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!