March 2012 | Page 2 of 3 | Midwestern At Heart

Army Quilt

I’m fairly certain I’ve shared with you the quilts I made a few years ago, I just can’t seem to find the post right now.

So anyway, if you didn’t know I made quilts once upon a time, I made 2. Well, I have material to make my hubby one that’ll be super cute, but I also stole some of his old military uniforms that he doesn’t wear anymore. He had a few that he wanted to keep intact, otherwise, I got the rest and decided to make him an army quilt. I don’t have a pattern, I’m just winging it.

In our house, we found a cutting mat so I told him for Christmas I wanted the squares and the running circular knife to cut material with. Please don’t ask me technical names because I don’t know them.

And then you need material, or in my case, old army uniforms. A guy I work with did this for his boss to give her brother in law (you know a friend of a friend of a friend of a cousin twice removed. ha!) and I saw the finished product, so I knew I had to make hubby one.

I bought these scissors specifically for cutting material. But I get teased because the night I brought them home I said, “These scissors are only for cutting.” Yeah, I haven’t lived that down yet. {Listen here mister, this is for you, I’m just sayin}

But I love this b/c you use the circular blade, run it around the square and BAM {Thanks Emeril} you have uniform squares which are MUCH easier to sew together.

I’m not very far unfortunately because sometimes time is limited, but I just wanted to show you what I’ve been working on…. I can’t wait to show you the finished product!

Weekend via Instagram & Camera+

Sometimes I love Love LOVE my iPhone. I get some easy shots that I might not have gotten otherwise, for whatever reason.

Ok so the quality might not be even as good as some point and shoots, but heck, I still like it!

So today’s post is brought to you by my new favorite app Camera+ and by my old love Instagram.

A relaxing Friday night once we finally made it home. We were watching Sweet Home Alabama on CMT (the Reality show)

Helping Tbug and myself not get pinched on Saturday, you know St. Patty’s Day

Saturday we headed to the yearly buffalo sale. (2010, 2011)

Uh oh… I’ve created a monster! haha

Our Yearly Buffalo Sale photo 🙂

Driving home after we left the sale, we stopped in Nevada and ate lunch at Iguana Azul. OMG it was good Mexican food! My great grandfather used to have a hardware store up on the square also, just a random side note.

I’m starting to learn to live with the fact, windows down & my hair just don’t play nice.

Later in the afternoon we headed over to Lucky J to watch the cutting going on.

She looks happy eh?

Later my mother in law called us and said she’d like to take us to dinner. She chose Habatchi.

Then we went with her to Atwoods and helped her load up something she was buying… and I fell in love with these boots. They are so out of the norm for me and my taste but aren’t they sexy?!?! Ok so I’m a shoe person but I absolutely LOVE boots! Just saying!

Time of My Life

Date: March 17, 2012

Age: 28

Size: Don’t judge when I tell! I’m between sizes in everything.

Shirts M {generally}, jeans I swear I need a 9

{10’s too big, 8’s not quite big enough but I can get into them, so I go for 10 so no/not as bad muffin top :)}

Friday Nights: Every other Friday night pick Tbug up at 7pm from Cheerleading.

Then the off weekends, generally go home and watch Sweet Home Alabama {the reality show}

Hair Style: My roots have grown out. Little past shoulder length,

Long bangs cut to the right.

Favorite place to dine out: Zio’s {Chicken Parmesan} in Springfield.

Around here Lucky J’s {Queso Burger with green beans, no bun}

Favorite Outfit: Denim jacket, Lucky Jeans or Patrol Jeans.

Love Life: We’ve started to hit some bumps in the road, but I think the stress of general life & school for both of us has it’s lasting effects from time to time. I think we’re leaving the Honeymoon phase and moving into the good parts. Remember, The first part is exciting, the second part is where the real depth comes in!

Home Life: Our life is taking a different turn than we thought it would a year and a half ago when we got married. Some days I just want to pull my hair out. We’ve actually kept the house relatively clean since hubby cleaned it in February and that eases a bit of the stress. Our dogs LOVE to litter our yard with their latest finds so we aren’t ever quite sure what we’ll find. The most recent was a pool float that they must have pulled out of the garage because I don’t know where else it could have been.

TV shows: The Pioneer Woman’s cooking show on Food Network, Sweet Home Alabama {The reality show}, Grey’s Anatomy, Big Bang Theory, Dancing with the Stars (I think I’ll watch again this season)

Extra time: Yeah I don’t really have extra time these days. School pretty much eats into my extra time and it’s kind of sad and depressing at times.

What excites me: *Playing with my camera *Playing with photoshop *Enjoying this beautiful weather we’ve been having *Riding horses

A moment I never want to forget: *When we won the horse breeding back in December {The excitement that hubby & I shared that night in the kitchen when I should have been studying for a test} *Dissecting the cow eyeball *Holding a human brain

Questions from Here – Jessica @ Stilleto’s & a Fishing Pole

She's a Member

When I was younger I was fairly active in the AQHYA (American Quarter Horse Youth Association) and even more so in the NYCHA (National Youth Cutting Horse Association).

AQHYA holds a world show every year in Oklahoma City (it was in Ft. Worth when I showed). Youth from all over the US & World compete for the Best in the World.

Tbug has expressed some interest in showing horses so we’ve been working with her. The cool thing about the Youth World show is each state is allotted so many delegates to represent the state if you don’t Nationally qualify, meaning you can go represent your state as a State Representative.

Every time you show in Quarter Horse shows you are working for/earning points.

So anyway we were going to try and make it so she could go compete in the Youth World this summer, but circumstances have inhibited that from happening this year.

That doesn’t mean we can’t go ahead and get her a membership and get her involved.

Saturday night we handed her her mail and asked her what she received. Her first question was, “I got mail here?” ha!

So she started reading the letter. {photos & video with my iPhone}

She was so intent on reading this letter that she read it beginning to end. It was so cute. Every so often she’d even crack a smile. When she was done we asked her what she got. At first she still wasn’t sure but then she figured it out, she is now a Member of the AQHYA. She was so ecstatic. She kept thanking her daddy and me. I’ll bet we got every bit of 50 thank you’s, not exaggerating.

Then she finally looked at us and said, “What does that mean anyway?”

Ha! Gotta love kids. Here’s even a short video of her reading. I know it might be a tad boring, no sound really other than background noise but she’s so dang cute!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC18GMSRVR4]

He's a Mac, I'm a PC {photo storage}

I take a lot of photos. I almost think that might be a bit of an understatement, that’s how many photos I actually take. Truth be told, I don’t even share half of what I take. I couldn’t or I would inundate you with photos.

Before I bought my dSLR and before I took photography classes, I still took a lot of photos, but definitely not nearly as many, so it was fairly easy to keep track of my photos. I run a window’s based system that has a folder in the start button called “Pictures”. How easy is that. I would create a new folder. Give it a name and dump them in, but even before that I would just dump them all into that pictures folder. Toward the beginning of the digital age I didn’t take “that” many photos {but I still took a lot, don’t get me wrong}.

When I started dating hubby, he had a Mac laptop. They have this whole special software system thingy (very technical name) that sorts all your photos for you and does face recognition, etc. Well that was about the same time I started taking gobs of photos. I couldn’t very well put them off on his laptop because that would overload his hard drive.

So this is the system that I’ve created for myself. I know there is software out there for photo storage, but….

I keep the current years photos off on my laptop. January 1-December 31. Once we hit January of the next year I go through and dump them off (~~in the dead external hard drive~~, or until it died I did) on the desktop I have for photo storage.

I try to keep the folders on my desk top and the folders on my laptop the same so it makes moving them over/off easy.

{click on photos to make bigger if you’d like}

So it’s on the hard drive of the desktop. In the drive labeled Photos. There I have my big main folders: Down on the Farm, Our Home, Birthday’s, Cheerleading, etc.

Then you click on {example} Down on the farm and they are broken down into sub folders based off topic & date they were taken.

And Viola, you open up a sub folder and here’s all the pictures taken on that date.

Now some folders {ie} Blogging topics are broken down by year.

Then broken down by what happened in that year on a particular date.

Open the folder, and there you have it.

I really have no method as to why some are broken down into sub folders by year and then broken down in to the topic at hand and others are just dumped in by topic at hand.

Sometimes I have photos of the dogs & the horses & people in a Down on the Farm folder, so if I ever wanted to go hunting, I’d have to remember where we were to find the particular item being looked for {ie person, dog, horse, etc}. I know there has to be an easier method out there.

One of the ladies I work with sorts all hers by date. Nothing other than date. I think I would get really confused by that, but at the same time, different things work for different people.

I just wondered how everyone else sorts their pictures so you know where to find things you are looking for?

Thought for the Day

You can pick your nose

And

You can pick your friends

But

You cannot pick your friends nose

Don’t forget today is Pi Day! 3.14!!

Sometimes & Always

Sometimes I sit on my leg at work.
Always my leg screams at me. My knee screams at me. And I wish I had better posture.

Sometimes I think we should branch out and try to watch different movies.
Always we revert back what we have DVR’ed which is Easy A, Grown Ups, Last Holiday, When in Rome & Just Go With It.

Sometimes I think I would like to move off to some exotic place
Always I remember, I can’t very easily pack up my parents and move them too.

Sometimes I want to delete reeeeaaaaallllllyyyyyy bad photos
Always I generally tend to throw them in the folder and file them away anyway.

Sometimes I really want to drink a coke
Always remember that I haven’t had pop since January 2nd and am trying to steer clear of it.

Sometimes I want to write a fashion post.
Always remember I’m really not all that fashionable but I survive 🙂

Sometimes we try to take serious pictures.
Always something funny goes on and we wind up with some cute photos anyway 🙂 {Ok not really but I had to throw this one in there anyway.}

And They're Off

Let’s head to the races, where it’s Mom against Daughter

And here are the contenders….

Ready? Three….. Two…… One…….

And they’re off…..

It looks like momma might be in the lead….

But daughter is going to catch up.

And this is going to be a close race… they’re in sync

Oh NO, is momma going down?

Daughter is taking the lead

But momma’s not going down without a fight.

Here they go.

Yikes, who’s winning?

Uh oh… is momma giving up?

Now Daughter is….

But wait, daughter is making a come back.

And here comes momma’s second wind.

She might even take Daughter

But in the end, It’s age before beauty, or something like that.

Who did you place your bets on?

{It so felt like running like Pheobe on that Friend’s episode. Yes I’m referencing Friends again. It happens.}

Yes, studying for A&P tests non stop for a day will make you go crazy. It’ll cause you to need a break and sometimes, the best entertainment is cheap and in the form of a camera. I have a test tonight. Wish me luck! I’m so going to need it!

Toodles,

Garlic Alfredo Sauce

Does this look yummy?

Would you believe we made that Alfredo sauce from scratch? It was almost just as easy as opening a jar, and a whole heck of a lot tastier! Let me show you how to make this fabulous meal!

Garlic Alfredo Sauce
found on Tasty Kitchen