Sweet Summertime

I've made note before about my many summer projects, so I thought that I'd list just what exactly is on that list and what's been checked off (or in process)!

• Paint my room - check! Linds and I painted my room "Desert Camel" this weekend. I house-sat while William, Julie & Tom were out of town, so we borrowed their huge ladder since I have vaulted ceilings. Once again, we didn't get enough paint and had the tiniest area left to paint when we hit the bottom. But going ahead and getting the extra is allowing for any type of touch ups and I painted a electric cord-hider-thingy. Let me tell you...we're just about pros at this. I'd say you should hire us, but it's about been the death of me.
• Finish redecorating my room - half check! I've got a few more little things I want to take care of, like sealing my bedside table so it doesn't chip, and there's a few cool wall-art things I want to do too. For my birthday, Laurie gave me a super cool chandelier to go over my bed that looks amazing, so that took care of lighting and it's beautiful! And my amazing parents recovered my red bench that I had and they did a fantastic job. Looks so great! I'll post a picture when it's all complete (and when we have legit internet again. Long story short, we can't remember the password for our router and now that the redecorating is well under way, my PC that has the router on it has been moved to another room and Comcast has to come and authorize??? the cable or whatever...)
• Touch up paint - this may be put off a little bit longer for maybe a rainy day when everything else is done. I'm so over painting at this point
• Call Tom - Tom was the project manager of the houses in our neighborhood. He told me when we moved in, over a year ago, that he'd replace my laundry room door because it's slightly warped and doesn't shut evenly. No biggie, but annoying. Also, they originally put the toilet paper holder in my bathroom in the wrong place when they built it and had to move it, leaving holes in the wall. Tom came once to fill the holes, but didn't paint over them, so I have two white spots on my bathroom wall. Thing is now, Tom apparently quit, and the new project manager doesn't believe me (niiiiice...), so I can handle the touch up paint myself, but I really want a new door. This one will have to be delayed too.
• Finish my scrapbook - no check. :( However, Mom took all my scrapbooking stuff home for the summer so she could work on Reed's book and has gotten so much done and it looks awesome! I'll get it back and get into gear hopefully the next time I go home.
• Get my tattoo - CHECK! :) I know, I know...I haven't posted about it. I promise it's coming.
• Paint Lindsey's dresser - this is obviously Lindsey's project, but she's pretty much been focused on my big one. So this WILL get done, but we'll have to get back into painting mode.
• Get carpet cleaned - saving this for the very last thing...after all painting is done!
• Clean out closets - half check! I have cleaned mine out, so Lindsey just has to do hers.
• Paint the 1/2 bath - CHECK!

...Come on! :)

To finish out the celebrating, a bunch of us planned on going to lunch after church. I didn't know that "a bunch" was going to turn into 13 people! And then the best gift of the day...my parents and Reed came and got to meet all my Mix friends for lunch, too! I had a wonderful birthday and I'm so blessed to have so many wonderful, amazing friends and the best family in the world!

The bestest cuz ever! So glad we could celebrate together!

Best Friend Forever.

Krista and Amber

Ryan and Robin

Karen and Nicole

Dinger and Jessica...so hardcore for coming both days!! :)

Yay!! My family made the day! (awesome camera angle, Reed!) :) Kinda mad I didn't end up with a picture with Daddy...next time for sure!

My "little" brother...he just started high school and I feel so old!

Even my WiiFit got into party mode and wished me a happy birthday! :)

Thank you to everyone who made my 24th birthday amazing! I got a lot of really sweet cards, amazing gift cards, great visits and of course, my new iBook. ;) And to those of you that couldn't celebrate with me, thank you so much for thinking about me and you were certainly missed!

Celebrate good times...

Since my birthday was on Sunday and not exactly a good "going out" day, I used it as a great excuse to celebrate all weekend long! Friday night, Laurie, Allison, Ruthann, Lindsey, Robin, Genevieve and I all went to see Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. It was really cute...and we officially saw the trailer for Harry Potter! :)

Saturday, Linds and I headed to the lake to spend the day with her parents, Will & Beth, her grandmother and all the dogs. What a fun day and perfect weather! Very exciting day! ;)

That night, we hurried home to get ready for the evening. JoJamie had made reservations for us at Sambuca, and I have to say that it was the exactly what I wanted for my birthday. Something relatively low-key, but something different than we go to eat every night. It was a very fun night (minus still having to wait over an hour for a table...despite reservations) with some great friends. You know you're getting old when you'd rather go home and get in bed early instead of going "out" out...although I've kinda always been like that. But it was exactly what I wanted to do, so it was perfect for me!

Lauren, Bree and I in our bright dresses before heading out.

Ruthann, Laurie, Brittany, Bree, me and Lauren all waiting outside for over an hour to be seated. Fortunately it felt amazing outside, and we all had lots of catching up to do...we were just starving!

Sara (Jessica's roommate), me, Jes and Dinger. We certainly missed Rachel!

My sweet Mallory ("Aunt Marolly") and Chip got to come for a while!! :)

Thank you, party planning best friends!!

Laurie and I throwing our "for real" except I'm 20-"four real!"

My beautiful little sister, Lauren, and I. I adore this girl!

The whole group (minus a couple) after dinner! I have great friends!

The BFF and I outside Sambuca!

WiiFit!

I've sung its praises and I will tell everyone and their brother how great WiiFit is. I have taken the body test almost once a day (and that's what they "expect" of you) and I've "trained" almost every other day. I've been going all the way through the yoga training and almost all the strength training too.

I love the yoga! I thought that'd be my least favorite, but it's tough, but really fun too. The strength training is kicking my butt. My legs kind of tingle on the days I don't train from the lunges and rowing squats!

There's also aerobics and balance training (skiing, hula hooping, tight rope walking, soccer, running, etc.) that are a lot of fun too. My favorite is the hula hoop, and Lindsey is pretty killer on the skiing. It's definitely worth the money because I'll hang out with the puppies and work out in my pajamas way quicker than I would get up early and go to a gym or go after work when I'm exhausted. And have I said enough about how much fun it really is! I really feel like I'm doing something, too!

Dance! Boogie Wonderland...

Last night was the finale of my favorite summer show...So You Think You Can Dance. I freaking love that show and I'm pretty sure that this season has been even better than the other 2 I've watched. The talent was outstanding! On the finale, the judges picked their favorite routines from the season. My favorite from the entire season was picked, of course. :) But here's another one of my favorites that they picked last night. H-O-T hot.

For most of the season, Lindsey, Laurie, Ruthann, Allison and I would all get together to watch the Wednesday performance show and have dinner and a fun girls' night. Mine and Lindsey's small group meets every other Wednesday, so sometimes we couldn't...including this week. However, we all got together for a big shindig at Laurie and Ruthann's for the final results show.

In the middle we had to pause (thank you, God, for DVR. No, really!) and have a little early birthday/finale celebrating! Ruthann made a cake and I got to blow out candles (pink, of course!)! :) Thanks, Ruthann!!

Laurie and I loved the yummy chocolate cake! And it was so pretty!

Lindsey was slightly delirious having been at a video shoot until 4:30am the night before, so when we came back to the paused TV, she thought judge Jean Marc Generaux needed some cake too!

We each picked who we thought would win and who we wanted to win (Allison: Katee/Katee, Laurie: Katee/Katee, Whitney: Joshua/Joshua, Lindsey: Joshua/Chelsie...who wasn't in the top 4, Ruthann: Katee/Twitch)...and the hip hop dancer, Joshua Allen won! Here we are, doing the "for real" sign that we really aren't positive what it means, other than it represents it being season 4.

Mickey

Just a quick update on little Mickey. We puppy-sat him from last Thursday through this past Monday night and we were so happy to have him in the house! He's such a sweet little puppy. He loves to cuddle up and play really hard...you'd never be able to tell he was a sick little guy for how much he loved to play. He had his second round of chemo on one day last week, and he needs to be watched pretty closely for the next 5-7 days after, so I worked from home on Friday so I could keep an eye on him (definitely one of the major things I love about my job...my boss is amazing when it comes to situations like that).

Basically, he's going through treatments of chemotherapy, but the doctors still don't know what type of cancer this is, so he's kind of a guinea pig when it comes to treatment. Fortunately, the chemo doesn't seem to be making him sick, so that's a great thing. He has to take about 3 pills a day for antibiotics and for nausea, and he's still having trouble pottying. The doctors are going to evaluate Mickey after the third round of chemo to see if the treatment is working or minimizing the cancer at all or what. I certainly would appreciate your prayers for the little fella. He's so much more than "just a dog" to Lindsey's parents! Here are a few sweet pictures from the week...when we could get him still enough! We'll be on Center Hill lake this Saturday with him, so maybe we'll get a few better ones then of the whole family!

I love this picture of Mickey, Paisley and Rocket running full force outside!

Doesn't Mickey (in the center) have the sweetest little face?

Bathroom Decorating

When Linds and I moved to Nashville over a year ago, we were so excited to finally get to paint walls in every room! Needless to say, we bit off a little more than we could chew, and by the time we got to the 1/2 bathroom, we were just ready to get it over with! I had wanted to pick out a color that I wouldn't necessarily paint an entire room that I'd be in every day...something a little different for me, but still somewhat coordinated with the surrounding rooms. So I picked a mossy-green, and the color was pretty...but in a tiny, 1/2 bath it pretty much looked disgusting. Almost every time I ever saw it for the past year, I would get aggravated by it! So part of the summer project list was to re-paint!

Linds and I went to Home Depot and picked out a brighter green...Bamboo Leaf (just FYI). We got it on the walls in a little over an hour and with the lights out, it was just the right color. However, I don't think any guests we have come over would appreciate having to go in the room with all the lights out. It was LIME green and basically glowed in the dark! Above is a picture of Lindsey with what I'm pretty certain is the only evidence of the original green (though it looks brown here) and definitely the only color of the lime green. It didn't look so bad as one little blob! We went back to Home Depot the next day and picked out another color green...Pepper Grass and it was perfect! However, it required a primer and 2 coats (after yet another...the 3rd if you're keeping count...trip to Home Depot). So 3 shades of green, and ultimately 5 coats total later, I have a very cute 1/2 bath! Finally...the finished product!

Wonderful Weekend!

Another great, and very hot weekend to mark the first weekend in August!

• No tax weekend! Although Linds and I didn't take full advantage of it clothes-wise as we typically do, we still did some damage. We both got laptops and cute outfits to go out with some friends on Saturday night. In the process of finishing my summer project list, I got some new office-type stuff for my room, since everything I had was hot pink and I'm now going with red as my accent colors. I also got a new dresser that was on sale (although that wasn't tax free, of course)!
• With the purchase of my dresser and desk stuff, now I just need to get my walls painted (blah), lighting figured out, finishing my bathroom and maybe painting my armoire. Still lots to do but getting closer!
• Saturday night, JoJamie had a friend from Florida in town and she wanted to show her around, so a bunch of girls went to dinner and then out afterwards. It was...interesting :) but it was fun to hang out with different people than normal...including darling Kari! :)
  
  
  

I have the greatest best friend ever :)

• We also finished our 1/2 bath (another check off the summer project list!) and kept Mickey for the week. Updates on both later!
• Finished up the Sync series at church...and what a great way to end an amazing series! I think the last service perfectly tied it all together, and actually made the previous services mean so much more. It's stuck with me all week long so far and I've been doing a lot of thinking about it. I love when things sink in enough to make you think continually. Lindsey and I also started our new schedule for the nursery...every other month, so we'll get to see our sweet little ones a little more often!

I sure love weekends but I sure don't like when they're over! Especially when it'll be the first week without an intern...and it doesn't look like we'll be getting one for the next semester. Boo.

Hi, I'm a Mac!

This is one of my favorite "Hi, I'm a Mac...and I'm a PC" commercials. I'm very pleased to say that I have joined the Mac world! My birthday is in a week and my sweet mom and dad got me an iBook! Jarrod, you were right! I'm kinda in love. This thing is so wonderful, and I'm not quite sure why I didn't take the plunge earlier. It's so light and tiny I can tote it with me everywhere. Initially I would have thought a 12" screen would be far too small, but it's absolutely not somehow. I don't know if it's because of the clarity of the screen or what, but I can see everything just fine!

As soon as I got things up and going and set up the way I wanted (which was all of about 5 minutes tops...my work laptop won't even start up in 5 minutes, much less start up and make changes!!), I got my calendar set up. If you really know me, you know I love organization and having calendars pretty much every is one of my favorite things. Right now, I have my big desk calendar at work with color-coded highlighters, my home calendar and my weekly planner that I color-code events in. Now I can put everything (and still be color-coded for work, bills, babysitting, personal, church, etc!) on my handy laptop and all those pretty colors are a click away. Can you say, "Type A?" :)

Thanks to my great best friend, who also got a new MacBook Pro this weekend, she's teaching me the ins and outs and shortcuts of everything. I'm learning, but it'll take a little while to adjust my however-many-years PC brain.

So THANK YOU, Mom & Daddy for a great birthday present!! I love it!