Houston Trip

Occasionally I get sent out to Houston, TX for work trips. I went there for 10 days in November for some training and I had a great time. There are quite a few folks out there that I work with closely, even though I don't live there, so when I get to go hang out with them in person it's a lot of fun.

The more I go there, the better I get to know my friends there so it's always exciting to go these days cause I know I'll have people there!

I'm certainly no expert on Houston because I pretty much never get my own car while I'm there so I don't really get to explore on my own. I was so shocked when on this November trip, I was given my own car for a week!

Anyway, here's my trip in pictures:

Of course my first picture involved food. I love burritos. :)

I took this awesome blurry picture of where I spent my days in Houston.

Spent one day in the control room with my Houston counterpart position which was cool. The person sitting there that day actually is one of my favorite planners (I have worked with her a lot these past 4 years) so I lucked out.

I got to see a lot of mock-ups while I was there including this one of the space shuttle, which is a little outdated now. ;)

This was in the lobby of mission control center so I had to snap a picture.

Everyone teased me because I thought these old, little phone booths were so cute!

My best Houston friend picked me up on Saturday so that we could spend the day together.

We ate at this amazing Mexican restaurant there called Chuy's. Check out this ceiling covered with hubcaps.

I thought the pendant lights over the tables were so cool! They had all these tiny pieces of colored glass in them and the light coming through looked awesome.

My food was so good. Now that I am back home I crave this dish all the time, but I don't have a Chuy's in my town. :(

I ordered the vegetarian combo and it came with a vegetarian enchilada that came with a spicy sauce and a chile relleno also with a spicy sauce. My meal was so amazing.

They also had several different dips for the chips there too. 

We went to the outlet mall and walked around a park, but I didn't get any pictures of that. :(

Then we went to this little cafe called Le Madeleine. It was so precious and their desserts are delicious!! I had the lemon tart and it was sooo good. Sometimes with lemon stuff it can be too sour, but this was perfect!

I ate the whole thing and regretted nothing.

On Monday, I for some reason took a picture of this guy explaining work stuff to us. He was pretty cool.

I took a picture of this drill because it had it's own little tool belt and I just thought that was so adorable.

Awwwww!!

I took this picture because I am weird and thought it was funny that the stick person broke the table.

This is a real tool on the International Space Station that astronauts can use. It's soooo little and cute!!!

Some of my Houston buddies took me to eat at the Indian restaurant. It was sooo good! They had my favorite dish, Sag Panir. :)

A model of Station:

See if you can find the tiny astronaut in this picture:

I took this one for my English friend that thinks Americans are extremely patriotic and have too many American flags everywhere. :)

Meet my friend Robonaut:

He's got muscles and he's super cool! While we were doing our training on Robonaut, they gave us a demonstration and let us all shake his hand. I was so honored because I really like this payload!

My sandwich for lunch one day:

We went to this place called Nobi House and everyone told me I had to get the egg sandwich and I was so confused, but now I know why!! It was really good. The place was pretty cool and modern too.

My friend hanging out in one of the mock-ups of the astronaut's sleeping quarters.

He was pretty cramped because dude is over 6 feet tall.

This is a mock-up of one of their exercise machines.

Just chillin' in the mock-up of the Russian segment of Space Station.

This contraption is what the astronauts use to weigh themselves. It's called SLAMMD because they sit on it really still and it "slams" them into the wall in order to get their weight. Obviously they have to do it that way because of the lack of gravity. :)

The last picture of my trip is my trying to perform one of the procedures the astronauts commonly have to do on Station. I was very confused and needed lots of  help. :( Mainly because I didn't know all the tool names.

I had such a good time and I'm hoping I'll get to go back within the next year. If I get to go I will go back to downtown and visit the Sam Houston Park. I went there the trip before last and it's beautiful. They have a gorgeous Japanese garden in the park. I hope you enjoyed the virtual trip!

Living Room Updates

Warning: There are a LOT of pictures in this post.

I think the last time I showed you all a full look at my living room was when I bought my green rug ....in 2011. Now, not too much has changed, but I wanted to take some updated pictures to show what it's looking like now.

So, in 2012 after purchasing some new bookshelves from Ikea, here's how it looked:

And now:

I mainly changed up pillows and other accessories here and there.

I added this desk in the corner just recently. More on that in another post.

Watching Psych on Netflix as usual..... :)

I wanted to get a few pictures with the desk lamp on.

So, if you made it through all of those pictures, you are a trooper. Good job!

Loft Updates

When I first got this house, I mentioned how much I loved this open area upstairs that I call the loft. It started out looking like this (more info here):

The last time I posted about the loft, it was looking like this:

There's been a few more changes since then. I finally got the loft, hallway and stairwell painted in fall of 2012 (I'm late posting about that update....). I wanted something neutral since it's a transition area and I finally decided on Light Pewter by Benjamin Moore. It's a light gray color and I have loved it in this space so far.

I also bought a mirror and rug for the room. I bought the mirror on Joss and Main and I think it's so cute. I just was being lazy about hanging it. The rug came from Homegoods, it's really not big enough for the space, but I don't care. It's colorful and I love it. :)

So after those changes, the mirror sat there for a whole year. Just waiting to be hung up. So neglected!

Here is how the room is looking now, after I FINALLY hung up the mirror!

Ta-da! It's a junk room!

Well, one side is anyway.... Yep, there's my Christmas tree. It's chillin' in here with some boxes and packing material. You'll also notice my Guitar Hero World Tour drum set and a pile of stuff I'm trying to sell on Craigslist.

On the other side....

There's a short story behind this table. I bought my dining room table in 2012 and when I did, they sent 1 and it had a busted up corner. I got the table from Overstock and if you receive a damage item, you can go to your account on the webpage and fill out a form for damaged items. I did this and they said that I would received another one and that I could throw the old table away. I thought they would take away the old one when they gave me the new one. Throw it away?? Why on earth would I do that? It just has a dinged up corner. Sooo, I just moved the old one upstairs and put the messed up corner up against the wall.

I'm still loving this bright, airy room, but I will love it even more once I get all the extra junk cleared out. Craigslist! Do your thing!

Nightstand Organization

As I mentioned in this post, I'm still on an organizing kick. I had a pretty productive Sunday and got a lot of spaces organized/cleaned! I guess I am starting my Spring cleaning early. :) I have some things to share from Sunday, but I wanted to show you guys another quick organizing project I accomplished last week while I was still snowed in at home.

This is one of my nightstands. Well, how it looked before I got sick of looking at it. (Yes, there is a lot going on with that wall in the background, but that's another post for another day!)

I sleep with a fan at night so that explains that, but that Pez from Easter and all those papers on the bottom shelf had to go. Actually, it really doesn't look that bad in the picture, but in person it looked like there were 3,000 papers about to tip over at any given time. Basically, this is the spot than whenever I get home from church or Bible studies, I just toss all my papers/books there. Every time I would walk through my bedroom I would see that stack of papers and it really started to bug me.

I had been putting off doing this project because I was really hoping to find some cute bins, maybe at Target or Homegoods, to organize my nightstand belongings, but I never did :( So being stuck at home for 3 days in a row was enough to make me accept that I just had to use what I had and I finally got to it.

Here's what I did:

I had 2 of these baskets in my "office" - can't really call it that yet because that room is a joke - for over 2 years. I was planning to use them in there, but never had a good reason for them so I brought one into my room and stuck it in the nightstand. It fit perfectly! I couldn't believe how nicely it fit. I even took a picture and sent it to my mom to show her.

Anyway, I stole some old folders from my file cabinet that weren't being used anymore (I'm going to have to re-label them once I get some labels) and made one for holding sermon notes, one for my papers from small group at church and another for studies for a Bible study that my roommate and I host.

I also popped in my Bible and notebooks in because I generally read scripture on my iPad (look at me! So 2014!) instead of the old school way. I added a little Ikea vase to hold my post it flags and a pen for when I am developing my studies or reading through a book. So now I have my "Jesus basket" all ready to go and whenever I need to plan a study or have my quiet time, it's a lot easier to grab what I am looking for! Also, it's much easier to put everything back where it should go.

Look how nicely this basket fits into its home! :)

It's a beautiful thing.