell. The best serious pose picture we have ever taken!

The bridesmaids and I!

SGA boys @ the wedding reception!

Leaving the reception- confetti!

Right after we arrived to our honeymoon in Jamaica!



Awesome lounge chair that fit both of us at the resort!



Before dinner one night!

The gorgeous view from our balcony.

Another of us!

We went to see Julie Hall, Miss Mississippi College in Vicksburg at the parade!

Julie Hall, Miss MC 2010!

Supporting Julie one of the nights of the pageant!

Easley Amused with friends!

4th of July with Zachary!

Us with nephew Thomas in Ohio in July!

In Destin - one of my favorite places in the world.

My family in Destin!

If you've made it through this long post of pictures, I'm impressed! We're going to start updating A LOT more so no more posts this long - promise! :)

Anna