Nooo!!

We had really bad thunderstorms here last night and when I headed to work this morning, it was still rainy and windy outside. When I left work and headed home, I discovered a sad sight.

The patio furniture I bought last July had blown over into the flower beds and the cushions/pllows were gone :(

I parked the car and went walking/running down the street looking for the cushions and found 1 beside a neighbors house, but couldn't find the other one! I wasn't willing to give up though so I kept looking (in the rain) and once I got to the end of the street, I found the other cushion on my neighbor's front porch. I was glad I found it, but another neighbor gave me a really strange look and I felt I had to explain that I did indeed live in this neighborhood.... I'm not a creeper, just want my cushion back!!

I never found those pretty, blue pillows though. I am so sad because they were a birthday gift from my mom. :(

At least I got the cushions back though and I learned a lesson. From now on if a storm is imminent, I will be sure to put my patio furniture in the garage! I did that earlier in the winter, but thought that it would be ok now that it's February. WRONG!

I'm not really sure if this is blog-worthy, but I wanted to complain. Haha.

Dining Room Light

I've been wanting a new dining room light pretty much since the moment I bought this house, but since you can't get them for free and I didn't know exactly what I wanted I just waited. Well, for Christmas I put one on my wish list just to remind myself to come back to it later once I had saved up, but someone bought it for me for Christmas!

I was so excited to get it! It came in the mail a few days later and my mom helped me to put it together and get it up. That was difficult (we're certainly not electricians), but worth the hours put in.

Here's the fixture that came with the house:

And here's the new fixture up!

The light is from Destination Lighting. I have the brushed nickel version and it has a cream-colored linen shade.

I love it! This light is so beautiful. :)

Happy New Year!

So what have I done since November? Well, not much really and it's been pretty nice. I've been spending a lot of time with my family and friends. I did manage to get together a few friends for a New Year's Eve get-together and I gotta say, there were some pretty special people there. Check it out!

Don't be jealous

We had some potato soup for dinner. I put out some toppings so we could make the soup "loaded" - sour cream, cheese...

I also made tomato basil pizza

We had lots of cookies too. I have a great chocolate chip cookie recipe that I'll share next week. I brought some of the leftovers to work and they were gone before I could blink.

My friend Sharon made us two kinds of punch. I sure do love punch. :)

It was a really fun night and no one's yard caught on fire this year.

Happy new year to all of my friends in blog land! :) Hope you all had a great time bringing in the new year!

Still Here

Well, I am still around though it doesn't seem like it. I have been taking lots of time to hang out with my family and friends and enjoy the holiday season. :) I have had a really wonderful last few weeks and hope that all of you are getting to spend a lot of time with your loved ones too!

I'll be back in blog land soon!

Everyone Can Paint

In college I minored in Theatre. For one course, we had to draw and paint costumes/sets. When I started out, I was really nervous about the course because I had never drawn well and knew we would be drawing for pretty much the whole semester. Well, the first day of class we walked in and the teacher said, "Do not tell me you cannot draw. Everyone can draw." I was thinking, "OK... I won't tell you, but I don't think I can."

That very day we had to get our sketch books and draw people in the class and draw our own hands. I really did not want to draw someone else's face for fear of making them look horrible with my lack of skills. The teacher said to just draw what we saw and so I followed his very simple instructions and what do you know? The drawing I did actually looked pretty much like the person. It took forever to draw him, but I was glad I did it.

Later on in the semester, we painted as well and I really enjoyed that, but after the class ended I retired my sketch book and paints. A few weeks ago, some friends at work invited me to go to a painting class here in town. They have a different painting each day and they teach you step by step how to paint it. I thought it sounded like fun and it would be cool to paint something again so of course I went with them. :)

We had a fun time and it was easy to follow the teacher's instructions.

Here's my painting!

The original painting had red and orange too, but I left that out so that it would match the color scheme of my house. I love how it turned out and think it's cool cause I painted it myself.

Now I just have to figure out where to put it. Maybe here?

This area is void of excitement, but we'll see where it ends up. Do any of you have this kind of thing in your area?

Halloween

On Halloween at work every year there is a costume contest. Not very many people dress up unfortunately. I think most of the people at my work are too self-conscious to dress up (i.e. afraid of looking silly). I am not at all afraid to look silly so of course I dressed up (as I have done in years past).

I even found a co-worker willing to join me!

For those of you that weren't children of the 90s, there was a magnificent kid's TV show on Nickelodeon called Legends of the Hidden Temple. It was an awesome game show that my sister and I used to watch. My co-worker loved the show just as much as me so we dressed up as 2 contestants. It was great fun, but unfortunately there weren't a lot of people that knew who we were.

After work I visited my family and got to hang out with London! :)

 She was wearing her pumpkin outfit for Halloween, but kept moving so I couldn't get a good picture.

On October 20, my friends Bobby and Kelly got married. :) It was a really fun day and I was so happy to be a part of it. The reception was one big party and it's always fun to see old friends.

Love my BFF! :)

Hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween!

Halloween Decorating

Want to see all the Halloween decorating I've done so far?

Check it out!

Yep, I managed to throw a Halloween-themed dishtowel over the oven handle and put out some candy corn. I am Halloween decorating fiend!!

In other news, I finally bought a rug pad for my living room rug. It was interesting to see the floors with the rug out of the way temporarily.

The rug feels more comfortable now that I put the rug pad under it and it doesn't slide around. Yay!