OH Dear!

So one of my mom's in my class shared a cooking/baking website with me today and I must pass it along! It's http://smittenkitchen.com/and it is AMAZING. I haven't looked at very much accept for the baking selection, no surprise there. But not only does the website provide easy practical recipes but the author is slightly sarcastic and definitely makes you chuckle while reading. She also posts amazing pictures that basically make you drool on your laptop because everything looks soo good! So if you're bored over the weekend and are looking for something to do I highly recommend browsing this website and possibly baking a thing or two, I know I will!!

Some New Favorites!!

So one of my friends posts some of the new favorite things in her life every week and I love this idea! This might turn out to be a very random weekly blog entry but at least it's something to give you a little glimpse into my very simple life!

1)Orbit has always been my most favorite gum but I've always stuck to Wintermint. I accidentally bought Sweet Mint recently and it's been the best mistake ever. I LOVE this flavor and it definitely takes my coffee breath away every morning! If you're looking for a new gum to try I highly recommend this one!

2) True Blue Spa Shea Cashmere Hand Cream! One of my coworkers introduced me to this fabulous lotion and I just fell in love with it when I tried it. We wash our hands so much at work that they are basically raw. So this nice little treat every day definitely helps with the pain. Bath and Body Works, oh how I love thee!

3) Pita Puffs! We've started shopping at Trader Joes more often lately and I came across this fantastic snack this past weekend. They're fun to eat and decently healthy! YUM YUM

6 Months of Updating :)

Okay so once again I'm on the path towards updating my blog more often. No promises yet but shooting for at least two a month lol but hopefully more like once a week! So here goes half a year of updates with a few pictures in between!!

October 2009 - We decided to make tshirts at work to celebrate Halloween baby style. I ironed on letters with phrases that related to working with infants and of course we had to wear pjs for pants! Some tshirt examples included: Spit up happens, Party in my crib at midnight, Sometimes I poop...up my back, Where's my paci, and Naptime is my favorite! (of course the naptime shirt was mine) :)

November 2009 - Thanksmas or shall we say getting the stomach flu on the drive from Nashville to Dallas and pretty much barely surviving in time to drive back to Nashville after four days of ugh. Of course I was a nice wife and gave this lovely gift to my husband so we pretty much spent the holiday in bed but at least we managed to surface for a picture with our matching tshirts!

December 2009 - Christmas!! Thankfully we were much healthier this go around to TX. We were able to to see lots of family and had a great time escaping from the real world in Nashville. It even snowed while we were there and we went with my family to see ICE at the Gaylord :) We also celebrated our first anniversary in this month but I failed to take a pic...we were in the airport flying back to TN after Christmas, I'll try harder next year to capture anniversary number two!


January 2010 - Tiffany came to visit and we went to see Carrie Underwood in concert at the Ryman! I managed to take zero pictures during this visit but I at least managed to steal a couple from Tiffany on facebook!

February 2010 - Happy Valentine's Day and good bye vegetarian Tyler :) Tyler cooked a delicious Valentine's dinner for me this year, I have pics but can't find them, woops. Like I said, I'm working on the whole taking more pics and actually keeping track of them. After two years of only eating veggies my hubby finally decided to enter the real world of meat eating again. A friend from the studio took us out to eat at Chick-Fil-A for this exciting event and Tyler had his first chicken sandwich in over two years. Pretty sure they could sell an ad campaign saying "Our chicken is so good even vegetarians can't resist us!"

March 2010 - Happy Birthday Tyler, Goodbye wisdom teeth, and Hello Abilene!! Tyler turned 25 this year and shortly after we were in TX again celebrating a friends wedding in Abilene and somewhere in there I had all of my wisdom teeth pulled. My dad got Tyler his first record player for his birthday and he said it was like Christmas when he unwrapped it! Now he has a new hobby and can listen to big boppin beats at home. We were also able to celebrate his birthday in TX with family and ate at Babe's to have some good old country cooking. Abilene was next on the visit! I hadn't been back since my grad school graduation in August 2008 and it was sooo much fun getting to see old friends and of course eating wedding cake!

Well it looks like we're all caught up! Hallelujah!! Up next...a few of my favorite things :)

Gatlinburg Getaway!!

This weekend Tyler's parents came to visit and they took us on a mini weekend vacation to Gatlinburg, TN!! It was a wonderful treat for us and we had a great time shopping, eating yummy food and LOTS of candy and of course some good old road trip conversations! Here's a couple pictures from the weekend and I just realized we didn't take any with his parents, oops. We'll have to take some for sure next time they're in town :) THANK YOU again for coming and sharing this weekend with us, we had a LOT of fun!!! :)

A view from outside our hotel room...there was a even a little river behind the pool!

Tyler and I with the beautiful Fall trees behind us (and yes it was very COLD)!!

It even SNOWED Saturday night in the mountains surrounding us :)

Lifelong Learner

My husband has told me more than once the past few weeks that I need to find a new hobby or to take up an old one...just something to keep me busy and away from spending my day watching Cake Boss or John and Kate Plus 8 while applying for jobs. So I've decided I want to start doing a research project. I know this might sound kind of crazy but I really do miss the higher education world and the days and weeks spent in the library working on papers and looking at journals and studies. So I've been thinking about something to research or study and I think I might have found it! One of my graduate school professors posted this link today on facebook and I found it extremely interesting. I'm not sure where I'm going to go with it but I'm always looking for ways to connect my bachelors degree and masters degree and this topic might be something worth pursuing. The title of the article is The Case for Early Marriage: Amid our purity pledges and attempts to make chastity hip, we forgot to teach young Christians how to tie the knot. I'll let you read it for yourself and let me know what you think but I found the article to be very interesting so if you're bored tonight grab a cup of coffee and dig in...I promise it will make you think! The link for the article is: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/august/16.22.html

Wedding Quilt!!

So my Aunt Connie in California made Tyler and I a beautiful quilt for our wedding and it came in the mail this week. I love it so much and it even has our name stitched in it on one of the hearts :) Thank you Aunt Connie for our beautiful quilt and all of your hard work, it's very much appreciated!!

Fresh Veggies Anyone?!?

So Tyler decided to take a second internship at another studio in town to keep him busy and learning even more things. The new studio is called Sound Barn and a really nice guy owns it and it's in a small house behind his main house in Nashville. The guy records 100% analog meaning he records on tape instead of through Pro Tools (at least that's what I understand lol) which is a computer software program (I think). Up until the 90's everthing was recorded on tape but now for convenience and efficiency and other reasons most studios record digitally and very few record on tape. A reel of tape is like $400 and only holds like 3 songs so it's also cheaper to not use tape. But tape produces a unique sound so some engineers and artists prefer it over the new way. (Tyler if you're reading this and I got some of this wrong, I apologize. But I think I got most of it right lol) Anyway, Tyler was over there yesterday helping him record and when he left he gave him some fresh veggies from his garden, YUM!! He said the tomatoes are great for homemade salsa so now I'm on the hunt for a salsa recipe :)