I made something GROW! And it isn't in my uterus!

Please observe the delicious bounty Bri and I grew in our little garden. I present to you ONE anaheim pepper and THREE little green tomatoes. Pretty soon we will be self-sustaining.

We used to have one giant green tomato (how do those things turn red???) but it mysteriously disappeared while we were on vacation :( 

Also, why do my eyes look a weird grey/blue color? And why do I look like I have brassy blonde streaks in my hair??

In other news, my co-worker had her baby boy on Saturday. His name is East and I can't wait to meet him :) AND my other co-worker is preggers too...the baby is due in March. Seriously is someone putting something in the water?? Pretty soon I'll be the only one without poopy diapers to worry about. I consider that a good thing. 

Swap till you drop

First things first. What is a swap and why on earth would someone want to participate in one? From what I can gather a blog swap is basically when one blogger sends another blogger "gifts" related to a theme. A swap is organized by a blogger and other bloggers are free to "enter" the swap. Then the host-blogger pairs up the partners randomly and you are on your way to shopping for a complete stranger.

I know it sounds a little weird/scary to shop for someone you have never met, but I like to think of it as a glorified grow-up version of penpals. And it is also like having Christmas in September.

The theme for the swap I entered is Tea. Yes as in herbal tea. Earl Grey tea. Matcha tea. You get it. Good thing I drink A LOT of tea. The host is travelling to London and wanted to do something related to that (and obviously the British drink a lot of tea). Click here for more details about the swap (and to read more of MRMs fabulous blog).

I found out my swap partner last week and I am really excited to start shopping for her. We have a budget of around $25 and can spend it on anything "tea-related" (tea leaves, mugs, tea diffusers, etc.). I've got a few things in mind and am just waiting to hear back from my partner regarding her particular tastes and style. I love to shop for other people's gifts, so this should be a lot of fun.

I know many of you must think I am crazy for doing this, but don't come crying to me when you have nothing to celebrate Christmas in September ;)

Stay tuned for my tea swap updates!!!

Teaser...

Here's a list of some things I have planned for your viewing pleasure...

• My office makeover. Work office not home office. I spend most of my time at the office or in my bed (working and sleeping) so I think I need to make both into the most fabulous places possible.
• A new installment of Let's Get to Know. I think it is time I introduced you to Deuce...my little, crazy, wild, mentally unstable, obese cat. (And yes I know it is impossible to be little and obese at the same time)
• The story of Georgetown. Why exactly was I (and Em) yelling at someone in a bar? I'm a lady, shame on me!
• The swap I entered. Yes, tis true. I entered a blog swap (!!) and I am excited about it, so there.

I've got a lot more up my sleeve (keyboard?) too, so stay tuned!

p.s. WTF Google Analytics?! How is it possible that I had ZERO visitors yesterday when I got comments on a post?! Grrrr help!!

I have found the one...

I think I have found "the one."

Yes, please behold the Jonathan Adler woven duvet...

I love the color, I love the pattern, I love the simplicity, I love that it will go with blue and cream. Basically as soon as I saw this I knew. It really is love.

Trash TV Tuesday?!

Since several of my "trash tv Tuesday" shows have ended I decided to check the Yahoo listings to see what else might tickle my fancy (remind me to NEVER use that phrase again. It is kind of gross). Take a look at these "winners"...

"Child Frozen in Time" on TLC @ 7pm. Here is the little blurb: "The story of Brooke Greenberg, the 16 year old who hasn't aged since she was 11 months old, baffling medical experts." Ok what?!?!?! So there is a 16 year old out there who still rides around in a stroller and eats in a highchair?!?!?!? I will most definitely be tuning in to see what this is all about. I am also currently resisting the urge to Google her and kill the suspense. Most likely, as is typical of many "trashy" shows, I will end up turning this off or watching something else. The TLC commentary can get a little old and I HATE it when they do dramatic reenactions...

"Tomb of 1,000 Roman Skeletons" on NatGeo @ 8pm. Apparently a tomb was discovered in 2006 that held 1,000 skeletons. Normally I wouldn't watch something like this, but I may tune into the end to hear the shocking conclusion (should there be one). My guess is that this show will be ALL about speculation - some "experts" will be interviewed and express their opinions on the matter, but in the end no one will ACTUALLY know why the skeletons are there.

"Top Chef Vegas" on Bravo @ 8pm. Missed this last week so I must definitely tune in. Like Project Runway, I find Top Chef to be vastly entertaining simply because the "characters" on the show are truly talented. I wish I could cook something more than pasta, curry, and chili. 

"The Universe" on History @ 9pm. This week they are highlighting what the Earth would be like should the Moon not exist. My gut is that we would be dead if the moon didn't exist, but I may need to find out for sure by tuning in during the commercials of another show. 

And now, just for kicks, a couple of shows I CANNOT stand:

"I Didn't Know I was Pregnant". Worst. Thing. Imaginable.  Not only would this mean you are completely incapable of assessing your own weight, one day you would just randomly feel the most extreme pain EVER and have no preparation. Not to mention you could be anywhere. Typically the people on this show end up in gas station bathrooms or on the floor of McDonalds. I hate this show. It is so melodramatic - complete with D-list reenactors, in your face interviews, and medical gore.

"The Secret Life of the American Teenager." Probably the worst show on TV. I haven't actually seen a whole episode but DAMN does Molly Ringwald look bad/weird. I have no idea what the story line of this show is actually about but I think one of the kids had a baby. Who knows? It is like an overly dramatic, poorly acted, cheap version of 7th Heaven (and that was bad). 

Anything with Paris Hilton, "New York", mud/jello, people eating gross things, or those "talent" shows where they only show 15 minutes of "talent," 30 minutes of commercials, 14 minutes of "suspenseful moments," and one minute to announce the winner/loser for the week (Top Chef and Project Runway are exempt from this category for obvious reasons). 

And with that I am off to do some cleaning and settle in for the night. Viva la Tuesday!

Ikea-not-so-awesome

I'd like to take the opportunity to recap my excursions this past weekend...

Let's begin with my horrid and long drive up to the DC area. Now I think we can all agree that DC traffic is beyond comprehension. It is just that bad. Throw an accident or construction into the mix and you can find yourself trapped for hours. Think taking an "alternate route" will get your around the 95 gridlock? Think again. EVERY roadway is discustingly packed (If you think of the US as a human body, DC is the constipated bowel). I don't think there has EVER been a time that I have been in the area (visiting or just passing through) that I didn't spend a significant amount of time giving my right foot a workout...gas, break, gas, break, gas, break...you get the picture. I should have monster calf muscles my now. So, of course, my trip this weekend was no exception to the DC traffic rule and it ended up taking me just over 2 hours to get to POTOMAC MILLS (a mere 80 miles from my humble abode). I am pretty sure the monsoon like storm had a lot to do with the bad traffic (people tend to forget how to drive as soon as a raindrop hits the windshield), and I was somewhat entertained by the fact that I couldn't even see 2 cars in front of me thanks to the rain. Thank goodness for Cosmo radio on XM...I don't know how I could survive such a boring trip without it. 

And onto Potomac Mills. If you follow me on Twitter (yes I Tweet. If you don't, then don't judge. You can't possibly understand Twitter unless you actually participate. So get over your social media fears and "lack of time" and follow me) you will know that I didn't have the greatest of times while visiting this outlet-shopping mecca. For some reason EVERYONE in the DC area picked 3pm on a Saturday afternoon to do their shopping (ok I should have known better) and I spent a large part of my time debating whether or not my purchases were worth standing in 50 person lines. I mean come on Nordstrom Rack!! TWO CASHIERS?! Needless to say, after all was said and done I didn't walk away with much. 

Ikea was pretty much a crash and burn experience for me too. I had practically no room to walk around, let alone swoon over the delightful Swedish bounty. I did end up scoring some nice art for the dining room though, so I will consider that my success story for the day. Observe:

I also bought some dark chocolate frames to go with the rest of the dining room decor. Now all we have to do is figure out how to rig fishing wire to make these babies hang. 

The rest of my trip consisted of a lot of wine, cheese, Georgetown, crepes, and *gasp* more shopping at Potomac Mills. The ridiculousness of my night out with the girls must be saved for another post, but I promise you are in for a treat...

But yes, you heard me correctly. After swinging by Tyson's Corner with Lo to purchase this...

...I decided to head back to Potomac Hell and scope a few last minute gifts for Brian's birthday. I also HAD to stop back in at Nordstrom Rack and purchase a birthday gift for myself, A Le Sportsac tote that will become my gym bag. The print is "Delight" and I got it for $45 off of $110...go me. 

Delight.

Overall, the trip was a success and it was SO NICE to hang out with Em and Lo. Now, unfortunately, I am sitting home sick. I really thought sickness was a winter thing. Oh well...

Not Me Monday

Oh what a week...

• This past week I definitely did not religiously check my Google Reader every 15 minutes to distract myself from my ever-growing to do list.
• I did not skip the gym all week. Oh wait. I haven't been to the gym since March. Wow and I suck.
• I did not attend 80s night at Banditos and dance like a true child of the 80s.
• I did not buy a Longchamp bag AND a Le Sport Sac as early birthday presents to myself.
• I would never ever ever yell at/scream at/verbally abuse anyone in a bar. I would especially never ever lie to said IDIOTS about the "well-being" of my friends (explanation about this to come...).
• I most definitely did not judge every single person at Potomac Mills on Saturday. I do not think that place SUCKS beyond belief (except for Ikea).
• I did not competely forget to turn in our volleyball registration for next season. Let's pray we make it on the roster.

On the plate this week...Brian's birthday, a meeting a City Limit (ummm what? Isn't that a bar?), lunch at a golf course (for business ;)), a volunteer training at Capital Ale (another bar?!), and attempting to maintain my sanity at work.

Lifetime...

As I am sure many of you know, Project Runway is premiering tonight on LIFETIME. I loved the Bravo seasons and I hope it is basically still the same show. I consider the show "real" reality TV since the designers are CLEARLY talented. No joe-shmoe off the street could just walk on and sew a dress out of items found in a grocery store. Oh and I LOVE Tim Gunn. He is probably one of my favorite "celebrities" of all time. I wish he was my neighbor. He would be like my sweet gay well-dressed uncle. Anyways, I hope you all are tuning in tonight! 

More Unsolicited Romance?!?!

Ok. I know what you are thinking... My bf is some sort of sappy, cute, romantic sub-human woman pleasing machine. But really, I assure you, he isn't (what guy REALLY is?? Ok the gay ones, and I love them for it). No offense to Brian of course, and no offense to my mate-picking abilities either. I love him for many, many reasons, but he is not exactly what I would call romantic. Well at least we tend to define romance in VERY different ways (i.e. His idea of showing me how much he loves me is by emptying the dishwasher everyday when he comes home from work. Yay for that and I'm glad he does it, but I am hard-pressed to call that romantic).

So anyways, when Brian DOES manage to do something romantic it completely blows my mind. I am pretty sure that he tries NOT to be romantic most of the time so that the romantic things he does do seem that much more special. But who knows? He is a guy; his motives will always be confusing. Moving on with my point here...

Yesterday Bri and I planned to go to Hondos, a nice restaurant here in Richmond. I had a giftcard from a while back and we decided it would be fun to go on a "date." Bri made reservations for 6:30 so I made sure I got home with enough time to change and relax for a while. When I got home Brian was on the couch reading his book and he asked me if I could get the mail. Since I am SUCH a nice girlfriend, I did this, and noticed that we had received a new Netflix movie. These are moments I dread normally, since Brian is really good at picking CRAPPY and WEIRD movies for us to watch. We haven't watched a normal movie in a very long time.

Yesterday was no exception for me in terms of expections. I picked up the movie and opened it, expecting to see another documentary about income taxes or a testosterone filled b-rate zombie apocolypse film. But LO AND BEHOLD...it was BRIDE WARS!!!!!!!!!! Ok I know that sounds soooo lame and girly but newsflash...I am a girl and I occasionaly enjoy a poorly made chickflick. I had been bugging Brian for a while about renting or on-demanding the movie, but he always insisted we watch something else (can you blame him?). So it turns out that as a part of our "date" night he thought it would be nice to get the movie for us to watch after our schmancy dinner. I really almost cried when I saw the movie had arrived, especially since he had to "order" it from Netflix on Monday for it to arrive on time. He PLANNED something!!! I was also touched by the fact that my movie-obsessed-"i-refuse-to-watch-chickflicks-especially-the-notebook" boyfriend allowed such a girly movie into our house for us to watch TOGETHER. Who wouldda thunk that such a small gesture could mean so much.

When all was said and done we had a nice dinner, the movie was alright (Bri messed around on espn.com and his fantasy sports page basically the whole time), and I got a nice serenade of "Mad" by Ne-Yo at the end of the night (again, completely obscure). Cheers to you Bri, keep up the good work.

Ikeawesome

It is no mystery that I love Ikea and pretty much all things Swedish (even the meatballs) so I have decided to take my monthly trip to mecca and check out the new 2010 bounty.

The closest Ikea to Richmond is up in Woodbridge (just outside DC) and is probably an hour/hour and a half drive from our house. This is an easy trip, but just far away enough that I don't accidently buy out the whole store. I don't like shopping without a specific plan for what I might "need" (ok more like "want"), so I have come up with a few items to search for so I don't end up spending a ton of money:

1. A vanity or something to hold my make-up and other girly things. Maybe something like the picture below. The top folds up into a mirror and the drawer pulls out to hold make-up etc. I kind of think something like this belongs in a bathroom so I'm not sure if it is right for me considering I want to house the vanity in the bedroom.

Or maybe something like this:

I like the fact that I could sit down and do make up and I like the contemporary feel. Although I'm not so sure about the white...

2. Art work. Our house is majorly lacking in this department, mostly because we have plaster walls that make hanging art a bit of an issue. We currently have NOTHING on the walls other than paint since we are afraid to do any major nailing. The entire house has picture rails , but this requires the use of special hooks and fishing wire (eww fishing). Ikea has these cool simple stretch frames that you staple fabric to to create art:

I might pick a few up, along with some fabric, to see if I can whip something up. I feel like these will be lightweight and therefore easy to hang on the plaster. Ikea has TONS of cool fabrics...

3. A bedspread and throw pillows. I am currently on duvet cover #3 and I am not totally satisfied. We started out with white but I have moved that to the guest room. I bought a cover from Ikea a while back that I THOUGHT would look nice, but disliked it almost as soon as I got it in the room. In fact, Brian has never seen it. Now we are using a nice (but boring) quilt from Crate and Barrel. The room is painted "White Satin" which is actually quite blue. I really like the color but am having a hard time nailing down the perfect duvet. I like the idea of using creams and oranges like this:

I also plan on checking out Homegoods, Pier1, and C&B to see if I can find something perfect.

And onto throw pillows...I ALWAYS see throw pillows that I like, but never end up buying anything out of fear that it won't match or go with anything. On this trip I plan to actually buy something, even if I fear that it won't fit anywhere.

4. http://www.easternmarket.net/ Ok so I am not going to buy the Eastern Market in DC but I do plan on swinging by. One of my bffs, Em Grace, found a lot of great stuff there so I'm hoping to do the same.

In other news, this weekend's impromtu DC trip should be a lot of fun. I'll be staying with two of my favorite people in the world (Em Grace and Lo) and we will undoubtledly be having lots of annoying girl fun :)

Here we are with another bff, Kate (who is FRESH back from Turkey!!).

Lo, Me, Kate, Em Grace

Anyone else have exciting weekend plans? Or find anything awesome at Ikea recently?

Happy hump day all... I leave you with a haiku:

I heart Ikea

Swedish patterns, gadgets galore

99 cent breakfast

Not Me Monday

Time to jump on the Not Me Monday bandwagon. The following is a list of things that I most definitely did NOT do over the past week. To find out more about Not Me Mondays click here.

• I did not deliberately wear SPF zero "sunscreen" all day on Friday while sitting out by the pool. And I am most certainly not feeling the burn now...
• I do not read the bfs fantasy baseball banter on a regular basis (with his permission of course; they are hilarious, especially when they aren't about baseball. Sorry boys, you got me). I also did not find out that some his friends have read this "poorly written" blog. Oh to be a kid again...
• I do not have over 200 emails to deal with today.
• I did not read 3.5 of the Harry Potter books while on vacation. I am not a complete nerd, I just needed something to read.
• I did not eat 2 whole bags of black licorice. I also did not go crazy and buy pop rocks and zots to add to the sugar high.
• I did not cut back my cucumber plant to the point of no return. I also did not sort of kill all my plants by restricting their water supply all week.
• I am not freaking out about the impending doom that is my 25th birthday.
• I am also not freaking out about having to attend a wedding all by myself. Anyone want to be my date??
• I am not totally sad that my cats were locked up in HELL while I was galavanting around the beach. I am not pissed that "kitty condo" really means semi large cage. Bri and I also did not rescue the cats by carrying them through HELL instead of forcing them into their carrying cage.
• Deuce did NOT poop on my arm while driving back from HELL. The cats also did not freak out and cry the whole way home. They are so not traumatized.

1/4

Yikes. Only one more month until I am a quarter of a century old...

Beachy Keen

Oh the vacation life...

So it turns out we do have "internet" here in the beach house, although I am not convinced that it is completely reliable. 

First things first; how is it already TUESDAY?! So far on this vacation I've helped my brother ring in his 21st year on this earth (we went to a Durham Bulls game then went back to his house to celebrate with his friends. I felt old, but in a good way), laid out by the pool for many hours (and have practically nothing to show for it. I use SPF 8 and I still don't get any sun. wtf?), visited the Currituck Lighthouse, had shrimp and grits for dinner on two separate occasions, dominated at Scattergories, and finished 3 entire books (Confessions of a Shopaholic, Harry Potter 1, and Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin). I wish I had 2 weeks here...

This morning the rest of the crew (Mom, Dad, Uncle Ted, Tristan, and Meredith, his gf) went off to hang glide while I stayed home to worry about their lives. I've done some insane/crazy/adventurous things in my life but I HATE flying with a passion that burns like no other. There was no way in hell that I was going to be towed up 2000 ft by a dinky little airplane and then released to flutter down to the ground in a hang glider. Yikes. It turns out they all survived and I managed to have a nice relaxing morning here at the house (I think I even see some tan lines starting to form!!!). 

Next up on our agenda is kayaking, jet skiing, and eating more junk. Brian is also FINALLY getting down here tonight. He had to work Mon/Today and attend the "finals night" at poker tonight. He's also taking our little monsters to the Holiday Barn where they will enjoy their own private condo, "cuddle time", and endless hours of staring into fish tanks. Seriously they live the good life...

Ok - back to dorkdom. Time to start Harry Potter 2 (I know I'm 12 but it is pretty good beach reading). 

MIA

Yesiree Bob I will be MIA for about a week starting TODAY!!! I am hoping to have access to the internet while we are at the beach, so you may actually see more posts from me than usual since I'll have tons of free time to blog. But if we don't have internet access for some odd reason (i.e. the owners of our beach house are old or weird or not into technology), then you might not be hearing from me for a while (now, now, wipe those tears).

In other news I need to say how AWESOME our volleyball team, I'd Hit That, is. We used to suck last season (we were in the wrong league), but now we are straight up ballin, shot callin. Last night we went 4-2 which is respectable and we went 5-1 and 6-0 the past two weeks. Volleyball is so f-in fun, especially when you have a great team and the vball gym serves $5.75 pitchers of Blue Moon/Yuengling/Miller/Yum. Oh and really good hotdogs.

In other, other news, my co-worker Holly gave birth to a little cuddley wuddley baby girl early yesterday morning. The baby's name is Ivey (no they didn't do that on purpose, Ivey is a family name on her hubby's side). So, instead of working this morning, my co-workers and I drove down to the hospital to visit and even got to hold the little thing. She is only 6lbs and SO CUTE.

And now, it is off to Raleigh to celebrate my baby brother's 21st birthday!!! I can't believe he is 21. Wow. Can't wait for a real life college party ;)

Adios amigos...you'll be seeing A LOT of me, or none of me, over the next week.

In the mean time, my BF has decided he wants to be as cool as me and started his own blog, The Enlightened Seeker (yeah he's deep like that). It isn't a very girl friendly blog (baseball, movies, random ramblings), but he is quite witty (when he uses spell check) so take a look.

http://theenlightenedseeker.blogspot.com

Hump Day Haiku

Today's topic: Trash TV

Housewives, prepsters, Flav.

Why not find love on a bus?

I am addicted.

Trash TV Tuesday...A recap

I don't know about all of you, but I love the trash TV that comes on on Tuesdays. Another good thing about Tuesdays is that Brian plays poker on these nights ("safe" poker - not the kind where he actually has to bet his own money. This is at a restaurant/bar, not a casino), so he is usually gone from about 7pm - 11pm (sometimes later when he wins, and he often does). So on a typical Tuesday I'll come home from work, grab a quick dinner, and Brian will be off. Then I can settle in on the couch and tune into the trash. I find this a completely acceptable thing to do, especially considering I only do it once a week. The trash is just SO TRASHY on Tuesdays that it is hard to resist. Let's take a look at my hourly play-by-play...

8:00pm
I'm usually done eating/blogging/surfing the internet/cleaning/whatever at this point. Just in time for Jon & Kate Plus 8 ridiculousness along with some America's Got Talent, 90210, and Real Housewives of Atlanta mixed in there too. I don't usually watch any of these shows all the way through...I prefer to mix and match my trash, at least for the first hour. I used to think J&KP8 was cute and interesting, but now I, along with most people, find it pretty disturbing. I always thought Kate was a controlling b*tch and Jon was a weird balding whipped jerk. Now these sentiments have been confirmed. The kids are still cute, so at least they have that going for them. AGT usually keeps me entertained during the commericals of the other shows. But I HATE how awkward it is when someone really sucks but they think they are really awesome. So sad. 90210 intruiges me because the characters look SO OLD even though they are supposed to be 15 or whatever. Talk about melodrama! The plots are so nuts and confusing that I have no idea what is going on in this show. I continue to watch anyways, just in case I start to "get it". And finally RHofA. There are really no words to describe these whack-o women. I enjoy RHofNY or OC, but Atlanta?!?! Another "there-are-commercials-on-every-other-channel" type of show for me.

9:oopm
Now the real fun begins. NYC Prep. If you watch this show then you know how utterly ridiculous it is. The kids on this show make me look back on my high school years and wonder why I wasn't beat up or attacked by the "cool" kids on a regular basis. I mean, HOLY CRAP! These kids party, "hook-up" (whatever that means), galavant around Manhattan, live WITHOUT THEIR PARENTS in the city, go to fashion shows, and spend entirely too much time getting ready in the morning. Half of that stuff I didn't do until I GRADUATED COLLEGE at the age of 24. And these kids are 15 and 16. I was a total nerd at that age. I didn't even THINK about galavanting around, let alone living without my parents!! Honestly, it makes me fear for my future children. But at the same time, my future kids won't be growing up in that kind of environment. I am totally and completely intruiged by this show. It blows my mind to think that people live like that (not in a bad way, it is just SO DIFFERENT than how I grew up in NC). I hope they have a 10 year reunion with these kids because I am so curious to see how they turn out. Bravo does it again!

10:00pm
Tori and Dean with a dose of Miami Social. I must say that I enjoy watching Tori and Dean. Their old show sucked so I am surprised that I feel this way. I think Tori Spelling is a little crazy, but I enjoy her antics and always-perfectly-done-up look. I do think she is way too thin though. Especially after popping babies out of her oven. I hope they have more kids. As for MS, I usually flip over to Bravo during the commericials of T&D. Although I admit that I get sucked into MS and end up missing large chunks of T&D. Decisions, decisions. Anyways- so MS is basically about a bunch of rich, "successful", random 20-30 something socialites living the good life in Miami. Some of them are gay. Some of them are divorced. Some of them are workaholics. Some of them have children that they ship off to boarding school in Switzerland. All of them are crazy, overly concerned with their looks, and probably on drugs (prescription and otherwise). There is no real plot to the show other than the fact that this group of "cool kids" meets on the roof of some expensive hotel (?) once a week to gossip about how fabulous they are. The rest of the show is about their real estate ventures, plastic surgeries, and psycho foreign girlfriends. The nice mix of gay/straight/male/female/crazy/more crazy/hot/thinks they're hot/rich/daddy's money rich makes this show oobertrashtastic.

11:00pm
I have usually migrated up stairs by this point and often end up falling asleep around 10:50 (this makes the Bravo/Oxygen teasers for next week's 10spots even more fun to watch throughout the week). However, this week I managed to catch a few minutes of Addicted to Beauty on Oxygn. This show highlights a "Medical Spa" called Changes and the Botox-ridden staff working there. I could only bear to watch about 15 minutes of this trash. It was just that trashy. In a nutshell, the staff of this "spa" talk about themselves and how much plastic surgery they have received/want, all the while trying to service customers (other crazy people like themselves). Don't think I'll be hanging around to watch this one on a weekly basis. A girl's gotta sleep.

I know you all watch trash TV too...so spill it. Any favs?

Unsolicited Romance

A girl can never get enough unsolicited romance. 

In fact, I often complain to Brian that I want more of it in my life. I am not flat out asking him to do something in particular, I am simply reminding him that I don't want to have to ASK for romantic things to happen. It is one thing to drop him hints about birthday wishes, a nudge to plan a trip for us, or any other fleeting comment that is supposed to generate some type of romantic action. It is a completely different ballpark when he acts completely on his own accord. I leave you with this tidbit:

So today I come home from work and Brian is on the couch (in his boxers, per usual - um seriously?!) clicking away at his fantasy baseball scores (don't even get me started on how much this annoys me. HELLO! You are in a FANTASY world. Blah). We chat briefly about what the heck to do for dinner, and it turns out he has already been grocery shopping today (20 points for Brian. I suggest you keep score). What can I say, he's a domestic god. So he goes outside and throws some sausages on the grill and I go into the kitchen to make sure we have hotdog buns. And what do I see when I enter Iron Chef stadium?? 

A bouquet of roses...on the stove. No, not in a vase. No, not strewn about in "come hither" fashion. Just straight up laying (lying?) across the stove top burners. My initial reaction was this: ummm he got me flowers in an attempt to sprinkle in some unsolicited romance, but he completely forgot he even bought the flowers and didn't even bother to give them to me. It was one of those thanks but "wtf" type moments. So I open the back door and ask him "Are those flowers for me?" (Duh.) His reply, "Yes, do you like them?" I tell him yes they are great, but did you forget to actually give them to me?

His response: "No, I thought it would be more romantic for you to stumble across them in the kitchen." I must say I was annoyed at first, but when I heard him say that, the gesture instantly became one of the most romantic things he has done in a while. Only Brian would find romance in a bouquet of bright orange roses delicately placed atop a stovetop burner. Yet another reason I love him so dearly..

The perfect piece of unsolicited romance to brighten up any Tuesday

Let's Get to Know Granddad!

In true LGTK fashion I'd like to take the opportunity to showcase my Granddad! Sadly, Granddad passed away this past winter. I won't get into too many detail about that so...While the experience was incredibly sad, I got the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my aunts and uncles. This was great considering they are all spread out (one on the West coast, one in Chi-town, and one in the Netherlands) and we had a fabulous time together despite the circumstances. Lately my dad has spent a lot of time going through some of Granddad's old things. I have really great memories of Granddad  so I was super excited to come across a whole slew of Dyer family photo albums that my Granddad had kept in tip-top shape. One of the most exciting finds was his BABY BOOK! My great-grandmother started the baby book in 1921, when Granddad was born. It is FULL of great old photos, a lot of quirky information, and even a family tree. It is such a cool thing to look at and I feel so lucky to have this kind of information about my family! So rather than just blab on about all the old-timey goodness, here are some pics for your viewing pleasure!

The cover of the book and Granddad's very first picture (surprisingly taken on my dad's (his son's) birthday, October 16th!)

My great-grandparents and Granddad!!

Granddad's first birthday...he even got a romper and stockings!

Granddad's great grandparents...that makes them my great-great-great grandparents right?

Read me first. Then you can really Carrie on.

After a very hefty and serious debate I would like to welcome myself to Blogger. You may know me from www.thelifeoffizzbo.wordpress.com and you may be wondering why the heck I chose to transfer myself to Blogger. From what I can tell, when people "grow up" in the blogworld, they move from Blogger to Wordpress. But whatever. I guess I am just going all Benjamin Button on you and growing down.  Wordpress has been lovely, and so has attempting to blog about the life of our new lil house, Fizzbo, but I am just ready to move on to a more personal blog with a simple template. Oh and I REALLY FREAKING WANT Google Analytics and I can't make it work on Wordpress. So, long story short, here I am. 

I still plan to continue my musings about Fizzbo, since he (yes he has a gender) is a huge part of my life right now. I am living with my boyfriend (nope not my fiance/husband/business partner) for the first time ever and we just so happen to be doing that in a place we BOUGHT together. May seem crazy, but I assure you, that is just our style. In the words of one wise blogger, we are "mortgage married." My guess is that if you pay attention to this lil blog for long enough, you will have a pretty good glimpse into my life, the life of Fizzbo, and the lives of my boyfriend, family, friends, work, and two fat cats. Can't forget the two fat cats. 

And on that note, Carrie on...