Saturday Gratitude

One of the things I’m doing in 2014 is a daily gratitude journal in Momento. Every evening at 8:00 I get a reminder to write something I’m grateful for. It only takes a minute, and I know that these will be good to look back at on those less than awesome days.

Here are some of the things making me happy lately.

Productive days
Days off for Jason
Catching up on TV shows
Walks
Flirty mornings
Doughnuts
Fresh affordable produce
Someone to laugh with
A good report on the car
Small steps towards moving
Conserving water
Tummy full of bruscetta (twice in one week)
Encouraging talks with Melissa
A safe return for Dad and Jeannie
A working washer and dryer
Our bed (which is lovely)
Pudding fights
FaceTime with my mom
Hot new library app
Technology that allows me to chat with friends in Tennessee, Kansas City, and Rome, and then make plans with friends who live down the street, all in the same day. It boggles my mind sometimes.

High Five for Friday

This has been a week of ups and downs. Here are some of the highlights.

1. Jason is on the road to recovery. He’s asked me to keep details private, so I’ll respect that. I’m just happy everything went well and he got to stay home a few days this week. So great to have him home all day. I think the worst is hopefully over and we can get back to normal in the next couple of weeks. So happy and relieved. This has been a stressful couple of weeks for us.

2. This soup. My first attempt at cream of chicken soup and it was fantastic!

3. How Stuff Works podcasts. I love almost all of these podcasts. A couple of recent favorites are the Cult of Domesticity from Stuff Mom Never Told You (a must-listen for any hipster/ lifestyle blogger/ home cooks) and The Parenthood Wars from PopStuff.

4. Netflix Streaming. We’re blasting through the last season of Alias right now. The implausibility verges on the ridiculous sometimes, but it’s a nice escape. And they still make our jaws drop every couple of episodes. Last weekend we had an Independent film marathon. Ten Inch Hero, HottieBoombaLottie, Splinterheads, and Miss Nobody. All really good. Nice, light funny movies.

5. Cooking at home. Sometimes I get so tired of cooking. I just want to grab a box or bag of something and throw it in the oven or microwave. We all have days like that, right? Well I think my days of boxes and bags are numbered. I found something so disgusting in a bag of fries last weekend that I think I’m completely turned off of processed foods for the foreseeable future. It still makes me shudder to think about it. So my new rule is, if I can’t see what’s in the package, I’m going to think twice before buying it.  Which means if I want fries, I guess I’ll have to learn how to fry things. Which I’m terrible at. Anyone know of any good baked fries recipes?

 

High Five for Friday

Lots to be grateful for/ excited about the past couple of weeks!

1. Making progress with the old knee. I’m completely off crutches now, but steps are still pretty painful. I have to hold onto a rail for dear life, but progress!

2. Presidential debates are way more fun with social media. Twitter has the best jokes and FB has good conversations. And we mostly keep it civil. Mostly.

3. Too Close by Alex Clare. Yeah, the one on the internet explorer commercials. Don’t hate.

4. Candy Corn. Candy corn is the devil. bad for my teeth. bad for my general health. awesome.

5. TV + Plex App. Might do a post on this later, or get Jason to do one. We’ve been playing with it for months on and off, but we might have it right this time *crosses fingers*

Honorable mention goes to Yankee Candle fall candles. They make the whole house smell good before I even light them.

Short and sweet this week 🙂

High Five for Friday

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1. Apple pie. From Winn Dixie. With ice cream. The end.

2. New dishes. We’ve been wanting white square dishes for years. We always look at them and sigh and say “One day…..”. Well Saturday was the day. We found some for cheap at Costco and they’re pretty sweet. But they are huge, way bigger than our other dishes. I think we’ll eat off the dessert plates and use the regular plates as serving platters. We actually put a whole roasted chicken on one of the big plates and it fit, that’s how big these are. We also got some glass Snapware containers for lunches. I’m trying to rid our house of plastic dishes and it was really nice to get rid of our old stained ziplock plastics.

3. New Camera!!!

4. Being tech support. I rarely get the opportunity to be tech support for anyone except my mom. And Jason is actually in tech support, so of course he never needs my help. But when he tried to post about our new camera on his blog he ran into a couple of problems uploading photos. And I was actually able to help for once, so that felt kind of good.

5. Shrimp and grits. I made some last night that were so easy and so tasty!

It was a good week. The new camera and dishes inspired me to spend a lot more time in the kitchen. I tried several new recipes and I’m excited to put them up here in the next week.

Linking up with Lauren.

High Five for Friday

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This week was mostly taken up by worries over Tropical Storm/ Hurricane Isaac. Other than that, it was pretty quiet. Here are a few good things…

1. Everybody’s ok. Everyone in my immediate family, at least. Isaac was not very bad for us at all. The real worry was for my Jason’s dad and brother, who live outside of New Orleans. We got a short message from him yesterday that everything was ok, but no real details. I know Slidell, that the town we stayed in when we visited them a few years ago had devastating flooding. Really terrible situation and our thoughts are with those in the Gulf region affected by the hurricane.

2. Sherlock. On a lighter note, we finished up the second season this week. I loved it, especially the first episode with the smokin’ hot Irene.

3. Presidential Knife Fight. I stumbled across this post yesterday from the Face In the Blue blog wherein he hypothesizes which president would win if there was a Hunger Games style arena knife fight to the death. Now y’all know I love me some Hunger Games. I also love me some history. So this was probably my favorite read all week.

4. Mojo is running high. I’ve lost count of the scrapbook pages I’ve made this week. It was a lot though. And I could probably sit and do a dozen more right now, but there are other things that are taking away from that… showering, job search, etc.

5. The return of John Stewart. We missed him during the little hiatus.

Linking up with Lauren.

Tropical Storm Isaac

All last week we kept an eye on the weather. We thought we probably wouldn’t be in the direct line of fire, but we knew we would get some bad weather. I was getting used to bad weather. We had been having lightning storms almost every day that week.

We wanted to be prepared for the worst, so we spent Saturday getting ready. Jason found extra candles and flashlights. I checked the supplies we had on hand and made a list. I double checked a few Hurricane Preparedness sites, especially how long food is safe to eat after the power goes out.

We went to the store for our regular Saturday shop and to get a few extra gallons of water. It was packed, because of course everyone was losing their everlovin’ minds. We got the essentials- water, cat food, beer, and Fritos. We got home and settled in to watch the second season of Sherlock.

Jason called to check on our friends Antoine and Heidi. Heidi’s dad passed away last week and we wanted to make sure they were ready for the storm. They hadn’t been shopping, so he said we’d pick up some water and stuff and bring it to them. We had a nice evening talking, watching TV, and playing video games. It was a nice distraction from worrying.

The next morning we watched the Weather Channel and ate a lot of junk food. It started raining heavily and we went out to take pictures.

Jason moved all the plants into a corner out of the wind.

Miss Kitty was unimpressed by the whole thing.

Jason and I are storm spotters, so I did a lot of tweeting and posting to FB to keep people updated on the storm.

We went through several squalls throughout the day. “A little wind, a little rain” as Jason says. It actually wasn’t that bad during the day. We spent a lot of time outside on our patio or front porch.

When it got too bad, we would head back in and watch more Sherlock and play video games.

We thought we had seen the worst of it. The radars were showing that most of the storms had passed us. I did the speed scrap at SDD. Towards the end of the SS it started storming and this time there was a lot of lightning.

There had been sporadic tornado watches throughout the day, one possible tornado had even come as close as Lake Worth. They issued a blanket tornado watch until the next morning.

We started getting ready for bed around midnight and the storm was still going strong. Then the power went out. It was on and off throughout the night. It came back on for the last time just in time for Jason to get coffee before heading to work.

All in all, for us it wasn’t a very bad storm. It was nerve-wracking, especially with all the lightning towards the end.  But no damage to our house, everyone was safe, and the power was only out for a couple of hours. Very grateful for that.

*These are a mixture of pictures taken by Jason and me and put up on instagram. Jason took some pretty awesome photos with our other camera. I’ll post those once I get them shrunk down and web-ready.

High Five for Friday

There was so much awesomeness this week!

1. Belated Father’s Day.  Super Hero Father’s Day was so much fun to put together. I’m actually sort of looking forward to doing something crafty for the 4th now. (Ignore the dirty bowl in the sink).

2. Swimming. Again. I actually hadn’t gone swimming for awhile, but we’ve already been three times since Little Man got here. We were all a little rusty at first, but we’re getting our groove back and even played some games in the pool. LM is also learning to snorkel.

3. Green Cay park. We went there last weekend and had a really fun time walking around checking out the wildlife. Even saw a couple of baby alligators!

4. The Boy’s Market. One of our favorite local Farmer’s Markets. It’s always really crowded, but so worth it. Fruits and veggies, cheese, baked goodies, and the Best onion bread and vegetable cream cheese. And all indoors so you’re not sweltering in the heat.

5. Jason and Jen keeping their s*** together with a child in the house. I’ve always been told by many people (including my mother) that nothing ruins a relationship like having children. And for the most part I believe them, lol. (Please feel free to chime in if you’re in an awesome relationship and have kids). And I know it’s only been two weeks, but it’s been really great having all of us in the house together. We are a good team. And sometimes we even get to have grown up conversations. And I know one night we’ll eventually get a full night’s sleep. Probably sometime in September.

Honorable mention this week goes to my new favorite skirt. Two things that I never thought I’d ever wear are horizontal stripes and maxi skirts. Because seriously this skirt makes me look as big as the side of a barn. But I. Do. Not. Care. I wear this thing Everywhere. It is so ridiculously comfortable.

Also Pro Tip: (Can you say that about things that aren’t tech related?) Don’t wear long skirts to the airport. They actually have a Skirt Alert. I got a Skirt Alert with No Cause, which meant I got pulled aside and patted down. And not just a friendly pat down, a serious Spread ‘Em kind of pat down. I won’t go into why I’m such an expert in pat downs, but trust me, that lady was thorough. And that’s the last time you’ll catch this girl in a maxi skirt at LAX.

I’ll be linking up with Lauren at From My Grey Desk.

High Five for Friday

So many things to be grateful for right now.

1. Of course the best thing is that we have a Little Man in the house now!

2. I’m ready to get to work on my summer Pinterest board. Lots of fun things to do this summer.

3. Miss Kitty and Little Man seem to be really getting along so far. I’m relieved that he doesn’t seem to be nervous around her anymore. (He had good reason. She used to randomly attack him for no apparent reason).

4. Glad to have be sticking close to home this summer. We only have one small trip planned, which is a lot less than we usually do. But it will be nice to keep it more low key after the year we’ve had so far.

5. I’ve decided how to document this summer in a really simple way- using Instagram photos and putting them into a Blurb book. So easy that I might actually finish this year! (I’m still working on Little Man’s summer book from last year). I’ve never used Blurb before, but I’ve already started the book and it’s super easy. I’m modeling it after a book that Elise Blaha Cripe did. Simplicity will be a welcome change, as I tend to overcomplicate things so much that I don’t finish.

I’ll be linking up with Lauren at From My Grey Desk.

High Five for Friday #6

Hello Friday! I’m so glad you’re here. We have some fun stuff planned for this weekend and I can’t wait to get started.

But first, weekly gratitude post. I really like doing these. It helps me get my head straight sometimes and realize that I’m surrounded by awesomeness in my daily life. Will be linking up with Lauren from From My Grey Desk.

1. Growing things. I LOVE my little balcony container garden. Crossing my fingers that I can keep them alive,

2. Jason is feeling better. After a couple of weeks with an intracostal strain, Jason is finally on the mend.

3. (i)NSD. InterNational Scrapbooking Day was last weekend. Oh, how I shopped! I’m still organizing it all, but will do a post on that soon.

4. My blog. It’s been 3 months since I started writing here in my tiny corner of the interwebs. This will be my 44th post. I’m pretty psyched about it. I have lots of plans and schemes.

5. Missus Smarty Pants. I am fashion challenged. I admit that freely. And after years of wearing mostly scrubs, it’s really strange to suddenly need an “outfit” for every day of the week. I’m so over the yoga pants an t-shirt look I’ve been sporting for months now. MSP has been a great help to me in the past, and I’m looking forward to joining again in the near future. In the meantime I’m listening to her podcasts.

Honorable mention:

Cinco de Mayo, washing our car together, talks with Melissa, Barack Obama, any night when Miss Kitty lets us get a full night’s sleep, and The Lovely Bones (finished last week)