Hmm...

I've been quite absent lately, because I've been quite busy lately. (And there were some minor technical glitches that I was too lazy to work around.) Which makes me think about my time, how I want to spend it, and what is my actual purpose in hitting "Publish" five times a week. (Other than liking the sound of my own voice...err...in a visual way.) Things will be back to normal soonish.

Announcement! (not a house or baby)

Caitlin and I are starting a 365-day photoblog today! *shoot off confetti* *celebrate*

As you might know, Caitlin and I went to college together and are BFF, brought together by a shared love for movie nights and cookie dough. Sadly, we currently live 1000 miles apart (Louisville, KY to Austin, TX), but since we both like blogging and photos, this seems like a great way to stay in better contact and see what the other sees everyday.

I took this picture yesterday on my way to work, so sadly I couldn't use it today since that's against the rules. 

Check it out (and subscribe!) at www.1000milesbetween.blogspot.com

Hello Again

I've been a bit MIA lately. A combination of being both lazy and busy, some writer's block and allergy/sinus misery.

For the past two nights I have come home from work and directly plopped down on the couch to watch TV until an early bedtime. This has made me realize that I think I need more time to let myself do nothing, even when I can breathe through my nose.

Last night was the first night I've been able to watch a whole episode of American Idol since the real competition has started. Didi was my favorite, but I also voted for Crystal and Lacey. Oh Idol, I have missed you.




image: ilovememphis

For Brandy

I'm a cryer. I cry when I'm happy, sad, scared, sleep-deprived, grumpy, frustrated...you get the point. But sometimes I cry because someone is experiencing my worst nightmare, and it terrifies me and breaks my heart for them, whether it's Steel Magnolias ("I can run all the way to Texas and back but my Shelby can't" gets me every time and I've seen that movie like ten times.) or Brandy.

I don't know Brandy. I'm not even subscribed to her blog, but I will now because she seems awesome (I love Glee and juice boxes too!) and I want to be kept up to date on her hot awesome dude. Brandy is living her worst nightmare and when you're faced with a nightmare I don't know what to do but pray. I truly do believe in the power of prayer so I'm joining with several other bloggers to ask you to pray for Brandy's hot awesome dude. Here's the story:

My name is brandy. And I have a blog.

And a plea.

I use my blog to showcase the crazy I meet everyday, share the stories of the kids I teach and document my love for tequila, dairy products and the abdominal muscles of Ryan Reynolds. Rarely do I talk about personal issues on my blog- as personal as the dude that I adore (who I actually met through my blog- single ladies, let that be a very good reason to blog, the possibility of meeting someone as wonderful as my man), but I need your help. And it involves my dude.

He’s a guy who made math comics for my class, so they would love learning about addition. He’s the kinda guy who sends my friends gift cards when they are having hard times, who remembers every story I ever told him, who was the first person I celebrated with when I got a teaching job. He’s the guy who sent flowers to me at school- dozens of my favourite pink roses just because he loves me. He’s a guy who has spent a year patiently explaining (and re-explaining) everything there is to know about football during the important games when silence is preferred. He’s made me word puzzles and comics and stayed up late playing Scrabble with me (even though I beat him almost every time). He’s listened to me cry about school and family and jobs. He is everything I never knew I needed and everything I always knew I wanted.

The holidays have hit us hard. He’s recently been told he may have something called multiple myeloma- an incurable cancer, that gives a person an average of five years of continued life. Though this news has came as a shock, he continues to be exactly who has always been- spending his time worrying about me, rather than worrying about himself. He’s the most selfless individual I know- (he stayed late on Christmas Eve to work, so his co-workers could leave early) and a post like this would never be something that he would promote or encourage but when I’m overwhelmed and feeling helpless, the blogging community has always given me tremendous support and comfort, two things I desperately need at this time.

As I write this, the future is uncertain and we aren’t sure what’s happening. He’ll need to see an oncologist soon, to verify what’s going on in his body. My hope is that everyone who reads this think positive thoughts and if you are a person who prays, could you add him to your list? (You can refer to him as ‘brandy’s hot awesome dude’). If you don’t pray, please keep him in your heart.This cancer is only a possibility and I believe that the prayers and positive thoughts of people can make sure it never becomes a reality.

I want to give a big thank you to the blog owner who scraped their original blog plans and graciously put this up. My goal is to get as many people as possible to see and read this post. If you are reading this and want to help, copy and paste my plea into your blog or send a link through twitter, so more people can keep him in their thoughts. I would be so very grateful (even more grateful than I am to my friend who first showed me the picture of Ryan Reynolds on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. If you haven’t seen it, google it. You. Are. Welcome).

I realize this all sounds dramatic, a Lifetime movie in the making- but this is life. Right now. And I’m throwing away any hint of ego and am humbly asking for you to pray or think kind thoughts. If you are able to pass this on, thank you and if you know anything regarding MM- please email me (my email is on my blog). This isn’t a call for sympathy or a plea for pity. It’s just one girl hoping you can think positive thoughts for the person she adores. If my current heartache provides you with anything, let it be with the reminder that life is short, love is unbending and no one knows what could happen next. Maybe it is silly, but I really do believe that positive thoughts can make a huge difference. Thank you for reading this and if you haven’t already? Please tell someone you love them today.

I did.

image: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/renneville/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Trying Harder

When I started blogging, my goals were just to actually blog about something -- anything -- on a semi-regular basis, like at least weekly. Then as I got more into it, I decided to blog regularly five days a week. And I did that for awhile, but I wasn't always satisfied with the product. Some days I would be busy and just slap up a YouTube video, which is fine, but it wasn't consistent with my blog goals (Be a better writer, tell stories...). So I decided to not force things anymore and I would write when I had something to say, hoping I would have things to say at least three times a week. (This last transition occurred within 24 hours of signing up for NaBloPoMo. Oh well, maybe next year.)

This morning I was reading this post from Writing Roads and now I'm rethinking the quantity/quality thing again. Julie's feelings on the matter are right:

I mean, I hear what they’re saying – which is basically, ‘Don’t post crap.’ But my response to that is this: Figure out a way to post something good. Work harder.

So I resolve to work harder, and find something worthwhile, everyday. Well, maybe just Monday through Friday. 


image: r3v || cls

Week in Review: 12/4 and Blogiversary!

Wow. It's been one year of blogging thing. I'm pretty proud of myself for sticking with this. But mostly a HUGE thanks to my readers. I have a lot of fun doing this, but it would get boring after awhile without anyone to comment so thank you thank you. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside! I am sending you many virtual hugs right now.

Feel free to leave any thoughts or suggestions for the upcoming year in the comments or there's a link to e-mail me to the right. I spend a lot of time thinking about goals and plans for this thing but I can never make up my mind so now I will just let you tell me what I should do. Topics to discuss? more or less of anything?

My post from a year ago today/Evidence of improvement (at least I give you pictures now!).

I really love Lexington Children's Theatre and if you do some clicking on Facebook you can help them get $25,000 or something awesome like that. Trust me, they deserve it and are just amazing. Amazing productions, amazing outreach, wonderful people. So if you can, give them some clicks.


There has been a lot of doubt about the cause of Jane Austen's death because it's a tricky business retro-diagnosing people, but it's been in the news this week that once again, it was more likely TB than Addison's disease.

I've noticed recently that when discussing colors of things with Lee (like shirts) he likes to correct my "purple" with "eggplant". I think eggplant is the only fancy color name he knows so he likes to trot it out as much as possible. This would explain why, when I found the perfect color for our future kitchen, he called it "baby excrement" instead of "mustard". He even compared it to this one house we saw that truly had poop-colored counter tops but this kitchen and those counter tops are nothing alike! The offending counter tops had a lot more brown and orange in them. I am determined to see my mustard kitchen some day. Don't fear!

I also found some prints and cutting boards I want to hang up in this future kitchen as well.

Have I mentioned that I'm mildly crazed by the amount of Christmas crafting I have left to do? Probably twenty times. I decided this week that we're not sending out Christmas cards this year because A. I normally see, e-mail or call the people I really care about and B. Removing them from my to-do list brings great peace of mind. I think printing and filling out this gift organizer from The Project Girl will also help.

Happy weekend-ing!

image: Orin Zebest

Excessively Ambitious Weekend Plans

This is just an awesome picture I took at the zoo. It has nothing to do with what is about to follow. 

I've filled this weekend with more goals than is probably humanly possible, because I'm good at that and have a bunch of stuff to do. Perhaps I am most likely to be successful if I break it down into timed segments.

Friday
6 pm   Eat dinner with family
9 pm   Watch my Netflix movie (Crash) because I have been a ridiculous Netflix loser this month and watched nothing and I try to watch at least 4-6 because I'm all about calculating my price per film.
11 pm    Catch up on as many DVRed TV shows as possible: Glee, The Office, Project Runway, Models of the Runway (although I'm thinking that last one is kind of lame).

Saturday 
11 pm   Up and running. Not metaphorically, actually on the street running, during which time I will calculate a plan to start working out more regularly because I haven't been working out much at all lately.
noon   Hopefully it will be a long run, and now I shall do crunches. Then shower and look cute.
1 pm   Lunch
1:30 pm   Drive around town trying to find OPI's Moon over Mumbai. (Long story. For next week perhaps.)
3 pm   Return home successful and paint my nails. Perhaps finish catching up on TV.
3:30 pm   Finish writing My First Pride and Prejudice. Yes, I am turning Pride and Prejudice into a children's novel book/craft project for the cutest toddler in America. Of course, I've also thought about avoiding the whole mess and just buying her the comic book to get her started.
5 pm   Megan and Richie are coming over to visit and watch the UK game! I'm going to have UK fans to watch a UK game with! I'm so happy I could cry! To order pizza or cook? That is the question.
6 pm   Go Cats!

Sunday
9 am   Mass
10 pm   Coffee and donuts
11 pm   Church Round 2 with Lee's family
noon   Lunch
1 pm   Upload pics from Cedar Point. Write some blog posts for upcoming week.
2 pm   Work on children's novel book.
3:30 pm   Work on some craftiness surrounding someone's birthday present.
4:30 pm   Read some Lord of the Rings because I would like to finish it sooner than later so I can officially declare Harry Potter the winner.
6 pm   Dinner
Maybe this exercise wasn't necessary. Maybe I can get everything done this weekend. I probably should go to the grocery at some point...I should have put that in earlier...we'll allow this gap in the schedule because I'll be lucky if I stick to this through Friday evening. 
9 pm   Desperate Housewives premiere! Will Mike marry Susan or Katherine?! I DON'T KNOW!
10 pm   Get ready for bed and snuggle up with some Frodo until I fall asleep.

This seems to be totally achievable! Not nearly as bad as I originally thought. Perhaps I should always specify my schedule like this. We'll see how things are on Sunday night. *fingers crossed!*

I Feel So Cool!

If you head over to Clever Nesting today, (which you should do every day), you'll see the earrings I made for my mom recently. :)

One Word

So yesterday I mentioned some snazzy blog awards I have received along with ten things you may or may not have known about me. Today I'm taking the One Word Challenge from Heather at The Gamer's Wife!

1. Where is your cell phone? desk

2. Your hair? disobedient

3. Your mother? awesome

4. Your father? awesome

5. Your favorite food? tomatoes

6. Your dream last night? random

7. Your favorite drink? water

8. Your dream/goal? happiness

9. What room are you in? office

10. Your hobby? craftiness

11. Your fear? falling

12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? here

13. Where were you last night? home

14. Something that you aren’t? tall

15. Muffins? yummy

16. Wish list item? iPod

17. Where did you grow up? Owensboro

18. Last thing you did? pie

19. What are you wearing? casual

20. Your TV? newish

21. Your pets? three

22. Friends? bestest

23. Your life? happy

24. Your mood? shrug

25. Missing someone? friends

26. Vehicle? Civic

27. Something you’re not wearing? necklace

28. Your favorite store? Container

29. Your favorite color? blue

30. When was the last time you laughed? today

31. Last time you cried? Friday

32. Your best friend? Lee

33. One place that I go to over and over? grocery

34. One person who emails me regularly? sisters

35. Favorite place to eat? Brendan's

Now I shall pass this along to...

Jamie at Jamie's Rabbits
Hannah at Journal of a Rock Angel
Kasey at Thrifty Little Blog
Krysten at After 'I Do'
Amy at Haha. Wait. What?

Catching Up

I was super excited this morning to find that Heather at The Gamer's Wife had passed along a blog award. Which reminded me that a month ago Amy at Haha. Wait. What? had also given me a blog award that I completely slacked on passing along. All shall be remedied in a few paragraphs.


First comes first, a belated thanks to Amy for the Honest Scrap Award. As a recipient of this honor I must be honest and share ten things about me that no one knows. (Okay, lesser known facts would be more accurate because there's nothing that no one knows.)

1. On Sunday at our monthly JASNA regional meeting I won a prize for the highest score on the Sense and Sensibilty quiz. We took tests on all the novels and I totally bombed the others, including, my most loved Pride and Prejudice. You should know though that they were very difficult quizzes and I re-read S&S most recently.

2. My friend spent NINE months trying to convince me to meet Lee but I thought he sounded very unappealing and kept turning her down. Oops.

3. My first car was a 1986 Buick Park Avenue named Clairee. Yes, that was inspired by Steel Magnolias.

4. I feel like, over the past few years, I've given people the wrong impression about what I consider to be the Greatest TV Show Ever. Apparently my younger sorority sisters remember my love of Grey's Anatomy and in his best man toast Lee's brother referenced my affection for Gilmore Girls. However, my first and forever favorite TV show is Friends.

5. For awhile in high school I wanted to be a lawyer. Ha! That would've been a riot since I have issues with logic.

6. In high school I was voted Most Likely to Succeed and Most Likely to Become President of the U.S.

7. In college I was voted Most Likely to Move to England and Stalk the British Royal Family (mostly for their eligible heirs).

8. Despite my unathletic nature and the fact that I'm currently running a 12-minute mile (working on it!), I want to bike across England some day.

9. I want to learn how to play tennis. Largely because I like the idea of a sport where you get to wear skirts and games tend to take place at locations (i.e.2, country clubs) that serve cocktails.

10. I ate lunch with the same girls from sixth grade through my senior year of high school and we all still keep in touch.

I'm sensing that's enough about me for today. I shall pass this on to some fantastic people and have more blog award fun for tomorrow!

Caitlin at commonreaders
Jenn at Newlyweds
Pinju at Sensorimotor
Heather at The Gamer's Wife
Amanda at this is [our] life
Jill at Confessions of an Enginerd

I Feel So Popular

A couple weeks ago my dear friend Caitlin invited me to write a guest post for her blog on my beloved Jane Austen. Since we have been real-life best friends from back before when blogs were cool (Actually there wasn't ever Facebook then! Gosh I feel old. When I started college (7 dorm rooms down from Caitlin) in September 2002, there was no Facebook.), this wasn't too surprising because we're obviously each other's biggest fans. However, Hannah from Journal of a Rock Angel liked my post so much she asked to repost it! I feel so popular! I'm also a huge dork. Anyway, just go check out Hannah's blog and read my thoughts on Jane again. (If you want. I mean, how can you tire of her? I can't!) Thanks Hannah!

In other English dork news, I'm loving this:

The 100th

This is my 100th post. Wow.


I must admit that writing post 1 I didn't there would be a post 100. I had some free time and had started reading some blogs and kept having thoughts like, "I should write a blog post on [something mildly amusing that just happened]." Add that with my missing writing. Even though I only write when I have to (I don't have journals filled with random thoughts and poems and stories), I really enjoy it and needed a reason to start again.

In the beginning I thought this would be full of mildly-prolific thoughts on real things. I had actual visions of this being "deep." It's not what I thought it would be, but I've had a lot of fun with it, and I hope this little side project continues to grow and be worthwhile for me and you guys too. Even if that's nothing more than a shared appreciation for humorous YouTube videos.

image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10413717@N08/ / CC BY 2.0

My First Guest Post

My bestie, Caitlin, likes to blog too (We have fueled each other through this obsession.) and invited me to write a guest post for her blog because she's awesome. Her blog commonreaders is all about books so I'm sure you'll be shocked (irony) to know that I wrote about my dear Jane. Check it out, and all the other posts Caitlin writes because she is awesome.

For the Third Time This Month

I've been playing again with the design of my blog. It's getting a little ridiculous, how I change it up every two weeks, but I'm trying to put in some big efforts this time to get something that I will be happy with for an extended period of time. I'm putting in so much effort, I've even started a new fake blog so I get get it arranged there and then upload it back here.

Since this has become all I think about (I even woke up this morning and blog design was my first thought.), I thought I would share some places that I've been using for help.

• dafont.com has some great fonts that are easy to use.
• Our Blogger Templates has lots of great, free templates and useful information for installing the templates and making changes to it.
• Blogger Styles ranks all of their templates which is very helpful.
• Color palette selection is the toughest part for me. I've been using these sites a lot: Color Scheme Designer, ColorCombos.com and The Inspired Bride's collection of color palettes.

Randomly Found Internet Things

I was at AdRants today, one of my favorite blogs for doing "work research" and found a couple very interesting things.

I was very intrigued by the Tide Total Care commercial and it's promises, only to later by horrifically sticker-shocked when I went to go purchase it at Walmart. One should never be sticker-shocked in Walmart. Apparently though, it's just as good as another type of Tide at half the price, which works as well as the All Small and Mighty I've been using since college. Tide, you have lost my trust; Tim Gunn, never!

I watch The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, so on many levels I feel that I can't judge this. And I respect arranged marriages as a cultural institution as long as everyone's a willing participant and not 12. But arranged marriage realty TV? I'm not surprised it's on Fox and CBS.

Sarcasm + Cooking = Cooking for Assholes. Brilliant. (I don't think this had any relation to AdRants, but was found today.)

Color Crazy

It's that time again where I decide to change the look of my blog! Woohoo! This is only for the 5th time or so. I think I like the header (today anyways) and now it's just a question of colors. Suggestions welcome.

This is what I started with, but felt it was too summery and bright.

This is where I am as of posting.


Found this neato video of someone making art for the cover of the New Yorker on his iPhone. If only I was that artistic...

Makeover Complete?!

The combination of my indecisiveness and perfectionist tendencies can be crippling. I've been changing the look of my blog around a bit lately because I can never make up mind and I think I'm finally happy with it. We'll see. I'm still all tore up about my profile picture. I feel that it should showcase my most recent hairstyle (bob with side-sweepy bangs) (I think I just made up the word side-sweepy.) yet I don't have any great pictures of me with that hairstyle. I mean, I like the hair, but I chronically make dumb faces in photos and I'm being particularly perfectionist on this matter.

The highlight of the new blog look (Other than the fact that I made the header by myself in InDesign which makes me feel super talented.) is the tag cloud. I had a two-week stint on WordPress and have missed the tag cloud ever since. You too can add a tag cloud by following these directions.

Drama Drama Drama

Do I have some kind of drama addiction? First, it was The Bachelor, now I'm caught up in all this UK coaching bighotmess. Here's a little diddy for those of us who miss the glory days.




In case you hadn't noticed how my indecisiveness spills over into my blog layout regularly, thoughts on the new design? Is it too bright? When I look at it on my massive work monitor I'm just kind of like Whoa!

Decorating Style Extravaganza!!

Thanks to one of my new favorite blogs, I discovered a variety of online quizzes regarding my decorating style. These quizzes are much better than the lame ones on Facebook so I encourage this as a top-notch means of procrastination.

Sproost says I'm 33% Traditional Country, 33% Nantucket Style and 34% Wine Country.

Ikea says I'm Country Antique, which breaks down to 60% Country, 40% Scandinavian and 0% Modern.

MyDeco says I'm Funky Modern. Kind of contradicts the previous two, but oh well.

I do think it's kind of funny how I like "country" styles yet I actually do not like the country at all. (Other than a weakness for ducks and the British countryside. In Britain, the country makes me think of Jane. In America, it just makes me think of ticks.) I'm a city girl, with a weakness for whicker.

Awesome Internet Finds

I've found lots of fun neato things on the Internet in the past 24 hours.

I've always been a fan of dressing dogs, but apparently dressing ferrets can be cute too!

Creeptastically awesome YouTube video


I also found a new blog thanks to its recent CNN fame. Giyen, the author of recently mention blog, also participates in this blog/vlog, which I've really enjoyed watching even though I don't have kids.