Tag: Home

  • Lately

    There has been a lot going on of late. I would like to expound on each thing, but for now, I’ll just give you a quick overview.

    I have started going to a chiropractor. I would venture that probably half of my church back home is going to this chiropractor. I went when I was a kid and Mom worked for one, but it has been a very long time. I had some discomfort in my left shoulder that gradually got more intense and into regular pain. So, I decided to hop on the bandwagon and check them out. I’m committed for a year (call me crazy!) and hopefully will see the good results my friends and church-family have been seeing. I’ll share more on this later, definitely. For now, you can just go check out their website.

    Last Thursday (two Thursdays ago, I guess, since Sunday starts a new week), friends of mine gave offered us tickets to the Cincinnati Tennis event, ATP/WTA Western and Southern Open. I loooove professional tennis. It’s a lot of fun. Matt had never been to a game so that makes it even more fun for me. We were able to get tickets for Thursday night and watched Rafael Nadal play and then Serena Williams. They both won their matches. We even had box seats since the tickets were from someone who works with Rookwood Pottery – that’s an iconic Cincinnati pottery business and they make the trophies given out at the tournament. Very fun. This was our view for the evening:

    tennis01 tennis02

    Nadal had a wedgie the entire tournament and Matt commented on it every time he picked at it…well, maybe not every time. It felt like every time because he picked out his wedgie just about every play. I’m not a huge Nadal fan anyway, so it was annoying. But he’s one of the best in tennis history, so it’s still a good watch…unless he’s picking his wedgie. Dude, get some different undies.

    Last Sunday, a man at Matt’s church was giving away from homegrown veggies. I grabbed up a zucchini and then sat around trying to figure out what to do with it. I also have some apples sitting around. Nice, plump, juicy apples. I got the big idea to add some apple to a zucchini bread. Sounds yummy, huh? Oh it was! But a word of warning – it might be a better idea to dry out the apple bits before adding them to your zucchini bread recipe. As it was, my recipe made either 24 muffins or 2 loaves of bread. I just have one pan for each, so I made 12 muffins and 1 loaf. Everything took probably twice as long to bake. I was up very late. I am wondering if the muffin recipe I have just makes really dense breads. I have yet to figure out how to make nice, fluffy breads. I’m guessing it is just something to learn. Regardless, they WERE very yummy! It’s almost all gone between Matt and I. Very dense. I would share the recipe with you, but I’m not really sure it worked the way it was supposed to. So, you can go to http://allrecipes.com and look up “apple zucchini” recipes. There are a bunch of things on there. I’m so glad.

    muffins

    Lastly, We were getting kind of low on our laundry detergent. I pinned more than a year ago this recipe for making your own. Claims to get 9 months of use out of $22+ of ingredients. That sounds fabulous! We haven’t had to buy detergent yet, so I thought it might be time to go ahead and make our own.

    Here is the website with the original recipe:

    It smelled so good while I was mixing it all together, and all the ingredients are supposed to be gentle for sensitive skin. I used it for my laundry last night and everything smells great! Only 1-2 tablespoons for each load. It’s just the two of us (as opposed to the blogger’s 5-member family) so I’m hoping it lasts us way longer than 9 months.

    laundrysoap

    Oh and all of our ingredients cost $22.10. Woot! Matt’s mother saw my pin and made this over a year ago. She has awful water to work with at their house and this is the only stuff that seems to work and actually get their clothes looking, feeling, smelling clean. When I posted pictures of the finished product, people came out of the woodwork on Facebook commenting about how they have been making their own and love it or asking questions about how to go about doing it themselves. As you can see, we have an HE washer, but it doesn’t seem to have any problem with the detergent. I put the date on some freezer tape and stuck it to the side of the box so I can see how long this batch lasts. I’m pretty pumped.

    Have a great week everyone! Hopefully, I can check in with you before another week and a half rolls by.

    Oh, and our sunflowers are kickin’ it!

    sunflowers

     

  • Getting Married: 21 Weeks – Happy New Year!

    It’s a new year! 2013 has arrived and I can’t even begin to express how excited I am for it. Last year, I will admit, that I had a bit of hope that Matt and I would be together and would be together forever. I don’t know how I knew; everything just seemed to be going that way. We weren’t an official couple yet, but I started a daily calendar, a tweet-like journal if you will, to keep track of all the wonderful happenings of 2012 and to add to it throughout the following years.

    I got the idea off of Pinterest, of course. The idea is to use vintage postcards and index cards as dividers and calendar pages.  I tweaked mine from the website and didn’t use a fruit box. Instead, I found a pretty box at Michael’s and used that.

    week21 box calendar 03

    I started mine mid-January, after, I think, Matt and I became an official couple. We went to the nearby Antique Mall and I found the postcards I was looking for – there are a ton there! The postcards represent a month of the year and serve to keep the index cards organized.

    week21 box calendar 02

    Some of them matched the month I planned to used them, and others were just sites that I really enjoyed, like mountains and elephants and beautiful homes or farmsteads. The ones pictured above are (left to right) for February, May and June. So, with my months sorted out, it was time to put together the index cards.

    The tutorial has the index cards being cut down a lot more than I wanted to, mostly because I didn’t want to cut down my post cards too much to “match.” So, I decided to get the index cards without lines to keep track of the days. This rule applies to most of my journaling; I prefer not to have lines because I like to have freedom to move all over the page. 🙂 I bought a date stamp and began stamping the cards with each day of the year, even throwing in February 29th – hey, it’s a day too!

    week21 box calendar 01

    And then, you just write. Try to keep the details short and sweet – just enough to jog the memory of the event. I had a lot of fun putting it together last year. The headings can be super big and important or just something trivial. Last January, I was pretty sick for about 3 days in a row…and each day I said so. In August, Matt and I sat down and looked through the ones i had for the year so far, he was really glad that I included that he was my very first kiss ever. I’m really glad for that too. I may post about it in the future.

    In other news, I’m pretty sure we finished our wedding registry at Menard’s. We hadn’t even started it yet, but it was a lot of fun running around that huge place adding things to our list. Word of advice, don’t freak out, but when they give you the scanner gun, they will take and keep one of your driver’s licenses until you return it. Matt was all excited that he beat me in getting his out to show the guy and then he had to fork it over for the 2+ hours we were in there.

    week21 yardsport
    Matt really wanted to register for this $5,000 cart, but we couldn’t find a SKU for it anywhere. (ahem…totally as a gag)

    I told Matt that we should probably plan a groom’s shower for him so that he can get all the tools and stuff and then I can get the other homey girlie stuff. Note that it was I who registered for the hammer, though, and plan to use it. Matt says it’s too big for me, but I’m sure I can handle it! Hope you have a great week!

    Menard’s registry!

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com

     

  • Getting Married: 22 Weeks – Festivities

    Wow! So, I think I made it through my first “couples” holiday season! Quite a ride though. Let’s see, there were 4 official family events going on. Saturday afternoon was at my sister’s house with my mom and sisters and family. Sunday afternoon was at my dad’s home with the sisters and family. Monday prevening/evening was with Matt’s father’s extended family. Tuesday started off at my house with my mom and then I headed out to Matt’s parents’ house for some more Christmas and is mother’s sister’s family came over.

    We had a lot of fun and it was so nice to have Matt there for all of it. He works such a goofy schedule, but he finished his last day on 1st shift on Friday and then had 5 days off! It was perfect. 🙂 And the weather was real cooperative until the day after Christmas. The news called for a blizzard and boy was that fun, but that’s another story.

    snowflake lights

    For Christmas with Mom, we have started exchanging names between the adults, but then all getting something for the kids. It’s been fun and Mom usually finds something goofy for all of us to have and enjoy. This year were glasses that changed the shape of lights when you wore them. I tried to capture the sight as much as possible through my camera. Above is the best I could do, but I think you can get the idea.

    Sunday, we had a really sweet service at my church. We were scheduled to have communion and Pastor Tim came up with a creative way to tie all of the life of Christ together in one service. It was a blessing for the morning.

    week 22 church

    After church, we headed over to Dad’s house for the next Christmas party. They just got a new puppy named Casper. He’s a Maltese, which means he doesn’t shed so there are no allergies. He was teeny tiny and a frisky little ball of fluff. I love dogs, bigger dogs though, but Casper is a cutie.

    week 22 casper

    I had to work half a day on Monday, but after work, I drove up to The House and hung out there until it was time to go to his grandpa’s house. Matt’s dad’s family is all over this area, and so there are frequent get-togethers with his aunts’ families and cousins and such. Most of them are married and there are some young kids that run around. They’re pretty cute (the kids, anyway) and I’m enjoying getting to know all of them.

    On Christmas Day, I woke up at my house with Mom and we opened gifts – I got a slew of kitchen utensils and sewing supplies. Just what I was wanting! Plus, the kitchen utensils are yellow 😀 After a while, I drove up to Matt’s parents’ house and spent the rest of the day there. Oh my word, I had a haul there! Here are some things I got for Christmas:

    week 22 elephant

    I’ve been eyeing this jewelry bowl for a while now. I pinned it to my Elephant board on Pinterest a while ago. It is so sweet, I just love it!

    week 22 darth

    Yep, the Boy got this for me. When you press Vader’s head, the screen lights up red. So cool. 🙂

    week22 sewing machine

    I.AM.SO.EXCITED.FOR.THIS!!! I have been worried about how I’m going to get all my sewing stuff done once I’m married without a machine, and I hate the idea of borrowing someone else’s. This Kenmore and I are going to spend lots of time together. Don’t worry Matt, not as much as you and me. 😀

    On Christmas Day, I got a message from a dear friend on Facebook that another of our friends, Chris Rushing, had not shown up to his family Christmas party. They tried to contact him and when he didn’t respond, they went to his place and found him. He had died suddenly and left such an ache in the hearts of all our friends. I head over to his profile every so often and read the messages to and about him from loved ones. He was one of the sweetest and most encouraging guys I’ve known. And hilarious! I can remember all the great convos we’ve had over the years and how much laughter there was in them. He will be so missed, but I take such comfort in knowing that he is now with Jesus – probably singing karaoke, or getting a road trip coordinated. I bet there are road trips in heaven, yeah? 🙂 I don’t know what he’s up to, but I know that he’s with our Saviour now. Please pray for his family and friends as they start the new year without this man.

    Chris01
    Chris Rushing
    September 25, 1982 – December 25, 2012
    “War Eagle”

    On a happier note, I also got a message from my step-brother that my newest niece was born on Christmas Eve! She is gorgeous and I’m in love with her already. I can’t wait to meet her. Her name is Evangeline Grace. I don’t get to see my step-bro and his family nearly enough, but I love being an aunt. It’s one of my favorite things ever. Matt and I were talking about how, when we’re married, he’ll be an instant uncle – 14 times! That’s right! I’ve got 7 nephews and 7 nieces! Seems wild to think about, but it’s a blast!

    EvieGrace
    Evangeline “Evie” Grace
    December 24th, 2012; 5:17 pm CST
    7 lbs 9 oz; 20.25 in

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    I’m getting married to my, you guessed it, best friend on June 1st, 2013! Matt and I are super-excited and since we have quite a bit of time to plan this thing, I decided it’d be fun to blog about it. Well, maybe not always fun, but at least informative and it might give me a welcome distraction. You can find all the posts by clicking the “Getting Married” tab on the right of this page, or by clicking here. Thanks for stopping by!

    My Pinterest Wedding Board

    Our Wedding Website on WeddingWire.com