All Hallow's Eve

Tonight we went over to my mom's house to pass out the candy to the little kids. My mom's neighborhood is packed full of trick or treaters every year.  No matter how much candy is bought, the candy always runs out too early, and we end up making a mad dash for the front door, screeching, "turn off the porch light, turn off the porch light!" Because we are a little fearful of being overrun by angry and unfulfilled little ghouls and goblins (or a million little kids in batman costumes which was the trend tonight).

My mom dressed up her lab as a princess. She was so adorable and there was a hat that went with the costume but she just wasn't having it. And she enjoyed being petted by every kid that meandered up to the door (a few she even knocked over with her tail), while we sat on the porch, passing out candy, and drinking frozen margaritas (it is never too cold for frozen margaritas!)

There were so many little babies out with their parent's trick or treating tonight.  They were so adorable and I couldn't help but think how fun it will be when we have some little ones of our own to take around the neighborhood.

Sardis City Pumpkin Patch

I feel like this is the most cliche thing to say ever, because everyone says it all the time, but my gosh I'm loving fall this year. I mean really loving fall. But I guess it is because I just spent four years in California, where summer is 365 days a year. That is all well and good, and there is something to be said about nonstop sunshine, but there is something more to be said about crisp air and changing leaves. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "Life Starts All Over Again When It Gets Crisp in the Fall."And I think that is pretty accurate.

So I've been spending a lot of time lately eating pumpkin pie bagels from panera, burning my pumpkin marshmallow scentsy scent, painting my nails with essie's fall collection, drinking salted caramel frappichinos, and taking chilly walks in the woods by our apartment. And no fall would be complete without a trip to the pumpkin patch.

A few weeks ago, I got a really great deal on a set of tickets to a nice pumpkin patch an hour from our house, and so we decided to go on Saturday. This pumpkin patch happened to have a big corn maze and I love corn mazes! Adam learned there was a record time on the maze and being the competitive person that he is, informed me if he had to leave me behind in the maze to beat the record, he would. I mean really! In the corn maze, you have to find 5 different signs representing college football teams. I think we found them in about 45 minutes, and I have no clue if that was a record or not. We of course did other activities like hay rides and pumpkin picking.

We finished the day with a carb heavy dinner at the Olive Garden where we ate so many free breadsticks that I'm surprised we didn't turn into breadsticks, which makes it a perfect fall day don't you think?

Home Sweet Office

When I first saw my work office, I was surprised by the overall redness of it. I just didn't know if red was the best choice for a children's therapy office, where I am routinely trying to calm ADHD kids and nervous teenagers. But I am not one to be overwhelmed by a strong color choice! My dorm room during my sophomore year was coated in a pepto bismal pink. It was so pink that when the light was on inside, the pinkness radiated out and bathed the entire hallway in pink. It was all Malibu Barbie Dream House in there.

Not all of my coworkers have really decorated their offices, but I feel like I'm spending as much time or maybe more time at work than I am at home, so I might as well have a place that feels homey and comfortable.  But I did use a lot of white, greys, and beige's to tone down the walls a bit. And there are a few things I still want to do with it. But for now I'm happy with it!

Last weekend, I took Adam to my office just to show him where I was working now because he wanted to see it. And he just seemed so proud of my while he was there and that really meant a lot to me. And I have to admit its nice to see all my hard work in college really starting to pay off! Plus, I must say it's pretty nice to have my own space rather than a cubicle!

And you know, you really do need your own space to play a million games of connect four. Which somehow, I still sometimes manage to lose to five year olds, even when I'm not even trying to let them win.

Quotables

Some of my Favorite Quotes from Books I've Read on my Kindle:

Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess (Gael Greene)
(Written about Julia Child)
Behind her, Paul Child caught it mid-topple and set it straight. What a team, I thought. Not only did they adore each other, but Paul was always there, seemingly content to swim in her wake, picking up whatever she might bowl over in her exuberant passage through life.

Dirty Sexy Politics (Meghan Mccain)
We learn some of the most important things in life by our failures and mistakes. If we never had things that we were sorry we’d done, or sorry we’d said, we would never be forced to take a hard look at ourselves—and make changes for the better.

It's All Relative: Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays, and 50 Boxes of Wine (A Memoir) (Wade Rouse)
That holidays were not—and did not have to be—perfect in order to be beautiful. It made me realize that all families are dysfunctional, especially during the holidays, and that while most celebrations are well-intended, they are also usually diarrhea-inducing.

It's All Relative: Two Families, Three Dogs, 34 Holidays, and 50 Boxes of Wine (A Memoir) (Wade Rouse)
There were even career Barbies, brainy Barbies who—for some reason—did not find it fulfilling enough to live off their beauty alone; no, they had to attend med school and become surgeons and pet doctors, a notion that unnerved me greatly.

Chocolate & Vicodin (Jennette Fulda)
People wanted there to be a narrative with a tidy ending so all the loose ends could be wrapped up. When Native Americans looked at the stars, they made up tales about how those dots of lights were first lit and where the world came from. A turtle might not actually be holding up the Earth, but it made for a good story. It gave meaning where there was none.

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality (Donald Miller)
Love, for example, is a true  emotion, but it is not rational. What I mean is, people actually  feel it. I have been in love, plenty of people have been in love,  yet love cannot be proved scientifically. Neither can beauty.  Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in  light and by light see all things. There are plenty of things that  are true that don't make any sense.

It Chooses You (Miranda July)
I kept the house because the rent is cheap and I write there; it’s become my office. And the great northern beans, the cinnamon, and the rice keep the light on for me,  should anything go horribly wrong, or should I come to my senses and reclaim my position as the most alone person who ever existed.

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life (Wade Rouse)
Don’t you have something to say to the Lord?” And I did. I wanted to ask Him how He could be cruel enough to take my brother and leave me alone in rural America. I wanted to ask Him why I liked boys, no matter how many Farrah Fawcett or Raquel Welch posters I hung in my room. I wanted to ask him when it would be OK to stop hating myself. I wanted to ask God how many blows I was going to take and if my faith was supposed to be shaken and rocked at such an early age in order for me to fully grasp what faith is all about.

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life (Wade Rouse)
I have read the Bible. I have studied the Bible. But we all fall short, every day, in one way or another. Our goal is to try to make the right decisions, to be good people. When all is said and done, I believe our final spiritual test will be akin to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?: Each of us, one-on-one, with God, trying to answer some hard-ass questions. And all without a phone-a-friend or fifty-fifty.

Father Fiction (Donald L. Miller)
Self-assurance is beautiful. A choosy girl is beautiful. Intelligence is beautiful. A girl who isn’t begging to be loved is beautiful. A woman who loves God is beautiful. A woman who does not manipulate men with her appearance is beautiful.

The Next Best Thing (Jennifer Weiner)
In Florida, where the Golden Girls lived, the weather was always warm and the skies were always sunny, and no crisis could not be managed in twenty-two minutes plus two commercial breaks. In that happy land, not everyone was beautiful, or young, or perfect. Not everyone had romantic love. But everyone had friends, a family they’d  chosen. It was that love that sustained them, and that love, I imagined, could sustain me, too.

Then Came You (Jennifer Weiner)
I lived my life like a meal that had been set in front of me, never asking if there were other choices or even if I was hungry.

Then Came You (Jennifer Weiner)
The thing about bad decisions is that they don’t feel like bad decisions when you’re making them. They feel like the obvious choice, the of-course-that-makes-sense move. They feel, somehow, inevitable.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (Donald Miller)
The Voice I am talking about is a deep water of calming wisdom that says, Hold your tongue; don’t talk about that person that way; forgive the friend you haven’t talked to; don’t look at that woman as a possession; I want to show you the sunset; look and see how short life is and how your troubles are not worth worrying about; buy that bottle of wine and call your friend and see if he can get together, because, remember, he was supposed to have that conversation with his daughter, and you
should ask him about it.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life (Donald Miller)
They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can’t see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story.

Water for Elephants  (Sara Gruen)
But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It’s a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I’m—you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you’re not. You’re thirty-five. And then you’re bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it’s decades before you admit it.

The Paris Wife: A Novel (Paula McLain)
There was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow, let alone forever. To keep you from thinking, there was liquor, an ocean’s worth at least, all the usual vices and plenty of rope to hang yourself with. But some of us, a very few in the end, bet on marriage against the odds. And though I didn’t feel holy, exactly, I did feel that what we had was rare and true—and that we were safe in the marriage we had built and were building every day.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel (Aimee Bender)
It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we’d read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty: A Novel (Joshilyn Jackson)
Now, I try not to be overly superstitious; I like black cats about as much as I like any other color cat, and I’ll go straight under any number of ladders if you put the right kind of pie on the other side.

Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and The Dawn of the Modern Woman (Sam Wasson)
There are those who believe they are truly loved when they truly aren’t, and others who suspect that despite sincere reassurance to the contrary, no one really loves them at all.

Southern Homecoming Party

 

Last weekend, we hosted a small little party to get our friends together, and celebrate moving to Alabama. I didn't want to call it a housewarming party because we don't own a home yet, and I'll need an excuse to throw another party when we buy a house next year. So instead I made it a, "Southern Homecoming Party."

 

Many of our friends drove in from Mississippi, and a few from just down the road. But I feel so blessed that we have so many friends, who are willing to take the time, come so far, and spend the gas money just to spend a few hours with us!

 

We did some terrible renditions of 80's songs, while playing lego rock band, ate pizza and cupcakes,  drank, and laughed a lot.  And somehow we ended the party in the wee hours of the morning watching Too Cute on Animal Planet. Which is literally a show about the lives of puppies. That show was amazing, I'm not even kidding. Best show ever. I love when completely random things happen like that. And they usually happen at our parties.

 

I only wish we could do that every night.  Of course, I was too busy having fun to think of taking pictures. But just picture a bunch of sophisticated people in their best attire and you will know what our party looked like! Or, maybe jeans and t-shirts would be more like it.

The New Apartment: Living Room/Dining Room

In our apartment, the "dining" area and the "living room" are attached. I'm only putting "dining area" in quotations because we have no table. So it seems wrong to call it a dining room. But it is also odd to call it just the, "open area adjacent to the living room." But for now, that is what I'll call it.

During my formative years, I watched a whole lot of trading spaces. And that taught me a few things. First of all, finding out that Hildi was going to be designing your space was akin to being told you were about to be thrown into the lion's den. Remember when she glued all those feathers to the wall? Can you imagine the dusting!! And the effects on the resale value of the house?!? But really the main thing I learned is that when you are designing a space, you should base it around one item.

A few months ago, I fell in love with the painting of the couple walking home in the rain. It just seemed so romantic. But it was kind of pricey and I didn't want to impulse buy it, so I walked away with full knowledge someone else might snatch it up. But I went back after a few weeks, and it was still there, so I figured it was a sign and I bought it! But by the time I got to the cash register that painting had disappeared!  Luckily, an employee was just in the process of rearranging the store and had moved it. But there was a moment there I experienced true devastation.

I designed the rest of the room around that painting obviously. I got a few pieces from hobby lobby and a few pieces from the store I got the painting from, Bargain Jungle. They key rack was made for us by one of my best friends Anna! It was her first ever pinterest project and I think it turned out beautifully.

Now we have matching furniture and a fancy vacuum! We are just feeling more grown up by the second! Now if we can just get a table to eat at, we will have it all together!

Alabama Snow

I think one of the things I'm enjoying most about being back in Alabama this fall is seeing the blooming cotton fields. I don't know if I truly took much notice of them when I was growing up here, but I'm sure noticing them now. And they are really brightening up my morning commute to work. Plus, it is as close as we usually get down here to seeing "snow."

And if you are wondering what real cotton blooms feel like, just know they feel exactly like the cotton balls you buy at the store. I don't even know why I thought they would feel any differently.

Scrappin' Sunday

Both Adam and I woke up with minor colds today, just the sniffles and general lethargy. So we didn't feel like doing much of anything. We took turns taking naps and watched the Packer game, which was just oh so sad. And I'm starting to think the Packer's are just going to have a blah season this year. Though, it is too early to really make that kind of prediction. But I swear right now I'm going to predict that it is going to be the 49's and the Texans in the Superbowl. And I'm really only writing it in the blog, so I can prove my psychic abilities. Which I don't really think I have, except I'm sometimes able to predict when I'm going to make a fool of myself. But that is just a coincidence, because I embarrass myself on the daily LOL.

But this weekend hasn't been a total bust. I got to do a little scrappin' of some of our Summer Happenings.Which I've been dying to do since I dropped a small fortune on some new supplies from Hobby Lobby.  And on Saturday we had lunch at the beyond delicious Mellow Mushroom Pizzeria, and afterwards we shared a bowl of cupcake batter frozen yogurt at Sweet Cici's. And of course, we have had a lot of fun playing with Miss. Carlee all weekend long.

Let's just hope we wake up tomorrow cold free and ready to face the work week!

The New Apartment: Bathroom!

 

It is something like 5:00 o'clock in the morning. I should not be awake. But I am awake. You know why I'm awake? Because we are pet sitting my mom's dog Carlee until next week. Which we don't mind at all, she truly is the sweetest dog. But she is a spoiled dog. But through no fault of her own, it is totally my mom's fault. She's so spoiled rotten that she barks at my mom in the middle of the night to get her a snack. And my mom does it!

But that doesn't fly with me, I value my sleep. In fact, it is probably my number one priority. The first night she was here, she walked right up to me, while I was sleeping, and barked in my face. It scared me to death. If I was a cat, I would have lost all 9 lives. I simply yelled at her, and she went and lied down with a real defiant sigh. I thought that settled the issue. The next two nights she didn't even try, that is until tonight. And no, I did not give her a snack. I don't negotiate with terrorists.

So what do you do when you can't sleep? Take pictures of your bathroom and post them on the Internet, of course! Well, I had actually taken these a while back. But it seems weird to me to start the apartment reveal pictures with our bathroom. Isn't that a little too personal? I don't know. But they are the only ones on my camera right now. So whatever!

I picked out a shower curtain and decorated the bathroom off its design, and I stuck with yellows and greys. I also have a bird theme? But that was kind of accidental. I just happened to buy one bird thing and it snowballed from there. Which is exactly what happened with my office at work. Maybe I have some bird obsession hidden subconsciously in my brain that I don't know about?

I got the shower curtain, towels, bath mats, tooth brush holder, soap dispenser, and frames from Target. I got the prints from etsy. The bird cage hand towel holder is from Hobby Lobby, along with the mason jars I'm using for cotton balls & q-tips.

I kind of like it.

Congrats, Mom!

This is a picture of me and my mom at her retirement party last week. My mom has worked for the government since long before I was born, and I've always been super proud of the hard worker she always was. She set such a great example for me as a little girl.

Over 50 people showed up to my mom's party, and I think that speaks to what an amazing person she is. I only hope when I retire years and years and years from now, I will have touched the people I share an office space with just like she has.

Happy Retirement, Mom! I know you will do amazing things with it.

P.S.-I realized looking at this picture that I have really started looking like my mom! When I was a little girl, I was a carbon copy of my father! It is weird how you change as you grow.