Homemade..

I love to cook & bake! I wish that i had more time and i would cook every night!I have so many cookbooks in our house that i could never make every recipe IF i had the time to make a new one everyday!! thanks to my fabulous husband i have stepped out of my food box and will try all sorts of things.
When we first got married i made a total of 4 things.. poppy seed chicken, enchilada chicken, chicken bundles, and taco casserole. Every time i suggested i "make dinner" kelly would ask if we could try something new.. so after about 2 months of newlywed bliss i indulged him, and have never gone back! We are talking everything from a from scratch tiramisu to risotto to steak and egg casserole.. I am up for it!
Well every Monday night we have girls night and we all take turns making dinner. This week I wanted to make lasagna.. well when i got home from my walmart trip friday night.. kelly looked so sad when he asked the question, "when can i have homemade lasagna?" So I caved took another trip to the store the get the ingredients for crock pot chicken and sausage for the girls.
So saturday i made kelly the homemade lasagna.. to which he sweetly told me he is like Garfield and he loves lasagna. He said it looks better that the stouffers stuff, but the true test was if it tasted better.. Which he quickly agreed that it did. Now he could just be exaggerating, but i don't think so! this stuff is good!
With all this success i decided to keep on with my "homemade" weekend and made creme brulee french toast sunday morning for breakfast.. it is from one of those cute little cookbooks put together from all the older people in Bella Vista.. and it has never disappointed.. every recipe in there is AMAZING!

girly girl

As many of my close friends know.. I am not a girly girl.. never really have been.
Growing up i would way rather play football with the neighborhood boys than play house with the girls. Now having said that i loved me some Barbie..
But i was never the girl that had to have a pink room. When i was 6 and the parents were going through the big D..mom asked me what color room would make me smile and I picked yellow.
So having said all of that I don't really like pink. But last Saturday morning it was off the the running store to get new running shoes. I might add that we went to the running store after I attempted to trail run around lake Fayetteville and only really succeeded in eating dirt and slicing open my hand on a giant root!!
But it was off to the store where i told the sales girl exactly what shoes i wore.. in fact i had them on and showed her the tag!! She told me i would have to get the new model.. and then proceeded to show me those above.. ALL PRETTY IN PINK.
I think Kelly could tell the expression on my face was not an overly excited one because he quickly told the sales girl.. "we don't buy shoes on the way they look, so those will be fine" Well they had to order them so I left empty handed..but when over the next few days i think about the shoes.. so i decide to pull up the shoes online only to realize home girl got the wrong flipping shoes!!!
So I call her and get the whole mess straightened out.. and i have to wait another week to have my shoes... but the good news they come in white and blue!

college days...

This weekend I had one of my FAVORITE treats…which reminded me of college.
I love my husband and love spending time with him and being married to him..but having said that- there are many things that I miss about living with girls.. not all girls.. just emmy and sara pp..
Emmy- emmy introduced me to the reason I am writing this entry.. Popcorn and marshmallows..with a lot of m&m’s.. I crave it at times and sadly enough Kelly isn’t a fan of popcorn or marshmallows which means it is got to be an almost holiday for me to get him to agree to it! But with emmy and I it was anytime.. sometimes even for dinner.

5 min game-quite possibly the greatest game ever invented! You have to rub the other persons back for 5 min, then switch. IT IS GREAT.. as long as you are playing with someone that doesn’t suck at giving a massage, which is why I played with emmy.
Walk & talk- where we would just walk and talk about life and sometimes determine who we would marry Dean Mote or....yep no one else could win that one
Sink-She is …well was… missing the domestic gene. One of the best days ever is when she put the sink stopper in upside down and the actual handle part was shoved so far down the drain i had to go borrow needle nose pliers to get it out (only now after being marries 3.5 years do i know that is what they are called-at the time they were "the thin grabby things")best part was she did the dishes in the sink and i had to stick my hand down in nasty dirty dishwater to get this out..oh and the reason we she was washing them in the sink.. is because she wasn't allowed to use the dishwasher.. she put liquid dish soap in it..
oh emmy..

Sara pp-hands down by far easiest person to live with.
organization-closet assorted by colors.. NO WIRE HANGERS and everything was evenly spaced out between each shirt or pair of pants.
Sonic-no matter what she was my happy hour partner, we rarely ever missed a sonic happy hour-if we had to dig out the bottom of our seats, use laundry quarters or write a check for 1.50 it didn't matter we went to sonic..man if only i could do that at work!
listening- best listener...enough said
shower-sara's happy place was the shower... it like a saying you could find on some 1950's commercial...in a bad mood-take a shower..life making you sad.. take a shower..
SOOO to end this walk down memory lane-popcorn, marshmallows, and M&M's... all of these flooded back to my mind like it was yesterday because of this FABULOUS treat!

realization

today after much tormenting from the people that i work with.. i have realized that i am a planner.. i start planning on monday for the next weekend. I make lists i check them off and then i am like Santa Claus.. i check it twice!
i make lists and i am a creature of the list..for example
8am i eat breakfast-yogurt and dry oats
10am snack-kashi bar-almond is my fav
1230-1-lunch-tuna and rice, chicken and veggies, or leftovers
during the day i have drank at least 2 nalgene bottles-i drink the first one before lunch, usually the red one, i drink the blue one after lunch
5pm home from work
530-dinner
6-i make the coffee for the next day, fill water bottles, and make lunch and breakfast
10pm bedtime
now the random part is i will have some spontaneity too..like (kellys mom is a flight attendant-so we fly for free)sometime we just go to the airport hope on the first open flight and go.. I would do that and love it.. but on a day to day basis, not a chance.
We were supposed to go to a Make-a-wish meeting this week.. two weeks ago i put this meeting on my calendar. I knew the time, but not the location..so for seriously a week before the meeting i asked my friend Sarah where the meeting was.. i thought she was gonna hit me! just for the record the next meeting is aug. 11th at 630 & it is already on my calendar.
I love that kelly has accepted this neurotic behavior and will indulge me to a point.
When we are on a run, he is faster and has the garmin (GPS for those of u who don't know) and now after our 3 1/2 years of marriage he will tell me ahead of time what the route will be, otherwise i have such a hard time with the run that i wont do good.
Our 1/2 that we ran in june..we went the night before and drove the course so that i would be prepared for what the run was going to be, but the day of the run--the course was different!! kelly told me after we finished that he was worried it was going to ruin my run.. it didn't but it was cute that he thought of me!

charitable contribution....

"Pink Trash Bash"
I am so excited!
I have been asked to work on the "pink trash bash" for Susan G Komen NWA chapter.
The party is November 6th at 9pm at George's Majestic Lounge.
http://www.georgesmajesticlounge.com/
We had our first meeting this past week and I have so many idea's and can't wait to get started.. everyone i know best buy a ticket and come support! Or, if you know anyone that wants to donate any items.. please let me know!!



THEN to make my week even better, I had my Make-a-Wish meeting..I am now the official chair of membership! So anyone that wants to sign on up for that let me know! We found out that there are 18 kids in NWA with life threatening diseases that are on the list to have their wish granted! I came home so excited about my charity events that Kelly said he will be a wish granter with me!

martha

I have always wanted to be
like martha stewart..
martha can do everything! So last weekend I decided that I would be marthaish.. and stain an old night stand that Kathryn ann gave me. WOW no one told me what a complete pain in the rear staining is…well let me just tell you, it is a huge pain! The best part of the entire story is that Kelly and I both thought that I would be done in 45min and could start on the next item that I wanted stained, laps, then a dresser, then some end tables…. Not so much…
The directions say apply a coat and wait for 30 min to let the stain do the work.-bull! I waited for like 40 and then I had to apply more.. and then started the dreaded cycle of cover, scrap, wipe, repeat, cover, scrap, wipe, & repeat! It was soo hot on Sunday to, when I went to take my gloves off they were wet, not moist-WET with sweat. So wet that my hands were pruned! This went on for a good 3 hours until thankfully it was time for church.
I am proud to say though that even after alllllll of that hard work. I have successfully finished the top of the night stand.. that is it.. that is all I got done. This may be an entire summer project.

what we will do...

FOR FREE FOOD?
For those of you that didn't know..Chic-fil-a had customer appreciation day today. The only catch was you had to dress up like a cow... Yep, a cow. So at about 11:30 this am we (me, hannah montana, and our friend james) decided that we could totally pull this off..
So James printed off the "cow costume" off the website & we went to work.
Well James was pretty much out on dressing like a cow, so we enlisted Sarah to partake in these crazy shenanigans!
The spots we just taped on (complete with TAIL) and then we stole the actual cow bell from another group at work! To complete the outfit, JB hunt has a food vendor come in everyday for lunch, and today they let us borrow 3 latex gloves to wear as our utters...awesome i know! I wish I would have had a video camera recording us putting our costumes on in the car..
Then, we walk in and we are the ONLY people dressed up that are over the age of 6!
All in all it was a bunch of fun, i don't think i have laughed that hard in a long time.. and we all three totally got a WHOLE MEAL free..and a fabulous pic!

triathlon.. shamathalon

Technically it was a triathlon..

Thursday at work I get this text.. from my crazy husband!
Telling me that tomorrow we are going to do the "carlson triathlon"
He has decided that we will run 8 miles, bike 10 miles, and then swim.
So I go along with plan because now I have decided that we should do this up right!
Get shirts made and stuff!!
So my friend hannah montana texts me thursday and lures us away from the triathlon with visions of a relaxing day at the creek! So we give in and reschedule for saturday.
Saturday morning we get up and head to the bentonville trail. We complete our 8 mile run in the rain, and when most NORMAL people are running for their cars.. we walk to ours, stretch a little and get the bikes off the back and begin the bike ride portion. We continue to ride for 10 miles in the pouring down rain..
So by this point, we have decided that swimming may not be the best thing. But we have rationalized that this is technically a triathlon since we did our 2 events in the rain..

red white and baby blue

If I could pick something that I love love love to do it would be organizing...
One day when i grow up i would love to do events coordinating.. everything from the color of the napkins to the kind of food and the donations.
At HU we don't have sororities.. we have social clubs. I was VP, and with that title came the coordination of our "rush" activities..I loved having that control.. picking out all the activities coordinating the times, invites and activities..Which is why I love to be involved in any thing that lets me do that!
This past weekend we got to go to the Red, white & baby blue foundation for the Jackson L Graves foundation..here are some of our pictures