The Liebster Award

Social media is a funny thing, it can be really bad or really good.  In this case it is really good because I've been nominated for The Liebster Award from Melissa of Posh Nails.  Woo hoo!!!  Thank you that is so very kind of you!!

What is The Liebster Award?  Well, the answer is that this is the internet and like the old game of telephone the rules aren't always clear.  I'm going to use the rules that Melissa used since she nominated me.  The rules from her blog are:

• Thank and link the person who nominated me
• Answer the questions given by the nominator
• Nominate 11 other bloggers with less than 200 followers and link their blogs (I'm going to ignore this rule.  Sorry!)
• Create 11 new questions for my nominees
• Then notify everyone who's been nominated via social media

I think these are mostly do-able rules (I'll struggle a little with the 11 nominations but I believe in myself.  You can giggle now).  If you want to try to figure out which rules you think are right or official this link about sums it up.

Thank you SassyLittleNails for the cute picture

I think this award is great because the internet is the vast place filled with what would seem like an over-saturation of people starting blogs, websites and YouTube channels.  I mean I have this tiny little blip on the internet where people read about my random brain dumps of whatever I feel like writing about and yet there are people who come and read it.  There are so many creative people in the world that just have gotten sucked into doing what they "are supposed" to do that I think it has stunted the creativity and imagination of who we can be.  

I really love that this blog let's me be a tad bit creative because I know that I am a creative person but I realize that I am limited in what I am able to due because of other things.  Yes, I could be more creative now but I know that we all get the same amount of time it's just about how we split it up.  I look at time like a jar of marbles.  Like this...

Haha!!  Not these Marbles!  More like these...

Enough of the babbling, on to the real part of the post.  Here are the 11 questions from Melissa:

1. What is your blog about and why did you start it?
2. What’s your favorite vacation place?
3. If you were stranded on a desert island, what’s the one thing you couldn't live without?
4. Do you prefer to wear nail polish or not bother with it?
5. List three values that are important to you in your family/life.
6. What do you like about where you are living now?
7. Tell me about one of your hobbies.
8. What do you like to do for fun?
9. Name one book that made a huge impact on your life.
10. What kind of music do you like to listen to?
11. How do you relax and unwind?

Answers:

1)  This blog is about whatever I want it to be.  I've been trying to figure out that question since I started.  It is a combination of random thoughts from my head, things I want my daughter to know, reminders to myself, encouragement and my life.  It is my place to be a creative outlet that doesn't require too much additional equipment other than my computer and some pictures.

2)  My favorite vacation place is any place with water.  I especially love the beach and clean sand but there is no one place that has been above and beyond the other places that I have been.  I have learned (and still have to remind myself) that I need to be in this moment.  I could tell you the best parts of many vacations so really just being with my favorite people is my favorite vacation place.

3)  My initial thought is to say water but I can find water so my next must have would be my family.  I N-E-E-D them.  

4)  I love nail polish!  But... I can't paint my own nails.  When I do it it looks like a three year old did them (I'm sure there are three year-olds that can paint better than me).  I'm so bad that one of the very few times I did paint my own nails that my husband told me, "It's okay dear, you can pay someone to do that."  I just got fired from my own nails by my husband...

5)  Trust, faith and hard-work

6)  I love that I am close to family.  We aren't afraid to move away from them but right now, they are such a huge help that I don't know what I'd do without them.

7)  Photography.  It needs work but it is fun.  

8)  This blog is becoming to be quite a bit of fun but I also like to find ways to be with my family that don't involve just being home.  Although we have quite a bit of fun there too.

9)  Oh the Places You Will Go! by Dr. Seuss

This book says volumes.  It can be applied to so much of life.

10)   I love R&B and Soul but really anything that's playing.

11)   Cooking is usually a time for me to relax and unwind.  I enjoy spending time in the kitchen creating things and who doesn't love food?!

My Liebster Award Nominees are:

Crystal of Catching Up with Crystal

Camilla of Castle Avenue Blog

Jess of Positively Oakes

Sara of Little Bits of Us

of A Perfectly Messy Life

Danielle of Hello Darling

Kelcey of The Andrus'

Jacee of Itty Bitty Baby Beck

Lala from BlogsAndLala

Questions for these fine bloggers:

1. What are the goals for your blog?
2. What do you enjoy the most when writing your blog?
3. What is your favorite food?
4. What is the best meal you cook for your family?
5. What do you do for a living?
6. What are you looking for when you read other blogs?
7. How did you find those blogs?
8. When you were growing up what was your dream job?  Now that you are older is that still your dream job?
9. If you could move anywhere where would you go and why?
10. What is your favorite social media outlet and why?
11. How long did it take you to make this post?

Beautiful Family Weekend

Since I've become a mom I feel the impact of not spending time as a family more than when it was just the husband and I.

I had a bit of an extended weekend this week. Husband and I decided earlier in the week if time was permitting we'd take a day and spend it together. Well Friday came around and I had the availablility to take it off. He was going to take the whole day as well but said he just needed to run to the office for a minute in the morning. Since I'm not an early riser by nature and he is I figured he'd get up early and be home before I knew it.

Well as it turned out that didn't happen. I got up before he left and he wasn't home until the afternoon. *sad face* I thought well there goes our time and family time too.

Turns out I was wrong. Woo hoo! We had a date night on Friday. We even asked his parents if they wouldn't mind keeping our little Mini overnight. They of course happily obliged.

We stopped at two different places to see a bit of jazz and it was wonderful. I'd tell you more about who we saw but I'm not really that versed in jazz musicians and wouldn't be doing them any justice if I tried to speak of them and their wonderful talents.  

We even made a poor decision to get a bit of Taco Bell before the night was over.  Seriously we're not teenagers any more.  That was a BAD idea.  We paid dearly for that.  Oh well.  It tasted good at the time.

Yummy, yummy, yummy... oh upset tummy, tummy, tummy

Saturday rolled around and we picked up Mini around noon and headed out to shop. We grabbed a bit of lunch which was quite a decision since we're not eating bread.  My husband is the sandwich/burger king so he struggled.  Afterward we spent way too much time shopping at Homegoods. We stopped at Sam's Club and I ran in to do more shopping while Husband and Mini sleep in the car.

She's definitely got a hang of her step stool from HomeGoods

It was so nice not to shop with her. I love my daughter but oh my goodness is it hard to shop with a 1 year old!

After all that shopping we were done. We headed home to relax and eat a dinner of the best roast I've ever made.  If you have ever met me you would know that I always make dry, tough roasts (yuck!).  Not this weekend though.  Woo hoo!!

Sunday was like icing on the cake. We watched a varsity girls basketball game and then did a bit more shopping. Well "shopping" implies we were buying things. We were really playing in Toys R Us for a few hours (literally). It was fun but exhausting. The best part was that we ended up only buying  $10 worth of balls. Haha!

She was in love with this Pewi Ybike

It might not sound like some epic weekend to some people but in my book it was fabulous! Spending time with the two most important people in my life having fun and relaxing was just what we've all been needing.

I mean check out her concentration!

Why am I being so destructive?

This morning I was playing around in my Google+ profile and wanted to change a few settings (mistake numero uno).  Well, I was looking at the pictures and thought, "people don't need to see these duplicate pictures."  (mistake numero dos)

Have you ever seen this little guy before?  Today was a first for me :-(

I got a little clicking happy and deleted nearly all the pictures in my blog! AAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!  Yup, I've got mad skillz like that.

Instead of writing a nice blog post about who knows what, I instead spent way too much time trying to figure out what I had done and then how to fix it.  Thanks to good 'ol Google, I just searched for it and found out that I am one of many people who have made this mistake.  Luckily for me this blog is pretty new and I didn't have years and years worth of posts.

I did try to remember what pictures went where and what size they were (I'm sure I messed up a few, readers may be confused, haha!) but that was no easy task.  I can barely remember what I did yesterday let alone go through 40+ blog posts and try to fix all the pictures.  I tried to use the words as a guide but let's be real, I am not the person who has a hand written journal of all the blog posts that I've done with explicit detail of where everything goes.

Okay, well maybe I keep some notes

I usually write blogs as time is permitting and ideas are flowing.  For example, yesterday's blog was written in the car while my sweet little girl snoozed away in her carseat from the comfort of my driveway.  See, time permitting.  I knew that if I decided to move her in the house and try to get in done in there that was going to fail miserably.

Most of the pictures I use are usually things that I have or made quickly.  Since I live in the world of camera phones, point and shoot cameras and even my DSLR camera, it seems that I am always taking pictures.  It's mostly luck that provides these blog posts with pictures not impeccable planning skills (go figure).

So the next time you want to go playing with your settings and deleting things, think twice about that before you do.  You might not know the extended damage of what you did.

Lights, Camera, Flashes

I find make up to be quite an interesting thing.  Most people who wear make up don't want to look like they are wearing make up; they want to look natural.  There are of course the people that fall on the opposite end of the spectrum looking more like Mimi from the Drew Carey Show (sorry if that reference is too old... Google it).



My cousin came over this weekend and we were talking about make up and how we don't wear much.   She was actually surprised to find out I did wear make up!  My husband would never have me wear it at all if possible.  I don't wear too much but the funny thing is I own some nice things like a few Naked palettes and too much Urban Decay eyeliner of all different shades of blue, grey, purple, gold and of course black.  If you see me at all during the week you would know that I probably put on make up maybe once a week.  With the exception of mascara.

Naked 2 Pallet by Urban Decay

I own multiple different drugstore mascaras all the way up to my current favorite, Tarte's Lights, Cameras, Flashes.  If it were up to me I would have Betty Boop eyelashes E-V-E-R-Y single day of my life.  I feel like if I only got the option of wearing one item of make up for the rest of my life it would most definitely be mascara.  

Hello sexy mascara!!

The items that I wear the least are things like foundation, concealer, and bronzer.  I know these things have the ability to make your skin look as smooth as a Cabbage Patch Baby's skin but I feel like I'm wearing a mask when I do wear them.  Some people really like to wear it because they do have some skin issues that they would like to cover but there are quite a few individuals that I know have very nice but still wear it.  Do you wear those things because someone tells you that is the first step in wearing your make up or because you have bad skin?  I would really like to know. 

To me make up and plastic surgery really blur the lines of reality.  Most of the time these products are supposed to make us feel good about ourselves but sometimes I feel like it does the opposite.  We feel bad about ourselves unless we have on our make up or a new pair of boobs or a sculpted new chin.  Our mask.  I know that the cosmetic companies and plastic surgeons thrive off our insecurities but what are we teaching our kids?  

I mean for real, real people have cellulite and stretch marks!

I completely understand these things for people who's lives have been altered in someway requiring reconstructive surgery (not cosmetic).  

Sometimes I worry about what my daughter will feel like growing up with all kinds of photoshopped images of people wearing a face full of makeup like icing on a cake.  I certainly hope that she can find a way to be comfortable in her skin but I don't for one second think that all the fake images, faces full of make up and unnatural enhanced bodies won't make her question herself. 

With all that said I do have an appreciation for makeup and those who are artists with it! 

I have a great idea!

... but what was it again???

My brain seems to constantly be jumping from one thing to another.  It seems like my best ideas tend to pop into my brain at the worst time.  You know like when you are dreaming knowing that you aren't going to remember when you wake up.  Or when you are in the shower where there is nothing around to write with  Or even better, while changing a diaper filled with poop that you are desperately trying to keep your child from touching.

I am an accountant.  Yesterday I was having a meeting with my boss about some year-end adjustments and mid sentence my brain just started trailing off into a great idea.  What was that great idea you ask?  Well, I have no idea because I was having an important discussion about numbers, very important numbers.  Gah!!  I cannot stand that.  Not only did I forget what the idea was I don't even know what it was about.

The best part of my whole thought process is that by the time I get an idea of what I was thinking about the second time around I will have forgotten the most intriguing part.  People get good ideas all the time but there has to be that one thing that makes the idea stand out and if you can't remember what that little bitty piece of information is then your idea is a bust.  You need the golden ticket!

I almost feel like I need to keep a note pad with me all the time so that when and idea comes around that I can jot it down.  Especially the most important part.