D's New Place

We spent Easter weekend with Danielle at her new place. I took several pics with my Smart-phone that I'm sharing here. I'm starting to think it may be time to upgrade to my camera phone.

So, to set the scene...a two-hour drive to her place was an all-day affair for us. I took the day off work, so it was a vacay day for me, which meant I wanted to sleep in, which I did. I woke up and realized we were getting a later start than I planned. 

A Lazy Almost Summer Day

It's a lazy almost summer day here in NC. A little humid for my tastes...but the sun is out and it is beautiful.

I took this picture "that time" I was at the Cherry Blossom Festival in D.C. It makes me smile.

I discovered a journal today that has some fun pithy sayings...or prompts. It is called "The Journal of Awesome". I was completely drawn to the title. When I flipped through I saw a few awesome things that made me smile.

So, when I got home I went straight to the internet to check out the story of the "Journal of Awesome". I will say it is likely that I am way behind on learning about this nugget. Turns out the journal grew from a book that grew from a blog. And the first book was published four years ago. Well, even though I'm quite late to this party, I have to say the thought of journaling about "AWESOME" is, well, awesome. It's nice to remember big and little things that make you happy. For me, today it was:

• Finding the picture I'm posting and
• My husband coming home and surprising me with fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts! AWESOME!

Beach Retreat

This past weekend I went on a Beach Retreat with the women in my church. We were on Oak Island. I've never been there before but found it to be lovely. Here are a few pictures I took while I was there.

Our Retreat theme was "Relax, Rejuvenate, Reflect and Re-connect". The setting was perfect for all of those things.

I'm still processing some of the things we explored. It was a difficult transition back to real life on Monday. Sunday was in the 60*s. Monday was cold, rainy, and sleet. What a difference!

But like they say: "In like a Lion out like a Lamb".

St. Pat's Weekend

I have a friend that is a really good photographer. She is also a good teacher. Do you remember my Waterfalls Photography Vacation?  ~ I know...it will be 2 years(!) in June. Time flies! Anyway, she is the person that organized that trip.

This weekend J. had several of us over to her house to share tips for Pet Photography. J. had some really good tips and shared her doggies to be models for us to try out our new skills.

Happy Friday

Happy Friday. I went dark on ya didn't I? I only got posts up 3X this week. It was a personal goal of mine to post each day during the week. Oh well....that didn't happen this week.  So, we'll see how next week goes.

I'm getting excited about the SUPER BOWL. I'm really torn about who to pull for. I think it'll be a great game. Sunday plans are: watch football and eat chips and dip.

What I Did This Weekend

What I did this weekend was....VERY LITTLE. And I'm not sorry.

I'm still new at my job...which means I come home with a fatigued brain each night. Not to mention that I now drive over 25 miles to and from work. (!!) Yeah! Driving itself can be a little scary. It's several different highways that I have to merge onto and off of. I can manage that okay in the mornings...but at night? OMG it's tough. I don't know if it's my depth perception or the fact that I get blinded so easily by all the lights...but I absolutely hate driving on these highways after dark. So, when I get home it's all I can do to just sit and watch Jeopardy. Which, by the way, I'm getting so much better at!

That Weekend is Here

It's super late & I need to be asleep. Daughter (on the left) and I (on the right) will be driving 2.5 hours away to be part of the Avon Breast Cancer walk tomorrow. Eek.  I haven't packed.

But, I couldn't bear the thought of going into the weekend without a post to send us off to our adventure. So...that's what this is. A whew...I can't believe we are going to do this post.

Think about us!

I Think I Have a Cold

Seriously. I've had fatigue for the last two days. Last night I went to bed at 8:00. Ridiculously early. And? when it was time to get up...I still felt like I could sleep for another 8 hours. 

So excited that the weekend is almost here. I really need it. I'm hoping I will be enjoying lots of hot tea and milk this weekend. Hope you are having a good day (and weekend).

How was your Weekend?

Can you believe that another weekend is gone? Poof...just gone. But the good news is, next weekend is a 3 Day Weekend! And it's a day just for us worker bees. The story goes that it's a day to celebrate the contribution of the American Worker to the U.S. economy. That's the story according to Wikipedia. It's funny that I had a (most likely incorrect) memory of this holiday being bundled with FDR's holidays to stop the runs on the banks in the depression. But Wikipedia didn't seem to suggest that. But I'm almost sure there IS a holiday that was designed just to be able to close banks "legitimately" to give the consumers time to calm down and leave their money in the bank.

Wikipedia does allude to a more "political" reason for the holiday. Ya know, Congress didn't wake up one day and say to themselves...."You know what the American Workers need? A DAY OFF". Although...in all honesty, it's always what this American worker wants. I love every three day weekend that comes my way!

What will I do with this extra day? Oh, I'll think of something. (Counting Down.)

A Weekend at Home

These wonderful roses came from our yard!  The Hubs and I are thrilled.  Thrilled, I tell you! Aren't they lovely? The Hubs and I picked out some really great bright colorful roses to be planted in our rose garden. On another day I'll share a pic of the actual rose garden.  --For now, think "White House" Rose Garden.

Sunday Musings

If you are following my blog please don't leave me...there were posts that appeared and then disappeared over the last two days...I know this. I've been obsessed with all things blog lately. I've been desperately trying to figure out how to get my blog to look the way I want it.  There's this whole HTML thing going on behind the scenes that I'm trying to master. And, frankly, it's kicking my a$$.

My daughter has a blog and I'm really liking how she has made hers look. She was good enough to come to my house yesterday and teach me some of the design tricks she has learned. (Forever grateful.) I spent the rest of the afternoon trying out new things on my blog.

Last night I discovered Microsoft Word has a word template called "Blog Post". So...I spent the time configuring Word to work with Blogger. My thought is/was to be able to type my posts in Word, along with images, and then upload straight from Word. It only partially worked. It uploaded the text but none of the images. --Which is pretty much useless to me.  The whole point for me was to be able to do some funky things with my images that are too difficult for me to do in Blogger itself. 

Then I found if I downloaded a program from Blogger to work with Word that it will all be so easy.  Again...wrong. It's all about the images. They don't seem to want to come into this blog unless I'm in the blogger. So many hours of frustration have ensued.

I just simply need to learn HTML. That's all there is to it.

I want to be able to share images and I want them to to "stay" where I put it.

My Sissy just offered to let me borrow a book and let me read it before she does. That is so generous. It's the new book by Liane Moriarty.

The first Liane Moriarty book I read was Three Wishes and I LOVED it! It is about Triplets on their 34th Birthday (and the year that led up to it. The sisters are in a nice restaurant celebrating their shared birthday when they have a sister fight. One that ends with the pregnant sister getting a fondue fork in her belly. (But not in a sinister, murderous, kind of way. More like in a sisterly, "I'm really mad at you", kind of way.)  Needless to say, this one had me at "hello", ahem, "fork in belly". Who needs Jersey Shore when you can read such a fun read?

After I devoured Three Wishes, I shared it with my Sissy. --The youngest one. That's right, while we aren't triplets, we are three sisters that are very close in age. My Sissy and I have a very similar sense of humor and she loved the book too.

Moriarity's second book...I loved, NOT AT ALL. And, I'm a little scared now. How can one book be so screechingly funny that I can't wait for more...and the next be so painful that I can't imagine it is the same writer?

Sissy is in the middle of a new mystery, so I don't know when she'll read this new book by Liane Moriarty. I'm hoping to get her take on it first.

I recently finished reading the last of Jen Lancaster's memoirs.  LOVED THEM ALL. But most especially loved SUCH A PRETTY FAT.

Now I'm reading Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella.  I'm about a third of the way through...and I'm not sure I will be able to stop myself from jumping to the last chapter to verify that it gets better. --I do that sometimes...if a book is starting to teeter on the "suck-a-meter", then I will jump to the end to see if it sounds like it got better.  If it does, then, typically I read backwards.  Really...what I do is read the last chapter. If I sort of liked it, or was intrigued enough to know how the characters "got there" then I read the next to the last chapter...and so on. I'm hoping not to have to go there with this one.

I consider myself an avid reader, but I decided long ago that life is too short to read a book beyond the "it could get good" stage.

I remember the first time I dared not actually read a book was in 9th grade. The book was...David Copperfield. I'd read Oliver Twist the year before and was surprised that I liked it. But Copperfield? I tried it for like three chapters and then decided if I couldn't pass with Cliff Notes then I just wouldn't pass. 

Well..that's what I'm thinking about tonight as I try to wind down the weekend. Hope everyone had a good weekend.