As I was sitting outside

While I was eating lunch today outside (bad decision, 100 degrees, ugh), this little cutie ran up to my table and sniffed around so I threw him a piece of bread from my lean pocket. He snatched it up and ran under a bush and ate it. It was so stinkin cute! When he was finished he ran off. Probably to go find somewhere cool to lie down and take a nap :)

A few things that I'm happy about

I'm happy my hubs and I saw Batman last night.  In my opinion, as someone who is not a Batman die-hard but has enjoyed the other movies, I thought this one was really good. Best movie ever? Ehh not sure if I would go that far. But, yes, it was good. Super long though. It was hard to stop from fidgeting in my chair the entire time.  Sometimes when I moved, the chair would squeak real loud, hehe. I had a silent laugh in my head over it and tried not to move around too much. I didn't want to make the "Bat fans" upset. (See what I did there? ha).

Here is the next thing that is currently making me happy. I believe this one speaks for itself. (Sorry it's little, click it to read it).

And lastly, I'm happy about the late summer storms, and the fact that fall is just around the corner. I love fall for a hundred different reasons. Warm yummy food, cooler weather, leaves changing and falling, pumpkins everywhere, Halloween decor, cider, delicious smelling candles, I could just go on and on. Funny how I was dying for summer a few months ago, and now I'm completely over it. I'm always so anxious for the next season to get here!

How gorgeous is this???  I'm in love ♥♥♥

Monday already?

Where the heck did my weekend go? We didn't do anything on Friday night other than watch tv and hang out. Saturday, I went to a hip hop cardio class and learned how to Dougie (among other things). I'm paying for all the Dougie-ing today though, that's for sure. Who knew the Dougie was so good for your abbies? Saturday night we went to a cookout at a friend's house, and it was so much fun! A huge storm blew in right about the time that the meat was finished cooking, so the timing was pretty good. It poured rain, thundered, and there were huge cracks of lightning all evening. It made for a perfect atmosphere hanging out with good friends indoors!

Sunday was spent recuperating from Saturday night's shenanigans. ;)  A little pool time, a little sleep time, and just a general all-over laziness.

Now I just HAVE to share this picture of a commercial that I saw over the weekend.  I actually had to rewind the commercial and watch it again because I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Octomom is a spokesperson for Octoloan.com!? I've never heard of the website, but wow. First of all, what reputable loan company would ever want her to be their spokesperson, and much less, name the company after her?? Secondly, what kind of person would ever see this commercial and think "Hmm this seems legit, I'm calling right now"??  Cray. See for yourself; one talking Octomom complete with baby crib in the background.

TGIF

The game last night was so fun! Perfect mild weather, clear skies (after the afternoon storm blew through), good company, and $1 hotdogs! What more can you ask for?? Oh I know what would have been the cherry on top... if the Bulls won! Unfortunately the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (yeah, that's their mascot HA) whooped the Bulls 10-1. Yeesh. It was still tons of fun though. A special thanks to some dear friends for the free tix. Here are a couple pics from the game.

See the huge Bull cut-out on the top left? If there was a grand slam, and the ball hits the bull, everyone in the stands gets a free steak! If the ball hit the grass under the bull, everyone would get a free salad! There were over 7,000 fans in the stands last night.. talk about a lot of steaks! We wondered if they just handed out steaks at the gate as people left, lol. It's probably in the form of a gift certificate.. but wouldn't it be funny if they handed out steaks right then and there?

Last night my husband received an email from his mom saying that his dog, Heidi, went missing. She is 12 years old and they have had her since she was a puppy. They posted a "Lost" ad on Craigslist, posted flyers throughout the neighborhood, and drove around for hours looking for her.

We had plans to go to a Durham Bulls game tonight, but we were thinking of cancelling those plans so that we could drive around and look for Heidi. We were trying to be optimistic, but in the back of our minds we were fearing the worst.

Then, this morning my husband received another email from his Mom. Here is the email:

Subject: Re: Heidi missing

Heidi is back and safe and sound! She found her way into a neighbor's garage last night. I was putting up flyers when another neighbor told me where she was (it was the neighbor behind him)...and she is now sleeping off her ordeal on the back porch! Heidi and I are both SO relieved and happy!

Love, Mom

YAY!!! We are so happy that she is back home safe and sound.  Too many animals go missing and are never seen again, so needless to say this email made our day.  Now our plans for the baseball game are back on! Woot!

Someday

I've been bitten by the travel bug today.  Well it actually bites me a lot of days, but today I found some places on Homeaway.com that I would love to go to.  Maybe in a year or two we might be able to go on one of these trips. In the meantime I guess I'll just settle for Internet day dreaming.

I also found a website called LoveHomeSwap.com that lets you participate in a vacation home exchange with someone else anywhere in the world! If you've seen The Holiday with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, then you'll know what I'm talking about. I wonder if it works that perfectly in real life. Hm. Two amazing homes, two independent young women who know how to live it up in their vacation spot, and they both manage to find love while on vacation!? Not to mention the fact that the women were able to meet up for a New Year's Eve party in England and party the night away with their new love interests. How perfect!

After looking at all the amazing homes on the home swap website, I can't help but wonder if any of those homeowners would agree to swap with me here in Durham. Don't get me wrong, my house is a nice home in the Durham suburbs, but it isn't in the heart of the city, no infinity pool, no views of mountains or oceans, and no Jude Law :) 

Anywho, here are the places I found on Homeaway.com that would be nice to travel to.

Sedona, Arizona - check out these views!!!

Big Sky Montana - Beautiful!

Ireland - one mile from Doolin, the traditional Irish music capital of Ireland!

London, England - went to London when I was 18 with a school trip.. probably more fun now that I am 27!

Fiji - ugh is this even REAL?? where do I sign up?

Amsterdam, Netherlands - this would be a totally cool place to visit!

Rollin on the river

When my alarm went off this morning, I felt like I was glued to the bed.  All my body parts were hurting and my back was burning and hurting too.  No, I didn't sleepwalk into the office and work out on the treadmill in the middle of the night.  Everything hurts because yesterday my hubs and I went rafting for six hours! We put the raft in at the southern end of Jordan Lake near the dam, which is the beginning of Haw River. It eventually turns into the Cape Fear River when the two merge together.  We didn't plan on it taking six hours, but when the current is actually going against you and the wind is blowing against you, it takes a lot of effort to move forward.

We thought we could just take a break from paddling from time to time and just drift down the river.  Wrong.  If we stopped paddling then we actually started to drift backwards.  So that explains my sore muscles this morning.  It was a killer workout, but I would have been happy with, say, three or four hours of rowing instead of six!

Despite the hard work, it was a fun day on the river in the sunshine. Oh, that's another thing. Apparently 30 SPF is no match for six hours of blaring mid-day sun. We both have sunburns despite our application and re-application of sunblock. Not terrible burns, but just enough to be bothersome on top of our sore joints and muscles.

After our adventure, we were extremely happy to come home and shower off, have a spaghetti and meatball dinner, and frostys for desert.

Here is a map of the route we took. The top "x" is where we put the raft in, and the bottom "x" is where we FINALLY took the raft out.  It may not look like much on the map, but it was actually about seven miles.

Frostys!

I can't even begin to describe how good our homemade Frostys were! They tasted identical to the ones you would get at Wendy's. Good thing we made a nice big batch so we'll have enough to last a couple days. Just talking about them makes me want one right now, and it's only 8:00am! It may not be the most nutritious breakfast, but definitely the tastiest!

Leisurely Saturday

My day started off with a Jimmy Dean D-Lite breakfast sandwich. They are soooo good! This one is ham, egg, and cheese on an English muffin. D-Lites is their reduced fat/calorie version and you would never know the difference! Only 210 calories for this sandwich and it is so yummy and filling. It was the perfect way to start off my day.

Of course Rocky had to come over and check out my sandwich and beg for some.  How can you say no to this face?!

I'm finishing off my night with a Pinterest recipe for a homemade Frosty!  It's so simple, only three ingredients. 

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 8oz tub of whipped cream

1 half gallon of chocolate milk

Mix (with hand mixer) the condensed milk and whipped cream until smooth.  Then add half of the chocolate milk and mix. Dump it all into your ice cream maker, and add the rest of the chocolate milk up to the fill line. Then follow your ice cream maker's instructions and that's it! I'll post a picture when ours has finished. We peeked in as it was churning and it looked so good, exactly like a Frosty. I tasted a little (ok, a BIG) spoonful and it tasted just like one too. I'd say this recipe is a definite keeper!!

Score!

Here is the pic I promised. This was my first time participating in Cow Appreciation Day.  I'd say it was a success!

TGIF!

Today is a great day for a couple reasons. First of all, it's Friday! Woo hoo yippee yay! Secondly, the staff in my office decided to have a snacky food day for no particular reason at all. So we all brought in different foods and snacks. Thirdly, if you dress up as a cow then you get a free meal at Chik-Fil-A! I've been to CFA plenty of times on these days and have seen other people dress as cows, but I've never participated myself.  We happen to have a CFA directly outside my office, so I'm excited about heading down there for my free meal at some point today! Mind you, I am NOT dressing in full cow gear head to toe. I wore a white shirt and jeans today, and I plan on drawing some black spots on paper and taping them to me. Maybe I'll snap a picture if you're lucky ;)

Now one picture that I will definitely be taking, is of my coworker who brought a full on cow costume today. Head to toe, spots, udders, tail, the whole nine yards. I promise I'll post of a picture of him later today.  My paper spots idea is SO not creative compared to his, but not everybody has a full blown cow costume hanging in their closet!

For our food day, I brought cucumber tea sandwiches.  Simple, refreshing, light, and delicious. Just mix whipped cream cheese with fresh chopped dill, and spread it on both sides of a sandwich. Then put one layer of sliced cucumbers in between, chop off the crust, cut the sammy into fours, and voila! Make sure you have a sharp knife though because a dull knife would wreak havoc on your sammy while cutting it into fours. Here is a pic of the finished product, and mind you this pic does not do them justice (the color is wayy off). They are just so deliciously cute in real life. Yum!

Girl look at that body.. uh,uh, I workout!

I'm proud of myself for working out on my new treadmill for the first time last night! Woo hoo! I wonder if my butt looks better yet ;)

After 30 minutes of sweating (and watching Toddlers in Tiaras on the ipad), I felt excellent. It's amazing what a 30 minute walk/jog will do for your mood.  I kept kicking Rocky in the nose accidentally because he wanted to sniff my legs and feet as I was walking, hehe poor guy.  I plan on hopefully getting another workout in tonight.

One of my very favorite things about summer is hanging up a hummingbird feeder and watching the little guys drink and fly around constantly.  They are there at the feeder probably every 2 minutes in the evenings.  When the hubs and I are sitting at the kitchen table I can't help but nudge him and tell him to look every time a little hummer comes up to it. I think they are just so cute. I'm sure my husband does too, right? I mean he's probably really grateful that I make sure to tell him every time I see one.

Here is a pic I snapped the other night, and I apologize for the blurry. The iphone takes great pictures, but when you zoom all the way in and snap pics quickly, they tend to be sub-par.

If you want to learn a little about hummingbirds, and how to enjoy them, here's a neat little site I found.  Not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing website, but helpful nonetheless.

Blast from the past!

So my Dad just sent me an e-mail that said, "Look what I found on the computer", and when I opened the attached picture, it was a picture of my college dorm room! Talk about a flood of memories! It was almost ten years ago that I moved into Owen dorm at NCSU.  I was excited, and a little scared of what the next four years would be like. I had a boyfriend (he who shall not be named) that I left behind at home and we were going to try to "make it work".  Oh naive 18 year old me. Like most "high school turned college" relationships, ours bit the dust pretty quickly as my Freshman year rolled on.

I had almost forgotten what my dorm room looked like! Sure I remember the computer desk and the bunk beds (mine was on bottom), but all the little details slipped right out of my memory. My new purple comforter and blue sheets- no doubt purchased at Bed Bath & Beyond during a "back-to-school-dorm-life-trendy-bright-colored-plastic-crap" sale. The desk in the picture was my roommate's desk.  I had a pot-luck roomie, and I was lucky that I was paired with a very nice, drama free girl.
I see our little plastic shelves with goldfish, oatmeal, and cereal on it. We were lucky to live in a premium dorm, which meant we had central campus location, central air conditioning, a sink in every room, and a micro-fridge in every room.  If I remember correctly I believe it was only a year old when we moved in.

What a trip down memory lane! When I started college I had no idea that I would meet my husband, move to NY, move back to NC, and living the life that I am now. Right about this time actually, there are rising college Freshman out there who are anxious, excited, nervous, about heading off to college. Their parents are proud and worried at the same time. These kids have no idea what the next 10 years of their life will bring. Looking at this picture I'm excited for them, and I don't even know them! They are about to experience some of the best years of their lives.

A week ago today my husband and I bought a treadmill. It was from a lady on Craigslist, and we got it for a good deal.  The downside? It smelled like cats. Ew. Also it was loud. My hubs tried to fix it by removing the plastic belt under the main belt. Turns out, it needs that plastic belt to function so we had to order a new one online.  If the shipping gods have mercy on us, then the belt will be here today.  My Lysol and Febreze bottles have been living in our home office (aka spare bedroom with a computer in it) for the past week, and I have been spraying every inch of the treadmill with both sprays every chance I get.

You know the Febreze commercials where they blindfold a person, and put them in a smelly room and ask them what they smell? They always name things like "clean, fresh air, flowers, sunshine, laundry, smiles, children laughing (wait, can you smell children laughing? hm.) anyways you get the point. Well if you blindfold someone and put them in our office, they would probably tell you it smells like a Febrezed cat. But that is WAY better than a non-Febrezed cat, which is what it smelled like a week ago, right?!?  Maybe I should try this method....

So after the new treadmill belt arrives, I'm hoping to start using it regularly.  We made sure it was an incline treadmill that goes up to 12% because I really want to work out my gluties. Also because I hate running, and when you have the incline up real high, you don't have to run. You can get an excellent workout just walking! Who says you need to run until your lungs explode to get a good workout. Psh. Here is a great article from www.Livestrong.com about the benefits of walking on an incline. Now lets just hope I am motivated to workout once our 'mill gets fixed!

What Does Walking on an Incline Do For the Body?

Creamer, what?

Ok, I know I just published a post about an hour ago, but I had to share this website with you.  I love delicious, rich, thick, coffee creamers that are flavored like my favorite desserts.  If you also share this obsession, then you know that coffee creamer can be expensive, especially the novelty flavored ones. The link to the website I shared shows you how to make your own flavored coffee creamers for much less!  I'll have to try this as soon as my current creamer runs out.  I'll definitely keep you posted!

What I love about Sundays

One of my favorite things about Sunday is CBS Sunday Morning News with Charles Osgood.  It's hardly 'news', but more like a collection of quirky stories about current events, interviews with interesting people (celebs and non celebs alike), and funny bits on interesting places that are "off the beaten path".  The stories are warm and make you feel good. The show always ends with a segment called "sounds of nature" where they play a scene that was recorded by a video camera out somewhere in the forest, in the arctic, in the desert, you name it. There are no human sounds, only nature for 30 seconds. Here is a clip from a segment on Brad Paisley, where he filmed a music video featuring the late Andy Griffith.

My mason jar full of sweet tea accompanied the CBS Sunday Morning News perfectly.

For lunch yesterday, I had Lean Cuisine's "Swedish Meatballs" and it was delicious! Less than 300 calories, tasty, and filling. Perfect. It was the first time I tried this kind, and it won't be the last.

Usually I enjoy some sort of cooking or baking on Sundays, and yesterday was no exception. I only made a very simple little snack: chocolate dipped pretzels. I had a bag of chocolate chips, so I melted some in a little glass bowl. Then just dip the pretzels in and lay them on aluminum foil to harden again. Simple and tasty! They were almost gone last night when I went to bed due to my snacking (as I'm making them) and my husband coming home with a growling tummy.

My Sunday ended with a little reading in bed, and a good night's sleep to follow. Perfection.

Lounged by the pool today.  Actually, since we are still in triple digits, less time was spent lounging by the pool, and more time was spent lounging in the pool.  I also got stung by a bee.  But it was worth it :)  Somehow, lounging by the pool makes me feel like I'm on vacation.  If only there were a poolside cabana, and salty air.  Ahhhhh...

The past two weeks in North Carolina have been HOT HOT HOT!  Records were broken last week with 106° and 107° days over the weekend.  Needless to say, sitting lazily in the A/C was something that I decided to indulge in a lot over the weekend.

Unfortunately, our upstairs A/C broke on Friday night, leaving us with a dreadfully hot and humid bedroom. We made the best of the situation and pulled a mattress downstairs to the living room, and "camped out" there for the night! Rocky enjoyed the mattress in the living room as well. He was raised in NY so the triple digits are not something he is accustomed to.

Clearly Judge Judy bores him.

Well here I am again starting a new blog. (RIP Garden Girl blog).  Maybe I can keep up with this one for longer than a month. :)