A Little Delayed Valentines

So it's been a crazy year, filled with big changes, a new lack of privacy and total self control of our lives and oddly, alot more romance than I ever would have thought!

We've been working really hard on our marriage this year. Reading books, attending classes, doing devotions and studies together and just really communicating (on all things!!) much better!

Here's to our 6th Valentines Day together.  And MANY MANY MORE!

Love you forever babe. And unlike our first Valentines Day I can actually sign this "yours" Stefanie :)

I can't help it when they keep giving me this much ammunition!

 

Scary shredded Vegas Showgirl look?

 

Definitely do not get the "wings"?? on her back. 

They look more like some random cotton batting shaped like a backpack.

 

I think this one speaks for itself.

It's my favorite type of weather.....

TANNING WEATHER!!

70 and sunny, 82 and sunny inside our back fence.


Cell phone picture from my comfy tanning chair. :)

I have a weakness......

For Nine West-

Buy One Get One 50% Off until Midnight tonight, but I need to be a good girl and not spend money.  So, instead I'll let any of you shoe nuts reading drool with me.

Patience

"A man's wisdom gives him patience; it is to His glory to overlook offense"

Proverbs 19:11

That needs to be stuck in my head for the next 3 days at work..........

Some Recent Photoshoots Part 2

  Engagement Portraits on the Woodlands Waterway Walk

And we're shooting her Bridal Portraits next month and their wedding the month after that!

Some Recent Photoshoots Part 1

Fun in the Park Photoshoot with some friends from church's kids.

Finally letting them have fun on the actual playground after making them smile nice :)

Ramblings

So, my schedule has been off for the last two weeks or so, so I'm just going to spill a bit.....

My husband's been home from work almost every day for the last 3 weeks.  Weather down here has stunk a bit, so in the golf business, that means no work, because no one is golfing.  Men at home mean routines go out the window and nothing gets accomplished in any type of normal time frame.

But, it's okay, we've had fun.  We've stayed up late watching movies, cleaned like crazy, bummed around town, ate lots of unhealthy food, you know, like a vacation, except for the fact that I still had to work.

Because of this, I'm way behind on my personal stuff though. I'm one of those women who's mindset is that everything that makes my husband happy, has to come in front of anything that makes me happy.  So, today he finally went back to work and I'm catching up on two weeks worth of shows online (with Justin Bieber commercials to boot! AHH! Punishment for not watching live or remembering to Tivo!), and doing 6 loads of laundry, and running any and all errands to girly stores, and so forth.  I'm also way behind in my personal devotions.

We've been reading some books together, which we're loving, and are making a huge impact on our relationship, but my solo devotions and Bible reading have kind of sucked.  I still haven't fully memorized my last verse, but I'm starting another anyways, hoping that by the 15th I can confidently say I know them both enough to only have 1 verse to memorize the second half of the month.  I've been choosing my verses based on my current struggles.  This week's theme is "discernment" since my mouth tends to get the better of my brain sometimes.
Philippians 1:10
"so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ."

Oh, and the books we've been reading are "Men are like Waffles, Women are like Spaghetti" and "Red Hot Monogamy" by Bill and Pam Farrell.

 

Both are hilarious, insightful and well worth the time to read. The first deals with communication and the ways we handle things, and the second, is pretty self explanatory! We've been having some fun with it!

We even decided it was finally time to spring on a real bed! 4 1/2 years of marriage and we finally bought a bed!

The cell phone picture will have to do because I'm too lazy to straighten up enough to give you a real one.  But, for the first time in 4 1/2 years our bed has a headboard and footboard, and is actually not on the floor! Almost all of our marriage our boxspring and mattress have simply been on the floor. Yep, pathetic huh? We're that cheap that we've only really had hand me down furniture and if no one was giving something away, we didn't bother to buy it.  No more! For our 5th Anniversary in May in we're actually going to outfit our hopefully soon to be apartment with furniture of our own choosing! Woohoo!!

Well enough rambling and time for more laundry.  Fun fun fun.

Have a great weekend!

WIMPS!

So, basically everything in Houston comes to a standstill when 30's are forecasted.  No one goes outside, people stock up on groceries and hunker down like a New Yorker might when 3-4 feet of snow is predicted.  Last night most of my plaza shut down at 5 or 6pm instead of the usual 9:00. Yesterday they put a notice in our mailbox saying mail service could be delayed or canceled today and it's after 2:00 and the garbage still hasn't been picked up. We had a "chance of a snow" in the forecast for last night and people panicked, proactively closed schools and the highway department coned off the Beltway and other roads with high exit ramps.  This morning, we woke up to a thick frost.

Yep, FROST.

And the entire city is virtually shut down.

Yeah, I'd be laughing, if it wasn't so inconvenient to deal with all of these Texas Wimps!

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.