top of the morning

Howdy all.

I'm road tripping this week, but I just wanted to pop in and say hello.

I also wanted to tell you that I finally got my exercise act together last week and logged some significant walking miles. However, for each mile I walked, I treated myself to a frozen chocolate chip cookie dough ball leftover from the great cookie bake-off, so I'm not sure if it counts. I think it's probably a wash, but now that I'm out of cookie balls, maybe I'll make some headway on the healthy living front.

Or maybe I'll just move on to the tub of dark chocolate cherry almond clusters that somehow made their way into my Costco cart last week.

Only time will tell.

Have a wonderful week!

fail early, fail often

Yesterday, in a flurry of flapping notebook pages, I wrote out a plan for myself.

The ideas, the inspiration, the resolve....my head was in a whirlwind and I frantically tried to write all my scattered thoughts down on paper before they vaporized forever.

Photo shoot dreams.

Craft project lists and clipped coupons for a visit to see my good friends Michael and JoAnn.

Blog post ideas.

Things I need to finish up for my little senior photography business.

Major and minor home projects that I want to tackle this year.

Thoughts on better eating and an exercise routine.

I wondered just how much of my new found (new found since last January) drive for structure and health was natural and inborn, and how much was driven by the retail world and their yearly marketing of work-out clothes, treadmills and home storage systems.

I'm pretty sure it's more the latter and I'm just easy prey for a good ad campaign, although perhaps we were created with a natural, yearly fresh start instinct. I'm sure there's a chance the wise men returned home in January from their trip to see the Baby Jesus with an urge to spruce up the camel barn, and a resolution to walk to the watering hole more often instead of always riding the donkey.

I made out a daily schedule for myself, in hopes that if I scheduled in things like exercise, I would actually do it.

My schedule starts with a six a.m. wake-up call, and even though the banks are closed and the mailman has the day off, it is a Monday and therefore a perfect day to start my shiny new, organized and healthy life.

However, coming off a week of staying up late and chronic sleeping in, I instead started off my day with an hour long game of snoozies with my Blackberry. After an hour, the phone was tired of the every five minute thing and went on strike.

Slacker.

My daily date with Jillian Michaels was scheduled for 7:30, but at this very moment it is 9:18 and I'm sitting in my chair writing a blog post that I wasn't scheduled to write until 10:00, after I'd cleaned up the kitchen and started a load of laundry. Additionally, I have absolutely no clue where my Jillian dvd is currently living, as we broke up sometime last spring and I haven't heard from her since.

So, I will do what I always do, and justify my failure by telling myself that it's a national holiday and you shouldn't start a new life on a national holiday and then I'll quote Scarlett O'Hara and tell myself that, "After all, tomorrow is another day."

And, " I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."

And then I'll go on a hunt for my workout dvd, and get sidetracked by an urge to watch Gone With The Wind, and end up spending the day in front of the tv eating all the leftover Christmas cookies while scouring Pinterest for some great wintertime craft projects.

Fiddle-dee-dee.

say goodbye to yester-year

Happy New Year's Eve, my friends!

We'll have a houseful of teenagers tonight, so my hubby and I are going to ring in the New Year by eating pizza, (hopefully there will be some left after the youngsters have at it), watching The Help, and desperately trying to stay awake until midnight so we (my hubby, actually) can chauffeur the gang home. Most of them have their driver's licenses, but the last thing I feel comfortable doing is sending them out on the crazy, drunken New Year's Eve roads.

The girls want to make a wish on the dock at midnight, and I can't wait to see how many boys end up participating in that. Apparently, there's also been talk of sprinkling glitter as they make their wishes.

I love it!

My son is not as enthused, but the sooner the better to learn that when your girlfriend wants to sprinkle glitter.....you'd best sprinkle you some glitter.

So, how about you all?

Champagne and fancy dresses?

Or maybe p.j.s and hot chocolate are more your style.

I'd love to hear what you're doing to welcome 2012.

Cheers to the year ahead!

girls only

A while back I mentioned that I was going to be taking senior pictures for some of the girls from our local high school.

I ended up photographing a total of eleven girls, and it was truly one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done.

Almost all of the girls go to school with my youngest, so I've watched some of them grow up since their grade school days.

It's so hard to believe that they are all going to be heading out into the big world in just a matter of months!


I happened to know that D'Aarion had a pretty pink prom dress in her closet, so a few days after we did her senior pictures, I texted her to see if she wanted to help me make my balloon dream come true.

We found the perfect field, and fought off a bit of frostbite, but I love, love, love how the pictures turned out.












I've been wanting to do a dreamy summer afternoon shoot on my porch for quite a while, and Rhayn was nice enough to help me make it happen!










This is truly an amazing group of young ladies. They are beautiful inside and out, and I wish them the very best that life has to offer.

The world is waiting, girls!

I can't wait to see what your futures hold!

outside my window-winter edition

Outside my window.....everything is brown and dead.

I'm not a huge fan of dead. Or brown, for that matter.

I'm anxiously waiting for some snow to cover up the ugly, but in the meantime, sunsets like this one will have to hold me over until the white stuff makes an appearance.


I am thinking.....that sometimes, modern technology can be pretty darn amazing. On Christmas day, my three boys spent a couple hours playing a game together on their X-boxes. The amazing part is that one of the boys was in Montana, one was in New York, and one was in the Middle East. They were able to talk to each other like they were sitting side by side, and it almost made me want to grab my very own sniper rifle (the virtual kind) and join in the fun. Unfortunately, my video game skills haven't progressed past the old school Mario Kart level, so I've got some work to do before I'm allowed to play with the big kids.


From the kitchen.....these enchiladas on Christmas Eve, egg nog French toast Christmas morning, and prime rib for Christmas dinner.

I'm still full.


I am reading.....nothing. I just finished The Hunger Games yesterday. It was my first read on my Kindle, and I think I am officially a Kindle fan. I would like to make one tiny improvement though.

The Kindle needs a remote control.

Stick with me here.

Our upstairs is arctic in the winter. Think Siberia on a cold day. The furnace kicks on in the morning, but the rest of the day we heat the downstairs only, so by bedtime things are a bit icy up yonder. We all have fleece sheets and approximately forty pounds of blankets on our beds, but my exposed book/Kindle holding hand gets very cold during the bedtime story hour.

I'm thinking that if I could prop the Kindle up on a pillow, and then have the remote control page turner under the covers, I'd have the perfect, cozy wintertime reading scenario. Ideally, when I fall asleep, the remote would automatically turn off my light as well.

Dear Amazon,
Please make a remote control page turner for Kindle.
Thank you,
Teresa


I'm now going to stray from the designated Outside My Window format, because I have a couple other things to tell you.

First, my middle son, our desert soldier, got his package on Christmas Eve. I can't even believe it. I take back every bad word I've ever said about the U.S. Post Office, the military mail system, and the customs department of any country, anywhere.

Major guilt trip averted.

He shared that his roommates mocked him on Christmas Day as he put together the miniature Lego set that Santa had us send to him.

Obviously, Lego jealousy knows no age limit.

Additionally, he told me that he has absolutely no memories whatsoever of the Christmas card picture taking fiasco of 1995, which is good because he was by far the one that was the most traumatized by the incident at the time.


One more thing. It just happens to be his birthday today.

He's been gone since April, and I think that's long enough, don't you?

Happy Birthday, buddy!

We miss you!

Come home soon!

silent night

it's a wrap

My house is an explosion of tissue paper and bows.

Happy wrapping, everyone!