a little drink for me.

oh yes I love some wine. I think my favorite I’ve had so far is from a wine tour husband and I took in the Smoky Mountains. If you visit all three wineries throughout the area, at the end, you receive a signature wine glass. And visit all three we did. We started at winery #1. Tasted 3 or 4 and purchased our favorite one. Left to winery #2, tasted 3 or 4 and bought another bottle or two. And finally rounding it out, we headed to winery #3. At this specific winery the lovely gentleman pouring our tasting glasses happened to normally work in the bottling part of the plant. Today he got to try his hand at pouring. Which led to our “tasting glasses” being 4 or 5oz. each. whoa buddy. by the end of this little outing I happened to be drunk. All by 11:30am. It was fabulous.

All of that leading me to this. I love wine. I even like to put it in food some times. So any good recommendations for a nice bottle of wine? I love a nice sweet moscato but a deep rich red is great too.

truth on a monday.

the truth is::

-I’d love to have one weekend where I didn’t have to work up some vegetables. squash. zucchini. tomatoes. jalapenos. banana peppers. habaneros. green peppers. corn. it never ends. I love gardening but holy vegetables batman! this year’s crop has ben cray. [come this winter when I want a nice hearty vegetable soup, my tummy will me thanking me for all of this summer hard work. I just know it]

-this weekend I drank way too many cups of coffee. way to late at night. which made for a lot of weird dreams.

-we moved our guest bed mattress into the master bedroom and the master bed mattress over to the guest room on saturday. that night’s sleep was amazing! the pillow top was such a dream. like sleeping on clouds. why didn’t we do this sooner?

-I am obsessed. obsessed. with the Wild Fern candle from Hobby Lobby. It is such a clean, refreshing aroma – not fern-like at all. I’ve gone through 5 since January. and the best part is they go 1/2 price every other week. score.

-my cat is the most loving, fluffy, dog-like cat I’ve ever met. he plays fetch. comes when called. and love any attention you want to give him. he is always looking out the window when I pull into the driveway after work and jumps down from his table to greet me at the door. he’s the best.

-I need/want a new couch. ours has been through hell and back. children spilling who knows what on it (not our children, we used to babysit a lot). it has had 2 different support beams on the bottom collapse, which led us to ripping the cloth off and nailing the boards back in. the cushions you sit on are flat and we didn’t know how to buy a good piece of furniture when we bought our couch (the very first piece of furniture we ever bought). it’s all wrong.

-on saturday night, husband and I started to head out to dinner – I needed to put on my rings. see, I am one of those people who are unnecessarily scared about damaging/losing/messing up my important jewelry [important being: engagement ring, wedding band, and right hand ring he bought me] – so anytime I’m doing yard work, cleaning, cooking, sleeping, showering basically anything around the house I take my rings off and place them in my jewelry box – they weren’t there. they were NO WHERE to be found. I’m telling you I looked in every single place I had ever set my rings – bathroom cabinet while I’m washing my face in the morning, master bedroom where I normally keep my rings, guest room where I keep my clothes and other costume jewelry. I searched through my make-up bag, I dumped out my entire bag of 100+ nail polishes from where I had painted my nails earlier in the day to see if I had dropped them in there. I checked the pizza box that had leftovers in the fridge from Friday night. I thought I had lost my mind. then as I was laying down on my stomach to check under the ottoman, I remembered!!!   the medicine cabinet in the kitchen. earlier in the day husband had said for us to run down to the garden and see what all we had before the rain came in so I placed my rings in there for “safe keeping” and forgot all about it…. where is my mind going??

Now & Then

then - 2006

now-2011

my how time has flown, husband.
and to me, it looks as if we have aged quite a bit. eek.
I wonder what we’ll look like in another 5 years or so.
maybe I’ll finally have a tan?
and why didn’t I fill in my eyebrows in either picture?
are we finally starting to look like adults?
maybe one of these days I’ll stop getting carded?

love you though. always and forever.

what the $&!*#

so when we have a slow day at work, I like to be the “fun boss” (haha) as long as the work is finished, we’re good to go. thursday was one of those days. and thursday, one of my team members opened my eyes to a whole new world of funnies. please enjoy these videos while your party is reached.










and I'm pretty sure the fact that I have those above listed videos do in fact make me a cat lady?

BridgeBox #1

so my very first BridgeBox arrived today is all of it’s glory. and let me tell you it lived up to the hype I made it out to be in my head. love it! I know when I checked my BlogLovin’ feed today and saw Heather’s post showing what would be coming our way I was giddy with excitement. please see the magnificent items that are the BridgeBox. well worth the $10+shipping. well worth it.

high five for friday

this morning I’m linking up over @ lauren elizabeth my newest favorite blog for her weekly High Five For Friday link up!

1-veggies from our garden (one day’s worth!)
2-little boy Max sleeping on momma’s leg
3-youngest nephew Peyton – he really enjoys marshmallows
4-I top knotted it yesterday for work
5-Shoney’s hot fudge cake. oh my.

That’s Important To Me

so I was reading a post from Lia @ Sunkissed & Southern and she had a song posted at the bottom of the post, saying it was her dad’s favorite and we should listen to the words. Well, listen I did. then Googled the lyrics and as I read and listened, I felt those words speak to me. like they were singing what I’ve been feeling for the last month or two but haven’t had the words to say. Please enjoy a few of the lyrics.

Thursday thursday thursday thursday

Max says -gimme those french fries - rub my head & brush my hair (he’s a diva) – wake up, I’m hungry – raise the blinds I want to see outside – pet me – don’t touch me – I’m going to hide now – I will chase you – I want to sleep leave me alone

Get in my refrigerator.

I am addicted to these – trying to make one homemade this coming weekend

I posted this Monday. it’s always rough coming back to work after a long weekend

I gained a pant size tonight after work.

so all day, for 10+ hours, all I could think about was making a delicious lasagna and garlic cheesy bread. the two recipes I saw that caught my attention are kate's meat lasagna & Tre but now Kate's mouth watering garlic cheesy bread.
oh my goodness. I couldn’t be the Next Foot Network Star because I don’t have words enough to describe the sinfully delicious flavors that I put in my mouth this evening. I also don’t leave the food stuffs in the dishes long enough to take wonderful pictures that show the ooey gooey melty cheeses.
if there is one thing you do this weekend it should be to head to the nearest grocery store, pick up the ingredients and make. this. dinner.
on another note… for those of you who frequent the farmer’s market or have a little garden and happen to have an abundance of zucchini, I have found the absolute best zucchini bread eva. you can take my word on it because I just downed 2 pieces for breakfast and have 6 loaves in the freezer.
and because I am acka-awesome I am going to share::

enjoy!

a few funnies

let’s get serious for a minute.. okay who am I kidding. let’s check out some funny shit I’ve found searching the interweb aka pinterest

My favorite movie, eva

Jay-Law’s dad flipping off paparazzi

hello, monday

my weekend in review::

sweet niece, Addison @ the FunFest fireworks Saturday night

Addison loves her Uncle Joshie

Breakfast with the balloons Saturday morning.

Love spending time on our family farm in Virginia – so beautiful!

my oldest nephew, Grayson. his personality is so fun

salsa ready to be canned in a hot water bath – over 8 jars made last night!

2 out of our 6 loaves of zucchini bread I made yesterday – so delicious and freezes so well!

how was your weekend!?!

today…

…I woke up today
…had to stand in the kitchen for hours while cooking and canning and pickling and boiling and cleaning
…ate only one meal. because I forgot to eat.
…missed my sunday night television shows because I was busy cleaning vegetables
…I left a load of laundry in the washer too long and had to rewash the clothes
and yet…
…I am thankful I was able to wake up again on this rainy day
…I am thankful I was able to stand for hours because it means my legs are able, and I am thankful our garden is bountiful enough to need to pickle and can and make salsa out of all of our veggies
…I am thankful I don’t have to worry where my next meal is coming from. and even if I do forget to eat, there is plenty to snack on in the pantry
…I am thankful that even though I had to miss my shows, I am able to have the luxury of cable
…I am thankful that I have laundry to wash because it’s dirty clothes from our vacation.

today I am just thankful.

Cincy

so although the Cincinnati trip was a little more than 48 hours, husband and I managed to pack in many entertaining and quite hilarious adventures and observations. a few examples to follow:

as we were walking back to our car after a delicious lunch at Sohpia's on Main St in downtown Cincinnati, it happened to be a busy lunch hour. being that Sophia’s is so close to the court house, we happened to be surrounded by men in suits and women in their finest court attire. At one corner as we waited for the ‘WALK’ to give us the go-ahead to cross, we stood beside one of the suit-clad men. then, out of nowhere a lovely gentleman on a bicycle comes speeding past us and yells at the man in a suit “you look like one of my lawyers!” in which the man in the suit tensed up and spun around to see.. maybe in fact it was one of his clients or maybe all men in suits look alike to the man on the bike. nevertheless, it was a comical moment as husband and I looked at each other thinking to ourselves… does the man on the bicycle have more than one lawyer? I wonder why he needs/needed a lawyer? Does the man in the suit get that comment often?

cut to our trip to the ever so lovely Wal-Mart. as we pulled onto our very first street in Cincinnati the memory card in my camera flashed “NO MEMORY AVAILABLE” you see, this memory card was one I purchased back in 2005 and holds and entire 256MB of memory. and I’m pretty sure I paid $50 for it at the time. since I didn’t bring my laptop for a quick 2 day trip we ventured to Wal-Mart to purchase another memory card. the new memory card was $19.95 and holds 16GB of memory. holy pictures batman – over 2200 pictures on my camera. I was ready to go.
except I wasn’t. you see, these awesome memory cards happened to be on a locked pegboard hook

so our $19.95 memory card would have to wait until we found an associate to unlock it for us. so off to the electronics counter I went – when I happened upon an associate who seemed ever so happy to be at work yeah right she was pissed so I politely asked if there was someone available to unlock the card to which she replied that I needed to step back and wait. she was the only one here and she needed to deal with this other stuff first. um.. okay. a “just a minute, let me finish this up and I will be right with you” would’ve sufficed. but nevertheless I stood there. and stood there. we’re talking 20 minutes at this point. finally I thought my salvation had come – not one but TWO other associates came to the counter. as I made eye contact with one to ask for help he immediately turned and got the hell outta dodge. the other was talking on her walkie talkie like it was going outta style.
being the amazing husband he is, Josh took it into his own hands – as I went with him he advised me to give him my “knife” – I use the term knife loosely because in my case, it’s one of those pink little doohickeys you keep on your keychain with the nail file and clippers along with a knife about 1inch at best. I laughed but handed it to him – in which he proceeded to cut the cardboard packaging, just the top portion that was hanging on the locked hook – then we skipped happily to the front check out counter and 45 minutes after we arrived, purchased a new SD card for my camera with jacked up packaging and a Pepsi and Mt Dew. winning.

there’s plenty more where that came from but we just had the biggest harvest of the season yet from our garden so it’s time to make 16 loaves of zucchini bread and some salsa. wish me luck!

Cincinnati Excursion

so husband and I took a little jaunt up to Cincinnati for a night to have a follow up on his knee replacement and have a night out of town.
to say it was amazing would be the understatement of the year. we hadn’t been on a night away, let alone a vacation for over 10 months so it was much deserved. we stayed at the amazing Hyatt in Blue Ash, OH. They had the sweetest staff. Nicest amenities. and a 12 noon check-out. Hello sleeping in.

while in any different city, husband and I love trying new restaurants. stuff that we can’t have at home. enter the cheesecake factory. we had never had the opportunity to enjoy this deliciousness until last night and when we finally got there for dinner at 9, it was so. worth. every. penny.

Chicken Bellagio

I am not kidding. I am pretty sure that I made noises as I was eating this meal – we splurged and had fried cheese appetizer, bread, our main dishes: chicken bellagio for me, coulette steak for husband, a lemon drop martini for me, and we split a piece of Adam’s peanut butter cup fudge ripple. we took our time, spent 2 hours enjoying each other’s company and they amazing food. I would definitely recommend it to anyone going anywhere close to a Cheesecake Factory.

moving on… although we were only there 2 days we had many adventures while I will recap in post #2 – for now, enjoy some pictures.

reasons I keep my husband around

-he is a quiet chewer. thank you.
-he calls his sunglasses ‘sunnies’ like me and has for years. before it was cool.
-he grabs my hand while we’re in the car driving and ‘hand dances’ – maybe while we’re on vacay I’ll see if we can get a little video snippet of this for you. it’s life changing.
-he does laundry.
-he doesn’t read books. but he does let his book nerd wife tell him detail by detail for every single book I read.
-he lets me decorate our house however I want. good thing I’m not a flowery girly girl. or am i?
-he lets me buy as many nail polish and lip colors as my little heart desires
-he writes me happy sticky notes and puts them on the bathroom mirror for when I get ready in the mornings.
-he smacks my ass every time I walk by
-he is very handy around the house: air conditioners, plumbing, electrical
-lastly: he has stuck with me for 9 years 7 months and has yet to get rid of my crazy ass

love ya babes!

under water

so today as I sat at work it began to rain – and rain – and rain some more.
I text husband to see how the weather was in our town since I work about 40 minutes away – he informed me that the storm was so bad it was shaking his office.
I drove home on the interstate going no more than 25 or 30 mph the whole way – then of course being the crazies we are, we just had to get out and see what was going on – he’s a property manager for apartments and houses so we did drive bys of some of the properties but a lot of roads were closed
massive flooding
below are just a few pictures of the flooding so far





it flooded so hard in our down town area that they were evacuating homes and businesses and had to set up an emergency shelter. thankfully by the grace of God our home and property are all in tact with no damage but I pray for those affected. I hate to see our town in such an awful state.

have you ever

read something that has touched you so deeply. spoke so directly to your soul that you couldn’t do anything but sit in utter astonishment or amazement or cry because you feel that finally, after all of this time, someone understands the feelings you’ve felt but never been able to express?
that was me after reading this post from Emily @ the doctor’s fleming. recently she lost her father. the deep, raw, and honest emotion she expresses with the use of the word saudade. I feel like anyone who has lost someone they loved deeply has emotions and feelings that sometimes words can’t describe and the word saudade is such a beautiful expression of these emotions.
from Emily's blog:
saudade "describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or deeply melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return." another way to look at it is to think of saudade as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. to have the feeling that someone that was once there, that should be there, is missing. and that you feel--mourn--their absence.
this person to me would be my mother’s mom, my Nana. I knew her for 17 short years and in those years, she influenced me, supported me, molded me into the person I am today and there isn’t a day that goes by that the thought doesn’t cross my mind “I wonder what nana would say about this” or “I wonder if she’d be proud of me or my life I’ve lived” because more than my mom and dad, I wanted to please her. I wanted her to be proud of me. I was closer to her, felt like I could talk to her about more, like she understood me better than my mom and dad ever could and although she was a grandmother, she was my best friend. I felt like she was taken from me too soon. I had more to learn. more questions to ask. more situations I would need her guidance in – I can’t help but feel that it’s not fair but then I just thank God I had the 17 years with her that I had. it’s more than my sister had. so I feel grateful.
but still have the love that remains now that she’s gone.
it’s been 8 year since she died and it isn’t any easier today to not be able to pick up the phone to call her or stop thinking about her than it was then.

I was able to carry her with me at my wedding

it’s tuesday and I want to scream

so the a/c issue is fixed.
after being under our house for a few hours this afternoon, I changed into some half-way acceptable clothing to go grab some pizzas as thanks to husband and dad for being awesome and fixing the a/c… as I was carrying said pizzas in the house I dropped my not even 3 month old samsung galaxy s3 on the carport and crash-the screen shattered.
and so did my heart.
I’ve never had an accident with a phone before and to say it was traumatic is an understatement.           .I kid. kind of.
okay so frankly if that’s the worst thing going on right now it’s no big deal. just an aggravation more or less.
but… vacation is coming soon and although it includes a doctor’s visit to follow up on husband’s knee replacement, that’ll only take a few hours out of our getaway and let me tell you. it is a much needed getaway.
so for now, I will leave you with the most recent favorite quote from where else other than pinterest   =)

image via

bridge the gap

between plain boring office supplies and amazing custom beautiful notepads, cards, pens, business cards.. anything you can dream up. enter the bridgebox by Heather the ah-mazing designer and creative mastermind behind this one time or monthly subscription service. I absolutely cannot wait for my first box and you bet I’ll be reviewing every delightful item here.

when moving into my home with josh after we got married, my mom lovingly brought 3 very large boxes, sat them in my living room and said “here’s your crap!” items that had been boxed up at her house for over 3 years while I was off at college. as I sorted through I noticed a trend… every. single. item. was either notepads, pens, markers, stamps. basically any and everything that can be found at staples or office depot. love it.

baby when?

am I the only one who wants kate to have her freakin’ baby already? 1-because I’m sick of hearing about it and 2-because I love me some good reality stuff and cannot wait to see them on “the steps” like prince william’s mother and father did many years ago.

but really it’s because their baby, no matter if it’s a girl or boy, will dominate North West any day

and yeah… let’s talk about this little snippet of my day – 92.. for the area I live in 92 is like walking in the depths of hell barefoot – and let us ice this cake shall we – our a/c in the house is on the fritz so we’ve got to work on that tomorrow after work. fan---tastic!