Mini Makeover

I moved into my apartment back in May. I consolidated from a two-bedroom down to a one-bedroom. In order to make things fit and work best for me, I opted to sell my dining table and chairs so I could use the dining room more like an office (I have bar stools and a couch ... so I'm good for a place to eat). Since I moved in, the office area has been extremely cluttered and extremely annoying to me. So, I did a mini makeover on it. I thought I'd share the before and after pictures with you. I still need to take care of the window treatment. It's certainly not staying the way it is in the after picture!

Before (This picture was actually taken on a super neat and clean day; imagine things MUCH worse):

After:

OK, so I know it doesn't look THAT different in the pictures, but it really looks a lot better, and it doesn't frustrate me when I walk in the room anymore. Woo hoo! :O)

Kinda Gross ... Kinda Cool

OK. I'll be the first to admit that, at times, my apartment looks a lot like a bachelor pad (a pretty one, though). What I'm about to show you, however, is more the result of an experiment, not grossness.

I had some Oreos and skim milk a few days ago. I left the glass of milk out for maybe a day. Within a day, I started to notice the milk changing. It was thickening a bit. Within probably two days, the top had bubbled up. Within three days, it looked like this:

Notice that it looks kind of like the inside of a Moon Pie sitting on top of a glass of water. I actually poured off the liquid, and it was clear like water. It left this behind:

I'm beyond amazed. I mean, I never would have thought that a glass of skim milk would have turned into that in three days. Now I know. Oh, and please know that I have disposed of the blob. The grossness has been removed from my apartment. The experiment is over. :O)

Juliette is Here!

My cousin Johnnie Ann had her baby Thursday. Her name is Juliette Ruth, and she is beautiful! Mommy and baby are both doing great. They went home from the hospital today. Here are a few pictures from the last couple of days. Enjoy!

Sweetgrass Bouquets

HAHA ... I just remembered a dream I had last night, and I needed to share it with someone. Seeing as how it's a little late to call anyone (12:50 AM), I decided I would tell you!

The dream started out with me being at my friend Crystal's wedding (Crystal from camp ... we've been friends for almost 10 years now! CRAZY!). She had these super weird (but pretty cool) flowers. The bridesmaids only carried one, because they were HUGE! It's hard to describe if you're not in my dream, but try to picture a normal, say, tulip. Now picture the bloom the size of a paint can, maybe even bigger than that. They were sort of cartoonish looking. If anyone could pull off flowers like that, it would be Crystal!

So, in my dream, I proceded to tell Crystal that I liked her flowers a lot, and then I told her what kind of bouquets my bridesmaids would be carrying (keep in mind that neither one of us is actually getting married right now in real life, haha). My wedding was going to be on a Charleston plantation, so my bridesmaids were going to carry bouquets of sweetgrass flowers. Some of you may be thinking, "What the heck is a sweetgrass flower?" If you've ever been to the market in downtown Charleston, you've likely seen the women weaving baskets of sweetgrass. Well, as you walk around town, you're also likely to encounter men (typically, but sometimes women as well) selling roses made out of sweetgrass. I think they're really cool. I have two of them that I've purchased on trips to Charleston (a short-lived "tradition" of purchasing one each time I went to Charleston, haha).

So now I find myself actually contemplating what it would be like to have bouquets of sweetgrass roses in my wedding. On some level, I must admit that I think it could be kind of cool! On another level, it could easily look really tacky!! Your thoughts? :O)

A Little Yearbook Fun

Several people on Facebook were going to the website http://www.yearbookyourself.com/, and one of them recommended that I try it out. So I did! Fun times indeed!

Dreams Part Dos

So, after I went back to bed last night, my dreams got WAY worse!! I had a dream that my brother Joel died, and I was preparing to give his eulogy. It was TERRIBLE! You know how sometimes you have an awesome dream, and then you try really hard to fall asleep again and get back to the awesome dream? Typically it doesn't work, right? Well, last night, every time I woke up sad because Joel died, I fell asleep and was right back in that same dream!!! I woke up SO sad!! So, since my dream life wasn't exactly pleasant last night (with a few minor exceptions), I decided I would blog about some real life dreams I have. They will be in no particular order, and some of them WILL seem silly to you. But that's OK, because they're MY dreams!

• be in a Sonic commercial
• be in a shampoo commercial
• be on Broadway
• be a really good photographer

• marry Mr. Special Someone :O)
• go to Mexico
• go to Africa
• go to Scotland
• go back to Ireland
• stay in an English cottage
• travel to all 50 states ... in a Winnebago (sp?!)
• write a novel
• be in a movie
• drive from the top of South America to the bottom of South America ... with Mr. Special Someone
• maybe live in Canada for a while
• have a job where I get to travel, which might aid in the accomplishment of some of the aforementioned dreams
• marry Mr. Someone Special under some oak trees on a plantation while people are playing guitar
• have an ice cream flavor named after me
• own enough chapstick (that I like) so that I have one in every purse, every travel bag, in my car (because someone will have invented chapstick that doesn't melt), in my desk, and in every room of my apartment (or maybe house by the time this dream can be realized)
• compile a book of knock knock jokes
• be in the same room as Kevin James ... that's all that can happen, because he's married
• write a children's book
• look good in a bikini (a modest one of course)
• write beautiful poetry
• not only to marry Mr. Special Someone but to have the kind of marriage my grandparents have
• have a wrap around porch with rocking chairs and swings ... hmmm, which country would I like to be living in when I get the wrap around porch?
• be a talk show hostess
• be a talk show co-hostess with my cousin Johnnie Ann
• live closer to all of my family

OK, that's probably enough for now. Thanks for enduring all this dreaming! :O)

Dreams

Yes, it's almost 3:30 in the morning. My dreams woke me up. They often do. I was having a wide variety of dreams. One left me a little sad, as that "genre" of dreams always does. The dream ended with me hugging my sister Shana (only it wasn't really Shana, but that's not the point). We were in our old house. I have a lot of dreams where we're in our old house, which means I have a lot of dreams that we're one big happy family again. I really miss the days when we all lived together, the days before the divorce. Aside from me being a REALLY mouthy teenager with an out-of-control temper, we had a good thing going. I love my family, and it's still hard for me sometimes that we aren't together anymore.

One of my other dreams was just a little weird. This guy and I seemed to like each other. He kissed me along my jawline, which I thought was him just being sweet. Then he told me I needed to lose weight in my lips. Unless my lips grow to the size of Lafawnda's from Napoleon Dynamite, I don't foresee a guy ever telling me in real life that I need to lose weight in my lips. Haha, dreams can be so funny. :O)