Twi-Hard

It's okay, don't be jealous.  This was how I spent part of my night Tuesday and some of my morning Wednesday.  Twilight Saga Midnight Premiere of Eclipse.  I know, I know.  I feel a little dorky, and kind of like I'm twelve.  But I will totally admit to loving this series, the books and the movies.  And as you can see, I'm not alone.

We had a blast, and I tromped some twelve year old kids.  What can I say, they were trying to take our seats, we had them flanked.  And as Sondra said "You can't argue with flanking."  I pretty much told them they had to more, but in a semi-nice way.  Okay, not so much, but I didn't yell or bust them up or anything, so that was good.  We love sitting in the first row of stadium seating, it has the bar which you can swoop under when you inevitably have to pee during the several hour long premiere. 

Michelle (my amazing and lovely and I will absolutely have a conniption if they take her from me co-worker) has proudly been displaying an Edward doll on our desk at work.  He was taken out of the box and allowed to join us at the movies last night/this morning.  We all took pictures with him, and Michelle threw around threats about man-handling her boy.  Luckily, we survived.

Nicole, Mere and I all met at Crocker Park at 6:30 Tuesday evening, yes that's right 6:30 for a midnight movie.  It'll probably be even earlier for the Harry Potter 7 premiere (I have totally jumped on the midnight showing bandwagon...but only if I can have the next day off work...).  We made an evening of the whole thing and it was super fun.  We walked around, ate at Champps (terrible service, by the by), and got in line to wait it out.  Nicole made us all goodie bags, we donned our various Twilight Saga gear, and settled in for a bit of a wait.  When the time came it was pretty much running of the bulls.  It's hard to save seven seats with just two people, and I almost wiffed it.  But in the end, after we kicked some girls out of our seats, made everyone else scoot down one chair, and caught our breath we got what we wanted.    It was definitely an amazing night and even though it's pretty lame I look forward to the next midnight movie with my girls.

Who Ordered the Shiny Wallpaper?

So how about that shiny wallpaper... This absolutely amazing wallpaper covered the landing, stairs, and upstairs hallway in our new house. Whoa. It's ridiculous...well it was ridiculous. I mean, who thought that was a good idea? Certainly not me, which is why it came down...oh, the second day we owned our house. Except for one bit, the bit that covered the laundry chute door on the second floor. That's right, we saved some, for posterity's sake...and so that we can show it off to everyone during our cookout next month.

PS: Our Realtor told us that her family had metallic wallpaper much like ours when she was growing up. Apparently the stuff can spark during certain lightening/thunder storms. Whoa (again)

Also, All you lovers (and haters) out there, check out the Twilight Saga shirt. It's coming up, what can  I say!?!

PS (Again): I totally admit to re-posting this (if you want to check out the original just click on the Homemade-Handmade-Heartmade link to  the left, click on my name, and scroll down a bit..  But honestly, this post is simply re-airing here in its original form, as seen on HHH).  I love it, it makes me laugh, and seriously, how could i resist sharing this joyous wallpaper with the world - twice?   

Willing to Help

Whilst getting ready for a wedding recently, I was lamenting over a lack of shoe options.  I had a dress that I wanted to wear but no legitimate shoes to go with said dress.  Now, I have tons and tons of shoes.  And many beautiful heels that I truly love and adore.  Over the last year or so I've also acquired quite the collection of adorable flats.  

Here's my sob story, I have the perfect heels for the dress I wanted to wear.  Alas, I'm not allowed to wear them.  The fact that I have an amazing amount of tremendous heels that I can't even wear for half a day torments me.  Constantly.  Flats with a fancy dress at a wedding are not so much the height of fashion.  I needed some dressy, open shoes...of which I have zero.

Enter Steve.  Amazing, always trying, willing to help, Steve.  He pulled out a pair of flats from my closet (that did actually match my dress, color wise).  He showed me the shoes...and offered to cut the tops off.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, my loving husband offered to use his many handy-man skills to fashion a pair of dressy, open shoes out of plain, casual flats.

I love him.

Finding a Forever Family

One of my dearest friends in the world is embarking on a journey.  Meredith and her husband are starting the process (again!) for International Adoption from Ethiopia.  They originally started down this long road over a year ago, that journey was paused in order for another to take place.  Last summer they adopted their beautiful son, Gabe.  With Gabe turning one in a few months they have felt led to once again start traveling down the path that is International Adoption.  To that end, they have set up a wonderful, virtual coffee shop.  Hop on over, read about their hearts, read about the organization JustLoveCoffee, and help Mere and her family bring home their child(ren).

Where Coffee Brings Family

You can also follow Mere and her story by clicking on her link to the left - Our Journey Home.  I always look forward to reading more about her, her family, and their journey.  I honestly feel I learn something new about Mere and see more of her wonderful heart each and every time I talk to her or read her Blog.

 Me and Gabe 

hanging out, 

Loving life,

and bouncing a ton.

Waking Up is Hard to Do

Steve and I have been trying to get up a a bit earlier than normal each day.  We spend time together at our table drinking coffee and doing devotions.  Well...that's the idea anyway.  We've been pretty hit or miss.  It turns out it's super hard to get out of bed at 5:30am when you don't actually "have" to get out of bed.  We've been good at least three days a week so far, and I'm trying not to put too much pressure on us about doing better.  I'm trying to do better, but I'm also trying to realize that these things take time.  And getting out of bed at 5:30am three days a week is pretty stinkin' good; especially when you compare that to the zero days a week we were getting up before.

Here's to three days next week...maybe even four.

Zoo-Ville

It's almost Zoo Season for us. It's probably been Zoo Season for a lot of people for awhile now. But we're only just getting into Zoo-ing as it's been House Season for us the past few months.

I only hope this years Zoo visits prove to be as eventful as last.

Me after I almost ate this Caterpillar, completely by accident of course.

Steve pimpin' it out - Zoo Style. He definitely busted over a dozen children under the age of twelve to get in this car.

Who Comes Up With These?

Painting is a pain.  But it's also the really fun part of re-doing an entire house. 

Here is a list of house re-doing activities I've participated in recently, in order from most to least horrendous experience:

• Stripping stain off of floors and just generally re-finishing floors
• Painting trim/ceilings
• Taking down wallpaper
• Painting walls

Anyway, painting is seriously fun.  Not only do I love seeing such an instant transformation, but I also enjoy picking out colors, ordering the paint, opening the cans (those little widget things are fantastic!), stirring, and hammering the cans closed again.  But what I'm really getting at here is that I want to name paints.  My dear friend Sondra and I have talked about this recently, paint names are simultaneously ridiculous and amazing.

In no particular order, here are the colors of my house.

• Butter Rum
• Native Soil
• Subtle Touch
• Porpoise
• Manhattan Mist
• River Valley
• Wine Frost
• Silverberry

Seriously, apart from Porpoise, do you have and clue what colors these paints actually are?

First

If you are reading this, you probably know us.  I won't bore you with all the details, let's just make it short and sweet.  We just celebrated our third anniversary (I still wish it was acceptable to wear my wedding dress as everyday gear).  We've been homeowners for approximately a month (we thoroughly believe in sweat equity - that of our own and  people we know, so watch out).  Trying to live life for God and with His will guiding our own desires is something for which we are striving (we get it wrong more often than we like, but we are more and more attempting to align our will with His).  That was a pretty quick summation of our lives, hmmmmm, maybe we should do more....

This little slice of the web that is our blog will probably be filled with useless tidbits and stories from our daily lives.  But you should probably check it everyday on the off chance that one of us imparts some pretty serious wisdom, or is ridiculously funny.

That's it for now.