Good morning and good Tuesday to ya. It is sunny and bright (though cool), and I am hoping for the kind of productive day I've needed for months now. I am getting closer to figuring out what all to list on Etsy, and today is the first good light I've had on a day off since....I don't know when! I also hope we get the yard started, at least, and that maybe - just maybe - I can get outside and get caught up on some spray painting projects!
Today over at Time Out For Mom, the Coffee Chat theme is "Favourite things. What are you loving these days?"
Well, for starters I am pretty excited about my recent seven pound weight loss. I have plateaued at the end of my second week, which I am NOT loving, but I'm trying to find creative ways to get the pounds falling off once again, because I really loved stepping on the scale and seeing the number move in a favorable direction. And I do NOT want to be caught at the same (or greater) number at the end of week three.
But that's not all!
I went to visit my family this past weekend. This was a planned visit, so I had hoped I would leave the blog a bit better prepared than I did, but due to an exhausting work schedule and an incredible amount of things to tend to before leaving, that obviously never happened. I am still playing catch-up. I've also fallen into the deep end of Pinterest again, but FINALLY I am pinning with a purpose because those big changes I've been talking about for years (the past two years, in fact)? Those changes are set to begin at last.
It's a chilly Tuesday morning. I remembered to take the trash out, I'm currently watching Sarah Sees Potential (which I really enjoy, despite Sarah's annoying voice), I've polished my nails, done a few chores around the house, I'm heading over to Pinterest in a few, and contemplating a nap before tonight's shift. I am determined to have a peaceful, yet productive day.
And based on that title, this is probably not the post you'd think it is. Since I was under the weather and binging on Netflix when not sleeping on Sunday, I missed Music Monday.
This week's theme (so far at least) seems to be random, so why not roll with it?
One solitary act or goal, that is.
In my last post, I briefly touched on some intentions for this year and promised to come back and expand upon them later. Well, today's Coffee Chat topic is "One thing I would like to accomplish in 2015 is ___________." Oh boy. Only one thing? But I have so many things I want to accomplish this year!
Or not. (That photo is from five years ago, and I love it, as it is classic "me.") As it turns out, I still have some decorating to do - even though I'm only adorning my bar with a small holiday-themed vignette - I'm still in somewhat of an adjustment period for the holidays. It didn't help matters that I had been valiantly trying to fight off an illness since Black Friday only to succumb to it a week later. I'm still feeling a bit run-down from that. Also, there was Sons of Anarchy. I hadn't watched until about 1.5 weeks ago, but it didn't take me long to get completely addicted! So a lot of my time has been spent with the SAMCRO crew. I'm now at the end of Season 3, and will probably have withdrawals while waiting on FX to marathon the final season (pleasepleaseplease tell me FX is going to marathon the final season at some point!).
But yeah. It actually IS starting to look a bit like Christmas because that is just how Christmas is done here. One bit at a time. We're getting there, folks! I have bought one gift for each of my sons. Thanks to my wonderful Mom, I am no longer laptop-deficient. And thanks to my boys, I now have a way to listen to all my treasured vinyl albums.
Today's Coffee Chat theme is "What does Christmas Eve look like at your home?" I may not have my holidays together just yet, but I do know how this plays out! Christmas Eve in my home will begin about 5pm, after my shift earlier in the day. I will give my sons their gifts. I will force them and the dogs to take pictures with me which I will then plaster on Facebook and Instagram. We will have a low-key dinner - I'm thinking finger foods. We will be in our PJs. We will stay up late getting caught up on favorite tv, or movies, and sleep in late on Christmas Day (in the morning). We will be thankful for another holiday in which we have been immeasurably blessed.
Here's a little South Park humor:
What does Christmas Eve look like at YOUR home?
We are now into the second day of December and here at Casa Belle, holiday preparations are being pushed farther and farther behind. I am exhausted from work and housework and trying to help get my sons ready to leave for their three-week out-of-town construction stint, and so that leaves us roughly tomorrow before work and tomorrow night after work to get the tree put together as a family. (HEY! It could happen!) On that note...
I've decided not to break out the big tree this year. There are only three of us here, none of us are getting big gifts, and as I said before, two will be gone in a few days and won't be coming back till the 22nd. It just doesn't make sense to make a big production out of decorating. So in an attempt to make things simpler, tomorrow evening we will get the Christmas music going. We will nosh on appetizer-type foods and I will have a glass of wine while I polish my fabulous mid-century bar, plunk a 2 foot tree on top of it, and hang our stockings on it via our stocking holders. Obviously, I'll fill out the vignette at some point soon, but tomorrow's goal before the boys leave is to get the tiny lights on the tiny tree and get the stockings hung on the bar. Easy peasy. Pics when I get the entire thing done. Maybe.
Today's Coffee Chat topic is "What are some of your favourite pre-holiday preparations?" And yes, this was about the closest I could get. I've never really "prepared" for the holidays other than getting a tree up bit by bit and a few presents under it. I've never hosted parties or dinners since my schedule always directly conflicts with everyone elses, but I wish I could! Because you know I could host the hell out of an amazing party!
And one of the songs you'd surely hear at any holiday party of mine is this one:
Blue Decorations - B.B. King
I do hope we'd all be feeling Christmas-y, though! Be sure to come back Thursday to see what else I've included for my holiday edition of the Mix Tape Shuffle!
Because that means I can enjoy a cup of coffee and get caught up on my favorite morning rituals (which are no longer rituals because I'm usually gone to work by this time) without rush and worry. Today's concoction is black silk with a packet of stevia and a bit of coconut oil since I'm trying to go healthier and all, served up in my cute pink "K" (my first initial) cup given to my by my aunt. It's delicious!
And how are you this morning? Or afternoon/evening, or whenever you're reading? I truly hope you're doing well. Today's Coffee Chat really has me thinking. The question for the week is "What is the one question you would ask everyone you meet?" I'm a huge believer in the power of words, and everyone likes to feel important, or at least acknowledged. So for me, it's just a very simple "How are you?" It has to be genuinely asked, though. (My job has taught me that people will say they're feeling awful just to make sure you're paying attention to them, and you had better be listening....you don't want to say something like "glad to hear that" when they've told you they feel terrible!)
Aside from that? I'm not sure. There isn't much else you can ask without getting too personal, and one thing people value more than feeling noticed/acknowledged/important is their privacy. What do YOU want to ask every person you meet?
Song for today: "Lights" by Journey. The first Journey song I ever heard (or maybe it was "Wheel in the Sky"), and I've loved it ever since. I was a little girl when this came out, and hearing it always takes me back to a less complex time. Lyrically speaking, it has nothing to do with the uncomplicated days of childhood, but that's always where my mind goes. (Not to mention, it has one of my favorite guitar solos!) I've been listening to it a lot lately since I've been pondering some new major, life-altering decisions lately and have needed the peace of mind that sometimes only comes in the form of hearing a good tune.
Journey: "Lights"
So very thankful.
When I woke up this morning, I thought....no, knew it would be a wonderful day, for I finally have the means to catch up my few bills so that I can be sure they stay paid on time, and replace my tires which now have 85,000+ miles.
It goes without saying that I'm ALWAYS thankful for my family and their continued good health, and the time I get to spend with them. But on the less obvious side of things, it is nice to be able to breathe a bit financially!
Song for today:
Volbeat: "Lola Montez"
So what did YOU think about when you woke up this morning? Come chat about it with us over at Coffee Chat!
to gush about coconut oil, so today is the day I will do that via coffee chat!
(Photograph © Keira-Anne via Flickr's Creative Commons)
How do I love coconut oil? Let me count the ways!
There's really so, so, so much you can do with it and I recommend checking out Wellness Mama's entire Uses for Coconut Oil post. It's very informative, and I love learning so much about natural and holistic alternatives for everyday items. I have already used it as a moisturizer on just about every part of my body, as a lip emollient, in a body scrub, as a mouthwash (oil pull) - I know it sounds CRAZY, but it will leave your mouth feeling so fresh and clean! - and also helps break down and prohibit tartar/plaque.
For a fun and decadent homemade pick-me-up, head over to The Glitter and Glam and try her homemade Honey Coconut Oil Mask. It will definitely make your skin feel amazing!
Coconut oil is relatively inexpensive, too, for all its uses. I was able to buy a 16 oz. jar of the Earth Fare brand organic extra virgin coconut oil for $9.99. If it's only one beauty and holistic item that I think every household needs, it's coconut oil.
I may have just blogged yesterday about how it smelled like springtime outside and I was hopeful that the groundhog wouldn't see his shadow, but that adorable yet evil bad-news-bringer let me down. And like clockwork, it got cold here again. Not as cold as it has been (::runs off to check forecast to make sure I'm not jinxing myself yet again::), but cold enough to kill my giddiness at a possible early spring and inevitable warmer weather. Hey, all I know is that we'd better not have another year like last year, when we had cold temps all the way into May! Because that seemed like being in Winterfell in the middle of the long winter.
But I digress. My point was that winter, which should be the ultimate ideal time to get focused on living better and doing a variety of intense indoor workouts to get a jump start on being healthy and looking good in the spring, is depressing. So depressing that it renders many of my good intentions useless - all I want is comfort food, hot baths, to be with family, and snuggling my doggies. But since gratitude is a huge part of my personal overhaul, I am thankful for those occasional glimpses of hope that remind me that spring is coming. Warmer weather, longer days, and hopefully better times are coming.
Every now and then I need to remind myself that I actually enjoy living, so this week's coffee chat theme of "Gimme Five. Reasons for Living that is." is quite timely. I may not have figured my purpose out just yet, but I know I am lucky to be relatively healthy and mobile and financially stable when so many are without. I owe it to myself to commit wholeheartedly to a more resourceful, creative, and abundant life. My five biggest reasons for living are family, pets, friends, a passionate love of learning, and myself.
What do YOU live for?
Today's music: Switchfoot, "Dare You to Move"
Not clothing buttons (nope, not a craft post), but remote control buttons. Since I last stopped by here, I feel like life has been on fast forward. Season and mid-season premieres, and the finale of the latest season of Project Runway All Stars. Last week blurred into a super productive Saturday in which another huge batch of homemade all natural laundry detergent was made. I'll be making another post soon with the recipe I used and a review, since this is the second batch and I've made some tweaks and made quite a few observations. Saturday melted into Sunday which meant work. Then the Golden Globes (Yay! Jared Leto won!). Then a massive headache which took a few hours and nine ibuprofen to kill. Then sleep, because today was a double at work. The first of three in a row, whew! Can we hit pause yet? For just a few moments?
So now it's Tuesday, and I'm getting my Music Monday post in an entire day late. The theme for Monday's Music Moves Me over at Dolly's is "songs in the key of life." Since I've never been one to assign certain songs to certain events, all I have from prom, wedding, first dance, first kiss....all the life moments....are my favorites from those times, and those wouldn't necessarily sum up my thoughts on my life moments. Nor are they necessarily songs that were popular during those times. So I'll just chime in with what I've been listening to a lot here lately, and that's A Perfect Circle's latest, their "greatest hits" compilation Three Sixty. I think Maynard James Keenan is nothing short of a musical genius, and APC's music is the perfect combination of progressive, aggressive, and dreamy. Here's "Rose," originally found on Mer de Noms.
Today's coffee chat topic over at Time Out For Mom is "What is the one thing you will do differently in 2014?"
Gee, just one thing? But there are SO MANY things I want to and will do differently this year. I guess if I had to pick just one, it would be to let backslides be backslides, instead of becoming a huge lapse back into bad habits/bad judgment. Case in point? By now, I wanted to re-introduce workouts into my daily routine. I haven't yet. And I may not for another two weeks, as I have LOTS of work, then a trip to my home state to belatedly celebrate the holidays with family and my youngest son's birthday with him, THEN a trip to Atlanta to visit Spank for the New Politics show. And I AM SO EXCITED - for ALL of it! But especially family. It's been about four months since I've seen them.
But I digress. Since I've gotten off the eating healthy wagon and failed to bring an integral part of my get fit plan into the mix, I have backslid. I accept this, and I have already promised myself I will do the best I can despite all the crazy-ness of the coming two weeks. I'm in need of a reset.
What are you listening to this week? What are the songs in the key of your life? What is the one thing you will do differently in 2014?
Hello, first Coffee Chat of the new year! Today's chat theme is random, so I'm going to take this opportunity to grab my sleepytime tea (I know by the time you read this, it's going to be time for the strongest stuff imaginable, but trust me, I do best ending my night with a blog post a la Doogie Howser. Anybody remember him?) and talk about how excited I am that in less than twenty-four hours, I will be able to resume my weekly dates with Raylan Givens! Now, this is nothing new to anyone stopping by here who has been friends with me on Facebook for a while. But for those who don't? Let's just say that for some reason, I just can't resist posting "Time for my weekly date with Raylan Givens!" on my Facebook wall before every episode. I know that by now it's surely lost its humor, (Was it ever humorous?) but also by now it is a tradition with me, so I shall continue it. It would be bad luck not to, right?
Ahem.
Anyway, this post almost didn't happen because I'm freezing my ass off down here in Alabama, and all I want to do is crawl under my covers and put my cold toes under my warm dogs' furry bodies when they hop up to snuggle me. And yes, I said Alabama, as in the deep south where we don't usually have many nighttime lows that fall below freezing, but we're now halfway through a two-day stretch where our daytime highs have been in the teens with wind chills of 0 and below. If you're from the north, feel free to freeze-shame me if you must. I am way too cold to care! But the joke is on you, because in a few days I will be sitting in fifty-five sweltering (by comparison) degrees. So there.
But I digress. This post did happen because, as I said, I got a sign. That sign was me flipping through the channels and landing on Conan long enough for me to see him announce that Timothy Olyphant would be a guest on tonight's show. And since I love Raylan Givens, who is portrayed by Timothy Olyphant, I felt compelled to watch. And blog.
The musical guest on this same show is Panic! At The Disco. They're not a band I normally like, but I've been seeing them all over the place here lately, and after this Conan performance, I will have seen them twice tonight. It's a sign, right? It's almost like they're stalking me - like Josh Hartnett did about five years ago. For a while there, every time I turned my tv on Josh Hartnett showed up on it at some point. Whether it was the Emporio Armani commercial or one of his many movies, he was everywhere I turned. Now Panic! At The Disco is everywhere I turn, and their stalking me worked because their latest, "Miss Jackson," is really growing on me. And now? I am enthralled by lead signer Brendan Urie's facial expressions.
So...it's been fun chatting with you, and I leave you with today's music: Panic! At The Disco's "Miss Jackson" (and Brendan Urie's expressive visage.)
Let's chat. Who's stalking you? Which tv shows are you excited about for 2014? What music are you listening to this week?
If you've been reading my blog for a while, then you already know how ready I was to stop complaining about the cold weather and start complaining about hot weather instead. Well, that time has finally come, folks! It seems like we went straight from winter into summer here in the good ol' south. Actually, this is just our spring, since we still have low temps in the 60s and highs in the mid to upper 80s. Down here, our summers REALLY scorch.
This brings me to this week's Coffee Chat: the 'chat is taking the summer off, so this will be our last one before September. This week, we're dishing on what we'll be doing over the course of the summer. Whatever shall I post about on Tuesdays from here on out?
As for me, I have plenty to do. And I shall give it to you in bullet form.
So what are YOUR plans for this summer? Vacationing? Tell me about it. Home improvement plans? I want to hear about them. Traveling? I'm jealous, but I'd love to hear about it all the same.
And to the Coffee Chat regulars - it's been nice getting to know you, and see you again in a few months! In the meantime, feel free to come on back anytime you like!
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I've often heard people talking and seen people writing about how they have no regrets - that everything they've done has brought them to where they are today, and they are confident everything has happened to them for a reason. I know this to be true in my heart. But while I don't dwell on my regrets (at least not for too long!), I'd be lying to your face - um, computer screen - if I told you I had none. I think of how different my life would be if I'd stuck with Weight Watchers two years ago. If I hadn't screwed school up. If I'd learned to manage my money better. So many ifs.
If I could have seen the future, would I have made some of the decisions I made that have affected my life, my family's lives, so profoundly? Chances are....I would have made better choices. It would be so neat to have a handy-dandy gadget to see into the future and see how the decisions I am making now, no matter how minuscule or harmless or inconsequential they might seem, will play into the big picture on down the road. While I've definitely learned some valuable lessons as a result of bad decision-making, and have had my share of character-building and resolve-strengthening experiences; knocks I had to take, for lack of a better analogy, it would be nice to be reaping the rewards of good decisions instead of picking up the pieces because of bad ones. However - what's done is done and going forward I can only hope to do better. I think I'm off to a good start!
Over at Coffee Chat today, Leslie asked " If you had the choice of going back in the past to a specific time in history, OR, if you could travel ahead into the future (you are coming back to present, don't worry) --- which would you choose?"
You might be thinking I'd gladly go to the future, just to see how my actions today will define my tomorrow, and make changes accordingly. But I wouldn't. Truth is - the future is not set in stone. And *I* will be making my own future. Therefore, I will be going back in time. While I would love to go back to my young adulthood, when I still had a good figure and was more financially stable than I am now, I wouldn't even go back then. Instead, I'd go back to the late 60s/early70s.
Sure, it was a tumultuous time of radical change, but the cars that ruled the road during this time were, in my opinion, the best-looking ever made. The dishes, the housewares, the decor, the style, the makeup, the clothing.....all so unique and beautiful. But the music? The music was (some of) the best! You had CCR, The Beatles, The Stones, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Johnny Winter, Hendrix, Sabbath, Zeppelin, Jan and Dean, Dylan, the Dead, Elvis, and ALL the country greats.
And you had The Doors. One of my favorite bands of all time. I know I say that about a lot of bands, but of those bands, The Doors are WAY on up there! I'd go back to that time, and be my mother's age now, just to have been around the same age as this man:
JIM MORRISON.
Whether he looked like this:
Or even this:
But I prefer this - it's one of my favorites:
In my opinion, one of my current musician crushes bears a striking resemblance to Jim in the above photo. Can you guess who? (Hint: it's the hair and the quirky hat!)
And I am so excited now because in less than two weeks, I am headed to see fellow Jim obsessee/fangirl Spank, and she and I will be going to see my first ever Doors tribute band! Set the night on fire, indeed!
Here, enjoy some Doors live at the Hollywood Bowl, 1968.....
So now you know why I wouldn't head to the future!
Grab your coffee and click the graphic to head to Leslie's for more Coffee Chat!
Image Source: Credit to original photographers; I found them all at the fuckyeahjimmorrison Tumblr.
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I just want to be sure people are commenting with their FB account because they want to, and not because it's the first thing they see and just assume that's my commenting system. And in the past, some have said they had trouble finding the place to comment. So now I've tried to make that very simple by adding a comment blurb at the bottom of posts which should be very easy to use and self-explanatory. You'll have to let me know how that works for you!
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