He makes me laugh

My husband was sent for dog food since we were out.  I am very particular about what my animals eat.  Remember this post?  So Scott knows exactly what to come home with.  Purina One Lamb & Rice Adult dog food.  For me, working with animals and all...it's really easy to remember.

I realized today that Scott could not tell you what the dogs eat, but he can point at it.  He didn't know what the food was called, he simply knew what the bag looked like.  Or rather what the dog on the bag looks like.

"I just get the red bag of food with the 'African-American Lilly' on it."

What?  Oh!

Our Lilly:

Our chosen dog food:

Oh my love...you crack me up!

Do you hear wedding bells?

First we decorated...

 

And then we set out some food...

And some ladies - both family and friends - gathered round....

All because my beautiful sister got one of these..

 

And that was reason for us to celebrate!

Congratulations to the bride-to-be!

 

We love you so much!

What a nose wants...

You can have the sweetest house and the cutest decor, but if your carpet smells like cat pee, it's all over. 

When I am exhausted from the day and walking in the door I am capable of many things.  I can relax next to the overwhelming pile o' laundry.  I can ignore the dishes in the sink.  Dust on all the furniture can wait.  Nothing in the fridge?  A glass of water will do.  But I cannot, simply will not, most assuredly, do not stand stinky!

Candles take too long to catch up.  Plug-ins smell great, but for me they simply mix in with the smell du jour. Scented garbage bags?  Umm, a joke in my opinion.  The fan above the stove...not helping!  Commercial carpet cleaning solution works for stains but not smelly.

"Ahh, is that lilac, fresh linen and rotten banana peel?  Did you not take out the trash?"

And for my house with umpteen animals, an open box of baking soda is quite frankly a joke.  I do not have room to open a dresser-size-box-of-baking-soda to combat all the smelly that can happen within my walls.

I have a lot of animals, but I don't want a visitor's sense of smell to tell them that before they even are greeted by a cold, wet nose.  If I walk in dead tired and smell --insert stinky scent here--then it's up and at 'em to clean whatever the offending scent may be.

So having a litter box and three perfectly housebroken dogs under the age of two in my house has transformed me and my sensitive nose to be a smell expert.  Well, expert might be a stretch, but I have got the scent thing pretty much mastered. 

First stop on the stink war, vinegar.  Vinegar can do a thousand things...literally.  See?  But for me, the problem with vinegar is that well, it stinks!  And cleaning stinky with stinky is just not what this girl (or her nose) wants.  And cleaning with baking soda?  Not nearly as smelly as its vinegar counter part, but the two of them just don't have a great scent...

After many trials and errors my favorite cleaning solution is as follows:


Magic Solution:

• 1/2 cup of water **
  
• 1/2 cup of a really fantastic liquid soap
• 1 & 2/3 cups of baking soda
• 2 tablespoons of white vinegar.  (You must add the vinegar last because adding vinegar directly to the soap will cause the soap to be spoiled. And that my friend is another post entirely!)
• Then add your favorite essential oil until your nose is no longer offended.  (A couple of drops goes a very long way.)
• **Add as much water as you need to make this solution easily pour into a clean spray bottle and easily spray out.  It depends on what brands of items you buy so it can vary just a little.
  

This works.  It's cheap!  It's green.  It's not poisonous.  It won't leave a residue (making dust stick to whatever you are cleaning causing you to clean more...bad cycle...) 

And if your pet pees on carpet -

• Run like you are on a gameshow to get a rag or papertowels.
• Blot like crazy while you are scolding the tar out of them.
• Unscrew the bottle of your "Magic Solution"
• Saturate the area and leave it.

When it dries, you will not smell the urine. 

Ahhhhhhh! 

Smell that?

No?

Success smells sweet!

To hit or miss, now that is today's question.

While driving, do you ever swerve to miss a paper bag because there might be kittens inside?  Do you ever think about stuff like that?

Confessions of a Festive Freak.

Okay, so I was down in the dumps.  Big time.  But the key word in that sentence is was.  Thank you to Lisi & Laurie for your uplifting words.  I will be e-mailing you both soon I am quite sure.  :)

So, what do you do when you are down in the dumps?  Me?  I decorate!  And man let me tell you, I love me some Halloween.  Seriously?  As an adult am I even allowed to love a creepy holiday this much??  Hope so because I definitely do!

So after Scott got home I begged (well actually I whined) that I needed him to get me the boxes (BIG boxes) down from the attic in the shed because I was going to decorate!  It was raining and that did not deter me.

I deligently began to transform our normal house into something only a "Festive Freak" can appreciate:  

First, the porch.  Earlier today I went to the garden shop nearby and purchased the largest mums I could find.

And then I draped cheesecloth over our mantle and added a couple of black rats along the top.  It looks great in real life, but admittedly it looks cheesy in this picture.  Sigh.

Moving on!  I also took black paper and taped a HUGE black silohuette of a cat slinking in one window.  In the next window, a large black spider.  This is an inexpensive way to really make your house one of the coolest on your street.  All these black cut-outs need is a light on in the room and voila!  You have a masterpiece!

This is a borrowed picture because try as I may, the lighting on my actual window is simply not working.  But at least you can get the idea...

And the dining room centerpiece...

The doormat:

Happy, happy Halloween everyone!

Disatisfication & Ramifications

Today I feel like I'm living a quote from one of my favorite movies, Before Sunset. If you haven't seen this incredible movie before, do yourself a favor and rent it immediately.

There are only two characters in the movie and they spend the entire time walking through Paris and talking about life. In Before Sunset, one of the characters (Jesse - played by Ethan Hawke) says of his life:

"You know, to be in the moment, and I just feel like I'm designed to be slightly dissatisfied with everything. You know? I mean... always trying to better my situation. You know, I satisfy one desire, and it just agitates another, you know? Then I think: to hell with everything, right? I mean, desire is the fuel of life."

I truly feel that sentiment today, I suppose a victim of my age. I'm 28 years old, nearing 30 quicker than I'd like, and I feel like I've accomplished little in my life. Nothing seems to ever make me truly happy. I always need something more, something else, something just a little further down the road. It's never enough.

Then logic kicks in and reminds me that success is in the eye of the beholder, that which only effects other people's perception of you and they're not worth your time in the first place, and I have a job which is pretty darn good in this economy - two in fact.  I have a husband who loves me so well, a beautiful house, a great family, friends, really cute dogs, enough money in the bank...blah, blah, blah....  But none of that is soothing at the moment.

I've just never been good with justifications; they taste bitter in my mouth. Some days (today in fact) I'm a professional at pointing out the negative, the evil, the bad, the dirty... and have absolutely no desire to be finding the good in myself. It's a heavy cross to bear when in fact it's you who makes you hold the cross.

I'm never good with change, but change is what I'm constantly seeking. Ironic, isn't it? My mind scans all available options - but I settle for being slightly uncomfortable and slightly dissatisfied with my station in life rather than largely uncomfortable making those changes.

You'd think I'd know better, constantly being uncomfortable really teaches you how to be in the current moment, but I just can't fathom doing that or living that way. I need stability but I long for change.  Ugh!

I generally write with purpose, but today it's entirely for internal vindication.

I'm sitting here, listening to itunes wishing a cat was purring on my lap, trying desperately to think of how to get this out of my head. I've been nearing the edge of tears all day. I'm positive it's a result of my recent diagnosis or maybe even my childhood friend's phone call.  I haven''t seen her for nearly 2 years and talking to her just reminded me of how little genuine contact I have in my life right now.  Ugh times two.

I went for blood work at the doctor's office the other week and when the results came back - they were not normal.  First I got a phone call to say that I needed to schedule an appointment for a follow up with the doctor.  You know, when you have perfect results - they just send you a letter.  Crap!

So in short, I have endocrine issues that make me overweight, have less than stellar skin, and fertility problems.  I have never been really large - just not always thin.  I have never had bad skin - just not always clear.  And I've never been pregnant - and maybe never will be?  In one way it's justification that although in the last two years I have been a size 6 all the way to...well...double digits...it's not me and my fascination with ice cream so much as my body's inability to regulate itself.  And in the other way, well, here I sit feeling sorry for myself.  Remember this post?  I had no idea at the time that this question might one day burn me. 

Fertility issues.  What a burden.  Seriously!  I mean if I were simply infertile, then I would know to just let it go and move on.  But I am not - just...well...keep your fingers crossed?  Give up?  Make a new family plan?  Try hard?  Take fertility drugs?  See a specialist?  Do nothing?  Do everything?

So, for now, it's hiding under stability. Maybe someday soon I'll learn how to make change not hurt and scare me so much.

I will take my medication and remember that life has many things in store for me and although it may not look like I once thought it would, it will be what was always intended to be.  Relinquishing control....and. just. waiting.

Tomorrow I will again strive to find my annoyingly optimistic self.  But today, I am going to wallow.

Good Grief!

I would like to make a formal (yes! my blog can be considered formal...) complaint to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart - whom at the end of September had all their Halloween stuff out and if that was not bad enough, Christmas items too!

Oh Wally-World! If I didn't love you so much, I'd hate you!

Hmm

Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?

Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?

Did you ever notice that when you blow in a dog's face, he gets mad at you, but when you take him for a car ride, he sticks his head out the window?

Do the Alphabet song and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star have the same tune?

Why did you just try singing the two songs above?

Happy Friday!

Who dunnit?

While on the phone with comcast cable trying to explain that we did not order the porns that we were charged ($10.00 each!) for...

Us: "We have just moved here and the date that the porns were ordered, we had not yet even set up a television!"

Them: "I'm sorry but there is simply no way we can remove those movies from your bill. If we do that for one person, then we must continue to do so each time someone swears that they did not order the adult films."

Us: "But I am 120% sure that no one in my household ordered this when we did not have a television!"

Them: "Every once in a while wires are crossed and your neighbors' selections can wind up on your bill. I can send a technician out to check this for you."

Us: "That would be great. We refuse to pay for another movie that we did not order. I don't care if it is Free Willy or Look at my Willy, we will shut off Comcast!"

Them: "I understand, we do not want to lose a customer. We will try to make sure this does not occur!"

And meanwhile someone on our street is doing the I-got-to-watch-dirty-movies-for-free dance!

Sigh...

Fall is in the air

Last weekend Scott and I attended a beautiful and elegant fall wedding.

Crisp green apples,
live monarch butterflies,
chrysanthemums,
brown and orange dresses,
and a beautiful outdoor shrine,
made me feel super pumped about the upcoming fall season.

So beautiful.

Congratulations to the new couple!

Before, During and After

Before

During

After

My mother told me to pick the very best one...

I painted my kitchen. I painted my living room. I painted my bedroom.

What color should our plain jane white white white bathroom be?

Suggestions? What color is your bathroom?


Help!

Dog Days of Summer are nearly gone...

Fast foward!

I was teaching Sunday school a few months ago and had planned to watch a video with my four year old group. When I pulled out the VHS, it needed to be rewound. I popped in the cassette, hit the rewind button and the whirring began. The children stared at me, waiting.

"Miss Elizabeth, push play!"

"I will as soon as it stops rewinding."

"What's reewhining?"

What?!?!?

In the land of instant communication and DVD's and CD's, I realized this new generation was not used to waiting for well, anything.

_______________________________________________________

Well my life feels like it has been in fast forward the greater part of this year. So this post is to rewind time back so that I can fast foward you to the present.

So recapping we go...

Ready?

______________________________________________________

It began with this lovely, sun glassed boy.

Hi Scott!

Scott is my outdoor country boy who stole my heart. Last year found us doing pretty much everything you can imagine. He taught me how to lose touch with my city self.

Fast forward one year later.

Wedding Rehearsal:

Here is my beautiful niece displaying her flower girl skills.

Good food with great friends.

The Scotts with baby Annabelle who would be born just one month later.

Spending time with my family to be...


Then our big day!

We left the night of our wedding to head to the airport. From there we flew the next morning to catch our cruise ship and sail to the Bahamas.






Just after unpacking and getting back into a routine, the house hunting began. We soon found what would become our first real home.



So we moved all in. Boxes, boxes, boxes and more boxes.

Scott and I plus our furry friends are very, very tired.


And more to come! Stay tuned...