What a bad blogger I've been!

I have my share of excuses for my no posts. I have had a crazy Christmas season in retail and am now almost through the craziness. I just have to get through new years day when we have our HUGE sale and I work from 6:45 am to 7 pm. AHHH!
Besides all the long hours and rare days off I did have a great Christmas! I got to go to our Sunday School Christmas party for the first time in a few years, decorated cookies with the fam, went to Christmas Eve service, had great meals with both our families and got lots of good stuff for Christmas. The two best gifts- David's mom got us gift certificates to all our favorite restaurants in town and my parents gave us a Roku. The Roku streams movies/ tv shows from Netflix to your TV. It's awesome. I have layed around all day watching TV shows on it (Giuliana and Bill reality show, love them!)

So no pictures or anything too exciting to report.
Happy Holidays and a Happy New year friends!!!!

Christmas Card pics....

We had our friend Phom take pictures a few weeks ago at our house for our Chritmas card. It was a great day and there were a lot of good shots. Here are a few that I liked that didn't make the actual card we are sending out

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Christmas Decorations are up!

I know I know...

...I haven't done a good job posting this Fall. I have had a lot going on. Work has been crazy, my grandfather in Atlanta passed away and I had a whirlwind trip to Atlanta for the funeral. But there has been some fun stuff keeping me busy too. David had his birthday and I surprised him with a fun Cowboy cake. This past weekend we went away with friends from church to a cabin outside Mountain View. It was soo much fun ( 5 couples and 4 dogs and it happened to be bean fest in town that weekend too, hah!)
Then we celebrated Halloween by dressing Rascal as a pirate. You can tell in the picture how much he enjoyed it (not very much).

Welcome Fall!

(southernliving.com)

Today I have my "Fall" to do list. I am putting put my Fall decorations. Mine do not look quite as extravagant as this beautiful Fall topiary. Also on my list is to put all the summer clothes up and pull out my fall/winter clothes. Now it just needs to get a little cooler out so I can wear those sweaters!!

Day Trip

Today we went to Paul Michael's in Lake Village, AR to do some Christmas decoration shopping. Yes, we need a storage unit just for our christmas decor, but I had to go get more! They had some awesome displays I had to share!

San Francisco/Wine Country

We just got back from a week in California for vacation. We were supposed to get back Friday evening but due to fog and lots of flight delays we ended up getting rerouted all over, spending the night in Dallas and getting home Saturday morning!
The good news is our luggage made it back to us!

I loved San Francisco. It is a city of wonderful food! I love sourdough bread, so I was in heaven. The best dinner we had was at North Beach Restaurant in Little Italy!

We also spent some time in Wine Country, which I also fell in love with! We went to two wineries, the town of Sonoma and a champaganery. It's beautiful there!

Waiting for Fall...

Top Five Reasons I am ready for Fall to be in Full Swing....

1. New episodes of some of my favorite shows.
Gossip Girl Season Premiere is Monday!!

2. Fall colors and decorations

3. Cooler Weather is coming!

4. Cooler weather means pulling of sweaters, turtlenecks, tights, boots, ect.

5. Anything flavored with pumpkin (pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, yummmm)

Another Year!

(Rehearsal Dinner)


Yesterday was our three year wedding anniversary!
How the time has flown by! I was telling my co-worker today at lunch how my wedding day began. I was staying at the Embassey Suites with one of my bridemaids. We woke up around 6 am to a loud fire alarm allerting us we had to evacuate!
So there we were grabbing all our stuff, thinking the hotel is burning down, running down 9 flights of stairs. I did not take it well! That was not how I wanted to begin sich a big day! Ha!

Painting Project

I have had the "itch" to paint something lately. Now that it is finally cooling down outside, I am thinking about painting my front door. The door is currently white. But the house is painted white with black shudders so I think it needs some color on the door. Here are some pictures I was looking at for color inspiration. I may be leaning towards a dark red....

Update

(Rascal as a baby)

I realized I hadn't put Rascal's big news on my blog. He is going to be a father!
He was bred with another olde english bulldogge by the people that sold us Rascal.
Foxxy Brown "aka Rascal's babies mama" is due in the next few days. I am sure there will be some cute puppy pictures coming soon.
Everyone has asked but no we will not be keeping a puppy right now. Rascal is a 90 lb handful and enough for us right now!!

Display for Back To School

Back to School time!
We created a trendy area and spray painted lockers to add some fun to the area!

Rascal!

I haven't done a Rascal post in awhile and I know everyone likes knowing what he is
up to!
He loves paper! We think he is part goat...


And of course he sleeps about 22 hours a day... He just gets up to move into his different spots around the house....

Five Love Languages

At work we have been talking a lot about relationships and my advice to some of the other girls at work was to read the book "Five Love Languages" by Gary Chapman.
If you haven't read the book its really good and can help you understand yourself and your partner better.
The Five Love Languages are....
Gifts
Acts of Service
Words of Affirmation
Physical Touch
Quality Time

Here is a link to a quiz to find out your love language, but I also recommend you buy the book!


http://www.5lovelanguages.com/assessments/30-second-quizzes/love/

A Reunion!

One of my best friends from Auburn, Beth and her husband Michael came to stay with us this past Sunday night. They had been in Colorado all summer and stayed with us on their way back to Tennessee. They will be moviny to East Asia in the Fall so I am soooo happy I was able to see them! I forgot to take a picture while they were here so I put one up of Beth and I at our rehearsal dinner.


We had a great time playing host and wanted to make sure our guests had a good meal while they were visiting.
On the menu for our reunion dinner....
Arkansas grown sweet corn
green beans with butter and almond sauce
garlic bread
Feta stuffed fila...yummmmmm

and blackberry cobbler.

The food turned out great!
I wish they could have stayed longer, I had so much fun seeing old friends!

Not something you see everyday...

There are two ways to get to our house and one way we don't drive down very often. I took that way the other day and what a surprise there were rows and rows of the big, beautiful sunflowers!

Happy 4th!!

Happy July 4th!!
I hope you are all enjoying your day and celebrating
by grilling out, watching fireworks, going to the lake,
and relaxing!

Oregon Vacation

We got back last night at the wonderful hour of 1:00 a.m from a week in Oregon. My dad's side of the family is all in Oregon so we went there to show off the wonderful state to the new family member(my husband and brother in law) and celebrate my grandfather's 80th birthday!
The weather was a PERFECT! It was 60 and sunny almost every day. What a break from the heat in Arkansas. The town we went to has lakes, rivers, sand dunes and the ocean all right there so we were able to enjoy alot that Oregon had to offer.
Now I we are back, doing laundry, in the heat and have been forced back to the real world.





At Devil's Elbow Beach....



View from the river house we rented....

Throwback to the Greek Days

My group of friends at work have started a new tradition where we have themed parties. It's an excuse to do something fun outside of work, eat and relax! The first one was hosted at our house at it
was a "Redneck" Poker Party. Everyone looked so funny! I guess since I was hosting I didn't take very many good pictures. The last party we had a week ago was "Golf Pros and Tennis Hoes". Yes, you would think we were back in our sorority and fraternity days with these themes huh? Now the only question is what we are dressing up as next month!

A Great Night for a Great Cause

Last night we went to a wonderful event called "Dinner on the Grounds". It was on the grounds of the Governor's Mansion and was a wonderful southern dinner with Jazz music. It was for a wonderful organization called Our House. It is a homeless shelter in Little Rock that does alot of great things. I wish I had taken more pictures of the governor's mansion and its grounds to share!

What have I been doing?

I realized it had been more than a week since I had written on my blog. I don't feel like I have been busy, but what have I been filling my time doing?
Well, I have been doing more yard work and trying to develop my green thumb. I have been laying out and trying to develop my tan. I'm thankful to have a sister who has a really nice apartment pool! I have taken up going to flea markets-does any one know any good ones outside Little Rock?
I have also discovered to joys of Netflix instant movies!
The ones I have watched recently watched Weeds (actually a tv show), Julie and Julia and I hate to admit the Hannah Montana movie.
So that's what I have been filling my time with besides blogging!

Green Thumb

Here is the start to my attempt at a green thumb. Let's see how it goes...

Happy Weekend!

We had great weather for this Mother's Day weekend. On Saturday we spent the weekend at Lake Katherine in Hot Springs. It was awesome, besides my sunburn and I love that lake. Today, we spent most of the day working on our yard. We weed eated, trimmed bushes, and planted. We bought two tomatoe bushes and planted them. We don't really have a green thumb but are trying!! I will take pictures of our planting and post soon!

Crafty

I have been trying to be more "crafty" lately. I started trying to make picture frames like I have seen in some stores around town. I have only made a few, so I am still experimenting. This is my Spring themed frame!