Welcome to the Farm

I spent the majority of this past weekend in my hometown with my family.  My brother took on the project of building a house for his family.  And when I say he's building a house, he is literally building a house, from the ground up, with the help of family and a number of family friends.  It's all amazing to think about how many people care so much about my brother and his family that they are donating their time and expertise to help him build this house that his kids will grow up in, knowing that their dad put everything into this house for well over a year. I got to help with some staining mainly.  The house is coming together beautifully - and to think it used to be just a wheat field.

I didn't take my camera with me on Saturday, but I did snap a few pictures on Sunday.  There's something therapeutic about going back to the farm and seeing miles and miles of pasture and crops and hay bales.  It's just so peaceful - no steady hum of traffic, no city lights for the stars to compete with - just the sound of the wind rustling through the grass and wheat field.

Blogging with a Purpose - Week 1

It's amazing if you stop and think about how many blogs exist where people like me, just decide they want to write and/or take pictures, and then share parts of their lives with complete strangers.  Gradually, these people become acquaintances, and maybe even friends down the road.  But there are just so many that you can pick to read and follow.  I've stumbled across some really great blogs with really talented writers and story tellers and photographers.  And sadly, I don't always remember how I find them.....

But I found one last week by Becky at From Mrs to Mama.  I read through some of her most recent posts, and was interested when I saw the title "Blogging with a Purpose."  Sometimes, I feel like I have a purpose in blogging, other times - not so much.  So, I think I'm going to do this weekly post for Blogging with  Purpose.  You can find the first part of the topic list here, and you can also see that I'm a week behind.  I figured that would give me something extra to write about this week :)

Week 1 - Who I Am

Daughter. Sister. Aunt. Friend. Girlfriend. Dog lover.

Auditor. Aspiring photographer. Blogger. 

What is a routine?

Routine - a : a regular course of procedure; b : habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure (Webster Dictionary)

It seems like since I got back from vacation, I've had a hard time establishing a routine for my evenings.  For the majority of the year, I had a very established routine - get up, pack a lunch, go to work, study during lunch, come home, fix something very quick for dinner, study, bed, and repeat.  Since I'm now DONE with studying (yay!!! Sometimes it still doesn't feel real), there are SO many things that I want to do that I simply haven't had the time to do before.  

I want to work on my photography.
I want to write a blog that maybe inspires people, or gives them a laugh, or makes people feel like they know me (everything that I get from some of the wonderful blogs that I've discovered and read on a regular basis).
I want to hang out with my friends and spend time with my family.
I want to have time to read great books.  I used to spend my summers reading all day, everyday.  I miss just having that kind of time to read.  
I want to do crafts.  I bought a sewing machine in October and have yet to use it.
I want to get on track for a healthier lifestyle - including eating better more consistently and working out.

I'm a pretty organized person, so having a routine seems to be what motivates me to get stuff done.  When I was in public accounting, that was a stringent routine and during my last busy season, I was so focused on my routine of working and tracking calories for every meal that I lost 10 pounds (ok, maybe the stress of working 80 hour weeks might have contributed to that a little, but I still have never tracked my calories so religiously as that time in my life).  

I'm not saying that every minute of my day has to be planned, and I welcome the unexpected (most of the time).  I just want to be able to establish some kind of routine where I can make time for all of the above "want to's".  

To help get my blogging in order after the Blog Every Day in May challenge, I started looking for cutesy blog planners that had elements that I wanted to use in my planning.  I found several that had pieces of what I wanted, but not one that had everything I wanted.  So I did what any A-type personality planner would do and made my own using Microsoft Publisher.  I downloaded some adorable fonts and made some pretty sweet tables and came up with a decent blog planner.  I wish I was more of a graphic designer to make it look not so plain, but alas, I chose the accounting route, which almost couldn't be further away from a graphic designer's personality.  

Anyway - back to a routine.  Ah, yes.  I made the blog planner to help me plan my blog posts, the goals I have for my blog, projects I want to include in my blog, and tracking my readership.  This worked out really well for all of my vacation posts since I could jot down how I wanted to group my photos and then what the topic for each post would be.  I feel like the writing was lacking, maybe because I was hoping the pictures would be worth more words than I could put here to describe the trip.

And then this past week happened.  I ran out of topics from vacation.  Even though I had some other ideas written out, I didn't follow through with the planning of the actual posts, and then things kept coming up and I just didn't get around to writing anything.  But now that things are maybe settling down, I can get into some kind of routine that will work for me and my schedule.   Maybe its a rotating schedule.  I guess we'll find out :)

And since I don't have a picture for this post yet - here's a cute one of my nephew from Father's day:

How cute is he?  :)

Thoughts for Thursday

1) It's almost Friday!! Yay! I always love when it gets close to Fridays :)

2) I'm sad I haven't had much time to blog this week.  I have some pretty good {or at least I hope you think so} ideas for coming blogs, so I'll get to work on those so I can share them!

3) Tonight is my first ever time to see The Lion King as a live performance!! They've come to Tulsa several times that I can remember, but this is the first time I'm actually going! So excited!!

4) I love Jeans Weeks.  My company uses jeans stickers as fundraisers for events happening in the community.  This week, the money went towards Relay for Life.  I enjoy contributing to a good cause, and especially love getting to wear jeans all week to work!

5) I started doing the P90x workout with J this week.  I'm still alive, so that's a good thing :)  I've been considerably more sore doing this than my usual Jillian Michaels workouts....J tells me that its a good thing to be sore from working out.....I'm saying the verdict is still out ;)

6) I made some pineapple whip last night - and it was yummy.  The ingredients couldn't be simpler (frozen pineapple chunks, almond milk, and optional honey), and the recipe couldn't be easier to make (toss them all in the blender or food processor and viola!).  My only recommendation is to beware of using a food processor since mine leaked a little bit of the almond milk.  I think I'll try the blender next time.  Either way - I highly recommend this dessert! It's so perfect for summer :)

You can find the recipe here

7) J has been watching Game of Thrones as well as reading the books.  He's entirely caught up on the show and wanted to start from the beginning again.  After wanting to watch the first episode all this week, we finally got to sit down last night and watch it.  I might just jump on the bandwagon yet!

Happy Birthday Addie!!!

Today is my sweet Golden's birthday!!!

I didn't have her as a puppy, but I'm so thankful she's in my life now!  I can't imagine not coming home to her on a daily basis.  She's the sweetest dog in the world - always ready for some love, always wanting to be around her humans, and always excited to see us.

I'm so thankful that I had the opportunity to adopt her from a family that didn't want to take care of her anymore.  It breaks my heart to see the look on her face when I leave for work in the morning - its just so sad.  I think that she got left alone a lot in her other home with just an old crotchety chihuahua to keep her company.  Now, she has a fun playmate in Amelia, and they are best friends :)

Happy Birthday Addie!!!

DIY - Vacation Momentos

If you're like me, you like to bring stuff home from trips.  I tend to save almost every stinking little thing - from boarding passes to the little luggage stickers.  Do I do anything with those?  Let's just say I have good intentions!!  I do like to dream about projects for the more fun stuff you find on vacations - like sand and seashells.

My first project was a photo box that I found on Pinterest:

Image Source

My supplies - I got the glass block from Hobby Lobby ($6 after the 40% off coupon); shells and sand from Mexico :)

I got a Cricut for Christmas, and the main reason I wanted it was to be able to do all the fun vinyl projects that are floating around Pinterest.  So, I already had the transfer tape, and I bought some white vinyl. 

 I cut out the letters and put the transfer tape on them and centered it on the block towards the bottom where the sand would be, and would allow for the picture that I wanted to put in it.  There was something about the vinyl that I bought that made it extremely difficult to get all of it off my Cricut cutting mat. It just took a little extra time and effort - otherwise this project could have been done in about half an hour total.

Then I started putting the sand in the block.  You can kinda see how clumpy the sand is, which I think adds to the character of this project.  I also put a few shells on top of the sand. I put in enough that you could see the letters over the sand, and still would have more for the other projects I wanted to do :)

I picked out a few pictures from the trip to print off, and then realized that my block was considerably smaller than a 4x6 picture.  So that helped me pick out which picture I could put in it - whichever would be easy to trim and still look good.  

And here's the final product!!

I love how simple and inexpensive it was to make (when you factor in that I already had the transfer tape and got to use the 40% off coupon for the vinyl and block), and I'll get to enjoy it on a daily basis :)

Project 2

I loved this globe with sand and shells and a candle that the hotel had sitting out, so I decided that I would make one when I got home :)

Again, I bought my globe at Hobby Lobby (it's semi dangerous that I live only 2 miles away haha!).  J picked up some shells in the ocean that seemed to have been recently vacated by the wildlife.  When I pulled them out of the plastic bag they traveled home in, they still smelled fishy and had some lovely algae or something growing on them.  I soaked them in a 50/50 water/bleach mixture for a while and then scrubbed them with a toothbrush and they came out looking pretty good.

 And viola!! The finished project.  I played around with how I wanted to put the shells in it, and opted for the simple big shell with a candle in it.  But I have options for when I want to switch out the shells.  This one couldn't have been easier!!

Happy Father's Day!

I wanted to wish my Dad a very Happy Father's Day!  

He's one of the most hard-working men that I know, and I've learned more from him that he'll ever know!  He's always been there for me - and I consider myself lucky to have such a great dad.

I also wanted to wish my brother a Happy 1st Father's Day!!!  He's got one of the best role models I can imagine, so I know he'll be a wonderful father.