Anniversary

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Laissez bon temps roulez!

Whew-it's only Wednesday, but it's been a busy week! My co-worker was out sick for two days in a row, so I've been doing double duty, and that leaves no time for blogging. Anyways, we had a great weekend! Ben was off on Saturday, which was such a treat. We got up bright and early Saturday to prepare for our crawfish boil. We were a little nervous, because we had never thrown a crawfish boil before. It took lots of teamwork, but overall we were successful. We had a really good time, and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. It was so relaxing just sit to outside all day and not really do much of anything! We had a little bit of trouble getting the water to boil...it was so windy, the propane flame wouldn't directly hit the pot, so we did a little engineering to block the wind in the cook area.

Travis, (my brother in law,) brought over his patented washer boards from "Warshers, Inc.". *yes, there is an "r" in Warshers Inc.-that's what he wants to name his washer board company.* So the boys pitched washers while we waited on water to boil. (The saying "a watched pot never boils" never rang so true...it took about 3 hours!) The girls played with my niece Avery and fixed dessert, which we ate first. My kind of party!

Finally, we had success! We had to cook them in 3 batches, but it was worth it.

The presentation. (Since our table became a wind blocking device.)

Dig in folks!



Nice setup huh?

I hope we can do it again sometime!


Sunday was an equally lazy day. I forced Ben to watch half of "Gone With the Wind" with me-(don't tell him I said his but I think he liked it, we finished the other half last night.) Sunday evening was a special communion service at church, and our pastors explained the symbolism of Passover, something I hadn't really thought too much about before. They were saying that the blood the Israelites put on their doors to show they were believers and so God would "pass over" their first born son, was early foreshadowing of how the blood of The Lamb would one day save us again. I really enjoyed the service. Just believe, and you will be saved! Afterwards we went to eat at Escalante with some of our small group friends-it was quite tasty. A great weekend-but too short, as usual!

Have a great week!

Friday, March 26, 2010

TGIF

Like the new design? It's a little more springy, and of course, girly. I tried to keep it pretty gender neutral at first, but let's face it, Ben will never post on here, and not many men will read this. (Sorry Dad, you'll have to suffer through the pink roses!) I'm sure it will change all the time though...there are so many great websites out there that have some really fun ideas, and as soon as I'm able to, I will be adding super awesome stuff I've created with Photoshop. Notice the header? I'm a little ashamed of how crummy the text looks...I did that with Microsoft Paint! Not exactly a designer's dream software.

Anyways, I'm soooo glad it's Friday! Ben is off tomorrow, and for the first time in forever, we are not going out of town on his Saturday off. (He only gets one a month.) Hopefully this will give him a chance to relax a little and get some rest. We are having a small crawfish boil tomorrow at our house! I went and bought all the fixings yesterday, based on some instructions I found online. We don't really know what we are doing...but we are gonna try! We've been wanting to invite people out to our house for a party so we can show it off, and we finally have a chance. Plus, who doesn't love a good crawfish boil? I'm a little bummed because a handful of our friends are not going to be able to make it, but we couldn't really be flexible on the date. Rain or shine, we will be boiling up some craw dads!

Also, please pray for our niece, Avery. She's getting tubes in her ears today, and she's been sick off an on for a while now.

I'll post on Monday with a crawfish re-cap, and hopefully I'll get some pics on here! Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Cubicle by Day, Fabulous Weddings by Night

As you may already know, I got a second job as a weekend assistant at one of the most fabulous wedding venues in the Houston area, and Sunday I worked my first "gig"! I'm an "event assistant", meaning I only work the actual wedding, (or event) and help the event planner make sure everything goes smoothly. I arrived 2 hours before the wedding started and was given a quick tour of the facility, (where the lights switches, AC monitors, emergency exits, etc. were,) and was introduced to the head chef and the head of catering. I was then given a checklist and was put to work immediately! I had to run around and make sure all of the tables were numbered correctly and had the right amount of chairs, check that all decorations were in the proper place, see that all outside vendors were doing what they were supposed to do, make sure rooms were the correct temperature, pin corsages on grandmothers, wrangle rowdy ring bearers before their walk down the aisle...the list goes on and on! I couldn't believe that so much trust was put in my hands on the very first day-but I loved it! They gave me a timeline which outlined every minute detail of the day, which is exactly what I did for my own wedding! (Which any of my friends and family who were involved can attest to!) I thought I was psycho crazy, but I guess that's what the pros do! This wedding was gorgeous! The budget was around $40,000! Towering glass centerpieces dripping with crystals and flowers...thousands of candles...fancy passed hor dourves...black tie tuxedos and floor length gowns...escort cards and individual menus...valet parking...it was the most lavish affair I've ever seen! It was just like what you see in the movies! Before the wedding started, there were about 100 people running in every direction tying bows on chairs, sprinkling rose petals, lighting candles, icing down champagne...you name it! And don't even get me started on the cake...oh, the cake! In the mother of the bride's speech, she referenced the bride's childhood summers at their house in France. Wowzers. Apparently the groom is a professional baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles. Needless to say, I was running around like crazy, figuring out where to seat guests who did not RSVP, arranging the candy bar, getting a towel for the father of bride after a very rowdy, (and sweaty,) turn of "Hava Nagila," assisting an elderly woman after she lost a huge onyx stone from one of her rings...and so much more! After 7 hours, I was exhausted! Normally I would of needed to stay even longer, but this particular bride had hired outside wedding planners as well, so there was plenty of help for packing the couple's belongings, etc, so I got to leave at a semi-decent hour. It was a Sunday night, (which is apparently the new day to get married,) so I had to work the next day. From now on, I should be able to pick the nights that I work...so hopefully no more Sundays! Overall, it was tiring but fun, and I'm going to stick with it! Maybe one day I will just be "Fabulous Wedding Planner" all the time! For now...it's back to my day job!

Monday, March 22, 2010

The 7 Deadly Habits

I just read these 7 Deadly Habits You Need to break on Doctor Oz's website. I could definitely work on a few of these areas...especially being late and being lazy at the end of the day. I thought I would share these tips from Doctor Oz so you can find an area to improve, (and lengthen!) your life too.

Deadly habit 1: Not Stretching In The Morning

Moving your body and releasing stress first thing is critical to preparing for a day where you are in control of your body.



Replacement: The 7-Minute Stretch

You can come up with your own or try out the routine Dr. Oz does first thing when he gets out of bed. It will center you for the day ahead and help you focus on taking good care of yourself.



Deadly Habit 2: Not Eating Breakfast

If you don’t eat right when you wake up, your body senses a famine is coming and slows your metabolism to compensate. Then, when your body is presented food later, it’s ravenous and wants to pack it in, leading to bingeing with a slow metabolism – a recipe for weight gain.



Replacement: Have A Small Breakfast Ready To Go

Dr. Oz ‘s Magical Breakfast Blaster (http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/magical-breakfast-blaster) from YOU: On a Diet is a smoothie of blueberries, bananas, psyllium husks, flax, soy protein, and honey. The fiber in the psyllium and flax helps regulate your metabolism throughout the day. Or try peanut butter on whole wheat bread. It doesn’t have to be big, just a little metabolic kickstart.



Deadly Habit 3: Running Late

Being perpetually late adds unnecessary stress to your life and takes control away from you, giving it to the people you disappoint and to the clock. That added stress, in turn, can lead to chronic inflammation and high blood pressure, which are linked to all kinds of diseases.



Replacement: Set Your Watch 5 Minutes Ahead

It’s a simple trick that will help you make appointments, get out of the rush rut, and lower stress.

Deadly Habit 4: Mindless Eating

Hitting the vending machine at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, raiding the pantry several times a day, eating through a bag of chips before we even realized we’ve opened them. We’re all guilty of eating without thinking about it sometimes. Problem is that often we are eating out of boredom, for a distraction, or to fill a hunger that can’t be met by food. And when we fill up on junk food, we add unhealthy calories, gaining fat and stressing our liver.



Replacement: Mindful Eating

Everything we eat should nourish us, and the ability to focus on that will help us all meet our goals of losing or maintaining weight. A simple solution is to pre-plan meals, especially snacks. On Sunday night, pack a variety of healthy snacks—12 almonds, one string cheese, 2 tablespoons of cranberries, 5 dark chocolates, 18 mini pretzels—in individual plastic bags for the week ahead. At 3pm on any day, you can reach for a baggie and know you are giving your body a good boost.



Deadly Habit 5: Becoming A Couch Potato

Flopping down in front of the TV at the end of a long day can feel good, but it’s actually doing a world of hurt to your body. Your metabolism still needs a workout as the evening draws to a close. Without it, your muscle turns to fat. Every decade we increase our percentage of fat by 5%.



Replacement: Half Hour Of Movement

Do squats while you watch TV, play with the kids, rearrange the closet, take a walk, do dishes, have a family dance party. Just figure out a way to get in a half hour of movement after dinner to give your metabolism something to do.



Deadly Habit 6: Disconnecting

So many of us pull away from the people who support us at exactly the times we need them most—when we’re going through a divorce, facing a financial crisis, feeling bad about our bodies. Adding the stress of bottled up emotions to already challenging times only leads to health problems down the road.



Replacement: Connecting

Human beings provide a social web that holds us all up. So call your mother, get back in touch with a college friend, make a plan to have coffee with an old work pal, send a thank you note to your high school teacher. If you surround yourself with support, you can weather the bad times with less stress and add years to your life.



Deadly Habit 7: Not Having A Bedtime

Kids have to be in bed at 8, but adults fill their evenings with TV, to-do lists, chores and more, falling into bed at a different (and later) time each night. That irregularity not only means fewer hours of sleep, but a lesser quality of sleep, both of which are causes of weight gain and disease.



Replacement: Planning A Bedtime

All of us need 7 and a half hours of sleep nightly to maintain good health, but sleeping well comes easy to few of us. It actually takes practice and routine, and it’s one of the most important things you can do for yourself. Count back 7 hours from when you wake up and make that your bedtime. If it’s 10:30, then you should be heading to bed at 10pm.

Read the entire article here.

Now go, be healthy!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Wedding Photos

On October 24, 2009, I married my best friend. I thought I'd share a few of my favorite pictures while I had the chance. Photography by "Photography by Dena".








Monday, March 15, 2010

Roses


Lately, I've found myself in a pattern of reading really dark books. The last few books I've read have all centered around death. ("Her Fearful Symmetry" and "The Lovely Bones" are both narrated by ghosts.) Needless to say, I wanted something a little lighter to read for a change of pace. I tried "Dear John" because Nicholas Sparks is a guilty pleasure of mine, and I always fall in to the book-made-into-movie hype. It was okay, but I was craving something different. Something I could really sink my teeth into. I saw "Roses" by Leila Meacham on Amazon's homepage, but I dismissed it because it was near Valentine's Day, and I figured they were just showing it due to it's romantic cover and title. Then I saw it was a New York Times best seller, and I read the synopsis. "This enthralling stunner, a good old-fashioned read, may herald the overdue return of those delicious doorstop epics from such writers as Barbara Taylor Bradford and Colleen McCullough. Meacham's multigenerational family saga, set in East Texas circa 1914–1985, charts the transformation of Mary Toliver, a wide-eyed 16-year-old heiress, into a calculating cotton plantation queen as hardheaded as Scarlett O'Hara." (From Publisher's Weekly.) East Texas, my East Texas? Gone With the Wind? I was sold in two sentences.

Although the town in which the story takes place is fictional, Howbutker, Texas, would be pretty much exactly where I grew up, in the "Pineywoods of Deep East Texas." I really enjoyed this book! It has love triangles, history, and vivid imagery that calls upon all of the senses. I found myself wishing that these characters really existed, and that I could research their history more. Although, the whole time I was reading it, I was picturing a writer and editor from New York who had never even been to Texas...some of the descriptions were just not quite right. For instance, two of the characters go to college: one to Texas A&M and the other to UT. At one point in the book, the author refers to the UT student as a graduate of "Texas University." Dear author, this college does not exist...ask any Aggie-they call UT this to make fun of them! After I finished the book, I found out Meacham lives in San Antonio...tsk tsk. That error should not have been made! Also, the story line was a little predictable. There were a few surprising twists here and there, but overall, I pretty much knew how the story was going to unfold. I find this happens a lot in books, so I don't really count this against "Roses." I still couldn't keep my hands off this book. Overall, 4 out of 5 stars! If you are looking for a easy read that doesn't make you think too hard, I highly suggest this.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Polyvore

Sorry for that last post. I was on a bit of a rant, (as you can see,) and I don't intend for my blog to be filled with boring. Hopefully things will be lighter in the future! Starting with my favorite boredom buster, polyvore.com. This fashion/interior design website is so amazing! You can "crop" images from other websites and use those images, as well as the thousands clipped by others, to create "sets". Every image is linked to it's website of origin where you can purchase that item if you like what you see. So far I've created a few outfits and one room. It makes me feel very fashionable and chic! :) Here is the first interior design set I created. (expect to see a lot more in the future!) Enjoy!






Friday, March 5, 2010

An Ode to My Kindle

This past Christmas, my wonderful husband got me a second generation Kindle. Not since I was a little kid, praying to God on Christmas Eve that He would tell His buddy, Santa, to pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top bring me a "Nightmare Before Christmas" Sally doll, have I wanted something so badly for Christmas. (Yes, I wanted a creepy doll with velco-removable limbs and head, which by the way I did get and cherish!) I was so happy when I opened the Kindle and removed it from it's simple packaging. You know you are holding an awesome piece of technology when it doesn't even include an instruction booklet.

I love my Kindle, and I don't understand why people could possibly think that it will compete with the Apple iPad. It makes me sad that people are even comparing the two. Let me start off by saying this, I think that the iPad is being overhyped. In my mind, it seems like it is just a giant iPhone that can't make calls. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPhone. A lot. But in no way does it take place of my need for a computer. Sure, you can download apps on the iPad, but those are fun for about 5 minutes. The games are a far cry from say, those of a Nintendo DS. You tilt to navigate, shake to jump...yeah, that's about it. It gets old really fast. The really useful apps, (shopping list, Google Maps, YellowPages, Fandango,) are really useful because you can have them on your phone, which is always with you when you need them in a pinch. I just don't feel the need to have apps on a bigger screen. Apple is known for their great computers that work flawlessly, but you pay a high enough price for them that it is no surprise that they are so great. For the iPad's low price point, I don't think you are going to get the expected flawlessness of a typical Apple computer. Like I said, I love my iPhone, but there are times I want to throw it out of the window. The battery life is just sad. I have to bring a charger with me to work, because it won't even make it through the day. When using 3G, the battery drains even faster. The iPhone freezes all the time, which gets really annoying, really fast. Applications tend to terminate unexpectedly. It's not perfect technology. Sure, Apple is going to show you snazzy video clips of some techy dude playing with the iPad, maneuvering flawlessly through the Internet and applications. They showed those same videos for the iPhone, and quite frankly, it just doesn't work like that. The Internet pages are not as quick to load as they will have you believe, and I expect the iPad to be the same way. (Remember, the low price point leads me to believe the two devices will be similar in expectations.) Will you be able to see Flash websites in action, or watch a video that isn't streamed through YouTube? Can't on the iPhone. I just don't see the iPad becoming a replacement computer-I see it being a fun boredom-buster, and not much else. I could be wrong, maybe the iPad will be the miracle wonder gadget that people think it will be, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm not going to abandon my Kindle for one.

I don't want to play games on my Kindle, I don't want a bright, colorful screen. I don't want to send e-mails with it, or watch movies on it, or upload a playlist to it. I want to read on it. The simplicity of the Kindle is genius. Everything you want to do with a book, you can do with the Kindle: take notes, place bookmarks, highlight sections. (The one thing you can't do is share books. This, in my opinion, is a big improvement Amazon could make to the Kindle.) Kindle has 3G wireless, so I can download a book instantly, without having to pay a monthly subscription fee, something I don't think Apple will ever consider doing. The battery life on the Kindle is amazing! I can read 4 books before having to charge it! And if you turn off the wireless connection, it lasts even longer. And I don't think the "lag" that some folks complain about on the Kindle is even worth mentioning; the brief recreation of a page is no longer than the amount of time it would take to turn a page. Which brings me to the E-Ink technology. This is a must see to believe. Instead of the bright, computer like screen of an iPad, the Kindle creates each page using ink, which is a real head stracher to me. I don't know how they do it, but I don't care; it looks like a real page. I have the Kindle app on my iPhone, which is great, because I'm never without my entire library. I can read my book on my lunch break on my iPhone, and when I get home and turn on my Kindle, it will take to me the last page I read on my phone. This is really cool, but I couldn't read on my phone for much longer than my 30 minute break. After a while, the brightly lit contrast of black and white starts to hurt my eyes. The Kindle is soothing in comparison. Who really wants to look at yet another bright computer screen during their downtime? Not to mention the fact that I can barely make out shapes and colors on my iPhone screen in the sunlight. To me, this is the most important distinction that sets the Kindle apart. Of course, it would be cool if the iPad leads people to reading who normally wouldn't pick up a book or purchase an e-reader. Probably not though. These people will probably spend most of their time on the iPad popping digital bubble wrap or creating a Twitter account for their dog. The only real threat I see to the Kindle is an actual book. There is something romantic about the physical presence of a book. But I think the Kindle is way cooler.

I will not be buying an iPad. Maybe in a few generations if they work out the inevitable kinks. But even if that day comes, I will still remain loyal to my Kindle.