Does this butt make my jeans look fat?

A friend who Nick and I just LOVE, and I don’t mean love like I ❤ In n Out, I mean we truly feel blessed to have in our life, Chad sends me e mails every so often that are so worth sharing. He’s a guy who I know seeks out God and tries hard to understand his love and how God wants us to manifest his love outwardly in the world. Anywho, this isn’t a blog to make Chaddy blush : ) Since I know he’s a reader of mine I’ll stop there.

I want to share an e mail he sent not long ago that I really enjoyed. It is a great reminder that God didn’t set out a bunch of rules for the soul purpose of testing us to see what we will or will not give up for him. Read it, think about it and let me know what you think.

“The point of the cross isn’t forgiveness. Forgiveness leads to something much bigger: restoration. God isn’t just interested in the covering over of our sins; God wants to make us into the people we were originally created to be. It is not just the removal of what’s being held against us; it is God pulling us into the people he orginally had in mind when he made us. This restoration is why Jesus always orients his message around becoming the kind of people who are generous and loving and compassionate. The goal here isn’t simply to not sin. Our purpose is to increase the shalom [Bell insists ‘shalom’ means the presence of the goodness of God, not simply ‘peace’] in this world, which is why approaches to the Christian faith that deal solely with not sinning always fail. They aim at the wrong thing. It is not about what you don’t do. The point is becoming more and more the kind of people God had in mind when we were first created.
It is one thing to be forgiven; it is another thing to become more and more and more and more the person God made you to be” Rob Bell , in Velvet Elvis

Thanks Chaddy!

PS  This pic is of a time Chaddy had the idea for us to switch outfits just to get a reaction out of our friends.  I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to be in a pic.  My jeans just fit him TOO well!  He’s hilarious!

Let’s start by saying I know it’s ValentiNe’s.  I just like the hybrid for Valentine’s and time (as in time of year).

So, am I jumping the gun on Valentimes?  Whocy?  It’s the best holiday ever, other than Halloween duh.  It bugs me when single people are like, “ugh, I hate it, blah blah blah, you just like it because you are in love, waa waa waa!”  I loved it long before I met Nick.  I mean who doesn’t love, love?  I for sure loved it before I was in it.  AND it’s a CANDY holiday.  If you didn’t plan your childhood around Valentimes, Easter and Halloween you were a freak.

Anyway, I wanted to share a Valentimes project I am working on and I am too impatient to wait til I’m done to share.  I have really crappy picy pics too because I took them when it was dark out with my cell phone.  We don’t own a nice camera (double : (  because we both took several semesters of photo classes) so this is what you get.

It all started when Nick and I were in Super Target and all of the Christmas stuff was 75% off.  We were in the chaos for about a half hour and found a few good things.  Then I found these glitter plants with LED lights all over them.  I mean I see something with glitter on it and I have to have it.  Since they were only $6 we bought them not really having any ideas.   Then it struck me. . . I could make my own light up glitter rose bush garden for Valentimes.  But how?

I went to Michaels and bought some cheap crappy silk roses.  No need to get the nice ones just to spray glue and glitter them.  I got home and had all my supplies-

Spray Elmer’s Glue

Screwdriver

Fake roses

Awesome glitter light up plants

Hot glue gun

1st- I pulled the flowers apart and took all the plastic pieces out of them and push the screw driver through to puncture a hole big enough to push the LED light through the middle.  I had them laid out and read for spray glue and red glitter.

2nd- I sprayed both sides of each petal, laid it on a paper plate and sprinkled glitter on it then flipped it onto a second paper plate and sprinkled the other side.  Continuing the back and forth until they were covered.

3rd-When there were enough petals to make a rose I pushed a little plastic bud piece around and LED light and hot glued the edge down.  Then pushed several pedals down, rotating them unevenly to make the rose look full.  To hold it down put another dot of hot glue in the middle.

I continued until I had glued and glitter (get it? like tarred and feathered) my entire hands.  At this point I am half way done.  I went back to Target and bought a second set of glitter leaves in gold.

Here’s what I have so far and I’m not positive where I’m going to put them.  I really want to make a sparkly rose garden in the back yard but the flowers aren’t weather proof : /

So I’m feeling like the pictures really aren’t showing how cute this is but maybe that will encourage you all to do it yourself and see.  The lights are so cute in real life.  They just add a glow to the flowers and reflect off the leaves.  But you get the point.

A lot of people have suggested that I sell crafts on Etsy.  I finally decided to give it a try.  We’ll see : )

Go to my Etsy Store

1.Promise Tangeman-Wurzell for making us look like movie stars.  They say a picture is worth 1000 words so . . .

2.My Suzuki Grand Vitara.  It will be 4 years at the beginning of February and my lease will be up : (  It was my first new car.  It has all the bells and whistles.  And I really wanted a black car with beige leather interior and wood grain panels.  Even though it’s just a Suzuki I always feel luxurious in it.  Ooh and it’s keyless!  When I got the car I thought, huh? I don’t get it?  But it’s magical! I’m really going to miss it.  You never have to take the keys out of your purse or pocket. Which sounds lame but once you get use to just touching the door handle button to get in and throwing your purse on the seat and turning the ignition handle, I can’t describe how convenient it is.  Not to mention, the sun roof, 6 disc in dash CD changer, seat warmers, cup holder cover thingy, automatic everything, etc. etc. etc.

Needless to say, if you are looking for a new car I highly highly recommend this car.  AND to top it all off the only money I have ever spent on the car is regular oil changes, tires once and brakes once in 60,000 miles.  The only reason I’m not trading it in for a new one is that we own another car and just can justify having 2 cars with me working only 3 days a week and Nick working from home.

3.HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 1 2 and 3!!!!  I LOVE LOVE LOVE these movies!  I own them all, know all the lyrics to ALL the songs, some dances.  I saw HSM 3 in the theater 3 times.  I cried every time i saw it.  I cry at the end of I Want It All because it’s the best number and any HSM movie and I totally get Sharpay.  I cry at Can I Have This Dance, and if you don’t cry when you see a couple do a perfect beautiful waltz you don’t have “dance ” in your soul.  And of course I cry at the end when they do close ups of all the main characters faces and the curtain drops for the last time.  HAHA I just teared up typing that!  I love it!

4. Ok maybe I shouldn’t say this one.  But those of you who know me well, know this all too well.  I LOVE saying bad words.  I’m good at censoring myself so I don’t offend people or say them around kids.  But my word, if you hid a tape recorder in my house you’d have a rated R movie for adult language.  And I mean, not just the taboo ones but the BAD words that no one wants to hear.  It’s just so funny to me.  They are just words that stir up such a reaction, good or bad.  And they really add to stories.

5. I can not put this one into words.  My girls Fiona Monroe and Karlene Mae.  They make me so happy I can’t imagine my life without them.  I always call them angels because if they had a comment bubble above their cute little heads it would always say “Be warm and happy.”  That is the message they were put in my life to tell me.  And I mean every time I see them my heart melts.  I can see them 1 minute, melt, walk down stairs and see them at the top of the stairs a minute later and melt all over again.  I just ADORE them.

This is Fiona.  She is my sassy sassy princess.  Everything is on her terms, she always has to look pretty and is constantly grooming.  That’s her on the extra chair in Nick’s office.  He calls her his little co-worker.  How cute is that?  And look at her pink nose, could you die?  It wrinkles when she eats.

This is Karlene.  She is honestly the sweetest cat I’ve ever met.  She loves me so much that it’s funny.  She can’t stop purring when I say her name or pet her or even just look in her general direction.  She is like that with Fiona too.  Which is great to observe because Fiona is obviously annoyed by the attention.  Karlene just ignores Fiona’s social ques and keeps on rubbing against her and purring.  It’s so cute!

She’s also our little injured baby.  She has a bad hip so we have to be gentle with her which is so weird for me.  I love being rough with cats and throwing them, for real they always land on their feet and hit the ground running.  I can’t even attempt that with this little angel.  Sad.

So my girls are total opposites, I have a sweet sweet sweetheart and the princess of sass and I LOVE it.

Here we go again. Christmas is upon and it’s time to decorate to our hearts content. Every year I enjoy picking new colors for my decorations and gift wrapping. ’06 was all about patterns. Nick and I were celebrating our first married Christmas so I was so excited to decorate our little 1 bedroom apartment. That was probably my favorite year for gift wrapping. And our tree looked great up against our red wall!

’07 was the year we moved into our house. Move in day was December 22nd so we didn’t get to do a lot of decorating. Just wrapping gifts and lights out front. But I got my idea from the Potter Barn catalog and used newspaper, brown paper bags, solid red, and a dark green flat paper that I stamped with a gold stamp all over. It was a lot of work but well worth it. I tried to dig up a picture but couldn’t find one : (
’08 was all about gold, silver and fuchsia. That was a fun challenge. Luckily a lot of stores were going with the theme of non traditional colors. The gifts looked REALLY cute. I also love finding ornaments, candy even a mini gumball machine to add to the bows on the gift. I think it really says “It’s the thought that counts . . . and I put a lot of thought into this : ) “

Drum roll for Christmas colors 2009. . . you guessed it (because it’s the title) red, white and silver. I haven’t even bought the gifts yet so I still get to do that but here’s what I’ve got in the decoration department.

So, I’ve got our mini tree on the coffee table because we’re not doing a tree this year : ( Then a little display I but together on the breakfast bar with old pieces I had in the Christmas box. The candy jar is new. It’s $1 at Michaels and the peppermint balls were $2 in the dollar section at Target. And the wreath around the candle is last years garland. I’m loving my dining table center piece. I had the jars and candles already and found a string of red wooden beads at Michaels and voila, center piece city!

Onto my favorite piece for this Christmas. . . I had a vision of what I wanted but when I saw this feather I new it had to be the item that POPPED. And it does! Then I went out back and pulled a little branch from our ficus tree sprayed it silver and painted it and threw some silver glitter on it. I stole a few red beads from my center piece and rolled them in red litter and hot glued them onto the branch.

I found a really cute silver glitter quail at Michaels and a some sparkly star bursts at Target so add some extra shape. Then I picked up some foam balls and painted them with glue and rolled them in glitter. I threw it all together on a $3 silver platter and. . .

Done and Done. Homemade Christmas display and a fun project to do on the weekend.

As a lot of you know I’ve never had a sip of alcohol in my life. For those of you who don’t know I’ll explain: I just don’t see the appeal. I like to be in control of my decisions and I’ve seen friends, who I love and respect, basically make fools of themselves. I don’t think these are bad people and I believe that they enjoy feeling this way so who am I to stop them? Even my own wonderful husband enjoys drinking and I still love him. But it’s not for me.
Some more background of my dislike for alcohol is that I’ve seen what alcohol can do when it takes control. I got the pleasure of growing up with a family full of alcoholics. The severity went from “I just drink at the end of the day to relax” to “I drink non stop, I have drinks hidden around the house and I also use illegal drugs.” No matter the severity these loved ones all depended on alcohol.
Most of them struggle with the conscious daily decision to drink or not, which believe me is much harder than it sounds. And it lead to one family member spending a lot of his life in prison, and another actually died making a stupid decision while drunk. So, do I believe that the part of your brain that helps you make good decisions gets turned off by alcohol? Absolutely. Do I ever want to put my family through the pain of me making a stupid decision while intoxicated and change their whole world? Never ever ever ever. Choices and accidents and 2 VERY different things. I don’t want to choose to put a chemical in my body that would cause an “accident”.
I know these are extremes and not everyone has been hurt by alcohol, however, open a news paper and see how many people are killed a day by drunk drivers, bar fights, etc.
Now, having all that experience under my belt I was researching marijuana today and realized it pretty much has all the same effects as alcohol plus the cancer causing agents of tobacco. What I don’t get is why are alcohol and tobacco legal and marijuana is not? Either way I wouldn’t use any of them but, wouldn’t it make sense that either all be illegal or all be legal? I mean why not start selling marijuana in liquor stores and tax the crap out of it? People who want to use it do anyway so why not make some money off of it? Or, if the lawmakers really believe that it is too dangerous for citizens to make their own choice about using it, why not make alcohol and tobacco illegal?
If I were to make the laws and would say; Let’s educate everyone on the effects of all of these 3 drugs and let them make their own decision. Hopefully natural selection would do it’s job. Yea that was harsh and a lot of times people under the influence end up killing innocent by standers and waste our tax money while we pay for them the rot away in prison.

Let me start by apologizing for the lack of posts. I’ll make the excuse that I worked long hours 2 weeks ago then went out of town for a week. I trust that you are all willing to forgive me so let’s forgive, forget and move forward.

Kimmy Dumont and Megan Hebenstreit are my 2 besties. Don’t ask why, it makes no sense. Especially to Kimmy, the hippy who lives very intentionally (kiss kiss Kimmy). I think they tried to get rid of me by moving a whopping 982 driving miles away from me. Well being the genius that I am I just bought a plane ticket and flew out to Denver. Suck on that Bitches (don’t worry, it’s endearing).

Side note- This was only the second time that Nick and I have been apart in our 3 year marriage. I have to like you A LOT to leave Nick to visit you.

Kimmy and I had a master plan to surprise Megan with my visit. We had to keep it under wraps for about a month. Wild, because Megan and I call or text about 10 to 20 times a day. Well we did it and I showed up on Megan’s door step last Tuesday. I was wearing a dress so I flashed her when she opened the door. I figured, had someone already blown the surprise of my visit at least she’d be surprised by someone exposing their underpants at the door.

Nothing too crazy happened while I was in town. It was incredibly cold and snowing so our options were limited. I got a great massage one day. Megan got more than she paid for from her masseuse. I crocheted mittens, ate lots of Megan’s baked goods. Megan and I found a little sibling for her amazing cat Thany, aka Nathaniel, Nate, Natey. I slept in the ghetto where Kimmy lives one night. We saw a gang of 3 seedy looking boys walk down the street at about 2 am : / I went to work with Kimmy and found several pictures of myself up in her office.

We pretty much just did the usual, make fun of each other and innocent bystanders. Laugh a lot. It was a fun trip!

From there I flew to the OC. Kimmy and I planned it so that we would fly there together. We got to fly over the Grand Canyon and that was awesome. I took so many pictures.

My sissy-in-law Kristy and nephew Chase picked me up from the airport. We had some time to kill until my brother was done working so we walked around Balboa for a little bit. Chase was adorable as usual. We hit up my brother’s work Halloween party for some free candy and dinner. Chase was absolutely the cutest kid there. He was the Angels’s rally monkey, could you die?

Then it was on to Temecula for my mom’s 50th b day party. I got to be in charge of decorations and center pieces. So fun! I got several mason jars and mini candle holders and candles and went wild. I also used the lids of the jars and the bottoms of mini terracotta pots, you know that little part that catches the water, to hold candles. I filled the large mason jars with water and used floating candles to add a water elements and give the little light show another level. We hung white japanese lanterns around the pool and glued battery opperated flickering “candles” in them. It turned out very nice.

The only failure was the floating candles for the pool. We just couldn’t keep them lit or away from the wall of the pool. We ended up throwing them all in the jacuzzi and just let them go out when they did. We couldn’t spend the whole night hovering and re lighting.

At the end of my trip Nick and I got on the plane to take off and there was quite a bit of turbulence. When the plane started to really bump around I thought for a second that we were going to die. Not because I’m afraid of flying but because I had spent the last 6 days with the people I love the most and I thought, this may be how I’m meant to go.

So this one time Nick and I were driving across the desert on our way home. We brought our good friend Chad with us and were having a great drive, no music just great conversation and snacks. The mood got mellow for a short time so I grabbed an empty bag of flamin’ hot cheetos (pretty much my fav “bad” snack) and started enjoying the left over crumbs. After a few tiny bites Nick glanced over at me and his face turned to absolute horror. At that moment we both came to the same realization.

About a half hour earlier in the drive Nick had decided, no better time to clip your nails but on a long drive. He had no where to store the clippings but an empty flamin’ hot cheetos bag! That’s right I was munching on my husbands finger nail clippings.

Neither of us could get a word out through the laughing/gagging so Chad was in the back of the car shouting “What happened!? What happened!?” We finally got the words out and Chad was the only one level headed so he was trying to calm my gag reflexes telling me not to throw up.

Somehow I managed to not vomit and was left with a great story.

Alright, I’m going to try to do a “5 Things I Love” every Tuesday. It’s Tuesday, here we go again. . .

1- I love making and eating chocolate chip cookies! What makes my cookies different? Well I wasn’t always good at making them, so I would just buy the break and bake. Nothing wrong with that. Break and bake cookies are delicious, quick and easy. But when you feel like baking, break and bake just doesn’t cut it, you know? So I got to thinking “Why are these so much better than my made-from-scratch cookies?” I observed the ready made dough and thought “this is so much thicker than my dough.” Duh, thicken up your dough, right? Well I did that by adding lots of extra flour at the end of mixing and tasting to see if it needed a little extra brown sugar or vanilla extract and TA DA, homemade cookies just as good as the pros. Oh and if you are like me with chocolate, double the amount of chocolate chips and/or chunks!
(The picture on the right says “Tear here to make sweet memories”)
P.S. I LOVE making cookies for others so if you want some just let me know.

2- No picture for this one. Good thing too, I don’t want to cause all you ladies to lust. I love Conan O’Brien. That’s right L. O. V. E. love! I don’t think I need to elaborate because the reasons are obvious. Who doesn’t love a funny man? And yes, I find him very attractive.

3-Dressing Lexi up. This is the latest creation stripes, polka dots, and a leopard print bow in her hair. We’re breaking all the “rules”. You know what I say, No rules=Endless possibilities!

4-Mugs! Didn’t know that I loved mugs until I started running out of room in our cupboard. I’ll touch on some of my favs. Our wonderful friends Jess and Eddie came across the 2 San Fransisco mugs at a garage sale and thought of us. So glad they got them for us, I love love love them! The Brown and Blue Disneyland mugs I hold close to my heart. I bought them with the Disney dollars that Disneyland so generously gave me for my b day. It’s written with the traditional font and they they are so beautiful in person. Pretty heavy and sturdy, the font is raised with a stitching printed on it. When you take a sip you see the beginning of Walt’s speech on the opening day of the park “To all who come to this happy place, welcome” written inside. Makes me tear up every time I hear it. Disneyland and San Fran are 2 places that will never get old for me.

5- And now for my love/obsession. My day planner. Yes, I carry it everywhere. And I keep my checkbook in it and balance everyday and compare it to my online statement. If people tell me they don’t keep a checkbook it makes me feel oddly sick. You can’t count on the on line ledger, it sometimes takes a week for things to clear! What if you overdraw!?
I also plan out our dinners for 2 weeks and write them in the “to do” section for each date. This really helps with not wasting any food and keeping the pantry and refrigerator clean and organized.
And duh, I write in all the days that I work, plans that I make, vacations etc. . .

What would I do if I ever lost this!?

I love to decorate. In our first apartment I thought I knew what I liked. We bought a set of living room furniture(couch, love seat, chair, coffee table, end tables, matchy, matchy , matchy. . .) We painted the walls a darkish green/gray and bought ALL dark wood. When we were done setting the place up I realized, I liked the look but not for my house. Too traditional and predictable. It just didn’t capture my essence.

When we bought our current house I had about 6 months to shop and look at magazines and get ideas while the house was being built. I determined that I love colors, floral patterns and some vintage items. Little did I know decorating your house is a never ending project! In a good way:) Nick and I are constantly rearranging, disagreeing and just changing things in the house.

When you discover you love to decorate you soon discover most furniture out there is blah, blah, blah boring. So, Nick and I love to buy stuff that will fit where we want it, then do what we want with it. It’s fun and something to be proud of. Not only does it show your guests a little bit more of who you are but it also makes your house your home.

Here are some things I’ve done with boring furniture, paint, new knobs and some imagination.

Just completed this desk yesterday. I’ll let you in on a secret, I sketched out those flowers before I painted them. Nick was nervous about me free handing it.

I’m in love with the knobs!

This is our old black coffee table. I painted if off white and sanded the edges to make it look worn.

Another adorable knob from Anthropology that jazzed up the old coffee table.

This is the new coffee table, since I stole the other one to paint and put in the loft. It was all white in the as is section at IKEA and Nick painted the top and I did the pattern on the bottom.

Tell me what you think!