Best Dressed Part 2

Awards show season always brings out my critical side. Partially because the things I find worthy of awards, the real critics never seem to think highly of, and partially, because several stars seem to desperately need new stylists.

Cases in point-

 

I know at least the hair is an improvement, but she still looks like a high giddy kid posing for the casting of the oscar statue!

 

Totally not flattering to her curves, bad placement of embellishment and the barely sheer skirt makes her thighs look extra curvy.

 

New girls already needs a new stylist, I just don't get this dress at all.

 

Can we say, need for double stick tape??? I know she's back on the market, but she doesn't have to make it that easy.

Really Nicole? Just way too many different cuts, shapes, fabrics, seams, etc... plus a bit too gothic looking on her.

FYI Printable Coupon Alert!

Target now has weekly printable coupons you can double with your regular newspaper generic coupons to save extra on cleaning supplies, toiletries and basic groceries! I'm hooked! And I'm off to do my big stock up on dry goods, snacks and such with twice as many coupons!

Go HERE to select yours!  You can chose as many or as few as you want, for just the items you use.  It will make you install their printer app, but I didn't have any issues with it.



Also, 20% Off Total Purchase at Joann's Fabrics, good on sale merchandise as well! Also great for little notion type stuff you don't want to waste your 40% on.

HERE's the link to that one as well!

ENJOY!

My weekend

Look who I finally got to meet......

 

My sister and her new little family! So happy for them!

3 days was not enough!  Miss them already!

I don't think I get fashion....

I work in women's fashion, but seriously, these made the best dressed list?

Puff Sleeve Disco Ball

The hair especially, seriously?!?!

Don't know what the point of the "poncho thing" is

Looks like she's trying to look naked, hopefully that flesh toned fabric 

is actually opaque and just really well matched!

Just a really bad fit

Why does she always do things like this to herself?

Someone needs to hire a new stylist!

Memorization

Psalm 19:14 May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing to You Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.

I did it! That was typed without looking, you can go back to last week and see if I was right!

For my second verse-

"If they obey and serve Him, they will spend the rest of their days in prosperity and their years in contentment"   Job 36:11

I've been coming back to this verse and others on contentment alot lately in order to remind myself that when I'm following what God wants me to do, it will get better!!

Recapping in Random Rambles

So, it's finally felt cold and wintery down here, at least by Houston standards....

The fountain in the parking lot at my work actually froze over the other night.

When I got to work on Thursday morning, my co-worker from Columbia was freaking out because she'd never seen anything naturally frozen like that. It was pretty funny, she made me run across the parking lot to get a picture to send to her phone because it was too cold for her to walk all the way across the lot and she wanted to see it closer up and take a picture home to show her kids.  Pretty funny to me since I was just in a heavy sweater and long pants and she had on 3 layers, plus a coat, scarf, hat and gloves! I should have taken a picture of her, you'd have thought we'd gotten three feet of snow the way she was dressed!

Because of the cold weather, my husband has been off all week.  I think he's starting to go crazy, which is good because I went crazy by Wednesday! So excited there's supposed to be work tomorrow, men were not meant to be home for 7 days straight when women are working, and women were not meant to be able to stay in a routine with men at home.  It would be really nice if next week was about 20 degrees warmer so he could work 6 days.  I need my organization back!

We're overhauling our "living room" here at my parents to make room for my sister and her husband to stay next weekend with my niece. Should be interesting making room for a second twin bed (the first one is being used as a daybed/sofa) and our old cradle in a room that serves as our living room, tv room, and office.  Basically I'm piling things in bins and moving them into the garage I think, no other way to make enough space for the beds alone!

Because they're coming, I'll FINALLY be meeting my niece this coming weekend! She'll be 6 weeks and a day when she gets here, it's about time! Having your sister have a baby in a freezing state with horrible travel right before Christmas when you work retail, totally stinks! But they're coming to me now, so I can meet her without having to worry about snow travel delays or digging out my snow gear from NY, lucky lucky me!

I'm also wondering if anyone's had any luck hosting blog sales. I'm cleaning out alot of stuff in preparation for getting our own place again in April. How do you advertise? How many inquiries do you usually get? Am I better off just having a garage sale?

Speaking of our own place, we should actually have some money left over from our trip to NY in March for my brother in law's wedding, because my husband's parents have actually offered to pay for our expenses for the trip! We'd designated $750 for travel, food and tux, and now it looks like at least 2/3 of that will be paid for by them! Which is totally amazing, because usually we get the short end of the deal with them and have to majorly over extend ourselves to be a part of family activities with little to no thanks and no effort made on their part to make anything easier, so yeah, this is a huge improvement!!!

So, IKEA here I come!

I started creating a shopping list at IKEA online around the first of the year.  Our savings for NY will just about pay for my couch!  Bedframe, bookcases, dressers, and other matching furniture to come later of course, but considering we donated our futon in NY, this kind of has to be our first furniture purchase. Our mix-match hand-me-down bedroom stuff will hold up for a little longer.

Back to cleaning for my sister's visit, I'll be choosing my second verse tomorrow. Anyone doing any memorization with me?

Verse #1

"May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer."
  Psalm 19:14

Because my current attitude towards some people at work isn't exactly the best witness and I need to work on that. 

Memory

Anyone else feel like they can paraphrase a large portion of the Bible, but they only know a few little sentence fragments verbatim?  In elementary and middle school I was the memory verse queen, always memorizing my Sunday School verse of the week and even memorizing the ones for weeks I'd missed to make sure I got one for every week all year.  Now, I can give you a an idea per my own personal paraphrase of the main part of it, but forget the reference, I'm doomed on those! 

So, along with some of the ladies in my Sunday School class now, I'm going to try to commit to a challenge placed by Beth Moore on her blog.  It's called the "Siesta" Challenge, meanings, "Siesta" is her nickname for "sisters", and basically, it's a challenge to partner together with other women and try to memorize 24 verses a year.  If I'd known sooner, I'd be joining the official group on her blog, but since I didn't find out until this weekend, I'll be posting my verses here instead of on her blog, that and sharing them with my class. 

The plan is to post a different verse every 15 days, on the 1st and the 15th of each month, and then you take the two weeks in between to memorize it and encourage other "sisters" on their verses. Each woman chooses her own verse based on what she thinks God wants HER to learn at that particular time and place, not something someone else picks that may not be as relevant at the moment to her, or something she thinks her husband or children need to learn, that way she has a better chance of truly applying the verse.  Normally you'd go to her blog on the 1st or 15th and post your name, location and verse in the comments section to hold yourself accountable.

I'll be choosing my first verse tomorrow, something I used to know that was important to me when I was younger, since I only have a few days until the 15th, and then I'll choose something this week to start working on on the 15th. 

Because I'm starting late, I'll be posting my verses here.  If anyone else wants to join in and share their verse, feel free to leave me a comment, or a link to your blog if you're posting your verse there, or just start joining in, I'd love to see how many verses I can commit to memory, and encourage you as you try with me.

Free Chocolate Alert!

So my friend Sarah over at 5k's and Chardonnays is hosting a giveaway HERE.

She's giving away the good stuff! LINDT!

Go post a fun caption for a picture of her adorable baby girl and enter for your chance to win!

Good luck, but not too much luck, because I want to win!

Christmas Lights in Champions

 The Champions Tree

In someone's front yard.

Yeah, tree wrapping is a BIG deal around here! And it's absolutely beautiful!

Looking Forward

So, I posted the last year recap, now for the next year to do list-

Physically-
Spend alot more time in these-

(bad cell phone picture, I know)
Even if it means having to buy new ones soon!

Getting to the point where all of my pants, dresses and skirts for work fasten easily, without having to be stretched out or having to be worried about what underwear I'm wearing since things are a little tight in back these days.

Get my stomach ready for tanning season, just so that I can feel good about myself, I know it's stupid and shallow, so shoot me.

Basically, I've worn the same size since I was 19, have never been pregnant and want to keep things that way, but, I'm already (at 25) seeing a change in my energy levels and metabolism, so working out, here I come again!  I was running quite a bit when we were first down here, I ran daily from 19-21, and seasonally after that, then it hit triple digits every day, then work went crazy for the holidays, so now I'm getting back in routine, hopefully daily, not just 3-4 times a week so that when I have to skip a day I miss it, not am relieved to not have had time to work out.  I don't even care about losing pounds, or even inches, just keeping things tight.  If I could do that without adding any extra bulk though, I'd certainly enjoy it.

Spiritually-
Pray through the "Power of the Praying Wife" quarterly this year.  I'd shoot for monthly as there are 30 topics to pray over, but seriously, things come up that are specific prayer needs at times other than fitting into the cycle, so I'm leaving room for error. 

I've prayed through it once every 6-8 months during our marriage, so most of the topics are memorized by now, but I want to do them more regularly, using them as a base for all of my prayer times. Whenever I'm focusing on praying for my husband, selflessly, not just to change to stop doing things that annoy me, or to do things exactly how I want him to, I see a huge difference in our communication, and our patience levels with each other. And, I see a huge difference in my outlook towards our marriage.

Emotionally-
GET OVER MY IN-LAWS.  Yep, that's a big one, kind of huge and has always been an issue, but I need to get over the past stuff and be ready to move forward and just be myself with them without freaking out about what problems they're going to find in me and our marriage and my treatment of their son. HE LOVES ME, they can deal. I just need to get over it all so I can stop being afraid of talking to them, or being around them, and stop dreading anything having to do with them. I know those fears come across when I'm around them and I need to get over them.

Personally-
Perfect my manual shooting skills. Meaning, get myself fast enough and comfortable enough with adjusting my aperture and iso settings that I can start using them on living beings, not just scenery that doesn't move.  I've never done much with manual during portrait shooting except for seniors and sleeping babies, and I want to kick it up so that I can get those levels fast enough that I can improve all of my baby and children photography shots.  Thanks to Rachel for her I Heart Photography tutorials, because seriously, my husband's explanations didn't make nearly as much sense as hers did.  He tried explaining all the settings and numbers when I first got my camera, but I didn't get it, so I mostly just played around with trial and error, now I kind of feel like I know what I'm doing. I just need a few young test subjects to see if I really get it or not. :) 

Professionally-
Branch out and network and advertise my piano and guitar lessons somehow!  I seriously miss teaching full time, so even 6-8 students would be such a joy!  Of course I'd take more, like enough to quit my day job, but that might take another year.  Of course, who knows, once I took the leap of faith and advertised in NY I went from 10-25 in 3 months.

Offer a few free photoshoot opportunities and get the word out. I work with the children's choirs at church, we're part of a newlyweds and young families group at church, and I work with women all day, so seriously, I just need to open my mouth.  It worked in NY, so shooting for free for a month or two should be totally worth it. I booked most of my shoots in NY by word of mouth, so all I have to do is get the ball rolling.

I'm off to grab a shower and some lunch, and basically just reverse my run since my husband is off and that never means fixing healthy lunch food, but whatever, I'll run again tomorrow.

New Year, New Post and a Little Review

So this year has been a bit of a full one, kind of crazy, alot of unexpected things, alot of planned changes and a bit of drama.  I'm recapping today partially for the sake of documenting and moving on to a hopefully less hectic and more organized year, but really, I'm just in the mood to write. :)

January-

We were still in our townhouse in NY, surrounded by boxes and selling off or throwing away anything we hadn't personally paid any large amount of money for and preparing friends and family for our soon departure.  I was a numb mess, trying not to feel anything about the move for fear of being distracted from all of the tasks that had to accomplished before we made the actual move.  I really don't remember a whole lot about the month, mostly due to the whole "numb" thing.

February-

Was probably a tie for worst months in a long time......moving SUCKS!  Sorry, don't use that word very often, but seriously, it's true when it comes to moving and leaving the first 25 years of your life and half of your belongings and all of your friends behind.  The last 2 weeks of working with my students I seriously cried my way to and from most of my lessons, unless I could get ahold of my sister or mom on the phone to distract me during the drive.  My reaction to our last couple of youth groups was pretty similar. My reaction now writing this is pretty similar, so time to change subjects......

March-

We arrived in Texas to sunshine, warmth, a welcome home at my parents, a fantastic church family in our lifegroup and jobs that practically landed in our laps.  It came with my birthday, a ton of chaos from my husband's family (the only big YUCK that led to 5 months of my brother-in-law not speaking the my husband even and my in-laws all basically ostracizing me.) and our first month not paying rent and utilities and being able to start our massive debt payoff. **Tips may come in a future blog if anyone's interested, we're 75% paid-off with everything but my husband's Elim loans in 9 months.

April-

Finally saw Texas starting to feel natural, and like August in NY! It also brought the discovery that our car's A/C had died sometime over the winter months, in 90 degree heat, that meant some major money saving to put the $900 into it to get the air replaced.  It also brought my first MLB game, for free, 12 rows behind home plate, thanks to my aunt's fiance. :) Gotta love good connections!

The coolest sign in Minute Maid Park!

May-

Essentially started with out 4th Wedding Anniversary at the beginning of the month.....4 Years since this-

All I have to say is WOW! Has it been an adventure!

May was also when we found out that my sister was going to be giving us a niece! Lots of fun and excitement!

June-

The annual Walt Disney World trip. Goodness do I love the fact that my parents are seasonal cast members and have to work twice a year and can get us in for free :)

June also brought us our first consistent 3 digit temperatures.  That A/C was getting to be a necessity and we were getting desperate for the money to afford it! Too bad paying off the car, and one bank in NY both 4 months ahead of schedule and paying for our hotel in Disney were more fun :) 2 accounts out of 6 paid off!

July-
Was honestly so HOT I don't remember a whole lot of it.  Seriously, your brain stops working at about 106 degrees! Trust me, an entire month where it hits 3 digits by 10am will make anyone have temporary amnesia! My brother in law did finally propose to his girlfriend of 5 1/2 years, so wedding planning began in NY, and tension began in our house waiting to see if my husband was going to get the option of being a witness to his brother's wedding.

August-
Kind of the same as July, nothing major besides paying off our furniture debt and replacing our A/C! FINALLY!! We could stop sweating through our clothes before leaving the subdivision and were not embarrassed to go out in public because of the sweat marks that were visible in our clothes just running to the grocery store! Seriously, I wish I was joking, but we'd literally leave sweat puddles in our seats just running 2 1/2 miles to Target. Yeah, nasty!

It also was the month I got promoted at work, more hours, more pay, and at least emergencies only insurance. Still not full time, but that's fine with me!

September-
Brought me back to something I LOVE and was missing significantly in my life! See details HERE.

My life started feeling "normal" again! Whatever "normal" is :)

It also brought some crazy emotions when my brother-in-law decided to semi-reconcile with my husband-meaning, he started talking to him again, but never addressed the issue or apologized for anything, just starting acting like nothing had happened.  This was really really tough for me, because I had been majorly treated as the root of all evil, demon person and still haven't really seen any improvement in my in-laws treatment of me, except maybe from my mother-in-law who's only clingy and accidentally mean in her lack of thought before speaking.  She still isn't warm, but she's not nasty, the other haven't given me the time of day in over a year.  So, yeah, that's still an issue and yeah.....

October-
We finally got some relief from the heat! Our average temp was only 86. :)  Yeah, still felt like August in NY to me!  It also brought the start of hockey season, much to my husband's excitement.....

November-
Started a crazy two months of work drama for me, and hectic schedules with church events, extra hours at work, and trying to stockpile money before my husband goes into slow season at his work.  We put another $500 worth of work into our car and paid off half of a credit card, on top of Christmas shopping, not a bad month overall, just hectic.

And, finally December-

We're caught up, we had the arrival of our niece,

Christmas, craziness, and still 70 degree temperatures.

Christmas pictures maybe coming, but definitely light pictures.

Here's to an easier 2011!  Happy New Year Everyone! 

Or, rather anyone reading, comment if you're reading, I'm curious who's still keeping up with my inconsistant blogging.