Don't Stop Believin!

Good morning, world! I am so tired today. Marc stayed up late working on a paper (oh the life of a grad student) and I couldn't sleep without him there (collective "awwwwwwww!"). So, I am pooped. BUT, as my mother pointed out this morning. It is really my Tuesday today because I don't have to work on Friday! Yay! That helps the Monday Morning blues a little. Oh, and so does listening to the Journey channel on Pandora.

Click on image to view web source.

We watched a movie on Saturday evening that had "Don't Stop Believing" as the credit roll music and now I can't stop singing Journey. But, it cheers up my Monday. Hope I'm not annoying the whole office. Need a little Journey in your life?



I'm planning on posting a new entry on the Methodist Children's Home blog today, so check it out later this afternoon. I am praying that people are not just ignoring my "Brand New Post!" emails. I hope they actually use the blog, because it is a great resource and I worked hard to make it happen.

For Theresa

Here is one of my craft projects. And suprise! It involves my little jelly Belle-y. :) I know you mentioned you like the pictures, so here it is!

The frame was a Goodwill find last year around Christmas. It used to be a weathered unfinished wood tone. I painted it teal and yellow last year and hated it. Then, right as I was about to throw it out (what was I thinking?!), Marc stopped me. Thanks, babe!


I painted it a fun shade of yellowish green (lots of coats) and cut out a piece of vintage fabric I bought at a local junk store. Then I mounted a picture of the cutest little bug in the frame on an angle to show her "sass" and "spunk." :)

I think this is a fun way to reuse an old frame and it is also an easy way to use up those awkward 5x7 frames we all have sitting around. I don't get to the photo store often enough to print 5x7s, so the funky fabric background is a nice touch that allows me to frame some of my special odd-sized or 4x6 photos.

Now this photo of little Belle sits proudly on my desk at work! Enjoy!

Hard at Work

I'm still blogging, I swear! Sorry for the absence. I have been working feverishly on the blog for Methodist Children's Home. It is a blog for the employees, friends, and donors of MCH. The idea is that it is a "refrigerator door" on which I can post all the great things we are doing across the MCH community.

It may not look like it, but there was a lot of crazy HTML work to make the MCH blog look like that. I'm tired just thinking about how many times I entered div tags or img src=blah blah blah...

But basically, just so you know, this is one of the things I love most about my job right now. Who would have thought?! I am actually enjoying learning HTML and learning a lot about web design from lynda.com. Bryan, my boss, put me in charge of the web re-design project this year, so I am busy learning how we can attract a new generation of donors and youth through our site. It is a great growing and learning experience and I know that I am blessed to have a boss that trusts me with a project of this magnitude. I am confident that the things I learn here in this job are preparing me for success in whatever comes next (be it more public relations or working in student development again).

Click on the image below to see the blog.


Feel free to check out the blog and give me feedback. If you know me, you know I love feedback!

Attic Update

An update for those of you who are following my attic adventures:

Today I...























Didn't open it... Sorry for disappointing everyone in blogland. It was very tempting, but there was a full office. :)

Sorry for getting your hopes up. When I experience "all that is the attic", you will be the first to know. Well, hopefully you will be the first to know. Unless I get caught...

My Unconventional Afternoon

To start with, I had to go to the dentist. Normally I get excited about the dentist if it involves laughing gas. Seriously. I LOVE laughing gas. It is probably some sort of weird addiction that I should look into (not really!). But for a naturally anxious person laughing gas is like a reprieve from my own overactive mind, but I digress.

This advertisement from 1845 makes me laugh. It even says,
"Those who inhale the Gas once, are always anxious to inhale it the second time."
I can't imagine going to an old-fashioned laughing gas party,
but it sounds pretty interesting. Click on image to see source site.

No laughing gas for me, at least not during my appointment yesterday. I got my crown glued on to my root canal. Fun, huh? It didn't hurt at all, but it did take an hour and a half out of my day. And I was miffed that the procedure didn't involve laughing gas - in a sick way I had been looking forward to it. :)

Then I came back to work. It was great. I got to go over to beautiful Cameron Park and photograph some guys from the Boys Ranch spending their insanely hot summer day fishing, hiking, disc golfing and playing catch. Some of my favorite homeparents from the Ranch were there and we got to talk. It was really fun (minus the intense sweating from the 100 degree heat).

On my way back to campus I decided to splurge for a Sonic drink, after all, it was Happy Hour at Sonic (half-price drinks). As I was driving past the back side of the Methodist Children's Home campus I saw that our kids were in the pool hanging out and playing games. Photo Op! Of course I took advantage of that!

After photographing the campus kids at the pool for a while, I headed back to the office to download my pictures and video and do some quick editing before heading home. But life had other plans for me. As I was turning one of the many corners in our confusing campus my car shut off (including power steering) and I was forced to manually turn the wheel and coast down the hill. I shut off the car for a while and restarted it thinking it may have just overheated from all the driving around town, but it made some scary "everything is NOT right with the world" noises when I restarted it.

So there I was. Bottom of the hill in one of the most confusing campuses I've ever been in, thinking, "Man, it's going to be fun trying to explain where I am to the tow truck operator." And it was a little complicated.

Sitting on the side of the road watching many of our staff drive by as they left from their work shift was a great time of reflection on being a good Samaritan. I was blessed by everyone who stopped to check on me. I laughed as some (very few, mind you) avoided me. And I was humbled by one man who actually pulled over and got out of his car to offer help.

I work in a great place. But beyond that, I serve a God who is beyond bad days and unreliable cars. Praise the Lord!

Koinonia Group

Here is a photo of our DaySpring Baptist Koinonia supper club. It was a ton of fun getting to know these lovely people over the last few months. :)

Attics Still Unknown, Sitting like Barack and Being an Auntie...

Didn't pull the cord yet. I am afraid it will bring down a staircase and I'm not quite emotionally ready for that experience. :) Also, I want to do it on a weekend when I can't get caught in the act. (i.e. I'm a weakling).

On another note, I shut my door and sat at my desk like Obama today. I felt pretty powerful. :)

On another another note, I am an intentional auntie! As many of you know, while I was growing up, my Mom was in a Bible study with a great group of women. These women all happened to have little girls (Really! No boys! Well, except for Tim and Brian but, blah blah blah). Since our Mom's consider themselves to be sisters, we all call them the Aunties. I have an Auntie Marilyn, an Auntie Paula and an Auntie Susie!

All this is a long way of explaining that Auntie Paula's daughter Heather had a baby girl today! Heather, and her husband Ryan, are going to be awesome parents. And of course, as a part of my obsession with babies, I had to know how we would be defining my relationship with the newest member of "the Family." Lindsay (Heather's sister and my childhood best friend) and I decided that rather than being a cousin Carrie (since our Mom's are the Aunties) I would be Auntie Carrie. After all (we reasoned), it better explained the relationship. :)


I'm not sure how being an "intentional" rather than biological auntie is passed down through the generations, or even how it all really works, all I know is that I have a new little "intentional" niece and I couldn't be happier!

Did I mention that this little bundle "just happened" to be born on her aunt Lindsay and grandma Paula's birthday? Three generations of ladies with the same DOB...crazy!

Attics Unknown and Office Posture

No matter how you feel about President Obama on a personal, or even political level, I think we can all agree that it is cool that we have a president who is willing to "put his feet up" once and a while, even if he is talking to the Israeli Prime Minister in a country in which showing the soles of your feet is taken as an offense. (For the full story, click the picture). I guess it could just be that I have always wanted to do this at work but haven't had the guts...

But now that the President is doing it... :)

On a completely different note, I wanted to show you the torment I go through each day at work. Every day, as I walk to get my morning cup of coffee in our staff break room, I am tormented by this.


It is a pull-down attic. I desperately want to know what would be in an attic of a building like this. Built in the 1950s, our Administration building is a gorgeous Georgian-style, white-columned building with lots of class. And I can think of nothing better than pulling that delicious looking metal chain and exploring the attic. You might not think that my temptation is a big deal, but I walk by that chain at least five or six times a day as I go to other offices.

Pure, unadulterated office torture, I say.

Blanket-smoothing, Bed-making something or other...

It all started when I got married I guess. I used to HATE having a top sheet on me when I slept. Mom and Dad always made me use them, but once I got to college (and the heat of Grand Island Hall) I quickly shed the top sheet in favor of a comfy quilt. Life was great that way for four years... but then I got married.

Marc didn't mind not using a top sheet, but I eventually started to feel guilty and thought that as "adults" we should probably get used to using a complete sheet set. As the years have gone by I haven't thought much about it.

Slippery slope, my friends.

You see, it isn't just using top sheets that has changed. I used to wash my sheets when it was convenient rather than on a schedule. And since I have mostly lived in apartments without a washer and dryer, washing sheets was not a priority. Not to be gross, but I was lucky if it happened every few months. Not so now! Now I wash the sheets weekly, and we still don't have our own washer and dryer.

And I never used to make my bed but it never bothered me. Now, I have to make the bed before I can get in it at night. The sheets MUST be pulled tight and re-tucked and the blankets simply MUST be smooth!

Last night, as I was straightening the bed and plotting when I could change the sheets, all of this came on me at once. I thought, "My goodness! Who am I? When did I become a blanket smoothing, bed making, sheet changing adult?"

Part of me wants to rebel tonight and sleep tonight on an unmade rumpled bed without a top sheet...

Who am I kidding? I'm even obsessive about properly folding fitted sheets. Who am I? :)

For a great tutorial on folding a fitted sheet click here!

All images in this post are taken from www.apartmenttherapy.com. Check it out!

I found friends to "junk" with!

Lacey and Jalon just moved to Waco from USF and I just found out that they love to go to junk shops! We spent the morning and early afternoon at two different shops in Waco. It was a blast, and I only spent $8!

On another note, we just tried out our ice cream maker yesterday. Actually, we tried to use it on Thursday evening, but we "ahem" failed to read the directions. I assumed that Marc had read the directions on the instruction sheet, so when he said we didn't need any ice, I believed him. What we failed to realized was that the only reason we didn't need the ice was because we were supposed to freeze the bowl! Needless to say, after twenty-five minutes of listening to the machine whirring, we were disappointed to see the soupy mess. After a bit of investigating we recognized our mistake and put the bowl in the freezer so we could enjoy it on Friday night. It was great once we used the machine the right way! :)