#171: First Thursday

Today was my first real Thursday without Little Man. In order to keep my mind off how much I miss him, I kept myself super busy!!

This morning, I had my first (and apparently only) dress fitting! It went well, but it took over an hour! They told me it would be only thirty minutes. Oops...lots to do with my dress! The good news is that I still love it just as much as I did back in September when I bought it!! And all the ladies that were there loved my shoes (remember them?).

After my fitting, I went to hang out with my friend also named Erin. We are awesome. She is awesome. And her two adorable kiddos are awesome. Her son just turned one back in March and her daughter is eight weeks old. They are two of the most laid-back kids I have EVER met! We ended up going to Chili's for lunch (and sat outside because it was 70 degrees!!!) and it was so nice to relax and catch up on life and play with the kiddos. It definitely helped my missing LM feeling.

As I was taking my shower before bed tonight, I started to plan out when I would start back up with the 30 Day Shred. If you remember, I had to stop because of some injuries (and here's how I was doing five days into it). I am fully healed (as far as I can tell) and ready to start anew! Life's been pretty busy lately, and I was planning on starting April 1st. But then all this occurred and I decided to postpone.

I started to work on cleaning up the basement tonight, and it's not looking conducive for a workout...

#1: The dresser that the TV used to sit on was my sister's, so obviously she took it with her when she moved.
#2: I have so many boxes, it's ridiculous!
#3: My Steve Nash Wheaties box is still alive and well. He has not been discarded yet.

On top of that, my parents brought these home from Lancaster, Pennsylvania this past weekend:

Excuse the sideways shot of the label, just take in the gorgeousness of the dumplings...

I can't believe I didn't have enough self-control to NOT eat one! I've managed to turn down cupcakes, but these I cannot resist. I am happy to report that I only ate half of the dough, but I did eat the whole apple! Got get my fruits and veggies, right?!

So let's just say, after eating that tonight and having my fitting this morning, I'm feeling pretty motivated to get started back up on the 30 Day Shred. Stay tuned and we'll see what goes down! 

Is there a dessert that you absolutely cannot resist? Something homemade? Store bought? Amish made, like my dumplings?

#170: Slacker Hacker

Wow, seriously. First I miss three posts in a row. And then I don't post until after midnight. I should be fired. But, oh wait. I'm the boss...I'll allow it.

If you didn't catch that the "I'll allow it" part was from a tv show, then you missed out tonight on a hilarious new show on Fox. It's called Breaking In and stars Christian Slater and Bret Harrison. Seriously funny. A little inappropriate, but when is something with Christian Slater not inappropriate? Exactly.

I won't reveal the whole show, but basically Oz (Christian) hires Cameron (Bret) to join his security company. They get hired by companies to hack into their system before actual criminals do, as a way of being able to amp up their security measures.

Here's a trailer for it:


In other news, my first dress fitting is tomorrow! I haven't put my dress on since December...that's quite a long time. I'm excited to get it out of the bag and onto my body!! I'm also going to try on everything with it, including my shoes and my jewelry, just to make sure it all goes together well.

Lots more exciting things will be happening soon, so stay tuned!

#169: The Move, Part 1

Tonight I decided to accomplish two things. One, to fix the bed frame so I could actually sleep on the bed in my old/new room. And two, bring up my computer/printer/etc. And guess who got both things accomplished?!

This girl right here!

Let me just start off by saying that I could not have accomplished either task without my dad or my brother. Number one, I definitely cannot lift a mattress or box spring by myself. Number two, I really didn't feel like figuring out how to re-plug in everything associated with my computer.

Here's my awesome dad and brother fixing my bed frame.

I would die without them. I even sang them a song. How's that for appreciation?

Oh, what song, you ask?  This one:


On second thought, Beaches makes me cry and that song makes me cry. I just sang one line of the chorus to them. You know the "did you ever know that you're my hero" part. Keeping it classy.

Then the guys helped me move my computer upstairs and set it up. My little desk downstairs looked so lonely...

So here's my new set-up.

I obviously still need a blanket on the bed. And I learned/remembered how much I hate making the bed when it's in the corner. Note to self: bedroom in new place will NOT be going in a corner.

Have you done any rearranging or moving of any kind? Do tell! 

#168: A Case of the Mondays

It's Monday again. Which means that the weekend is over. Which means that I won't see J all week and through next weekend.

I actually kept thinking today was Friday. How disappointing!

Since my sister and nephew moved, I am now able to move back into my old room! I decided to do a deep clean before moving back in, since it's a lot easier without stuff in there. I spent a lot of time cleaning the fan and desk/bookcase, since those seem to collect the most dust, which is awful for my allergies. Then I used my dad's forbidden Dyson vacuum and cleaned the seriously old carpet as well as I could...I would kill for some hardwood in that room! And just watch, I bet my mom will put hardwood in as soon as I'm gone!

I spent Friday night bringing my clothes and shoes up from the basement to my closet. It took an uncountable amount of trips. I think I even exclaimed at one point that I had too many clothes and shoes...luckily, no one heard me. Oh wait. Oops. I'm pretty sure a significant amount of my clothes will end up being donated instead of packed. I donate at least 3-4 trash bags full of clothes a year.

At 2am, I decided to call it a night. This morning, I picked up new pillows at Target. Since this full-size bed will become our guest room bed, I figured some new pillows would be nice. And at $13 total for four standard pillows, I'm a happy camper.

I'm planning on moving my computer and desk stuff up tomorrow. Most of my stuff will stay in the basement to get packed up, but all of the important stuff will be taken up.

What I've learned in this moving of the bedroom sequence is that I am NOT looking forward to moving all my stuff to Richmond! But once I get there, it will all be worth it!

I can't wait to spend my Sunday nights NOT driving on I-95 North!

#167: You're So Vain

Okay, we'll admit it: we love ourselves. And we love pictures of ourselves.

So we did another engagement shoot. You can see our second shoot here (there's a link to our first shoot in this one), here, here and here.

This shoot, however, was not with the fabulous Jewel Peach. It was with our amazing wedding photographer, Peter Davis!

Let me tell you, this guy is a hoot! We laughed and had so much fun as we traipsed all around Forest Hill Park in Richmond. The park itself was gorgeous! It had beautiful trees, awesome paths, a lake and gorgeous stairs and buildings.

We originally had our shoot scheduled for Saturday evening, but the weather wasn't looking so hot, so we decided to reschedule for Sunday evening. And boy were we glad that we did! The weather was gorgeous and the sun was out, which created optimal light for Peter.

We had so much fun with Peter that we ended up spending two and a half hours in the park! We included red roses in our photos (my favorite flower), some lemonade, a French easel (oh yes, I painted too!) and some good old-fashioned kisses. J and Peter were all about those shots!

Here's the preview photo Peter posted on Facebook last night:

Can't wait to see the rest! And of course, I'll post a few for you to see!

#166: Poor Rams!!

I wrote about the VCU Rams in this post and the Final Four game was Saturday night! I headed down to Richmond Saturday afternoon and made it to J's place just outside the city. We contemplated going into the city to watch the game, but we were dead tired and decided to stay in...after I made J go out and get us some Glory Days wings, of course :)

The game itself was great to watch. Since J played basketball in high school and I'm an avid NBA fan, we actually had basketball-centered conversations. So weird. I don't think we've ever actually talked about basketball for that long before.

In the end, the Rams just couldn't get enough rebounds to win the game, but boy, did they put up a fight! They had the lead for most of the game and the fast-paced plays were enjoyable to watch. I'm so proud that they made it as far as they did! And they should be proud of themselves as well!

#165: Happenings

Okay, please forgive me. I fell off the bandwagon for a few days!

Let's get back into the swing of things. For this post, I'd like to tell you what's been going on in my house lately!

Last Monday, my sister got married! She and her now-husband were childhood sweethearts and then...life happened. Families moved and contact was lost. Enter Facebook. Enter awesome sister Erin who adds sister's-future-husband on (sister's) Facebook account. Enter love story here.

Here's a few pictures from the day. It was great having my whole family together (minus J of course, but he was up on Saturday for a nice dinner with everyone!).

 The happy couple :)

 Somebody wanted in on some pictures...

 Family picture! 

 Sisters

 Brother!

 My gorgeous momma and handsome daddy

 The boys playing with their pizza dough

 My other little man and sister-in-law

And then, the dreaded day. As a new family, they moved to Raytown, Missouri. My brother-in-law was already living there, as he has a ton of family in that area, and so my sister and Little Monster went to live there. Such a hard few days, but I'm learning to adjust. Our house is much quieter and less filled with baked goodies, but I am so happy for my sister and her newly-made family. Can't wait to see her and LM at my bridal shower in just five weeks! And then again six weeks after that for the wedding!!

Here's a picture of my sister's storage POD being picked up from our driveway on Thursday. So crazy to watch!!

 Hydraulics to lift the POD up high (It's literally hanging by four chains)

  Then the truck gets backed in underneath it, it gets lowered and the latched in. Then it's good to go! 

Everything is a little different in the house without my sister and LM. It wasn't a normal weekend, so I'm sure we'll notice their absences a lot more this upcoming weekend :(