{top five friday} summertime!

helloooo friday loves! :)

today i am very excited to share something with you. something that i named as a goal on my 30 day detox top five last friday. something so totally amazeballs that i am squirming in my pants to run with it.

i have kind of, sort of, maybe just a little bit started formulating a temporary idea for a plan that i might put into place that could possibly one day morph into a hand made business.

{i know}

squeeee!!!

i can't share details yet. the idea i have stemmed from a gift i made for my sister-in-law's baby shower and i don't want to spill the surprise on here, you know because she like stalks my blog and all.

{hey mccall!}

but i can tell you this. i have a name. and i have an etsy account set up in that name... but i don't have a shop yet. i'm still working on that part.

i will very soon have a logo with that name and i don't want to spoil that for you but i will ask for this...

your continued prayers and encouragement because seriously folks... it keeps me going! knowing that i have friends that think what i do is worthy makes my heart tumble around a bit and swell up inside.

oh and by the way, the hubs is totally backing me up too, which makes my heart almost burst. i'm pretty sure i have the best husband ever ever ever.

so - on with the top five friday!

it's summertime!

{are you singing summertime by will smith? nope? bet you will be now. all day. you're welcome.}

ok well not officially summertime. i always know when summertime officially starts because it happens that the hubs' birthday is on summer solstice, june 21, the loooongest day of the year.

{yep - he never lets me forget it}

but in the south it is already hot & humid, the pools are warm enough to jump into and the sno cone stands are already open!

here are my top five favorite things about summer

one

sunshine

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even though i am a white-white-white girl i love the sunshine. i love the warm envelope of happiness it wraps me in. i love the tingle when i am in it just a little too long. i love to jump in the pool and then lay in the sun and let all the water evaporate off me. i love to open my sunroof on a long drive and let the sun warm my car up. i love to squint through sunglasses at a beautiful sunset at the lake. i love to sit outside in the mornings and watch the sun filter through all the trees behind my house.

and don't worry - i am a huge supporter of spf and don't carry anything less than 50 with me at all times. it's a rare occurance that i get a sunburn anymore.

two

icy cold drinks in mason jars



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nothing screams "i live in the south" better than a cold refreshment served in a mason jar. sweet iced tea for you, unsweet for me, lemonade, dr. pepper, mint juleps, water... you name it & i can almost guarantee it will taste better coming from a mason jar.

three

smores



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omigawsh omigawsh omigawsh. squish a perfectly burnt, gooey marshmallow and creamy milk chocolate between two graham crackers and i am in my own little version of heaven.

four

cutoffs



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i would definitely love cut off jeans a whole lot more if i looked like this in them. but i don't. and that is ok with me! why is it cutoffs are so comfy anyways?

i love the casualness of them and how you can just throw them in the floor of the boat and jump in the lake and when you come back they are more comfy than they were before! i love the way they look with a comfy, soft white shirt and brown sandals. i love the tiny bits of sand that collect in the corners of the pockets after a day at the beach.

do you have a favorite pair of cutoffs?

five

the fam dam



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every year on july 4th weekend my entire family gathers for a reunion (which we have affectionately named the "fam dam reunion" and it is always soo much fun. this will be our 21st year in a row to have one. read about the 20th year here.

here is the catch though:

they are by invitation only.

if you get invited and you don't come, we talk about you

and you don't get invited back.

this is of course a joke. kind of.

;)

this year we are going to galveston, texas. and while i don't loooove the beach as much as i loooooooooove the lake where we usually go, i am nonetheless excited to see all of my family!

so let's have it. what are your favorite things about summer?

lucky number seven

i have been thinking. a lot. about this number.

7

and about how i am going to make seven pounds disappear from my body in the next few days.

for starters, i am going to stop having nutella and toast for breakfast.

unfortunately that has nothing to do with the fact that i want to lose these seven pounds and everything to do with the fact that i am completely out of nutella.

i may or may not have scooped every last bit out with my finger last night. just sayin.

i had a couple people mention the 30 day shred with what's-her-face from the biggest loser.

i'm not going to lie. this woman scares the living daylights out of me. it also just happens that i received that as a birthday gift from some friends.

i know. i thought the same thing. but then i remembered that it was on my amazon wish list and got glad in the same pants i got mad in.

so i am hemming & hawing about whether or not i should submit to her hellacious video.

i also kind of have to decide the date that this little 30 day detox is over. because i first read & blogged about it on may 10th. but i didn't set any goals until may 13th.

in the interest of giving myself an extra seventy-two hours to burn off some fatty tissue, i am going to say that i have until june 13th. how does that sound with you?

good? good. i like you. we can be friends.

so here is how i am going to do it:

no more soft drinks.

no more beer. (yah. i have a beer occasionally.)

run three days a week.

spend one day of the weekend outside, doing some sort of activity.

(yardwork, sanding something, throwing a frisbee, etc.)

and that is it.

and p.s.

the more you people help me, encourage me, and keep me on track the better i will do. so please please encourage me because i need it. im a terrible self motivator and your sweet comments always make me feel like i am working towards something for the good of us all. i will love you forever and ever. amen.

525,600 minutes...

five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes...

five hundred, twenty five thousand moments so dear...

five hundred twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes...

how do you measure, measure a year?

in memories... 



at my cousin's bachelorette party at pete's piano bar in fort worth, tx

 

mom on her first mission trip.

 

at the beach for one of the family reunions - this is in 2002

 

for my 23rd birthday we did the super supper thing

mom loooved crackin crab legs!

  

seriously old school here - every year we get christmas pjs. :)



on my wedding day!



in celebrations...

after my brother graduated from NSU

 

after my husband graduated from SMU



my brother and his wife at their reception



 in laughter...

at my cousin kyle's wedding



real belly laugh's at enochs

groucho marx day at NSU

in old friends...

liz and i in spain

 

ashley, me, lindsay and megan several years ago at a wedding

me, alina and mara at possum kingdom last summer



ashley and her son, my godson noah



adrian, sarah, me and jennifer several years ago in dallas

me, nina and liz on the night before my bro's wedding

rhiann and i at my birthday party this year

in new friends...

hubs, me, james and cynthia at church camp
woot pine cove!!

morgan and i at church camp (woot pine cove again!)



me and my brother from another mother, johnny

me and dan at church camp (woot for pine cove again!!)



in family...



my awesome, supporting, loving, amazing, brilliant husband :)

dad and i at his company christmas party, 2010



the whole fam dam at the fam dam reunion, 2009

me and auntie kay, my mom's best friend



me and dad at some meat cooking extravaganza

bill, lori (inlaws) & grammie at christmas, 2009



auntie kay and me, 2010

 

impromptu family get-together at dairy queen in white oak
dad, me, mimi and rance



mccall and i on her wedding day

 ***************************************************

one entire year has gone by and i have loved, lived and learned more than i ever thought i could.

i miss you mom. every day. i would give anything for five more minutes but i am so thankful for the time we had together.

thank you to everyone who said a kind word, gave a few moments of time in prayer, picked up the phone or gave us a hug over the past year. i may not remember every single one of them but i promise you the compassion and the love outpoured will never be forgotten.

my very first 5K!

this post is part of my 30 day detox. click here to read more about turning negative into positive!

if you follow me on twitter you might have noticed a few tweets that look something like this...

in an effort to hopefully put off the random protruding 30-year-old fat, i decided it was time to do something. i knew i needed to be getting some physical activity.

i needed it to be free, challenging and to actually work.

i would have preferred that it include the words "snuggle on the couch, eat chocolate and watch movies" but we really can't have it all, can we?



rhiann on left. me on right - definitely not watching movies or eating chocolate.

i despise running. growing up a volleyball player i always categorized running as punishment. i never put two and two together that conditioning actually made you a better athlete. i just always thought my coach had a personal vendetta against me and therefore punished the entire team with 35-second line drills and sprints.

i knew about the couch to 5K program. all my friends were doing it. all the cool, rich, popular kids were doing it. so of course i had to do it.



all the rich, popular, cool kids

plus, it is free, challenging and from what i had seen from all the cool, rich, popular kids, it actually worked.

well, i guess {free} is relative. i paid $2.95 for an app on my ipod. but compared to expense of gym memberships and personal trainers and workout videos, $2.95 is essentially free, right?

before the race. rhiann has a tight grip on my shirt so i can't run away.

so i decided to take on running. it took a lot of positive energy and uplifting thoughts to actually make me start. i knew if i started with the attitude of "i never finish anything" i would in fact never finish this. so i signed up for a 5K. i needed a goal. some inspiration. a reason to force myself to roll out of the bed at 5 am other than warm cinnamon rolls.



the home stretch. proving to myself that the impossible can be acheived!

last saturday, the 7th, i ran across the finish line, still living and breathing and not carried by another runner, in my first 5K. i finally accomplished something i never thought i would be able to do...

basking in the glory of {not} coming in last!
(there were three people behind me)

enjoy running.

please don't ask me my time. my goal for this race was to survive. which i obviously did. i will record my next time at alley run in june. (yep, already signed up for another 5K - guess that makes me either "a runner", crazy, or both.)

30 day detox goals! {top five friday}

so i may or may not have mentioned this on here a couple of times but i am participating in a sweet little something called the 30 Day Detox, commandeered by the beautiful Kaelah.

today i want to make a list of five things that will make me feel better about myself and give me a more positive outlook on life in general. my goal is to do these things during the next thirty days during my mind & body detox!

one

private journaling

as a gift for my birthday i got a $25 amazon gift card from some dear friends of mine!

{thanks jared & alina!}

i decided that in addition to journaling in public here on the blog i would like to start a private journal as well. somewhere to document the crazy in my head that i don't want to share with the world.

i know - hard to think there is more crazy underlying this. ;)

i also know that i have to be real with myself. after a day of writing blogs, working {funny that blogging comes before work.. maybe i should reassess my priorities...}, doing laundry, loving my husband, playing with dogs, cooking and cleaning... am i really going to want to write a long drawn out soliloquy in my journal?

ummm. negative ghostrider. ;)

so with my amazon gift card i bought this:

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one line every day for five years. and for the first thirty days i will write something positive that happened to me that day. no negativity. no sadness. no griping. i have so many blessings so why should i focus on these things? one positive thought a day. :)

two

lose seven pounds

there is no significance to the number seven. there isn't a medical reason i need to lose seven pounds. i just know that it would make me happy and i would feel better about myself if i did it. i just kind of figure that seven is a reasonable goal for thirty days.

addendum: figure out how to lose seven pounds while having nutella on toasted sourdough bread every day. conundrum.

three

paint the half bathroom in my house

i have got to lose the fear of starting a project. i need to get over myself and just do it already.

so here is a secret. i love to look at pretty pictures of homes. i love to dream of changing my house. i yearn for pretty and sensible and organized in my home. i lust after other people's spaces.

but pick up a paint brush and actually do something to make these dreams and yearnings come true? it gives me a stomach ache to think about it. what if the paint color i pick is wrong and makes the already tiny room feel smaller? what if i get halfway through it and run out of money? what if i finish it and i hate it? anxiety takes over and my brain reels with what ifs and fears and trepidations.

i need to get rid of the what ifs and anxiety. i need to make myself realize that nothing i can do is permanent. nothing can't be changed. and i need to realize the biggest what if of all...

what if i love it?

four

cook five meals we have never had before

in accordance with my favorite food bloggers, i want to get outside of the hamburger helper box and explore some new meals.

baked buffalo chicken pasta

spicy dr. pepper shredded pork

brisket tacos with red cabbage

grilled chicken, bacon & spinach flatbread pizzas

bbq chicken quesadillas

maybe i will be super-blogger-lady and actually photograph these and blog about them. if you are lucky. but don't they all sound deeeeelicious??

oh and i want to make this:

homemade nutella.

five

start working on my homemade/handmade business

{gasp}

i said that out loud?

i suppose it is true. i have a million ideas swimming in my head for things i can make and sell. i want to be creative and share it. i want to work from home.

my big three year goal is to

*pay off a big chunk of student loans & other miscellaneous debt

*have a baby

*stay at home and sell handmade products

{holy cannolli batman. saying it on here makes it real and that totally makes me all twisted-up-anxious inside}

i guess the best way to start that is to...

well... start it.

let me be clear. i want to do this simply to prove to myself that i can. i'm not out to make money or anything like that. (that is why i want to finish the debt off so i can do this without worrying about finances) so my goal in this next thirty days is to figure out what i want to do and how i am going to do it. and to make a plan and a list to get it done. because that is how my brain operates:

idea

announce

list

think

plan

list

plan

list

think

list

plan

DO IT

i do hope you stick around during the next thirty days to see where this might take me! :)

{lessons learned}

this post is part of my 30 day detox.
click here to read more about turning negative into positive!

life in the duplex

if you are reading this and you know me in real life, you already know what this post will be about.

that is what i love about the duplex.



liz and i on the "front porch" where we spend many nights
drinking wine and talking in british accents
{hence the wine glass in the flower pot next to me}

the duplex is where i lived most of the years between moving out of my parent's house and moving to another state. it was bought by my uncle bobby (who blogs here and is my dad's brother) in 2003 or somewhere thereabouts. one side of it was empty and he remodeled it top to bottom and moved his mom (hitherto referred to as mimi) in there to live free of rent.

the other side housed what can only be named "the nastiest people ever. ev.er living in it. for a while he couldn't do anything about it because they paid their rent on time. i think they finally quit paying their rent or bobby jacked it up so they couldn't afford it and had to move out. this is where i enter the picture.

my friend liz and i were told we could move into the duplex at a "discounted rent rate" (psh) if we would help him out by cleaning it out and fixing it up a bit. he even said we could choose the paint colors! we thought we were being given the deal of the century.

{history}

so in august of 2003, in texas, without electricity, we started working on the duplex.

to say it was hot would be a gross understatement. it was miserable.

he bought a new refridgerator and oven and when we moved the old appliances out we found hamburgers, brushes, dirt, dog poop, dog hair, mold, dead animals and the remnants of what could only be described as general ick and muck on the floors underneath.

oh - you think i am joking? not so much.

we sanded dog poop off of door frames and set off roach and flea bombs to kill the fleas that infested the 30 year old carpet (that bobby refused to replace. ugh thinking about walking on that carpet now makes me gag.)



i cannot believe that i laid down on that carpet. see how grungy it is!?
and this is "airplane!" which is dumb but liz and i did it all the time.

we scrubbed years worth of grease and food particles off the kitchen cabinets before painting them white. we patched and painted all the doors that had holes punched in them. there were many more disgusting stories about the month we spent cleaning, disinfecting and painting the duplex. i will spare you.

then liz and i moved in. we lived there for about a year i would say. to be honest those memories are pretty fuzzy due to the massive amount of alcohol you were required to consume to disinfect your body from the mold, sand and blech that leached out of that 30-year old carpet. but we ended up having to find a house big enough for us and our three dogs so we moved out and my grandpa jett (who was my mom's father) moved in.

this is a great picture of the paint color we chose.
a lovely flesh with great pink undertones.
i'm not sure exactly what we were thinking. come to t
hink of it i think my mom picked that color.
gag.

grandpa jett got the gold treatment. bobby finally pulled all the carpet out and we literally vacuummed about an inch and a half deep layer of sand off the floor. he had laminate floors put in, ceramic tile replaced the nasty carpet in the bathrooms, and he had the place profesionally cleaned i think.



these are the laminate floors that replaced the nasty carpet.
if you look past the demolished pillow that is.

grandpa jett lived there for about 8 months i think. until my mother went to check on him and found him in the kitchen. he had a heart attack and died instantly.

i moved back in to the duplex. i lived there with several roommates (including liz, a boyfriend, another girlfriend, and finally the girl who would become my sister-in-law) before i got engaged in november of 2007.



liz and me singing "a whole new world to our
dog mabelle in the duplex living room.

my husband and i lived in the duplex for about ten months before we moved to louisiana. now my brother and his wife live there. (read about that adventure here)



the cabinet my sister in law painted and also a good
depiction of the color she and my brother painted after
chris and i moved out

i guess it is what you would call a family affair. if the words "the duplex" are mentioned it seems everyone in our home town knows what those words mean and where it is.

{lesson learned}

i always viewed the duplex as a temporary thing. it was nothing to take care of - just a phase of life i was passing through. i never cleaned it. my excuse was "why should i? it just gets dirty thirty seconds from the dirt that puffs up out of the carpet after ever step!" it looked raggedy so i let it be raggedy.

i was certainly not proud of it. i was embarassed by it and the state it was in. to me it told people i was just a low-class citizen for living in a duplex. only "trashy" people lived in duplexes and i would have rather not been associated with them.

{i know that many fine, upstanding citizens live in duplexes so before you click away i will explain. if you lived in the duplex you would have seen our street. a street of trashy duplexes. the street where cops drove up and down at least three times a day. the street where a cloud of yellow smoke hung permanently above the meth house next door. the street where there was at least one screaming argument in the front yard every day. it is on that street}

one afternoon my mom came to visit. as usual there was a fine layer of sand from the carpet over everything, trash overflowing in the kitchen trash can and the toilets needed to be scrubbed. she took one look around the duplex, looked at me and said...

"have some pride in where you live"

and turned around and left. she wouldn't even come in. that hurt. that hurt worse than the feeling of embarassment that i associated with the duplex. it echoed between my ears endlessly. it wrenched my gut. i still get a tangled up inside feeling when i think about that day.

but it taught me something.

no matter where you live, what you have, or how much of anything you have... take pride in it. God chose to give it to you. you were given a place to live. it may not be what you want or what you love but it is so much more than some people have.

take pride in the fact that you have somewhere, albeit small and cramped, lacking storage and natural light, to call home. to come home every day and kiss your husband on the cheek and rub a dog between the ears. be thankful you have food to prepare and a kitchen to prepare it in. give thanks for the water heater and tiny bathtub with the questionable stains where you took a hot shower in the mornings.  be thankful for a place that allowed you to live next door to your mimi for so long, where she would leave fresh baked banana bread on your doorstep. give thanks for being part of a legacy.

i never thought it would happen but i shed more than a few tears the day i emptied out the duplex and packed it into a moving truck. whether i liked it or not, i had sewn so many memories into the walls of the duplex that it was hard to leave. it stopped being the duplex.

it had become home.