2011 was a great inaugural year for Just Us Four thanks in large part to some really great blogs that sent people this way.  So, as we begin 2012, I want to say a big

to my top referring blogs:
1) Someday Crafts
2) Young House Love (love the Pinterest Challenges!)
3) Bower Power
4) Decor to Adore
5) Romantic Home

Of course, this blog would be pretty lonely without all the lovely comments!  So,

to all the lovely readers who take the time to comment and to the most frequent commenters here:
1)  Jennifer from Vintage Gwen
2)  Sherika from Passionately Perfect
3)  Mindie from Bacon Time
4)  Marilyn from The Artsy Girl Connection
5)  Kelli from The Turquoise Piano

When you have a moment, please be sure to visit these lovely and extremely talented ladies!
And thanks again for being so supportive of Just Us Four!

At the end of the year, it is nice to do a little review of where we’ve been!  Most people (me included) do it in our personal lives so I figure it should extend here too.  So, I bring you the top 5 posts, based on reader views, from 2011.

1.  I created some paint chip art for the 1st Pinterest Challenge.

2.  I hosted a crafting “date” with my friend Liz where we made Halloween wreaths.

3.  For the 2nd Pinterest Challenge, I made some homemade hurricane vases and filled them with spray painted pine cones for Christmas.

4.  Junior let me share the great painting job she did in her powder room using a toilet paper roll!

5.  I used some Ikea lanterns to decorate our front porch for Halloween.

I can’t wait to share more fun things with you in 2012! Happy New Year!

 

 

This felt like an exceptionally long weekend since mine technically started on Wednesday!  Woo to the hoo!  We spent Wednesday night with two of our favorite people doing one of our favorite things…drinking wine!

Junior found this really neat little place, Parallel Wine Bistro, that allows you to serve yourself wine by the taste, half glass or full glass.  In all, I think there were at least 20 wines to try.  The boys mostly stuck to beer but the Junior and I went down the line and tasted almost every one available!

Thursday was spent cooking and getting ready for Thanksgiving.  We didn’t make our usual trip to visit my parents which gave me a pretty big case of the sads.  We did get to the spend the holiday with Mathlete’s parents which was really nice! 

We had all the traditional Thanksgiving things including a pumpkin pie that H made.

After stuffing ourselves with yummy food, we got to have a special visit with my parents!  Isn’t the internet awesome?!

 
A little nap to get ready and then we literally shopped until we dropped!  So, we spent most of Friday sleeping.

Saturday was the yearly Christmas decorating marathon. 

[A Christmas Story House]

We finished about 95%  of the outdoor decorating and a good chunk of the stuff indoors too.  I’ll be sharing pictures of all that once I finally get around to taking some.  We capped off Saturday night with homemade pizza!
Sunday, Junior and I got up extra early and headed off to the mall for

One of the best parts of the class was the pre-store opening shopping and the 10% off discount.  L-O-V-E!
The guys met us with the kids for our annual Santa picture taking. While we waited, there was lots to look at such as polar bears and snow.

We had a struggle getting all of the kids to look the same way at the same time.  Santa was very patient.

Did you get an extra long weekend?  Spend some time with Santa?  Or maybe you just vegged out with family?

I want to share with you a current pet peeve of mine.  {I apologize in advance for the mini-rant!}  Websites that aren’t user friendly!  Right now, I am doing a ton of holiday shopping and planning for upcoming events.  One of my key weapons tools for this is the interwebs.  I need to confirm that places are open because I am short on time or make sure the restaurant we are considering has food everyone will eat!

[The Best Web Hosting Service]

Last week, a friend told me about a local store that sells Annie Sloan Chalk Paint.  I prefer to buy locally when I can so I went searching online for the store to confirm the hours and location.  The problem:  I couldn’t find a website to help me out.  I finally found a reference to the store on another website but it didn’t offer the details I needed to make the trip!  So, I bought my chalk paint somewhere else!
I can’t tell you how many times recently this has happened where a store or restaurant had a terribly put together website or, worse, no website at all!

[Addicted to Insight]

Yeah, that is how I feel too lady!  These days, people (especially me!) rely on websites for so much of their daily activities.  I check opening/closing times, location and other details about the places I am considering going.  For some, checking a menu on a website prior to heading to a restaurant is crucial so not having a good website (or one at all!) means potentially losing a customer.  That is why it is so important for businesses to create a website and make it user friendly.

So, since I am on a mini-rant here, what I do I mean when I say build a user friendly website?  I think there are 5 key parts that need to be included (feel free to add any rants or additional items in the comments!):

1. Include basic details like what time you open and close, the location and any special notes (i.e. do you charge for parking? is there valet?).  Want to be a “super” site?  Offer directions or a link to Google maps.
2. Offer pictures and descriptions of the key products you have.  Even if the website doesn’t offer online shopping, it is important to show customers what they will see if they come to the store/restaurant. {Think Michaels}
3. Try to avoid flash OR offer a mobile version of your site. I know I do so much of my research and websurfing on my smart phone.  Flash + smart phone = ridiculous waste of time.  Sure, it looks great but I could find what I need much faster if the website either had a mobile (flash-less) version or just didn’t use flash to begin with.
4. Try to keep the web address something easy to remember!  I think this is pretty self explanatory.  http://www.keepitsimple.com/ is much easier to remember than http://www.wewantyoutokeepthingssimpleforyourself.com/. Right?
5. Keep your site up to date!  This is a BIGGIE!  I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to try and confirm something and then get to the place to find that the information was outdated.

So, are you, my dear readers, doing a lot of web surfing to prepare for the holiday season?  How about online shopping?  Do you check a menu before heading to a restaurant so you’ll have an idea of what to order?

I am participating in a blog campaign for Bucks2Blog for an online website builder company and was compensated.  However, the view, opinions and rants shared here are my own.

Warning – The first part of this post is full of fun pictures of my kids {mostly taken by my mom} showing what they were doing while we were busy with other life stuff.

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If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you already knew something was coming today.  Can you guess what it is? 
Yep, a brand new blog design thanks to Seven Thirty Three.  I think she did a fantastic job and hope you all like it too!
So, what do we do when something BIG happens around here (I like to think of the new design as being pretty BIG), we celebrate!
Over the next 2 weeks, look out for some fun stuff including a guest blogger or two, some fun new crafts and a giveaways thanks to our friends at

Be sure to grab our new button too!  Old buttons are so last week!

It is my second week of hosting this great giveaway link party!  If you are hosting a giveaway, please link to it below!  The “rules” of the party:
    – Please be sure to link up only to your specific giveaway post and not to your overall blog.
    – In your linky title, please put the name of your giveaway and the end date.
    – Please link back to this blog so your readers will know where to come find other giveaways too!

Interested in entering a giveaway, check out all the ones linked up below!

We never have to worry about what goes on when we aren’t around because, if my mom is there, it will all be caught on camera!  This weekend was no different!  Since I wasn’t there, I won’t offer much commentary but just provide some photos for your viewing pleasure.

Yes, in this picture, you can see what is still not hung on the wall!

Princesses on Ice was the highlight of Sunday!

Hope you enjoyed this photo tour of our kids weekend!

You probably guess from here that Sunday was my wedding anniversary.  Yep, the Mathlete and I have been married for a whopping 7 years!  So far, nothing has started itching which I take as a pretty good sign.
To celebrate our big 7, we headed back to the place where it all began: Virginia Tech.  We even managed to make the trip sans kids thanks to our parents who took on kid duty for the entire weekend (thanks Mom, Dad and Mom2!).
Ready for our trip:

If you’ve never been to Blacksburg, it is a great town…provided you don’t mind everything being maroon and orange!

Hey, I did say everything!  Seriously, though, downtown Blacksburg is a quaint little town filled with lots of charm and Hokie birds.

We spent Saturday morning playing tourist in downtown before the football game began.  We drove/walked back some of our hang outs including the place we celebrated our engagement…The Cellar (known for their macdaddy meatballs but not necessarily their romantic atmosphere).

We spent a lot of time walking around campus too.  Almost all of the buildings there are made of Hokie stone (yes, that is a thing) which is pretty neat.  We used to have dreams of building our house out of Hokie stone but I doubt the HOA would have approved.

We took a trip to where Mathlete was officially “born”.  It is (sadly) one of the only buildings on campus not made of the famous stone.  It’s ok though because the geek beacon works better in a regular brick building.

Next up was a stop for remembrance at the Memorial of the April 2007 shootings that took place on campus.  The memorial is a semi-circle with a stone for each person lost in the terrible tragedy.

Our last stop before tailgating was the place where Mathlete blinded me with sparkly objects and convinced me to marry him.

Then, it was tailgating time…with the bird!

Yeah, he likes to shake it!  We spent a little time eating and drinking before heading over to Lane Stadium for some football action.

If you don’t hear Metallica while looking at this picture, you should!

25 seasons and still going strong!

Hokie Pokie time!

Sunday, we ditched the camera and did a bunch of driving to get back home.  We did stop once at

As you can tell, we packed a lot of stuff into our weekend but the trip was well worth it.  Let’s hope in 7 more years, we’ll still be celebrating!