A Few of My Favorite Things...

It's been a while since I've been around, and of course I have 1001 pictures, but I'm going to try to keep it short and simple (which, of course, probably means 2 or 3 posts. ha.). I'm a big fan of Christmas and enjoy all aspects of it! Here are a few pictures of my favorite things that lead up to the big day!

When Lindsey finally got back from Mexico, we went to see Point of Grace in Brentwood for their Christmas concert. I love Christmas music, and their "Christmas Story" album is one of my favorites to listen to this time of year!

I also love getting to decorate everything for winter (more snowmen so it can stay out for a few months instead of a few weeks) and Christmas! I also love shopping the day after Christmas to get good deals on new decorations for the next year! Lindsey puts the lights up outside and we added garland around the door this year. All my pictures have our house number on them, and I feel slightly paranoid about putting that on here...but rest assured she did a fabulous job! :)

Speaking of Christmas lights, I love getting to look at those too! A few sweet friends told me all about Sunnyside and I will not be missing out again! There were more lights in the neighborhood than I've ever seen, and the story behind it is far too sweet.

I love love love getting to relax over the Christmas break too! So here's what I've spent a great deal of time on...getting addicted (slightly later than everyone else) to the Twilight books!

And of course I can't forget about the Christmas parties! This picture is from my very favorite party that we have each year. All the "lake crew" friends get together and have dinner and of course we always wind up playing Apples to Apples!

Photograph...

I've always had an interest in photography. I love taking pictures (or at least attempting) that are more than just the "put your arms around each other and smile." So when I had a gift certificate to HHGregg from my HOA, I decided to spend it on something I wouldn't go buy for myself when I needed it (like a new tv or something). So I got myself a new Canon Rebel XS! Basically I'm in love. I took it home with me for Thanksgiving so I could play around with it for a few days, but Justin is going to show me how to actually do cool things with it. Here are a few of the pictures I took while I was playing (no editing done...I have to learn how to do all that stuff too!). Most of it was of pets because they were easy test subjects! :)
My very first picture! Mom, Daddy & I were blown away about how clear it was, even in our dark living room!

This is my Nala. She will be 15 next spring!

This is Lucy, Reed's dog. She's such a good little girl!

Reed and I were slightly bored...so we were playing with his reflective aviators! :)

Tag it!

Uh oh! I was tagged by Mr. New Daddy to an Adorable Baby Boy!

Here are the rules..
1. Post the rules on your blog.
2. Write 6 random things about yourself.
3. Tag 6 people at the end of your post.
4. If you’re tagged, DO IT and pass on the tag.

1. I love chocolate. No, that's clearly not random...but I do have an entire container of just chocolate chips that I keep by my bed. I'm pretty positive I can't go to bed without a hand full.
2. I took voice lessons for 13 years and competed throughout high school with a group of 4 other girls...we were called "Take 5" and were pretty great, if I do say so myself. Anyone that hears that about me now that I'm in the music business thinks that I'm in the business to become an artist. Noooooooot true. The spotlight is not for me, but I sure love singing harmony!
3. My room was pink when I was a little girl (shocker, right?), and by the time I got to middle school I hated all things pink for about 5 or 6 years.
4. I had my dog's name picked out over a year before I bought her...obviously well before she was born. And no, it's not because I'm a fan of Brad Paisley or even the paisley pattern. I just think it's an adorable name!
5. I can't stand scary movies and slept in my parents' room for 2 weeks after I saw Scream 2 in 7th grade. I still can't look at the Scream mask without my blood running cold.
6. I would have loved to work at Disney World through school at some point, but I didn't want to become jaded and not love seeing all the characters and princesses every time I went. And truth be told, I'm a Disney Princess at heart. :)

Now, I tag:
Lindsey
Laurie
Jessica
Rachel
Brandi
Shai

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!

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!

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!

Wonderful Weekend

Another great weekend in Nashville (and another one down before the cruise!!)!

• Friday I left work early and got some things around the house done and finished my scrapbook! Woohoo!
• Saturday Linds and I took the dogs to see a guy from the office run in the Country Music 1/2 Marathon, and then dropped them off in Murfreesboro while she and I got some tax-free cruise shopping done. I think we have everything ready now...all that's left is to pack and go!
• Saturday night we went to the Chapter Room Farewell Party. Chi Omega's chapter room (and all other sororities) at MTSU is being taken away so we had one final party in the room with actives and alum. It was great to see the chapter room again (I haven't been there since I graduated), and it was filled with old t-shirts from mixers and events, scrapbooks, memory books and pictures from the past however many years in the room. It was so great to see some of the people I haven't seen in a really long time, including my little sister, my "adopted," and my favorite - Bree! :) Those 3 in particular made the sorority experience for me (plus Linds, of course) and it was so good to hang out with them and catch up!
• Sunday we had the nursery for the 9:00 service. Oh. My. Word. What a crazy morning. It had to have been a full moon or something...seriously. Our room is really great typically. As a matter of fact, I've bragged on our room because we have a lot of kids and they're all great. Well, this morning we had a ton of babies, and very, very few of them were happy. It's so sad when they get upset, but this day in particular, when one would cry, the next would start in, and then the next, and so on. However, one little girl who typically stays unhappy stuck to my side and she stayed the entire time...without even a whimper! Yayyy!! All the crying for an hour should have been a sign for things to come, because once I found out what the service was about, the waterworks started for me as well. And I rarely cry. More on that later, promise. :) It was an incredible morning though, and truly made me thankful for everything, even the wails that we had just gone through in the nursery.
• Sunday afternoon, after doing some major upstairs cleaning and organizing, I decided I didn't like the arrangement of furniture in my room, so Lindsey and I moved it all around! I love it now! :)

More Than A Memory...

I did it! I finally completed my scrapbook!!

This is my 4th book to complete totally by myself and is the most recent in the timeline. I have 7 total now...2 are in the works (one I just started with the completion of this book), and 1 was given to me by my mom of my senior year in high school.

Each book is very special to me, of course, but this one seems a little more "complete" for some reason. I have no clue why, either. This particular book goes from the very beginning of college in Fall 2003, to Christmas 2007. The only gaps I'm missing are from Christmas to this point, and from my 4th birthday to my 11th birthday. Yikes. That sure seems like I have a lot to do...

I began scrapbooking when I was in 6th grade, and it's really interesting to see how the pages change from the very beginning to now. And it's crazy how some things I do just the very same way, too. I began scrapbooking with my mom's best friend, Lisa Goodman. She taught me a great deal in that very first class! My aunt, Kay, and I were the scrapbookers of the family, so I always enjoyed the times when we would spend entire days in her kitchen just scrapbooking, talking and asking for each others' opinions on what we were working on. As I got older, my best friend and I would scrapbook together, too. Caley and I would leave football games to go "Crop til you Drop" with the women from church and work on our books all night long and get up and do it again the whole next day!

Scrapbooking is a favorite hobby of mine for different reasons. I love the creativity of it (I'm not creative on my own, mind you! That's what the idea books are for!!) compared to pictures just in a photo album. I've always loved pictures, because it's capturing a moment in time. Almost every single picture that I have has some sort of story or special memory behind it, and I like to include a little of those stories on my pages. I also love that there are so many ways to protect your pictures now, too, so I know that years from now I will still have these books to show my kids and grandkids. Finally, scrapbooking is a huge stress reliever for me. I will just turn on some show (usually Oprah or Ellen!) that I don't have to pay attention to and completely focus on my pages. Before I know it, 4 or 5 hours have passed and I haven't thought about much of anything but those pages! Problem solved, and cute work to show for it! :)

Wonderful Weekend

What a great weekend in big 'ole S-Town! Here are some of the "tickled me pink" highlights:

• Lindsey drove. Um, hi? Did you see the torrential flood Friday night? I wasn't about to attempt it. She's the greatest best friend in the entire world for multiple reasons, but one of the biggies is because she knows what I'm thinking without making me say it out loud. So when it got really bad, and I got really quiet, she cranked up the volume so I wouldn't have to hear the rain-on-the-road noises. How great is she?
• On the way home, both of the dogs jumped into the crate. Typically Paisley sits on my pillow in the lap of whoever isn't driving. For some reason when I told Rocket to "park it," she hopped in and I didn't get her out. She quickly realized her mistake and was grumpy for the first hour of the drive. It was hysterical though. She would almost whisper growls at me, and when I continued to ignore her, she would bark really quietly. She's such a good little girl!
• We got home in time to hang out with my parents and then play Super Smash Bros. with Reed. We used to be addicted to that game (mostly because it's one of about 4 or 5 that I'm willing to play), and we played it all weekend. Reed is coming up in a week and there's a newer Wii version of the game, and we just may have to splurge so we can play it! :)
• Saturday we just hung out, let all the dogs play outside (and then gave them much needed baths), visited my grandmother and saw Laurie's senior show art. This girl needs to work at Pier 1, no doubt. Then we went to eat yummy Rib Cage for Reed's birthday!!
• Also Saturday night, Caley came over and we booked our shore excursions!!! We're down to less than 3 weeks from our tropical bliss! :) Then we all (minus Reed and Mom - she hates movies with dying. Ha.) watched 88 Minutes. It was great...super intense!
• Sunday we had the rest of the family come over for Reed to open gifts and stayed outside for a while...long enough to get an awkward burn/tan line from my dress! Then Linds and I loaded up and made it back for our church.
• A huge thing that really made me super happy is that "Stop And Stare" by OneRepublic was the song used for the message. They are one of my favorite bands right now, and that song is my favorite off the album. It was beautiful, and the service was great, but we sure missed Pete!

Sing us a song, you're the Piano Man

So since before Lindsey and I moved to Nashville from Murfreesboro, the plan was for Lindsey to get her grandmother's piano. A year later, we've finally gotten it!

I started informal piano lessons with my mom (who plays at their church back home) when I was really little. So little I don't remember. I started in first or second grade with formal lessons, once a week during school, and continued until high school. We had yearly performances and competitions, and I always did really well (not to toot my own horn), but once I was made to play and practice I didn't like it any more. Same goes with reading. I couldn't wait to quit once I began my freshman year.

Fast forward to senior year. My high school requires senior projects to be done before graduation. We have to pick a task that we've never done before, have a mentor and complete X amount of hours on the task, complete tons of research and papers and all this other stuff...and then have everything ready for a presentation in front of a panel of judges. Since I had a background in singing and playing the piano, I decided to combine the two and learn to play "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton. It was actually a lot of fun, and because I had chosen to do it, I got a lot more out of it and really began to like playing the piano again. Since I moved away from home, I have missed playing from time to time and I can't wait to get my music and start playing here now! So as promised, here's the picture of how the dining room (slash music room!) looks with the piano there now (it was for sure a headache getting it here and finding just the right positioning). Thanks Justin, for the help!

Wonderful Weekend

What a great weekend it was! I love weekends where nothing major "to do" is planned!

• I worked on my scrapbook (more on that later) and got 4 pages done and I have it planned out to the end of this book (only 8 more pages...and I'm hoping to wipe most of those out in the next week or so!)
• Justin and his parents brought the piano to our house (more on that with pictures, Mom & Dad!), so when I get my music from home, I can pick back up on playing some!
• Saturday Lindsey and I went to see 21 with Robin (from CP) and Genevieve (a friend that we've met through Robin). It was a pretty awesome movie. It definitely made me want to be back in Vegas with the girls though!
• Afterwards we all got Starbucks (soooo good on a cold, dreary day!) and then Linds and I went speed-shopping for her cute clothes to a new, cool job! :)
• Saturday night, a ton of people went out for Robin, Rachel and Anna's birthdays (all CP crew). Lots of fun, but my camera battery was dead and I didn't realize it...so no pictures. :(
• Sunday was BEAUTIFUL!!! That was precisely the weather I've been waiting for! We took the dogs on a nice, long walk and even let them run around off leash for a while. They loved it!
• Sunday night was the 2nd week of the new series - Plan B. I know I keep saying this, but goodness I love this series. I guess I've just never been a part of a church that was so relatable to me that I feel like God is speaking directly to me through the pastor...and at Cross Point it's like that in every service. A-Maz-Ing.