2011

    Well, just in case Madam Vino has all my attention later tonight, I want to wish you all a joyous New Year, I hope you chase down every dream and wish you have for yourself in this new year. Strike that, I meant to say chase it down, club it over its head and drag it home! I have given a little thought about the coming New Year and one of the things I promised myself (besides of course, losing the usual million pounds) is to learn to play the guitar, yep folks you read correctly, play the guitar. Please do not expect to see my name in lights any time…..at all, as I still am only able to carry a tune in the privacy of my shower. Recently, I thought about how often we make promises or resolutions to ourselves that have little to do with the enrichment of our minds and souls. Mine are always, lose weight, make more money, partake in spring cleaning and all that is great but I need to learn something, I need to add to my talents for no one else but myself. And since I just got done chopping all my hair off, what’s left…..??....This year at Christmas my mom received a violin, she has never played a day in her life and now she is learning to play. I guess I could say it was a little inspirational. I am also making a conscience effort to be kinder to everyone even in the face of adversity and trial, I hope we can all do a little more of that as well.  So to all of you, I say this……do exactly what you want this year, know your worth, love those that love you and love those that don't and trust that your path will lead you to such greatness. May your best days of 2010 be your worst days of 2011.

Just accepting it…….

   I normally keep it light and airy on the blogity blog but I have had a little something on my mind lately. I recently had a revelation of sorts brought on by many things. I realize I am quite the Debbie Downer a few days before Christmas but this does have a rhyme and reason….kinda, maybe……oh, just keep reading.

 I realized that we spend so much of our lives trying to change people, things, and situations….why do we do this? We chase down what we want whether or not it was ever supposed to be ours, we work so hard to convince people to like us, love us, and value us…..with no regard to whether or not they were ever meant to. In our childhood we heard often, “no, because I said so” or “I’m sorry, you just can’t have that”, I wonder if we still need that type of guidance as adults. I was recently doing a little Christmas shopping………ok, ok, I was mainly people watching, as it wasn’t December 23^rd yet, so I felt no urgency to buy, and I watched a very stressed out mother as she bent down face to face with her young child and said, “I’m sorry, you don’t get that”, I guess I found this moment more profound than most. But, if you take the words of the stressed out mother, say them to yourself and put ‘in life’ at the end of it, how many things and people in your life could you apply this to and once applied does it bring us closer to peace within our own lives and what is genuinely meant to be ours.

Personally, I have struggled with this concept most of my life, as a young child and like many young children I felt, if I just loved my father and made him proud, he would be who he was supposed to be. Like many young adults my age, I know now this does not work, it has taken 27 years to realize, ‘I don’t get that…. in life’. Please don’t misunderstand, this blog isn’t about the woes of a single parent child but about people, situations and things in our lives that will never love us, like us, value us or treat us the way we want them to and maybe just accepting it is the way to feel better about it. I tend to think of myself as a pretty resilient gal with a pretty thick skin, but I will tell you a secret…..when it comes to people in my life that I care about, I tend to be quite sensitive and hurt easily when my affection and my love is not reciprocated. We waste so much time, energy and love in our lives, changing, mending, fixing without ever really stopping to accept the fait that God felt necessary to put in our lives. We hurt when people don’t reach the standards WE set for them, we let it upset us when we do for them and they don’t do for us. Maybe someone’s purpose in our lives isn’t always to love us, accept us or be there for us, maybe their purpose is to show ourselves how strong we can be and how we are able to accept that their terms, their love, their appreciation are not always the same as ours.

  I felt it necessary to share this with my blog family, as I will be putting this to work in my own life with the coming of the new year. In doing this, I hope I realize strength I didn’t know I had and I will be more able to love those that truly love me.

  



Book Worm

Oh, hello blog, how I have missed you! Just popped in for a quick suggestion, more stories soon....

Ok, I must confess something…..I have an affection for old things, old and tossed aside, especially books. I love to go to the library, go through and find some old really neat book….(and I love love love the way library books smell…..weirdo, I know) So I thought I would share. I, like most of us, read The Shack several years ago and I really liked it, so I went on a quest to find books similar. A very dear older friend of mine gave me, Illusions by Richard Bach, it really is neat, a short read and it came out in 1977 so you can look like a total smarty pants to all your friends….or maybe just someone who is seriously behind….hmm…..Either way, it would be a great winter read. 



The Week End Review

A week.....end review……. Thursday night, exciting company with my Q’s promiscuous bachelor friend who always has a great story and is ready to tell it…(no matter how cringe worthy). If I knew guys talked that way when I was single I would have sat in my apartment every night, ALONE!!

Friday night, MY company arrives!! My bestie, my fifth sister….Michael…with an M!! Ok, ok…….this is when Q goes into the office and only comes out to eat, he love me, he loves Michael…..but sometimes me and Michael together, all of our witch laughs, inside jokes and gossip is way too much for my mild mannered man.

So from Thursday to Sunday there were belly laughs, a diaper cake, cupcakes, a baby shower, Italian food, fondant disasters, high school yearbooks, gossip, 30 year old virgins, small business website building and LOTS of sangria!



I ended it all with an amazing Oklahoma sunset on the back porch with my Q, Sunday night.

There are few things in this world as breathtaking as Oklahoma sky.





And since I’m a girl and I’m entitled to a few hundred mood changes in my life…..I got crabby and ended the night telling Q to stop trying to cheer me up…….oh to be a woman.



H@pPiiiiee tHOooy$DaY!

Because I can.................

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgc5l9X3Dn4&NR=1

You know that dog food commercial where a young woman and her dog sit peacefully on her yoga mat in the early morning sun, meditating, centering, and bonding. This commercial came to me when I had Yoga time visitors this morning.



Morning Yoga with a side of Sushi…….(yes, I named my cat after my favorite food…..sign of a fatty….right?)

Morning Yoga with a side of Miri……….

                  Morning Yoga with a side of Gladiator fight……..this went terribly wrong….somewhere. 





Sting would be very disappointed.

Namaste.

How To: Homemade Body Scrub

I've been referred to as “Queen of the Coffee Grounds.” Aside from the fact that I consume more coffee than anyone has ever seen, I never really understood why until I had the idea for this next post. One day while I was salvaging left over coffee grounds for my flower beds I thought, what a wonderful body scrub these little things would make. I did some research and found many articles about how coffee grounds fight cellulite…..while I don’t promise that, one thing I have noticed is that it makes a great morning wake up and the best thing is I made it for less than $2 in less than forty-five minutes! I have been scrubbing with coffee grounds for a few weeks now and while it was wonderful, I knew there had to be other elements to mine. So I played around with several things and finally came up with a recipe that was blog worthy and here it is!!........Its good to be Queen………..

  The cast of players include:

Extra virgin olive oil- 2 to 3 Tbs.

Left over coffee grounds- 2to 3 cups

The peel and juice of one to two lemons

A container (for in shower storage or something a little fancier just in case you plan on  

      giving it to someone. I used small glass mason jars for mine)

Over the course of a week or so save your coffee grounds in a plastic storage bag on your cabinet. When you’re ready to make your scrub, line the bottom of a bowl with paper towels and drain any excess moisture from your grounds.



While your grounds are draining squeeze the juice from your lemons into a medium sized bowl making sure there are no seeds. Peel lemons (all you need is the peel), grate lemon peel.



Combine lemon peel and olive oil into the juice, mix. Add coffee grounds, mix until incorporated.

And since we don’t want to waste the parts of the lemon we don’t need, throw em’ in your compost or toss them in your garden.

Lastly, into the container of your choice it goes! Ok, I choose glass jars, if you do this make sure they are sanitized, a run through your dishwasher will do just fine. Fill em’ up and use it in the morning for a nice wake up to your skin…..a nice little good morning, epidermis!...                                                              

Rock that beautiful skin!! (That didn’t cost you a fortune to obtain..)

I realized something today, the weather is getting chilly, the sound of football can be found coming from my television and autumn decorations are everywhere. So it is with a heavy heart that I bid old lady summer, adieu.

You will be missed....

The Smell of Rain and Potato Soup

Ever since I was a little girl rain has always made me want to put on some soup (preferably potato) and clean the house………thank you, mom. In light of the recent diet enforcement around my house I will settling for a nice rainy day salad….Its just not the same and despite the advice of my couch I did clean the house………ok that’s a lie, I shuffled some things around to trick myself into thinking I cleaned and spent most the day on the phone with my best friend, sister and mother talking about weight gain and New Jersey housewife drama. I think its time for new traditions……

A dollar store coffee cup and inside the mind of…….

......a genius? a tragically hip big sister with a need to laugh at all things? a unapologetically indecisive girlfriend? a somewhat wordy best friend?.........all of those things? First blog post.......this took a lot of thought (and backspacing) until this morning I miraculously came to a very easy conclusion. The introduction to me and the blogging world should not be formal, it should not be life altering, I want blog to like me so I wont talk to too much (we will get into the wonderment of me and my world at a later date) I thought, what should I wear for first blog? how should I do my hair? what sort of witty repartee should I bring to the table in this relationship?..........and here I sit in my cleaning house clothes, hair pulled back and secured with a very second grade picture day-esqe red head band (don’t laugh) drinking out of my favorite coffee mug, its green, most likely from a dollar store and despite the looming crack that I fear will end its life very soon it is one of the things I unapologetically love, isn’t a good life compiled of things you love....red head bands, green coffee cups,  friends and family that just get you,  clean sheets, cupcakes, a man with good facial hair that always seems to smell wonderful.....oh umm....uhhh...there my mind goes. The things we love don’t have to be perfect (they very rarely are) or even pretty but loving something for our very own reasons are what makes life worth living and your very own reasons are just that, yours! Pheeeew! There it is, the ice has been broken, my very first documentation of a thought is out there and for your viewing pleasure.......I understand these thoughts are sporadic and a bit crazy but aren’t we all just a little crazy....?.......yes?.....no?.........anyone?