Happy December!

Today is December 1st and i feel like the Christmas season is finally upon us.  (technically, its been here since the day after thanksgiving i guess)  since thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, i'm a firm no christmas anything before thanksgiving.  i hate that it gets overlooked because we are in such a hurry to move on to christmas.  typically, i won't even order my favorite christmas drink at starbucks until after thanksgiving is over and i absolutely will NOT listen to christmas music early.  it's a big deal to me. 

anyway, now that it is december, bring on the christmas festivities!  i spent a couple hours today baking christmas cookies for an event at church tonight while listening to my Tennessee christmas mix (who doesn't love some old school amy grant?  circa 1983...i wasn't even alive then...) on pandora.  bliss. 
at this point in my life, i don't have very many christmas decorations to speak of.  hopefully this will change over the next several years.  here are a few pics of my favorite christmas-y things around my house.

i made a "wreath"!  i'm not sure what to call this exactly since it's not really round, but we'll just stick with a wreath for now.  i saw this idea on pinterest.  this is actually the first pinterest project that i've done.  i'm pretty pleased with how it turned out!  i love that our door has something fun to hang on it now too! 

so robyn turned our kitchen chalkboard into a countdown for christmas!  i LOVE it. 

so this isn't really a decoration per say, but i did think he looked pretty cute all festive and lit up!  while we were putting up our tree on sunday, i decided i would just see if troop would cooperate and let me take a picture of him with the christmas lights.  i'm not quite sure how i pulled this one off, but it happened!  and before you tell me that i was torturing my pup and yada yada, just know he got plenty of treats after this pic and happily went back to chewing his bone.

i don't have a picture of our tree, but i think it turned out pretty cute too!  merry christmas y'all!  may your days be merry and bright!

the great mousecapade 2011. part 2.

so finally after about 6 weeks of plotting against the mouse, WE FINALLY CAUGHT IT!!!  VICTORY!

honestly the mouse has kind of been on the back burner lately because we've been focusing on some other crawlies we've had around our house in the past couple weeks.  yu-ck.  so last night after i went to bed, robyn was upstairs and heard a trap go off in the kitchen.  after donning rain boots and gloves (because that's how we roll around here...not taking any chances with the mice nibbing on our fingers or toes...)  she checked under the sink to find that the mouse had eaten the bait off the trap, set it off and gotten away.  i'll tell you, mice these days must be up on the peanut butter trick.  everyone told us that was the best bait, but experience has taught us, it is not.  this is when she got crafty.  we all know from every children's book ever written about mice, they love cheese.  so she melted some cheese to the trap.  this way there could be no snitching. 

today, we were in the kitchen putting some stuff away and what did we find under the sink?  a mouse in the trap!  SUCCESS!  as i scooped that little creature out with the dustpan, all i could think was "what now little mouse, what now?!"  sad, i know, but in light of the events from last weekend with the snake, i'm really just feeling dominion over these pests around my house. wo-man.  who even knew this girl could take care of such things??? 

welcome to the jungle

alright "welcome to the jungle" may be a little dramatic for this post but not too far off.  it's a regular zoo around here lately.  this city girl is having to expend herself in ways i didn't even know was possible.


some of you may remember this post from a few weeks ago about our mouse hunt.  well last sunday, robyn and i were headed out the door to church (on time mind you...that's a little victory in and of itself...) and what do we find to greet us on the sidewalk?  a SNAKE.  is this a joke???  now there are some things that i just can't handle, namely spiders, but snakes i'm usually ok with.  seeing this though, led us into a discussion of our options for this little creeper.  i'm not normally a "all snakes must die" kind of girl.  i mean if its outside and not bothering us, whatevs, just let it be.  right now i'm talking as though i've been around snakes my whole life and just pick them up bare handed...let's be honest, this is not the case.  city girl, right here.  so back to the discussion.  leaving it there wasn't an option because everything like that just gets into our house.  robyn and i didn't love the idea of sharing our home with this.  then i thought, maybe i'll scoop it into a dustpan and carry it to the field at the end of the street.  this idea was quickly vetoed as robyn reminded me that snakes crawl and i was in church clothes.  a dustpan didn't provide much distance between the creeper and my hand... and church shoes didn't provide much speed to get that snake to the field in a hurry.  this lead us to choose option 3.  killing the snake.  now we had to sike ourselves up for this one.  as we began looking around the garage, we realized that our options of tools to take care of the mouse were limited.  in the end, we choose a paintcan. i mean pickings really were slim looking at all we had to work with.  so i walked up to mr. slithers and just dropped the can on him.  at this point we were really late to church so we just left the paint can in the drive and went on our way.  when we came back, we lifted the can and SUCCESS!  the snake was dead.  boo-yeah. 

now google told us that this snake was probably just a brown snake, so really he would have been harmless.  if you look closely at the picture though, you will see that his head was kind of diamond shaped.  this made me think that he could have been poisonous.  once upon a time, in my kanakuk days, my friend becca and i used to orient the counselors during staff training to nature class. now this in and of itself is really a joke. i mean the girl who couldn't be in the room with a live spider teaching nature?  puh-leese.  but it happened.  any-who, digging into my vast snake knowlege all i could even remember was red and black, friend of jack.  red and yellow, kill a fellow.  good.  so i can absolutely tell you that this snake is not a coral snake.  so glad all that nature knowledge has stuck with me through the years. 

so there you have it.  i killed a snake.  who even knew i had it in me.

short and sweet

so somehow blogging has taken a back burner to well, life.  this is not because i'm short on topics to blog about, but more because at the end of the day lately i've been lacking the creativity to come up with any kind of post that anyone besides my mom would want to read.  thanks mom :) 
thanksgiving is tomorrow.  i LOVE thanksgiving.  hopefully, there will be a post dedicated to thanksgiving in the near future, but i'm just not sure i can promise that.  for now i will just say that it is my favorite holiday and i'm really excited to head home in the morning to see my family. 

here is my top 3 of my life lately...

1. first and foremost, I'M GOING TO HAVE A NIECE IN APRIL.  i'm beyond excited about this!  i would have been just as thrilled with the news of a nephew but i sort of just knew all along that this babe would be a girl.  ask my family, i have a really great record for guessing baby genders when people in my life are pregnant.  call it a gift.  i love the thought of absolutely spoiling this precious lil cutie with all things pink and bows and tutus! 
2.  i killed a snake this weekend.  now this news is really just a teaser because the whole snake killing incident deserves it's own post.  and don't you even worry, i have pictures to document the whole thing.  it still shocks me that i even had it in me to do this.  just to peak your interest here are some key points...church clothes, paint can, robyn, google.  now that i've got you hooked, you'll have to check back later for the whole story.
3.  so i called it a top 3, but really it's just a top 2 i guess since i need to go pack for home now.  i can't actually remember if i thought of 3 things to post about when i started writing but now this is all that comes to mind....maybe i can blame it on a long day at work??  plus who has a top 2 anyway?  that doesn't even sound that exciting. 
alright i'm out.  happy thanksgiving everyone!

i'm baaaacckkk!

i've taken a little bloggy break the past couple of weeks without even meaning to...whoops!  life has been busy busy so many things have taken a back burner lately.  one day last week, my most loyal follower, aka my mom, mentioned that she noticed i haven't blogged in a while, so i guess that means it's time to post again.  all of you who have just been waiting on pins and needles for an update on my life, you have my momma to thank for this....she says you're welcome. :)  
i have a few things lined up that i have been meaning to blog about but for now i will just stick to a post about this past weekend.  such a fun one it was!  it started thursday night when i got off work. one of my best friends from college, sarah and another dear friend from home, morgan came into town early that evening!  amber made us a yummy dinner and we spent the evening laughing and catching up.  we all stayed up way later than this girls 9:30 bedtime usually allows for. 
we spent friday afternoon eating a yummy loafin' joes lunch and browsing the aisles of target and some other local shops.  that night we met up with a couple of high school friends who still live here in town for dinner.  i love how out of town guests give an excuse to drop everything and just hang out.  i hate it that we sometimes need this excuse, but sure i'm thankful for the time together. 

sar and i.  such a sweet sweet friend.

saturday, ashley arrived.  woo!  we lunched at slims and lazed around that afternoon.  love that with best friends, just being together is enough. 

reunited and it feels so good!  sure love these girls!  thanks for the picture steal ash :)

that night we went to the game.  woo pig!  sure do love watching those hogs win in person!  i didn't take full advantage of going to as many games as i could of when i was in school so it's such a treat now when i actually do get to go to a game.  it's an even bigger treat to get to sing "oh lord it's hard to be humble, when you're an arkansas razorback fan!" at the end of the game and we sure got to sing it saturday.  such a fun game to be at! 

love those hogs!

today has been bittersweet saying goodbye to the last friend who left today.  my heart is full after such a good weekend with friends who are so dear to me.  thankful for friendships that continue on even from states away and pick right back up when we're together.  "from the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another."  john 1:16

the great mousecapade 2011. part 1.

this story begins about 4 weeks ago when robyn told me she thought we had a mouse in our house. (i just can't resist the rhyming.  its too cliche not to.)  honestly i laughed and didn't believe it because i hadn't really seen any of the signs of mice.  shame on me.  she set some traps but we never saw anything so we kind of just dropped it. 
fast forward to tuesday night.  i was sitting in bed reading and thought i saw something scurry across the floor into my closet.  i was kind of confused because trooper is laying at the foot of my bed and doesn't move a muscle.  the thing about the troop is that any kind of living creature in what he thinks is his territory sends him THROUGH the roof.  he sees a dog at the end of the block, a cat on the golf course, a neighbor in THEIR yard across the street, a moth in the house and IT'S OVER.  i just couldn't believe that if a mouse ran across the floor he wouldn't notice it.  way to go troop.  this could have been your moment of shining glory.  instead you just snooze it away.  cautiously, after putting on my tennis shoes (safety first always, i'm not interested in any mice nibbling my toes) i look around in my closet.  about this time robyn walked in.  THANK GOODNESS.  i cannot do this alone.  the only weird thing we notice are corn kernels scattered in little trails all around my closet.  what the heck.  after looking a little closer, we can see that it all starts from my corn bag.  (for those of you who don't know the greatness of a cornbag, it is literally a fabric bag filled with dried corn kernels that you warm up in the microwave and use as a heating pad.  heavenly. ) and that's where i see it.  there are holes in my corn bag.  we also notice little droppings here and there.  don't worry, we verified this on google.  yes, we are those people.  what would we even do without the world wide web?  thank you, al gore.  i kid, i kid.  kind of...
   all this to say  MOUSE CONFIRMED.  and in my closet of all places.  this would be the case since i laughed at the idea of mice in our house just a month ago.  and i apparently have been providing a corn feast to these crawly creatures for who knows how long.  perfect.  lesson learned.  boo.   
so now we are left with figuring out what to do about this.  i'm sure you are all on the edge of your seats waiting eagerly to find out how this story ends.  well stick around for part 2 once we figure this out ourselves.  suggestions are welcome.

we're suckers for crafts

it's that time of year again...war eagle craft fair time!!!  my mom and i started going a few years back and it has become one of my favorite things that we do each fall.  let me just give you the back story on us and crafts.  when i was a kid, hobby lobby was one of my mom's favorite places to go wonder into.  sure she would go in with a purpose, but one idea would lead to another so then we would have to go check it out.  this usually required a trip down another aisle to see if they carried anything like whatever she was thinking of. (sound familiar?  anyone who's ever been to the hob lob with me knows that i do the very same thing these days...)  when i was a kid, i was not a fan trips to hobby lobby with my mom because i knew they would take forever and it wasn't just going to be a get in and get out thing.  well everyone knows, that we all become our parents in one way or another.  i'll go ahead and admit it.  I'VE BECOME MY MOTHER IN THIS WAY. it's ok though, i'm actually not sad about it at all.  so in the spirit of me inheriting my mom's love for craftiness, the war eagle fair really is such a fun tradition for us.  
we could not have asked for a better day weather wise this year.  warm, sunny, clear skies.  perfect.  neither of us bought much, but it's always fun to wander in and out of the tents and booths that are set up.  it's really just an added bonus that the fair is held outside of the war eagle mill. i just don't think you can be the beauty of autumn in arkansas.  i love it.

many of the things at the fair are honestly things that we could make ourselves if we had the time to do it.  this however, is not something either of us would ever have thought of and i sure hope we never get to the point of thinking it is a necessity in our 4 legged friends lives...
this vendor was selling doggie visors with attached sunglasses.  really?  this is a joke?  nope.  they were for real.  i didn't even bother looking for the price tag on these puppies...no pun intended...ok maybe a little intended...because really?  i just snapped a quick pic because i knew it would be blog worthy, and tried not to let the vendor think that i was really buying into the idea that this was a necessity in troopers life.  sorry troop, i do love you, but not quite this much...

and finally, fair food.

fried pickles, potato whirls and strawberry lemonade.  oh yum.  i surely can't eat these things often, but in the spirit of the fair, you just have to give in.  not sorry. 

that's all for now.  happy sunday to you!

just call me auntie

so this weekend i made a whirlwind trip home to see these 2 people.

this is my brother sonny and his wife annie.  i wish i had a background story for this picture...but i might have swiped it from facebook... stalker much? um yes.  but it doesn't count if it's family right?  i did it all in the name of a good blog post because really, who likes a blog without any pictures to look at?  so you're welcome for this little stalker addition.
anyway, just as we were headed out to dinner, sonny made a little off hand comment to my dad about knowing that you're old when you become a grandpa.  at first we were all like "haha whatever, let's go eat."  my dad stopped and asked if that was a joke or for real.  sure enough, IT WAS FOR REAL!  they are going to have a baby!  I'M GOING TO BE AN AUNT! 
we are all beyond excited!  i wish i had pictures of our expressions when we found this out, but of course i don't.  i just want to remember this moment as such a sweet family memory.  it was so fun that night making our predictions for boy vs.girl and brainstorming good grandparent names for my parents.  i'm excited for this next season for our family.  more to come on this as the days draw closer to his or her arrival.  i plan to be a doting aunt to this lil' preshie.  i can't even wait. 

wednesdays

i love wednesdays.  what a funny day to love right?  i usually don't work on wednesdays which really is reason enough to love it, but good things happen that day. 
in the mornings, i go to bible study.  i'm doing something different this year and trying out Bible study fellowship (bsf).  it's not like any Bible study i've ever done, but i'm really enjoying it so far.  we are studying Acts and the Epistles this year.  i really like the daily study portion of it.  i've done plenty of beth moore studies and those really are great, but i'm loving that the Bible is the only resource we use for this study.  i feel like i'm learning a lot from Scripture i've read over and over.  it's challenging and good. 

wednesday afternoons i meet with susie for discipleship. this is susie.

we went on a mission trip to haiti together in march and really just clicked.  she's cool and i like her a lot.  i'm not really sure what we are trying to portray in this picture, which really makes it even better i think.  we are reading "forgoten God" by francis chan.  it's a book about the Holy Spirit.  i don't know if either of us really knew what to expect from this book, but we are really liking it!  honestly, i'm not sure that i've ever given the Holy Spirit a ton of thought except that He is there.  (side note: did you know that the Holy Spirit is a He and not an it?  i did not before reading this.  there's your bloggy educational nugget for the day)  a lot of what i'm learning about the Spirit in this book ties closely together with what we've covered in the Acts study at bsf so far.  love when that happens. 

wednesday nights are TRACK nights for the 1st-4th graders at church.  i've blogged about this a bit before.  5 weeks in, and it's still so fun!  it's really is a highllight of my week! 

i'm sure that this has been a thrilling read for y'all.  thanks for listening to my love for this day in my week.  haha!
also, shane and shane's cd "the one you need" came out yesterday. i'm sure all of you in my budding audience remember that i posted about it in this post . i bought the album yesterday and it's just SO good.  now i'm not that girl that waits and waits for an album to come out so that i can buy it the day it's released.  no big, if you are that girl (or boy? i'm just not sure any boys actually read this.  do boys even read blogs?  i just don't know...) mostly i'm just too cheap to buy something until i know it's going to be good.  i feel the same way about seeing movies in the theater.  another post of another day.  anywho, i'm pretty sure this is the first album i've EVER bought on it's release date.  that's big time.  so if you're a shane and shane fan, or even if you're not, check this out!  you won't be sorry you did. 

pumpkin muffins!

i LOVE pumpkin in the fall.  these are my favorite pumpkin muffins to bake.  i can't remember where i found this recipe first, but i know that i've had it for the last couple of falls.  anytime i have to bring a treat to share in the fall, this recipe is my go-to.  it's so easy and fool-proof!  you just can't go wrong with that!  so here it is. 

3 ingredients people.  that's it!  easy peasy.
1 box spice cake mix
1 can of pumpkin (not the big one, just the standard size)
1 bag of cinnamon chips (these are like chocolate chips except they are made of cinnamon.  if you haven't had these before, go buy a bag now.  they are SO good.  Hershey is the only brand i can ever find and i actually have to make a special trip to a different grocery store than i usually shop at to find them.  wal-mart doesn't carry them..boo.)

Preheat oven to 325.  i use muffin liners so that i don't have to grease my muffin tin.  fill muffin cups 3/4 of the way full.  bake for about 25 mins. 

i've always wanted to try a cream cheese frosting on these (another weakness of mine...i could eat it by the spoonful!) but they are pretty sweet with the cinnamon chips so i think a frosting would be too much.  bestie made them a couple of weeks ago and she frosted them and omitted the cinnamon chips.  she said that they were just as good.  i just really love the chips in them, so i can't bring myself to leave them out in order to try frosting.  this time i just dusted them with powdered sugar which did nothing special for the taste but made them look oh so pretty!  i took them to a potluck at work this week.  this is a good thing because i can't help but eat these by the twos when they are sitting on my kitchen counter... 
enjoy!  happy fall y'all!

what a great weekend it has been!  ashley came to visit!  after several long days at work, some best friend time this weekend was the perfect way to end the week.  she came in friday night after work and we met up with kristin and amber for dinner at hammontrees.  hammontrees is a local fayetteville favorite for fancy grilled cheese.  i just don't think you can go wrong when your speciality is cheese.  this is unfortunate since i'm lactose intolerant....boo.  life's hard when you're a lactard.  oh well.  i eat here in spite and love every bite in the moment.  haha
saturday morning we swung by ricks (another local favorite) to pick up some coffee and yummy pastries before heading out to a couple of flea markets we'd been wanting to check out.  i have such a thing for flea markets these days!  the hunt of finding little treasures in these places is so fun!  this week's find was maybe my favorite of all time so far.   

these are the same glasses that i remember drinking from at my grandma's house growing up.  i think my mom actually had these too.  they are glass jelly jars.  as soon as i saw them, i knew i wanted them.  i love the sentiment of using something on a daily basis that i remember having as a child.  i'm not actually sure that they don't still sell jelly in jars like these.  since i'm not much of a jelly eater though, it was a better deal on my end to just buy them here.  just over $2 for 5.  i'll take it.  i love how thick the glass is.  when i carried them up to the counter, the owner of the shop called them country crystal.  i love it. 
we ended the day watching the arkansas-alabama game with amber and caleb.  the game was disappointing but the company made the afternoon well worth it.  thankful for a weekend full of great friends! 

another week has come and gone and the highlight was definitely a trip to kansas city this weekend.  robyn had a vacation day that she needed to use before next week.  when she asked if i wanted to take a long weekend and go somewhere it didn't take much any tempting for me to say yes!  thank you three 12 hour shifts a week to accommodate this kind of spontaneity.  after weighing our options of places to go, kansas city fit the bill of being an easy drive and having plenty of cool things to check out.  an added bonus was the fact that we would drive right past my parents house on the way to drop the pup off for the night.  shout out to my mom (who i know reads this even if no one else does) for being the best dog sitter ev.  troop thinks you're great.  :)
the goal of the trip was simply to enjoy the time and not be tied to a schedule.  this worked out perfectly.  we knew that we did not want to feel like we needed a vacation from "vacation" and we didn't want to be stressed while we were there.  we also made a pact that we didn't want to eat food that we could get in fayetteville.  loving local things even when we're not the locals...perf. 
faves of the weekend... (ps i didn't take a single pic this weekend...whoops! thank you google images for saving this post from being boring and pictureless. 

friday lunch.  this little gem was found by urbanspoon on my phone.  how did we ever do trips without the iphone?  pandolfi's deli is a family owned hole in the wall place that only serves lunch M-F.  now you know a place is going to be good if they can afford such limited business hours.  we both ordered the sassano which was turkey, prosciutto and pepper jack on a homemade roll with balsamic vinegar.  yum-o.  we ate every bite.  as an added bonus, while we were eating the grandfather of the owner (who's father was the originally mr. pandolfi when he came over from italy) came over to chat with us.  much get much more local than that people.

so a  friend from high school recommended this place in the power and light district.  i'm still a little confused if the store is called the garment or the garment district but either way it did not disappoint.  they had TONS of clothes that were so cute and unique.  seriously, so many great things.  there was lots to love here but a cute cute purse for the winter is all i left with.  and it was a STEAL.  i do love a good deal. 

i do love a farmers' market no matter the location.  kansas city was a great one downtown.  it was a little chilly saturday morning which made it perfect to pull out the scarves and jackets and wonder around with coffee in hand...actually i think both of us may have had hot tea...either way...perfect.  had i not been traveling, i could have come away with LOTS of tasty produce, but i was a little nervous to leave it in the car all day.  i did get some honey oatmeal bread from an amish stand.  delish.  the amish sure do know how to bake bread!  i do wish that i could bake like that...for now i'll just stick to buying it from them i guess.

all i have to say about this is yum-o.  so just before heading home on saturday, we made the last minute decision to find something sweet for the drive home.  the upper crust bakery happened to be just down the street from the place where we had lunch.  it was this little place in the back of the oddest kitchen store i've ever been in.  seriously, this place had every kind of kitchen gadget, both cheap and high end, on floor to ceiling shelves.  so much fun to browse!  even better because we had yummy cookies in hand while we browsed!  and they were still warm...i'm just not sure it can get any better.  i had a banana cookie with burnt sugar frosting.  i'm not sure that i am normally a banana dessert kind of girl.  if it's dessert, it needs chocolate.  i mean you really can't go wrong with this right?!  this cookie made me never want to eat banana bread again without frosting...so good.

and that is all.  we are all home (me, robyn and trooper that is) and it's back to work tomorrow.  woo. 

so fall is here and i'm kind of really likng it.  don't get me wrong, i love the summertime, but after months of 100 degree days, the cool mornings and mild heat in the afternoons is a welcome change.  i love love fall in NWA.  the leaves change to the most beautiful shades of red and orange, the state goes HOGWILD for razorback football and fun festivals like the apple festival, bikes blues and bbq and the war eagle craft fair take place.  loving all things local these days.  NWA is a great place to live all the time, but i especially love it in the fall. 

highlighs from this week include...

so i've been a shane & shane fan for a while now.  they came to town last week and after receiving a text from a friend who had an extra ticket, i made the last minute decision to head over after work.  now having somewhere to be after working for 12 hours isn't my favorite thing, but i was so glad i went to this.  they played a bunch of songs from their new album, "the one you need." the cover song on this album is just the sweetest thing.  both of them had baby girls in the last year and they wrote this for them.  it's all about how they want to be able to be everything for their daughters, but as humans, they will fail at this.  it goes on to say that they have learned in their own lives that Jesus is the One who will never fail them and that He is the one they need.  such a sweet hope for their children.  since i had to leave early to make my 9:30 bedtime (so cool on a friday night, i know) for work the next day, i didn't get to buy this CD that night.  i'm anxiously awaiting its arrival on itunes.

lunch date with some of my favorite kiddos.  chik-fil-a outside on a sunny afternoon with these 2 cuties...doesn't get better

i have been on such an iced coffee kick all summer.  i'm definitely a coffee drinker, but when it's 100 degrees outside, a hot drink rarely sounds good to me.  the pioneer woman posted a recipe for iced coffee a couple months ago, and i've been nuts over it ever since i tried it.  i'm a little lazy to follow all of her instructions for straining and such so i usually just make a big pot of strong coffee, let it cool completely, and then put it in the fridge to drink off of for the week.  the key here is keeping it covered so that it doesn't get that stale, day-old coffee taste.  i usually add just a splash of soy milk and a few ice cubes along with the normal amount of flavored creamer that i use.  so so good.  my favorite thing about days off are slow mornings with coffee.  drinking this from a mason jar makes it even better i think :)

so in the spirit of loving all things local, the farmers market on saturday mornings is one of my favorite fayetteville things.  there are fresh produce stands, live music on the street corners, local vendors selling coffee, baked goods and other homemade goodies and lots and lots of people watching  :)  the pace is slow and the atmosphere is chill.  i can't really think of a place i would rather be on a saturday morning.  today i picked these up.  after trimming the ends a bit, i decided to put them in water in a mason jar (shocker right?  are you seeing a theme?  LOVE mason jars) 

that's all for now.  looking forward to a lazy afternoon and some razorback football with friends tonight.  woo pig.  go hogs go.

it's that time again, time for another blog post!  i know all 3 of you that read this are pretty pumped right now!  y'all should know that my last post took my entirely too long to put together.  why you ask?  because blogger is smarter than me.  boo.  my goal this time around is for this post to take me less than an entire hour to write.  i'm hoping this is not too lofty of a goal... :/
this week in my life...
i've worked a little, played a little, lazed a little, read a little, baked a little and everything in between.

what i made...

banana bread!  a lady at work made some earlier this week and it was sooo yummy!  i knew that it should be a baking project for this week since I had some yucky brown bananas sitting on my counter.  since i've never actually made banana bread before, i went to my trusty allrecipes app on my phone to find a recipe that looked good.  i used this one HERE . it called for sour cream instead of oil which i thought was interesting.  this bread turned out so moist and delish, just like the reviews said it would.  i added the cinnamon and ground cloves, as one of the reviews suggested, and i wasn't sorry i did.  i also substituted walnuts for pecans because pecans are what i already had.   it should be noted that i had to go out and buy a loaf pan in order to make this...that's what happens when you live with roommates for the last 5 years and they one by one get married and move out...they take their loaf pans with them haha!  i am excited to have a loaf pan of my own now!  it's the little things people...

 what i'm loving... :

little dog got a haircut!  for those of you that don't know (which is probably no one since only 3 of my friends even know about this blog) this is Trooper.  he is always one of my favorite things in life, but this is especially the case after he comes back from the groomer so fresh and clean. 

Pinterest.  i was trying to explain how wonderful this is to one of my co-workers the other day and she just wasn't buying it.  so sad for her.  pinterest is this digital pinboard where you can "pin" ideas you love.  you create boards in different categories and then pin away!  there are so many wonderful ideas that i've found on this!  will i make every idea i pinned on here?  no way!  but it's a nice go-to place when i get a hankering for a project.  plus i really love looking at all of the pretty pictures :)  

alrighty, i think that's all for now...mostly because it's almost my bedtime. don't all the cool kids go to bed at 9:30?? i know, the answer is no.  boo.  oh well. it's really the only way i can convince myself to head straight to the coffee pot when my alarm goes off at 5am.  being an adult is super. 

What i am...

so since i'm not much of a writer, i decided that most of my blog posts will be dedicated to "what i am..." reading, making, doing, learning and loving.  we'll see how this goes! (also grammar is not my strong point, so no judgies from here on out please and thanks! haha )

what i am reading...

so the bestie recommended this book before my last trip to the library and i am LOVING it!  it's sweet and real and easy to curl up with at night before falling asleep.  since finishing school, i love that i get to read for FUN again haha

what i am loving...

THE TRACK.  i'm so pumped to get to hang with the kiddos on wednesday nights this year at church.  we sing silly songs, play fun games, dress up, do skits  (well, let's be honest, i am not the one in the skits....being in skits gives me such anxiety...major flashbacks to OD skit days while working at kanakuk in college...not my finest moments in life...mmmkay.)  most importantly we learn about the life of Jesus and how we can model our life after His.  i'm excited to serve alongside this team (plus a few others) this year!  here we are sweatbands on, knees socks pulled high and posed for action.  we love the kiddos!

what i am making...

peach crumble pie.  yum-o.  if we're being honest here, and we are, i actually made this pie last week but since this blog didn't exist then, here it is now.  i got this recipe HERE from the sincerely yours paper blog.  since we're being honest here, i'll admit that i've been stalking reading this blog for a while now and i love her 'what i made monday' posts.  as soon as i saw this recipe i knew that i had to try it.  i LOVE peaches in the summertime!  a dinner with sweet friends seemed like the perfect excuse to try this recipe out since i knew they wouldn't be too harsh on my amateur baking skills.   i ate the leftovers the next morning two mornings for breakfast...whoops! 

alright, that's what i've got for now!  goodnight y'all!

here we go...

so i've loved reading others' blogs for quite some time now.  after some encouragement aka prodding from friends... here is my blog.  i'm not a writer but here is my account of what i do, what i love and who i am in this season of life.  maybe nobody except my mom will read this, maybe lots will.  either way, here it is.