Memories

Christmas Tree 2018 (And a Surprise)

Finally, the tree went up at our house over the weekend. I’ve been pretty much chomping at the bit (horse term) to get that tree up. I would like to say it went up without any hitches, but it didn’t… NOT. AT. ALL. In fact, I think the term hitches is a nice way of saying how things went on Saturday when we put the tree up. Sad day! Part of me wants to jot those memories down and part of me wants to forget it ever happened. No use in dwelling on the past, right? Let’s just say, Christmas is my favorite holiday (followed so close by Thanksgiving and all of the rest of the holidays) and I used the phrase, I Hate Christmas. Sadly, I try to teach Abug not to say hate. It’s something I try to instill in Abug, don’t hate. Yet I was so frustrated I kept saying HATE. Hypocrite! (that was directed at me, not you :))

The Tree

A few years ago we bought this tree at Lowe’s on sale after Christmas. Best purchase we’ve ever made when it comes to Christmas trees. It goes together so nicely and yeah, I love this tree. Plus, I’m a white light girl and hubby is a colored light guy… This tree flashes back and forth between white lights and colored lights. Best of both worlds!

My friend Harriett told me I needed to make a tree skirt for my tree, but it was too late to start it when she suggested that… so next year. I’m holding you to that Harriett! So Abug decided she was going to put the tree skirt on the tree… (more…)

Strawberry Lemonade French Macarons

I have been on a French Macaron kick lately, but I guess when you make French Buttercream, you have a lot of egg whites left over. If you didn’t know, French Buttercream is made with egg yolks. Don’t worry, they’re cooked! But we’re not really talking French Buttercream right now… we’re talking French Macarons. Hey, just a thought… Do you think that French Macarons and French Buttercream were made to be compliments so you don’t waste eggs? Just a thought.

But since I’ve had so many egg whites lying around, I thought French Macarons were in order. I love making them. I don’t have them perfected just yet… And practice makes perfect. Plus at our last dive club meeting, I made my friend Danielle a deal that I’d make her French Macarons if she’d make hubby some deviled eggs. He loves them and I’m not a fan so I don’t typically make them. In fact, I’ve only made the once in my life. It was fun boiling the eggs and then seeing if I did it correctly to see if the shells would peel correctly.

Speaking of Deviled eggs, I saw a deal at the grocery store where you crack the egg, pour it in, boil it, and it makes a perfect deviled egg. Interesting! (more…)

Family Fourth of July

I’ve talked about our Family Fourth of July quite a bit this week between the Spumoni Cake, the Wacky Cake, and the Chocolate Chip Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches. A lot of food talk huh? I also made a Greek Pasta Salad. Holy Yum! But hello, where are the pictures of the fireworks? I’m so glad you asked!

I spent quite a bit of time coming up with what desserts we were going to take. Then making sure I had all the ingredients. Finally, the execution.

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The Birthday Party

This sweet little girl is 4 today. 4. How did that happen? I seriously don’t know. It seems like just 4 years went by in the blink of an eye. I’m sooooo proud of how she’s turned out and some days she leaves me shaking my head wondering how her mind got where it got!

Only having her sister around certain times and with trying to plan a birthday party around our hectic at times schedule, we actually wound up celebrating her birthday 2 weeks early. Hey, a girl is allowed to celebrate her birthday for a month, right? I think so!!

The Birthday Party

I knew the theme was going to be Unicorn’s since sometime last fall. It’s random. It’s so totally her! I did some research online looking for party decorations. I started to order offline but then went to town to Party City to see what they had. They had everything I wanted and I could walk away with it in hand so I went ahead and changed up the unicorn pattern a little and bam, we were set! (more…)

NCHA Hall of Fame

Oh goodness, this month has flown by! Gosh! We’re already at the end of the month and now I’m going to tell you something that happened the first weekend of this month. That was 20 some days ago… But sometimes I get to play catch up and this is one of those things I want on this blog, so that’s what you get… playing catch up.

My uncle has had a goal his whole cutting horse showing career of making the NCHA Hall of Fame. I’m pleased to announce he finally made his goal come true! Woot woot! One of the criteria is for you to win $ 500,000-lifetime earnings. Let’s just say, he made it! And this year he was inducted into the NCHA Non-Pro Hall of Fame.

The awards banquet was held in Grapevine, Texas, the first weekend of June during the NCHA Convention. We loaded up first thing Saturday morning and hit the road for a long 6 hour trip to Grapevine which is just outside of Dallas. We pulled in around 3 pm or so because we actually got on the road earlier than we planned on. What? 6 of us and we got on the road earlier than normal. That’s totally unheard of! Especially for my family… not going to lie. Usually, we get on the road later than planned. (more…)

Writing

Here’s an interesting topic that has been on my brain today… Writing.

Seriously, who thinks about writing? Well, obviously I do. But why? Writing has kind of a negative connotation. I think some of that stems to school when you are required to write papers. Papers on things you don’t want to write about. Required to write X number of words on a topic you may or may not know anything about or care about. But writing is a unique quality.

It is a way to convey a message. When you read a piece of writing, it can make or break what you are trying to say. Heck, think about texts. They are a form of writing. It’s a form of communication. You type something one way and someone takes it another and BAM! you have a fight on your hands. That’s the interesting thing about writing. Some people spend years honing in on that talent and ability. The ability to speak and write. If you read a lot of job descriptions, they want you to be able to communicate effectively and efficiently and that includes having the ability to write.

In a job, you’ll write memos, emails, meeting minutes, notes, etc. In those, you have to be able to convey a message to multiple groups of people. And two words about that are Quickly and Effectively. (more…)

College Life

 

I’m not sure why the last couple days I’ve been stuck in the past. That’s how it feels anyway. Maybe because College seemed so easy… or maybe it was the phone call from Camille that brought back the memories. My {step}daughter is a Freshman in high school. She’s at the part of her life when grades totally matter. When she’s starting to think about her future. Starting to make plans about going to college (or not, but right now yes).

A lot can change in four years. Right now she has college narrowed down to two choices. One is in state, one is way out of state. But either choice she has plans to live at home (the out of state is with family). If there’s one thing I keep trying to stress to her, promise me she’ll live in the dorms at least 1 year. Bam! Seriously though, you learn a lot from living in the dorms, and that is one way you make those lifetime friends. (more…)

The Damn Water Tower

The other night I was watching a movie with my husband and my mother-in-law. I think it was My Secret Valentine or it could have been Very, Very, Valentine. Either way, it was a Hallmark movie. If you haven’t figured out… Hallmark movies are my absolute favorite. Christmas and non-Christmas alike. There’s always a plot twist right before they have a happy ending and they are always so predictable. Either way though, I like them. They give me that warm tingly feeling.

But while I was sitting there watching the movie, my phone rang. I answered the phone and it was my friend Camille. In college, I always teased and called her Camel Jockey. Sometimes to her face, sometimes not. I was caught off guard a little bit because I haven’t spoken on the phone with her for about 10 years. The last time we spoke on the phone, she had just gotten engaged. I found out via Facebook and was giving her crap to the point she called me.

We chatted for a good almost half hour. We reminisced about good times and bad. A few years ago I was sitting in my Midevil British Literature class when we went to break. During the break, I jumped on Facebook for a minute and saw a very scary message. She said something to the effect of don’t wait until the last minute to tell your best friend how you feel or something like that. I can’t remember the exact words because it’s been almost 3 years now if I remember right. (more…)

Gussied Up

Sometimes my husband calls me the queen of random and lately that’s really how I’ve felt. I happened to be watching one of my absolute, all-time favorite movies… My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Gosh, I love that movie! I prefer it over the 1st and typically, in my opinion anyway, you can’t always say that about sequels. Usually the first is best and second isn’t worth it. But this one… I actually much prefer the second and want them to make a third!

In this movie, if you haven’t seen it, Tula and Ian’s daughter goes to her senior prom. (No, that isn’t what the whole movie is about, just the part pertinent to today’s post.) Because of that scene, I got to thinking about Prom and real life. A relative of mine’s daughter had her debutante ball this last weekend. We don’t have anything like that around here, I figured it was just a tv thing… but it is apparently a real thing. The girls dress up in beautiful gowns. Prom is the same way and then there are homecomings, etc.

All this getting gussied up young in life and then people grow up and what is there? Maybe a wedding dress here and there, but what else? I grew up in the country. I grew up rural. Even Middle America. Maybe it’s different if you live in NYC or someplace. Maybe people do get dressed up for Christmas Eve and Christmas day… I don’t know. I just know my friends and I don’t. (more…)