i could spend hours reading blogs and pinning things on pinterest, but sometimes i get bummed because i can't buy everything i like. silly, i know.
one day i was looking around my house and thought "i love my stuff." i may not have every little thing i see that i like, but who does? and really when all is said and done stuff is stuff. if the house burns down, i'm grabbing jake - the rest is replaceable. but i sure would miss my stuff ;) i walked around the house and snapped some pictures of a few things that make me happy.
mickey mouse cookie jar
my magazine collection - the only thing i hoard
my memaw's girl scout handbook - circa 1952
my coffee cup collection - this is the newest to the group
my medal - a reminder of a goal i reached
my first love
a new summer dress
another dress i wanted forever and got 80% off
my mom's old sewing machine
salt and pepper shaker - pier 1... $3
the books on my nightstand
respect the recession and appreciate whatcha got! word? (don't remind me that i said this when i'm whining for a new camera)
as i previously posted, the lough family is getting back to basics. we had our first date night in a while.
we turned on the big chill soundtrack (highly recommend) and broke out the painting supplies for portrait date night.
the supplies
my drawing of jake - hold the laughter :)
don't worry - i'm going to stick to my day job!
jake should stick to his day job, too!
oh man... i really hope i don't look like the picture jake painted! yikes. and i am now super self-conscious of my moles on my face (i prefer to call them "beauty marks")
a couple of weeks ago i was looking up recipes for a few freezable meals for a friend who just had a baby. i was so overwhelmed by all of the delicious recipes posted out there on the world wide web that i shut down and ended up baking. whoops! that reminds me, i still need to cook for her! i found an oatmeal raisin cookie recipe that i needed right then and there! i added chocolate chips because it was friday, and everyone knows you add chocolate chips on friday.
throw the goods in the bowl
stir it up, little darlin
spread the love on a cookie sheet and bake
and, because a family friend was in town and had a birthday, i baked a cake!
once upon a time there was a young couple who did fun stuff all the time. every day felt like a date. they dressed up in 70's clothes from a thift store and went to a fancy restaurant in atlanta. they did things like that all the time - totally enjoying each other's company, hardly noticing anyone else around. they set up a campground (huge tent, sleeping bags) in the living room and told ghost stories and sang campfire songs.
fast foward almost six years...
we they spent this evening watching food network, dawson's creek, and how i met your mother... in our their sweats.
and that's ok. we're married. that's just life. but there needs to be some dating too. a gal needs to be pursued. it's not ALL jake's fault. (heh. kidding) money is tight and when you think "date night" you think money. after 6 years, sometimes it seems as though we have no more tricks up our sleeves.
that's not always the case. and we need to remember that.
thanks to the ole blog-a-roo i've found great ideas for expensive (or free) date nights. it just takes a little thinking. most of these don't even involve leaving the house. date night is about spending time together - chatting, laughing, learning things you didn't know about the person who hogs your sheets every night.
i know. i know what you are thinking about the title. here goes THAT girl always wishing away every season. i admit.. by august, i'm usually dying for cooler weather. i try not to complain, because it bugs me when people are always wishing for the next season.
but i was made for summer.
i moved to the beach! i was a mermaid in another life - i just know it. i look better in the summer. i feel better in the summer. i'm just generally a happier person in the summer. i like the summer foods, the summer clothes, the smell of sunscreen, the cover bands playing at the local restaurants. i love the way that my feet and fingers don't get numb in the summer and the way my hair doesn't stick to the side of my face from static. i love the forgiving summer clothing that says "go ahead. there is still plenty of room in this flowy dress for that margarita and chips and salsa."
and then i came across the most beautiful summer images:
come on, summer. i need you near. i promise i won't swear at you for your humidity, stickiness, and for making my hair frizz. i'm sorry. please come back.
sorry for being THAT girl (but not really all that sorry),
ml
Q: Tell a story about you and each of your brothers and sisters.
the siblings
disney 1997?
A: oh man. ok.... you asked. well, you really didn't but i'm pretending you did.
bedtime games: a sister story
when we were young our dad built a dollhouse headboard that sort of looked like this:
except it seemed much bigger. everything does when you are a kid, but our bed was a full or queen so it had to be bigger. i say "our" bed because there is a time where it is all very fuzzy whose bed was whose. we all shacked up. it was musical beds at the oliver house. sometimes (a lot) cade and i would "trick" bo and she would sneak in my room after he fell asleep. for the most part though, it was 3 little pigs in the bed. until i became too cool for sleeping with my younger siblings and then there were two. oops, i digress...
anywaaaaay, when it was just cadence and me (or when bo was asleep) we would take turns hiding a ittttty bittttty teeeny weeeeny polly pocket and the other person would have to find it in the dollhouse. the dollhouse headboard stored a ton of stuff - books, stuffed animals, trinkets, etc. so there were many places to hide ole polly. http://www.flickr.com/photos/leoniesparnaay/4449793169/ - i'm talking about this kind of polly pocket. not that new crap. i'm talking about choking hazard polly.
the game would go on forever (way past bedtime) and when we got bored with that we would take turns tickling each other's back... problem with that was that cadence always fell asleep before it was my turn. ALWAYS. i'm not bitter. nope, not me. even though i always tickled her back. i remember those nights like it happened last week. i'm glad the girl across the hall for all those years was, and is, my very best pal.
FILLED!!!: a brother story
when we were young there was a man who came to our church and every time he came, he would pray for people and yell "FILLED" and touch their heads and they would fall back... someone would catch them and help them lay down.
this video kinda gives you an idea of what i'm talking about... can you imagine seeing all this happen from a kid's perspective!?!
as a kid, we thought this made INCREDIBLE trampoline fun. cadence, bo and i would take turns being the "filled man" as we liked to call him and push each other on the forehead causing the others to fall on their backs.
well, that was all fine and dandy on a trampoline.
i'm a little fuzzy on the details, but i remember it was about bedtime and we were in the living room acting like wild banshee. bo was standing on the arm of the recliner (that's never a good idea), and we were playing "filled". i don't remember if i was the "filled man" or if cadence was, but bo sure enough got filled. filled with the corner of our brick fireplace in the back of the head.
bloody mess. crying. guilty looks shot back and forth between the sisters.
thankfully, our very good family friend/doctor came over to patch up little bo-bo. bo was sporting a cool indian headpiece (bandage wrapped around his head) for a little while and we laugh about the filled game every time bo shaves his head and you can see his scar.
is today my birthday? well, no.. is it any time soon? well, no... BUT it is going to my 25th birthday in june! that's kind of a big birthday - a quarter of a century! i've had my eye on ideas for the celebration for quite some time. i suppose it will come down to the condition of my uterus. if it is occupied, i'll probably be keeping it low-key.
365 days of floridianism. hey! what do ya know!? i invented a word!
i remember exactly what i did on jan 10, 2010. i woke up at my friend's parents' house (because we were basically homeless) and went to mcdonald's for breakfast.
then, swore i would never eat mcdonald's for breakfast ever again.
went to church - the same church i had been a part of for 23 years. soaked it up. got in the car and headed south. on the way down we listened to an audiobook - the last song by nicholas sparks. heh, poor jake. we got to my parents' house (where we would live for 3 FULL MONTHS!) and i plopped my tush in the chaise. i stayed there for 2 months watching hgtv only getting up to eat (sometimes i ate on the chaise) and sleep (sometimes i slept on the chaise).
i do not exaggerate. ever.
we had no money. well, actually we had a lot of money that we saved up to move. we just weren't able to spend ANY of it because we had no jobs in sight. luckily, now i have a great job! unluckily, i spent all that money. dang it.
i've learned a couple things since moving here:
1. summers are AWESOME. it's like a 6 month vacation from march to september.
2. winters are dark and boring and filled with old people.
3. there are great yardsales, plenty of thai restaurants, and as many bingo halls as there are seashells.
4. if you live on the water, they will come. (think field of dreams) every weekend. and i love it.
5. it's almost impossible to find a place to rent on the water that isn't furnished with cheap beach decor. {i.e. current living situation}
6. you have to have a kid to make friends... well i know this isn't always the case, but it SEEMS that there is a secret club you only get invited into if you have kids.
7. this isn't a hometown. it's a military town so people are always coming and going. i miss that about griffin. i can drive into the city limits of griffin and know the people i see driving by.
8. i can't wait to raise little beach bum surfer kids. and hopefully make a friend or two. sheesh.
9. there is nothing wrong with a town that has 3 starbucks within 10 miles of each other. :)
hiya pal! i think i told you that my sister gave me a blog in a jar. there are 52 questions in here to get us through 2011. let's fire this baby up! :)
Q: what is the most difficult thing a mother/father has to do?
A: well... hm.. i'm not a mother so this is more difficult than i thought.. i was hoping for a question about favorite lip glosses or mascaras. i guess what SEEMS like the most difficult thing that a mother/father has to do would be to raise your kid to be the person that you want him/her to be and then having to let go and let them make their own mistakes and choices. free will scares the heck out of me. but just seeing your kid hurt in anyway and not being able to help them or take the hurt away would seem like the most difficult thing a mother/father has to do.
what do you think? i can think of dozen other things that seem difficult about parenthood. geez. makes a gal wanna hop right up on the baby-making train, huh? pffft.
