What a great game last night! Go Ducks!
Image found here.
Crafting Martha Stewart Style
1 hour ago
Friday, December 4, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Fall Photos
A while back my very talented friend JoAnna took photos of Mr. P and I. We had so much fun taking pictures with JoAnna and I highly recommend her to anyone in the Eugene/Springfield area. You can see more of her work at her website http://www.joannajamesphotography.com/.
Friday, November 27, 2009
To Shop or Not to Shop
I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving yesterday. We definitely did. Food was delicious and we had a nice time with my Mom, siblings, Uncles family and some friends. After dinner and dessert we officially started the Christmas season with a Christmas movie.
Today is black Friday. Are you out in the shopping madness today? I am not. Rather I'm burrowing in my apartment until 4pm when we're going over to our friend David's and cooking dinner for a bunch of friends. I went out last year on black Friday and while I did get some good deals but I'm still recovering from the madness.
So what am doing if I'm not shopping? I spent the morning cleaning. If you read this blog you know I hate to clean. But there are two things that motivate me to clean: my grandmother coming to visit, and putting up Christmas decorations. I love putting up Christmas decorations but when I was a kid we always had to clean house before getting out all of the decorations. So this morning I woke up and started cleaning right away, Mr. P helped and by noon the house was so clean. Now I'm taking a blogging break and then I will turn on the radio and decorate away.
How are you spending the day after Thanksgiving?
Today is black Friday. Are you out in the shopping madness today? I am not. Rather I'm burrowing in my apartment until 4pm when we're going over to our friend David's and cooking dinner for a bunch of friends. I went out last year on black Friday and while I did get some good deals but I'm still recovering from the madness.
So what am doing if I'm not shopping? I spent the morning cleaning. If you read this blog you know I hate to clean. But there are two things that motivate me to clean: my grandmother coming to visit, and putting up Christmas decorations. I love putting up Christmas decorations but when I was a kid we always had to clean house before getting out all of the decorations. So this morning I woke up and started cleaning right away, Mr. P helped and by noon the house was so clean. Now I'm taking a blogging break and then I will turn on the radio and decorate away.
How are you spending the day after Thanksgiving?
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Gorgeous Wedding Photos
Happy Day before Thanksgiving to all. First of all I forgot to add the video link to my last post. And now I can't figure out how to edit the post to do so. So here is the link to the video my Dad sent me about Christmas. It's very good. Now onto today. While most peoples heads are in Thanksgiving mode, mine is half in gorgeous wedding mode because I finally got the disk of Lauren's wedding photos which are so beautiful. So here is some wedding eye candy for all. And wishing Lauren and Nick a very happy first Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
"Before we eat..."
Thanksgiving is just a few days away. At this time of the year I think it is important to stop and really think about what we are Thankful for. And I don’t mean the “10 things you are thankful for” speech your father begins the meal with. This has been on my mind a lot lately. The past few months I have had a bad case of the “I wants”. I want booties, I want new skinny jeans, I want riding boots, I want to live in a house, I want to have a baby, I want Mr. P to be done with law school already, I want a new party dress and so on. This really hit home a few weeks ago when I learned that our church budget was suffering and our Pastor was going to have to take a pay cut. Then the next week I was at Ethos (a young adults youth group) when the Pastor spoke on envy versus contentment. Then my dad sent me this video. And then on Sunday we had our annual Thanksgiving service and church pot luck and Pastor Steve reminded us much we have to be thankful for. I read this pattern as a clear message from God and reminder to myself. It is so easy in our society to get “the wants”, we see what others have and we start to feel entitled, we start to feel it’s not fair, and we start to feel embarrassed with what we have or don’t have. We forget how blessed we are and how content we should be. I know I struggle with this and it is something I continually need to work on. In the words of my father, “the word fair needs to be taken out of your vocabulary”.
With thanksgiving this week and the holidays around the corner I am glad for the reminder I needed. I want this Thanksgiving to truly be a reminder of how blessed we are. And I want this Christmas to be about Jesus, family, friends, church and building beautiful memories. So in honor of Thanksgiving and my Dad (who always requires this before we are allowed to eat out Thanksgiving dinner) here is my list of what I am thankful for this year:
1. Our Church, we love our Church, it is truly a gift from God
2. Mr. P, he is such a wonderful husband
3. My brother and sister, who besides being wonderful siblings are also wonderful friends
4. My wonderful Father and Mother
5. That I live in this country with all of the promise and opportunity it offers
6. That I live in a nice apartment with a roof overhead and a warm comfy bed
7. For all of our wonderful friends
8. For my Cousin Lauren who is also my best friend and the perfect shopping partner
9. For my job which provides more than we need
10. That Mr. P has the opportunity to go to Law School
What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?
With thanksgiving this week and the holidays around the corner I am glad for the reminder I needed. I want this Thanksgiving to truly be a reminder of how blessed we are. And I want this Christmas to be about Jesus, family, friends, church and building beautiful memories. So in honor of Thanksgiving and my Dad (who always requires this before we are allowed to eat out Thanksgiving dinner) here is my list of what I am thankful for this year:
1. Our Church, we love our Church, it is truly a gift from God
2. Mr. P, he is such a wonderful husband
Mr. P and I at Crater Lake this summer.
3. My brother and sister, who besides being wonderful siblings are also wonderful friends
Sean and Jess at Jess' graduation
4. My wonderful Father and Mother
Mom and I at my bridal shower.
5. That I live in this country with all of the promise and opportunity it offers
6. That I live in a nice apartment with a roof overhead and a warm comfy bed
7. For all of our wonderful friends
Everyone at Easter dinner last year.
8. For my Cousin Lauren who is also my best friend and the perfect shopping partner
Lauren and I at her wedding in July
9. For my job which provides more than we need
10. That Mr. P has the opportunity to go to Law School
What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?
Friday, November 20, 2009
Sometimes Life Is Just Good
It is Friday.
It's really wet, rainy and cold here today.
It is 2pm.
I am at home alone wearing a cozy sweater on my neatly made bed in my clean room drinking tea.
I have no plans tonight except cooking dinner with Mr. P and perhaps watching an old movie.
Sometimes life is just good. You are nice and relaxed with a weekend to look forward too, a big family gathering on Saturday and friends to see at church on Sunday.
Happy Friday!
It's really wet, rainy and cold here today.
It is 2pm.
I am at home alone wearing a cozy sweater on my neatly made bed in my clean room drinking tea.
I have no plans tonight except cooking dinner with Mr. P and perhaps watching an old movie.
Sometimes life is just good. You are nice and relaxed with a weekend to look forward too, a big family gathering on Saturday and friends to see at church on Sunday.
Happy Friday!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A Cowboy
This is my Grandfather (the one in the hat), we call him Grampa Dan. Grampa is a rancher. He wears cowboy boots, old dirty worn out cowboy hats, unless he's going to town and then Nonna makes him put a clean hat on. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of Grampa on his horse on my computer.
In college, while other kids went off to Mexico or California for Spring break I headed straight for the ranch. It was usually the first place I went once finals were over for the year. My cousin and I were roommates in college and we'd head down to the ranch almost once a month to go riding, get our fill of homemade Italian cooking and do are laundry. We'd dump all our laundry into the middle of Nonna's big laundry room and head off to the barn with Grampa. While we rode through old growth forests on old logging roads Nonna would do all our laundry and cook us our favorite Italian dishes. Then they would send us home with fresh beef, veggies, Parmesan cheese, preserves, apple sauce, homemade pickles, whatever yummy food Nonna had piled away. It was a wonderful routine.
Grampa taught me to ride a horse by myself when I was seven years old. He's taken me all over the valley riding throughout the forests. All the while he teaches me about our family history, the horses, the ranch, how to run the ranch, life lessons, the "proper place for women", how I will marry a republican, how to track animals, that country music was the only worth listening to and that George Straight and Patsy Cline were the best and so on. Sometimes we would ride the horses all day long out in the trees. We would ride high up into the hills where we could look down and see the whole valley. Then we would stop and Grampa would stand there up on his big horse and point to various places through the valley. He would point out where his school house was, were Great-Grandpa Oscar's father first settled in the 1800's, where his grandmother's apple orchard was, the way he'd come home from school, where so and so held a barn dance, where my great-grandfather shot a cougar.
Other days we would work cattle. This was my favorite activity. We would take the horses up in the hills behind the range land, then we would work the cows down through the creek to the main pasture. Once the cattle were near the barn we would move them into the corral. Usually we would run them through the shoot to vaccinate them, separate them, give them fly powder and things like that. Sometimes a cow would have twins and we would have to take the twin into the barn to be bottle fed.
After a long day working on the ranch we would come up to the main house, eat a lot of food and watch Pure Country. It has always been our movie possessing all the truly important movie elements: horses, good music, a love story and dancing.
Yesterday I received a package from my Grandfather with this in it:
A lot of people barely know there Grandparents, some never meet them. I am extremely blessed to know mine as friends. I grew up 45 minutes away from Grampa Dan and Nonna (Nonna is the Italian word for grandmother). They live on a small cattle ranch in Oregon where I spent a lot of time growing up and even in college. Sadly, I have spent considerably less time there since I've been married.
In college, while other kids went off to Mexico or California for Spring break I headed straight for the ranch. It was usually the first place I went once finals were over for the year. My cousin and I were roommates in college and we'd head down to the ranch almost once a month to go riding, get our fill of homemade Italian cooking and do are laundry. We'd dump all our laundry into the middle of Nonna's big laundry room and head off to the barn with Grampa. While we rode through old growth forests on old logging roads Nonna would do all our laundry and cook us our favorite Italian dishes. Then they would send us home with fresh beef, veggies, Parmesan cheese, preserves, apple sauce, homemade pickles, whatever yummy food Nonna had piled away. It was a wonderful routine.
Grampa taught me to ride a horse by myself when I was seven years old. He's taken me all over the valley riding throughout the forests. All the while he teaches me about our family history, the horses, the ranch, how to run the ranch, life lessons, the "proper place for women", how I will marry a republican, how to track animals, that country music was the only worth listening to and that George Straight and Patsy Cline were the best and so on. Sometimes we would ride the horses all day long out in the trees. We would ride high up into the hills where we could look down and see the whole valley. Then we would stop and Grampa would stand there up on his big horse and point to various places through the valley. He would point out where his school house was, were Great-Grandpa Oscar's father first settled in the 1800's, where his grandmother's apple orchard was, the way he'd come home from school, where so and so held a barn dance, where my great-grandfather shot a cougar.
Other days we would work cattle. This was my favorite activity. We would take the horses up in the hills behind the range land, then we would work the cows down through the creek to the main pasture. Once the cattle were near the barn we would move them into the corral. Usually we would run them through the shoot to vaccinate them, separate them, give them fly powder and things like that. Sometimes a cow would have twins and we would have to take the twin into the barn to be bottle fed.
After a long day working on the ranch we would come up to the main house, eat a lot of food and watch Pure Country. It has always been our movie possessing all the truly important movie elements: horses, good music, a love story and dancing.
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