Today's Daybook

FOR TODAY...

Outside my window... a gas station and the glow of Christmas lights from the front porch

I am thinking... how beautiful the park across the street looks

I am thankful for... my amazing friends and adoring fiance (that's right, I'm engaged :D the whole story coming soon...)

I am wearing... cropped sweats and a t-shirt from doing Crossfit Geneseo baby!

I am remembering... all the things I have to do tomorrow...

I am going... to bed soon

I am currently reading... Love and Respect

I am hoping... to finish this wedding by wednesday!

On my mind... figuring out how to get more organization into my apartment

Noticing that... the holiday goodies are coming... and trying to figure out how not to go ape crazy on that!

Pondering these words... When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible!

From the kitchen... yummy italian breaded chicken, au gratin potatoes, broccoli and salad

Around the house... a gorgeous Christmas tree

One of my favorite things... watching tv while eating breakfast... don't ask lol

Join in HERE...

punkin pie phase 1

The day after Halloween Steve and I went out to find some pumpkins to make pie with.

Bad idea.

All the pumpkins had been snatched up from the night before. We checked wegmans and they said that every.single.wegmans in the greater rochester area were sold out. Seriously?

So we checked a local farm market and thankfully they had a few left. So we bought two small ones and they've since then been marking a lovely centerpiece on my kitchen table.

The goal initially was to be all romantic and whatnot and make these together, but silly things like lack of time get in the way and we haven't had the opportunity to get around to it.

And since I didn't want to wait so long that either A) Thanksgiving came and went or B) the pumpkins went rotten (probably more realistic at this point) I decided that I would bake them yesterday and begin the process

I have discovered over the last few months that I am a knife brat. My parents have always had good cutco knives and I always thought their particular*ness* with knives was a little absurd. I however, no longer think so. Not after I've been subjected to the useless sharp objects I have in my drawer that are in disguise as knives.

Cutting these pumpkins in half was a beast.

At least I didn't cut off a finger (or two) in the process. The slimy seeds were shooting out from under it and the slipperiness created between the knife, my hands and the cutting board it was actually quite miraculous no blood was shed.

Can I just tell you, I've never actually scooped out a pumpkin before. It's true, call it deprivation or whatever you want, but I truly believe now that my parents spared me from that experience intentionally.

It is not fun, it is not clean, it is not easy.

But now I have pumpkin seeds and I want to bake them and eat them. Anyone have a good recipe for doing that?

Finally, the pumpkins made it into the oven. The smell that filled this apartment was almost more than I could handle. It made me want to curl up in front of a fireplace and drink hot apple cider while listening to Christmas music and drift off to sleep. I however did only 1 out of 4 of those things. The drifting part, ha.

Now I'm on to phase 2: pureeing the pumpkin. Not sure how well that's going to go, since my blender can only handle a little at a time... but we'll see. And hopefully I'll have a pumpkin pie before Thanksgiving next week!

revelation song

I have few words today... this song is where my heart has been the last few days.



Amazing how such simple words can usher the presence of the Lord so powerfully. I'm resting in His grace and peace today.

oh, they're back

Dear Starbucks,

I know how you work. Even when you don't have your seasonal drinks on the menu, I realize that I could still order one at any point throughout the year. But if I order a grande peppermint mocha in July, not only will I not get whipped cream on top but I won't get the shamazing chocolate truffle shavings on top.

Oh.my.goodness. Christmas in a cup.



I'm a feelings girl. All about atmosphere. Therefore, I do not order peppermint mochas out of season... I wait all year for this. And you have not disappointed me.

Now if I could actually afford to drink them... ;)

oh closet how I miss you

When I was 12 and we moved into the house my parents are still at, I had the smallest bedroom and my closet was across the hall not even in my room.

I hated that bedroom. During the first year we lived there I rearranged my room about once a month because I was so dissatisfied with how it felt and because I was so unhappy about having to move.

Anyways, fast forward a few years and I finally convince my mom to let me move my bedroom to one of the back guest rooms. With the understanding that I would have to relinquish my room whenever we had company. No problem. Seriously. I got to upgrade to 2 rooms instead of 1 and also had a closet in one of the rooms. What a concept.

So after a few years being in those rooms I finally went all in and repainted and decorated to my liking. This all involved making a closet organizer to fit my stuff.



I loved having this closet organizer soooooo much. One of the things I miss most about living in this apartment now. But the closet I now have isn't so bad. I've managed to fit an amazing amount of stuff in it.

What's crazy to me though is that looking at this picture makes me realize just how much stuff I got rid of in the move. I'm glad I did though. There is so much stuff that I didn't ever use or want in there. So I gave away a ton of clothes and shoes... of which I have bought more since I moved ;)

A girl can't have too many shoes!

redirect

This post is a shameless redirect to my photo blog. Most of you who read this probably already read the photo blog, but I have nothing to post today and feel the need to post. Although I am failing miserably at NaBloPoMo, I'm trying to be better at not giving up entirely when I can't do something perfect. There's something to be said for persistence!

Anyways, these little footsies belong to brand new baby Haven Hope. I tagged along with Andrea the other day when she went to Seth and Tarah's to take these and am so happy I did. There are more on my photo blog from this shoot as well as on Andrea's flickr account :)

decorating

Since I've moved into my new apartment I've been working on decorating in unique and creative ways but not spending a boatload of money. I will most likely be moving again within a year so I am not planning on doing too much, but there are things I still can do.

I decided to paint one of the walls in my living room red. It's so awesome. I'm totally hooked on painting crazy bold colors forevermore amen. There is power in a white wall decorated well, but holy smokes, there's something about a red wall... or any bright bold color.

And again, about the whole no pictures of my new place thing... well, i am waiting to get to ikea to get the frames I need/want. I have ideas people, and they cannot be completed without ikea!

But Melissa found this website yesterday and I'm totally freaking out in love with it. They make huge decals for your walls.

This one below is my absolute favorite so far. Minus the whole crib thing... I'm sooooo not ready for that lol!

But seriously, go to that site and check it out. It.is.amazing. I want to buy one of everything. Do it now!

Thank You

I have no words to describe how happy these make me.



Thank you Andrea...

last wedding of the year... and other randomness

Saturday was the last wedding I have for 2009. I'm sad and relieved at the same time. Now I can begin finishing everything up and getting ready for next year!

It was a beautiful day for a wedding... seriously, one of the best yet. However, due to daylight savings and the early hour at which the sun sets, we were unable to get out and do an appropriate amount of bridal pictures. So, hopefully we will be going out another day and doing them!

Andrea came with me as my assistant for the third time and I am sooooooo glad to have her! Truly, a good assistant is invaluable. In fact, I just booked my first wedding to actually HIRE a second photog. They have specifically requested Andrea and I couldn't be happier for either her OR me :)



Saturday also happened to be her birthday :)

If you click on the link to her blog you'll see a couple of the pictures she took of me yesterday! but if not, I'll be posting a couple tomorrow probably ;) I was totally sick yesterday. it hit me hard on saturday night, then i felt better in the morning, ok through the afternoon, then last night again... ugh. But I am feeling better now. Hopefully I've kicked it, but in the event that I haven't, I'm still pumping the vitamin c like a bad habit.

bangs baby

In my attempts to have something to post every day this month, I've taken pictures of thing I normally might now. However, when my decluttering self gets in the way, I realize that I delete pictures that are ridiculous...

Therefore, the picture I was going to use to post yesterday has been deleted... not to mention the fact that I just all out forgot to post :P

Anyways, I looked through my phone pictures quickly to see if I had anything post-worthy, and while there are pictures more post-worthy than this, I decided that since I hadn't shown you all the new bangs yet that this was appropriate.

Sooo what do you think? I have had a love/hate relationship with them the last week and a half... first I loved them, then I thought they were ridiculous, and have along the way come up with some interesting things to do with them... for example, trying to make them look 80's last Saturday at BASIC.

It would have been great if I had remembered to actually bring hair spray and my diffuser... seeing as how it all was flat within minutes of styling. But ahh well, I pinned it a little and it worked.

But I'm getting used to them and I quite like that I can choose to either rock them or put them away :) In fact, I got them trimmed yesterday for my photo shoot with Andrea tomorrow! I can't wait!

Killa's got a brand new bowl

In front of me right now sits two notebooks, with numerous pages filled with random scribblings. Notes while I'm on the phone, lists of things to do and little doodly-doos.

One of the lists though is labeled "general todo (personal)"

Things that I need to get done, but seem to end up doing so many other things before. At the top of that list was cleaning out the fish bowl. You see, about 2 months ago I had a tragedy here. Sting passed away, due to a toxic environment... when I was little, I had fish, and because I would clean their bowl multiple times a week, their life expectancy was rather short...

So, when I took up owning a fish this time, I thought it would be better to just leave the bowl alone... apparently 6 months is too long...

RIP Sting. RIP.

But I did enjoy having a little friend around. So a new fish came along, his name is Killa.



And he has been due for a cleaning... so yesterday I set to work to give him some fresh water. Problem is that today, the water still hasn't unclouded... I exchanged about 75% of the water for new water, but it it still reeeeallyyy dirty looking. Ugh.



When I bought this plant back in May or so it only had 6 leaves on it. I thought I was going to kill it because the tops would stick out of the water and dry out and turn brown. So I pulled all the dead stuff off and wouldn't ya know, that little plant has flourished! Its has about 13 leaves on it now and new ones just keep growing! So much cooler than plastic ;)



I couldn't believe how much algae I sucked up out of the stones. Waaaaayyy more than I expected.



This time too I separated all the big rocks from the little pebbles. I like the way it looks with the bigger rocks on top and because I've not sorted them out after cleaning the last couple times I've cleaned it they were pretty much all mixed together.

Please don't judge me now... I swear, I really do have better things to do with my time than blogging about cleaning a fish bowl... ;)

365 and holding

I discovered the joys of subscribing to blogs through an rss feed quite some time ago. My feed of choice is google reader, it's convenient and I really like the way it sorts my stuff.

Anyways, since about August I haven't really sat down and read through my beloved blogs. I have 103 subscriptions, obviously they are not all updated regularly, but many of them are. Currently I have 365 unread posts. I've kept many of these blogs at bay by reading regularly, but so many I want to take time to sit and read thoroughly... and they just pile up, accumulating more and more until I am like, yah forget it!

So today I have decided that I'm going to spend the next 30 minutes to an hour reading as much as I can, and then I'm hitting the "mark all as read" button *gasp!* i know, i know...

I realized that this (as silly as it sounds) is one of the things that is burdening my mind. I am sooo not a clutter person. But on the contrary, I'm horrible at keeping things picked up. Go figure.

So here's to a little de-cluttering... even if it is cyber-clutter ;)

not for the faint of heart

a week and a half ago, I realized that I wasn't living alone in this apartment.

No sir, I had a friend who made his presence known late one friday night by hopping across my kitchen floor. Did you know that mice hop?

I was so thoroughly grossed out by it I tried chasing it down to get rid of it then and there but was unsuccessful. The little bugger had gone back into the hole from whence he came.

I stayed the night at a friends house, out of sheer horror, and haunted by the memory of a pet gerbil crawling on top of me as I slept when I was a mere 8 years old.

The next day I acquired two mouse traps which I cleverly concealed behind my dishwasher and bathroom door. The original sighting spot.

A week went by and no dice. Err, I mean mice.

But then yesterday, Steve mentioned that he thought he had noticed the one behind the dishwasher being unset. But not noticing that there was a mouse in it. So this morning I went to get it and reset the thing and guess what awaited me... oh that's right. Little luther (i think that name is appropriate) was sandwiched in that mousetrap.

I'm not one for animal cruelty, but mice should know, they must not coexist with humans. There are consequences for doing so.

Luther has been disposed of... but not before I experienced some bodily reactions I was quite sure I was tougher than. Like, the thought of taking the mouse out of the trap before disposing, made my ears burn. Picking the trap up to put it in a garbage bag made my stomach flop right over. And when it's little body moved as its weight shifted on its trip to the garbage bag, I screamed so loud and dropped it back to the floor.

Yes, I am a girl. I am a screamer, and I get faint at the thought of rodents running wild in my house. Never thought I would have to admit that... but tell me you don't feel a bit weak when you see this:

a post a day keeps the something away...

Apparently November is nablopomo, and apparently I also cannot come up with post titles that actually make sense. For those of you who are wondering nablopomo stands for national blog posting month. Didn't realize this until this morning... and it's already November 2. nablopomo fail.

Whatever. I decided a while ago that I was going to make a valiant effort in participation this month...

Anyways, about this past weekend. I went to syracuse for the BASIC conference. The director had asked me to come and take pictures for them to use for promotional stuff etc. I got to drive up with one of the seminar speakers who also happens to be a really good friend of mine and got to have some amazing conversations :)

I also got to meet her friend Joanna, and we all shared a hotel room. Joanna is on the left in this pic, Tiffany in the middle. And obviously, that's me on the right ;)

And oh yes, while this is a bad pic of them, I now have bangs. That's right, bang baby, bang. Ha, I know I'm a cheese-ball. Andrea's going to take pictures of me later this week so I'm sure I'll have a better representation of them. They're fun, though I'm not sure I'll hang on to them for long. Kinda sassy and cute, but we'll see what happens.