Troubled Annie

So it's not Tuesday, and I've been gone for a little over a week, but I have to tell you something-something great! A few weeks back I was commiserating over the fact that none of my faves from Nashville Star have really made it big on the national scene with their music. Now I do not have to hear an artist on the radio for me to listen to them, in fact-it's typically the opposite. But, because they aren't big or well-known, I had lost track of them, and it's highly doubtful that anyone would ever come to Kansas to play, so there wasn't much of a chance of me catching up with anybody later.......till I became obsessed with blogs and blogging and I stumbled across this blog http://hootenannie.com/.

You see, the cutie from hootenannie.com is friends with Meg Allison, and just the other day talked about Meg and if I'm understanding this right, a dude from the same season of Nashville Star-Joshua Stevens (who by the way looks approximately 1100 times better now), making a duo called Troubled Annie. Awesome awesome stuff! I'm excited for them to come out with some great stuff and I've just had their myspace page playing in the background and I love their voices together.

So now my family has some more ideas for my Christmas stockings! (That's right, I get more than one stocking-in fact Mark and I travel to about 73 different holiday celebrations-ok more like 7 or so -but that's just the immediate family, grandparents and parents, and it feels like 73.) Yes dear family I will take a CD from about any or all artists I have listed in my little music section.

And you have some more exposure to the real country music, the good country music that I love and that you should too.

Music Tuesday #?

It's Music Tuesday again and I have lately been reminded of my love, my random strange love for the band Dropkick Murphys. Yes, completely out of left field-but it's true. I have to give full credit to my friend Robin, clear back from high school she loved all sorts of different British and Irish and I don't know-any sort of punk music. Thanks to her I fell in love with those guys and B*Witched. Oh ya-google that one!

The songs are fun, and they're Celtic-meaning they're perfect drinking songs! Sounds like a good night to me-I think I'll turn up my speakers, open a Bud Light, and enjoy the fact that I work at a bank and don't have to show up to work tomorrow.

Favorites:
Tessie
The Pub with No Beer
I'm Shipping up to Boston



And just cause I know you want to see some B*Witched-Enjoy....

EMAW

EMAW

Every Man A Wildcat

Today's the day-the hated opponent, the season on the line, the tailgating-it's all so important and already making me nervous. I don't do well with this kind of stuff....but I live for it. Purple-Get Ready to Roll.

Go STATE!

Ornament Exchange!

I have no idea what I am doing with this whole blog thing. But I do know it's fun, and I like snooping into other's lives-I mean reading about others!- and learning and being entertained and encouraged and challenged by what others have to say. One blog that I have recently started reading and enjoying is http://pamperingbeki.blogspot.com/ and she recently had a post introducing her 2009 Bloggers Ornament Exchange.

Now I love Christmas and I love ornaments. Every year starting when I was little, my Grandma Alice (my mom's mom) would get me and my sister an ornament, typically with our name and year on it. And after she passed away, my mother continued on with the tradition. So, two years ago, for Mark's and my first Christmas as a married couple- I wanted to continue on with our own tree. So, I drug him along and he actually picked out a fun ornament with a little bride and groom. Last year, as we lived in the world's smallest house, I bought a little house ornament and told Mark that we would always remember that year when our house was the same size as the ornament. Now this year has been the year of the loan-as we have purchased a farm, a house, and a tractor. Maybe we'll buy a paintbrush ornament, or a little red tractor, or an empty wallet ornament.

But anyways, I jumped on this opportunity to share my love of ornaments with others, and meet another blogger from near or far, and again be inspired and challenged and entertained. If you would like to join in the fun, check out Beki's blog (and her adorable shop-lots of cute necklaces and such that would make a perfect Christmas present for a neice or a friend or whomever!)
Check it out!

Lazy Days

I love having lazy Sundays. I have a few things that I am slowly getting done today, laundry, eating out at the Mexican restaurant, a little more laundry, and napping. Yesterday Mark and I were both in the same cleaning up mood so we got a lot of things done-which could be explained by the weird behavior associated with Halloween. But anyways, we went with it and got lots of little things and big things (like mowing our lawn for the first time in about two months-yes we're that kind of neighbor) done.

About a month ago I stopped at our farm and pulled 3 old doors and a screen out of the grainery. Yesterday I finally got around to washing them off and placing them in the house. Now they still need some love and decorations, but they're really cute and I love them so much. And they even passed the husband test, which was important. (not really)

So I placed the first one with the window in the dining room. Love it! And you can't see it in this picture-too dark, but that's my purple dining set on the table. Love it even more!


That's my "Congrats on the new house" plant from my mom. I really only have it sitting there because I thought it needed some more sunlight-since I had kind of forgotten about it in my Mary Kay room.

Here, on the right side of the picture you can see the screen that I put up plus the gold clock that I spent a fortune on out at the Pamida-but hey I like it! The screen came with the old blue paint which happens to look beautiful next to my blue wall. I think it was meant to be.

I needed a headboard for the spare bed and I think it works ok. It needs some more stuff on the wall and maybe even on the door. My friend/interior decorating advisor Alicia suggested maybe some of those wooden twig balls with lights in them.
Also-let it be known that I do not love this comforter-I like the colors, but I guess it just seems a little too dorm room to me now. But I did pick it out and someone was nice enough to buy it for us for our wedding-so if it was you I'm sorry! It's not your fault-it's all my fault that I changed my mind.

And finally the front porch and the last door. The steel pail and plants came from a wonderful co-worker, cause Lord knows I could never grow anything-she had to get me the simplest, easiest, can't kill kind of plants (like with the plant from my mom that I forgot about and left on the floor of my MK room for about 3 weeks-whoops.) This door needs a wreath but I love the old barn door look.

What do you think? Kinda fun, free decorating. The best kind in my book!

$$$

Earlier this week, Mark and I paid off my student loans. Paid Off


PAID OFF!

Now I do have to say that we were very blessed in the fact that my husband graduated with zero student loans, and while I had some-it was not near as bad as it could have been. (But then of course, it wasn't as good as it could have been either! If I had umm.....kept my GPA up and not failed Spanish 2 my second semester of my freshman year and kept my scholarship. I mean seriously, who fails Spanish?)

But still, I am super excited. We made our first student loan payment in July of 2007. We had set out early on with the goal of paying them off quickly, as opposed to taking the full 30 years like they wanted us to.

When Mark and I were dating and talking about our future, I always knew that I wanted to be able to stay at home when we have kids. And so, that meant planning financially for that future.(Which is not in the near future-but that's a post for another day.) It's crazy and dumb and backwards and old school that I would want to be a stay at home mother, and quite ironic that to do that I have to concentrate on paying off loans for a college degree that I won't be using. But it's something that I feel strongly about. And I know that if it gets down to it, and I'm in the middle of a job that I love and can't imagine giving up then we'll find a different way, and Mark won't be upset and life will be great. But as we have it planned now, I want to be able to spend that time at home with my children and raise my family and put my "career" on the backburner.

We don't drive brand new vehicles and we work around a budget every month and we maybe put off buying tons of new furniture or whatever because that doesn't work for us right now. And we still have season football tickets, and we go out to eat, and we buy fun things, and I never feel guilty about spending money when I do-we just don't let that get out of hand.

I am very blessed to have a husband who feels the same way about money that I do. Many couples say that money is one of their biggest issues. Our biggest money issue is why he's not spending more of it on me? I mean seriously, I'd take another diamond or maybe just a pretty bracelet, or a shopping spree-that'd be fun too.

Having money isn't everything, and I never want it to sound that way. But having money affords you choices, and we want to be able to make those choices for our family, our friends, our faith, where ever we are led.

I'll Play Doctor with You!

I have a confession to make.

I have a crush. And it's ok, I already told Mark-he's not too worried.

You see my crush is on a fictional character. I have recently become enamored with the tv show Numb3rs and one of the main characters Charlie Eppes. Dr. Charles Eppes. Oh man. He's a mathematical genius, a kind person, and he has the floppy curly hair that kind of just does it for me.

I think I would die if I ever met David Krumholtz (the guy who plays Charlie) in person. And I would cry if he wasn't at least a little bit dorky and smart in person.

So there, I've admitted it-I've confessed my love for a fictional character. I feel a little better, but I wish I was at home watching a Numb3rs marathon.

What I did on my Sick Days

I'm back to work, I headed back on Wednesday. I went to the doctor on Monday and he told me that I just had a cold and that I was a big ol' wimp. Well maybe not the last part-but that's what I kinda picked up on. No flu, no strep, just a little cold that put me on my back for about 4 1/2 days.

It's been a long time since I have spent that much time in front of daytime TV and it taught me two things. 1) I have rekindled my love for two morning TLC shows A Baby Story and Bringing Home Baby- and I can't decide if they make me want to start a family or never ever ever go through the process of labor and 2) TV Shopping Channels are addicting -sorry family if all you get for Christmas is a Denim and Co. cardigan set or a lifetime supply of really expensive clothes hangers.

And maybe if I'm lucky-when I order I'll get to talk to the people on set and tell them exactly who I'm buying everything for and I can tell them a cute story about my puppy and all the other things I'm gonna buy from their lines and what the weather is like in little ol' Kansas and yes I've heard that Wizard of Oz joke before and ohmygoodness we'll become best friends forever and it will all be so wonderful -AND I can just make the 5 easy payments and it'll all be shipped to my house in time for all the holidays!

My husband is now realizing that I can never be sick again.

Music Tuesday

Completely random-I mean way random and I don't even know why I thought of this. But I was thinking about the tv show Nashville Star. Now I'm talking about back when it was on USA, not NBC-because you can hardly consider that show Nashville Star, plus I could hardly watch it for the severe dislike I have for John Rich-blech.

But anyways-I was really into Season 5 and I thought I would google a few names and see if anyone from that show had done much of anything. Sadly, it's not really looking like that. But I do still love some of the girls from that show and there's a few random singles out there that I love.

The winner of Season 5 was Angela Hacker. Her most popular song during the competition was "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool." She just crooned it and made me close my eyes and sway along and I loved every minute of it. According to her website she's supposed to be coming out with a new CD in early 09-it's obviously late 09. So hopefully it is in the making somewhere, because I really think that she has an individual sound and could take country music back to its roots.

Another favorite of mine was Meg Allison. She wasn't real classic "country" sounding. But I big time love her. I love the twang and the writing and everything about it. She seems to be busy with tour dates, and there's lots of good songs on her myspace page.

Still sick

I'm skipping work today. I wish I could say I was just playing hooky and that I was going to do something fun today, but I'm pretty sure my day will consist of laying on the couch, trying to hack up a lung, guessing as to whether it's been long enough that I can take another capful of my Nyquil stuff, and hopefully making it into the doctor without catching someone else's sickness.

I can't remember a time where I have felt like this. Been this sick. Normally I might get one of those 24 hour things where I just sleep all day. But that's not happening now. I might only get 2 hrs of sleep before I wake up and have to start fighting whatever it is that I have. I cough and cough, not getting anywhere or again have to make that painful swallow in your throat-where you're not really swallowing anything and you have to close your eyes and squint just to finish that painful motion.

And I'm still so hoarse, I can hardly talk-I sound like a whispering man. And yes, my husband is enjoying this quieter Miranda-but I'm still able to make demands, so it doesn't work out all that well for him.

Basically this just sucks and I'd (almost) rather be at work. I'll let you know when I switch over to definitely would rather be at work-if that happens.

So Sick

I am so sick today.

So sick that I can't talk.

So sick that I can't go to the K-State game.

So sick that I'm allowing my mother-in-law to stop by with some food, even though my house is a disaster.

So sick, and so pissy! Why does this have to ruin my weekend. I had some fun things planned.

Just so sick.

And yes, I will take your sympathy.

Is queso an acceptable anniversary gift?

Last night my dad came to Clay Center to hang out with me and my husband. He had wanted to take us out for supper for our anniversary since, well our anniversary. But you see, I had no concept of this whole Fall Harvest thing back when I decided I wanted to get married-which has of course resulted in Mark and I never being able to actually celebrate our anniversary with more than a quick supper and a lousy champagne toast at about 10pm when he gets home all dirty and gross from the elevator. I mean seriously, why did no one tell me about this whole deal back when we actually decided on the wedding day!

But anyways-I digress.

My sister Morgan, my dad, Mark and I all went to eat at Carlos O'Kellys. I love me some queso and chips. Did you know-when we lived in Oklahoma-EVERY Mexican restaurant served not only the free chips and salsa, but also free queso! It's one of the few reasons Mark and I kinda miss Oklahoma. That and the......well, I'm thinking......we also miss the umm.......I don't know. There wasn't much else, other than the Mexican restaurants.

Mark and I moved back to Kansas from Oklahoma on March 29th, our 6mo. wedding anniversary-surprisingly another date that we couldn't celebrate, with anything more than a lousy toast and lots of sweating and cursing from the move.