Comma Again?

I'm having a soapbox moment.  It'll pass it's probably the heat.  Here it is:

Random grammar errors.  I'm not usually a grammar nazi but some of the emails I get you would not believe.  Today I got an email that ran like this "sells rep "Dakota" whatever the rest of the sentence was".  I had to read it a couple of times.  Now what I am pretty sure she meant was that the woman's name is Dakota.  Of course it could be an alias.  "Dakota" could be a CIA agent who has infiltrated one of our suppliers.  When giving someone's name like this woman was offset by commas as in:  sells rep, Dakota, whatever the rest of the sentence was.  Commas drive me crazy!  People will insert them in the most, random, places,.  And then one of my favorite typo is our/are.  Not the same.  At all.

On a happy note, Josh put together our second bookshelf and my living room is Way more organized now.  It makes me happy.  See?  That's as good as the picture gets cause right then my camera died.

 
-"Sierra"

Or...is it really an alias and I am an alien that has taken over "Sierra's" body??  Muhahaha

It's 3.5 Million Degrees and 179% Humidity

So naturally I am thinking about Christmas haha!  I am super super excited about my first married Christmas with Josh.  Last year was our first Christmas together and it was such fun.  Christmas is one of the most romantic times of the year.  :-)

Since it is our first married Christmas and my first Christmas really away from home, its the first time I will decorate.  Bekah used to decorate our little apartment but she was pretty much in charge of that.  I've been looking at themed decorations, like a particular color theme or something.  Here are the pictures of what I like:

This is traditional red and gold.  Pretty.  Classic.  Not a huge gold fan but at Christmas it works.

This is blue and silver.  A little more my style.  Kind looks cold though, you know "it evokes the snow and ice that oft accompanies the Christmas season" as a magazine would say.

This is pink.  Josh would never go for this but it was cute so I thought you should see it.  It looks like a doll house's decorations! 

This is a peppermint theme.  It makes me want peppermint.  Or a candy striper uniform.  It's more of a theme per se than the simpler color themes.  I really love the peppermint on the mailbox!   I'm not sure why there is a wedding cake in the bottom right picture.  The picture said it was for a party so maybe they were serving a lot of guests?  Shrug.  Whatever floats their boat!

 

This is definitely the most exciting part of Christmas!  Josh and I are getting a bed!!  We think this is what we are getting.  We've been looking and this is our favorite so far.  Josh doesn't share the bed so great haha.  The other night, in his sleep, he started pushing me and saying "You are ALWAYS in the way!  Always!"  It was funny.  Well, except that I was all but hanging onto the edge of the bed with my toenails.

Merry Christmas...in July that is!

Have You Been to the Mall Lately?

Josh, Eli, and I went to the final Harry Potter movie this week.  It was Amazing!  I did start crying when Lavender Brown died and didn't stop until Harry came back from the dead.  I do not cry pretty so I was super glad no one could see besides Josh who was laughing at me.  And let me just say, if I were going to Hogwarts I would have skipped over Harry entirely and gone straight for Neville because he is one good looking man.  Mmhm, true story.

Anyway, the movie theater is in the mall.  I am amazed at what some people will put on and then go out of the house in.  I was only in the mall for about 15 minutes before hitting the theater but in that time I saw:
-a 16-ish year old girl wearing short shorts so short (say that three times fast) that the pockets were longer than the material covering her legs.  Really?  Because having the shorts just two maybe three inches longer would have cramped her sex appeal too much?  If ever I have a daughter and you see her wearing something with That much skin showing, wrap her in a towel and bring her straight home.
-I don't think skinny jeans are a good look.  Apparently a lot of people like them but I think it draws the eyes to the thighs and I definitely Don't need attention there!  I'm also not a huge fan of colored jeans just because they fade with time and you can tell worse than you can with denim and because they look like a revival of the 80s and if I'm picking a decade to dress like I'd rather do the 40s or 50s.  That said, I don't think anyone thinks that purple skinny jeans and a robin's egg blue t-shirt looks good.  Except for the 18 year old guy I saw wearing them.  Not a great look.  He was definitely easy to find in a crowd though and maybe that's what he was going for.
-It is rarely appropriate to go out in public without a bra (if you're a woman of course, if you're a man it is rarely never appropriate to go out in a bra).  There is that occasion when your shirt has a built in bra but that is a different category, I'm talkin' letting the girls hang out.  If you are 21 and 5'9" and 115 pounds maybe you get by not wearing a bra, but if you are 45 and haven't had major plastic surgery you should wear appropriate undergarments.  This woman was in a halter top with Major Major cleavage and since her girls were somewhat past their prime the cleavage went down to her navel.  It wasn't a pretty sight.  Gravity happens, get plastic surgery if you have the moola to spare or buy a great bra, but by all  means Wear a Bra in PUBLIC!

I was glad when I was in the theater and my eyeballs were no longer being assaulted by moments of  "Did they look in the mirror before they left and think this was a good look?" instead I soaked up Neville Longbottom's heroics and enjoyed the last movie.  Final word on the subject:  Wear Clothes!!!

This Is An Important Week

I am ready for this week, well sort of.  This week I have my neurologist appointment and my wisdom teeth taken out.  I am so incredibly ready to hear what the neurologist has to say.  You cannot imagine how ready I am to be headache free.  And my wisdom teeth are just annoying.  My parents paid far too much money to make my teeth straight for these silly wisdom teeth to mess them up.

In order to get ready for this week I have been cleaning like a mad woman all weekend.  I have literally cleaned the light fixtures.  My bathroom has no light because they fixtures are down and drying.  It's a little extreme.  This is what I imagine nesting must be like.  Here is a financial tip from me to you (because I completely and totally qualified to offer you advice ;)  )  (I never know how to close a parentheses when I have a smiley at the end)  (Sorry, I use a lot of parentheses)  (Now I'm done).  If I ever get pregnant you should invest in the company that makes Pine Sol.  I have used about half a bottle in two days.  Right now my entire apartment smells like a pine forest.  I think that company would be looking at two extremely good quarters if I were nesting.  Anyway, so there has been lots of cleaning, why you ask?  Because of my mother.  She has permanently damaged my psyche.  Not really, that is completely a joke.  She did teach me that you should always plan to die.  I know that is morbid, but just in case I didn't wake up from being put to sleep for the wisdom teeth or I had some brain eating bacteria and I kicked the bucket I want the house to be nice for the ladies who will bring casseroles to Josh.  Do I think either of those will happen, no, but now if they did, the microwave is clean.  What is more likely, is that I will be tired and swollen and won't feel like cleaning and will be appreciative of my fresh clean sheets.  I love clean sheets.


I've also cooked two fresh loaves of bread.  Regular honey wheat and cinnamon raisin.  I put Nutella and banana slices on the cinnamon raisin and it was a party in my mouth.  I think that is my new favorite breakfast food.  I've also stocked up lots of food.  I'm ready to convalesce.  Prayers for quick healing would be awesome.  Also, should I die, go to the guest bathroom and say "Look at these globes, so clean wipe tear she was so thoughtful to clean these so we could see when we brought this delicious casserole."  Thanks!

Look how prettily it swirled!  This is a major accomplishment for me.

House Hunters LIES!!

Josh and I love HGTV and the History Channel (for American Pickers) and A&E (for Storage Wars) but this post is about HGTV.  We like House Hunters.  I’m sure you’ve seen it.  Nice happy couple goes with a perfectly coiffed realtor and looks at three houses all within a fairly narrow price range.  Each house has a thing or two positive and a thing or two negative.  They announce “we chose House #...(Lysol disinfects to protect [commercial break])…2!”  They sign the paper work and suddenly there they are in a $300,000 house that makes all their furniture from their old house look even better despite the changes in lighting and room size.

Did you know this is all false?  How do I know this is false?  Josh and I have been house looking.  We’ve been looking 6-8 weeks and this is what we’ve found:                             .  That big empty space is where our first starter home pictures isn’t.  We have yet to even go in a house legally( we can’t help it if you don’t think to lock the door behind you, in that case we are our own tour guides, the house was up for sale and uninhabited, we don’t wander through people’s homes).  Josh takes this all in stride but we have spent hours poring over internet sites and homes magazines to come up with not even a house that is worth investigating.  I don’t take it in stride as well as he does.  Hence, this post. 

We found on that we thought might be worth looking at.  We made an appointment.  Between the time we made the appointment (last Tuesday) and when we were supposed to look at the house (tomorrow) the house went under contract and they won’t show it to us.  Sigh.  We both know we don’t want to rush into buying a house that isn’t right but I guess I thought would have seen more viable options.  Sigh again.  

Stupid House Hunters building up false hope of multiple options of perfectly acceptable homes.  Grumble grumble.

I’ll keep you appraised of the goings on (hmm, there is a house hunting joke in there somewhere about appraisals, but I can’t quite get it, pretend I told a funny joke and laugh and slap your knee).

Sometimes There Is An Epic Fail...This Is An Example

 I had a really good idea.  I was going to make a four layer cake.  I bought a new pan.  It is the coolest thing.  It has this little latch on the side that makes the pan sort of spring out and let the cake come out of the bottom, keeping it's shape...in theory that is.  This is my pan (And my pretty basket for Farmer's Market Shopping, I might have sung "a tisket, a tasket, a red and yellow basket".  I couldn't help myself.  You weren't there, don't judge my voice lol.).

So then I chose a recipe for icing, one that didn't call for only egg whites because I can't separate yolk from white. 

Define irony:  choosing an icing recipe without only egg whites, only to have your husband ask for white cake...which requires only egg whites.  I did get better at getting just the whites and leaving the yolk intact.  Here's another side note, I made those eggs into scrambled eggs and without whites eggs are BAD!! 

I started baking the cake.  For some unknown reason it took nearly twice as long as it was supposed to.  While the cake baked, I made the icing.  Well, that is to say, that I tried.  I accidently misread the recipe and screwed it up.  Instead of being nice and fluffy it was like a really tasty cream cheesy pudding.  Good, but not conducive to layering.  Not to be taunted I tried.  I cut the cake in half and layered with icing and put peaches on the second layer.  Not too bad.  Just wait.

The next two layers finished the poor cake off.  It collapsed under its own weight.  It wasn't a pretty sight.  There was so much icing that the top two layers tried to slide off the counter, I had to catch them with my bare hands.  Don't worry, I am a compulsive hand washer when I cook.  I then scooped it onto plates and dolloped just a little a whole bunch of the leftover icing on top and then added fruit.  Oh well.  Sometimes the cake falls.  Then you scoop it onto plates or serve it in martini glasses.  Overall it's what's inside that counts.  Such a wonderful life lesson.  Maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better.  :)

2nd of July

Happy 4th of July!  I hope you are bbq-ing or swimming or doing something wonderfully summery!  We had our gathering on Saturday because Josh was supposed to work today.  It was such fun!  Since we've changed churches I hadn't seen some of these people in months.  Here are some pics.  Please note, if you weren't at the lake house on the 2nd, you were missing out, sorry to tell ya :(

 This is the lake house.  Dad designed it and we built it.  I spent the majority of my teenage Saturdays working on it, wishing I were just about anywhere else.

This is a look into my future.  It's my momma and Bubba.  They look alike.  A LOT alike.  I suppose one day I will look the same.

This, however, is my present.  :-)  I am absolutely wild about that man!  (Even if he gives me bunny ears)

 This is Papaw.  I am super excited about this picture because it somehow just captured his personality in my opinion and I pretty much never get good pictures. 

Eli and McK.  You can't really tell but Eli's mouth is open yelling because McK is drowning him with the canoe paddle.  Only because Eli tried the rock the canoe enough to flip it.  I love to watch those two!  They almost have a better brother-sister bond than Eli and I do!  Plus, she talks a lot which makes her the sister I never had!

Dad swingin'.  We all love this swing.  It almost matches the sky in this shot, pretend I planned it like that lol!

Once a upon a time I was a preteen/young teenager.  I was young and stupid.  I Hated the lake with a passion.  I "knew" that I wanted to get out of this little hick town and go somewhere and live a fancy life in a big city.  I am now a few years older and a bit wiser and I don't want to leave this little safe haven where we can watch the sun set on the lake and geese float.  It's too pretty and peaceful to exchange for the hustle and bustle and expense and smell of a big city.