double

I had a busy weekend so I was not able to do my Sunday post!  I say busy...but really I mean I was too lazy to make time to do it.  Last weekend I went bridesmaid dress shopping for Meredith's wedding (hmm which necklace to wear with the dress??) and had dinner with the family to celebrate Alton/Stephanie's birthdays and a late Father's Day celebration.  Mom made chocolate cake which was delicious!  Sunday I did the all important speed clean with Meredith and hung out with Paulie.

Plans for this week: get my apartment spotless and check some things off my procrastination list, spend a fun Saturday with my love, and then get hair done on Sunday.  SOOO because I may choose to be lazy next sunday I will go ahead and post our pics for this week too. :)  Hope you are enjoying our jewelry as much as we are!

 I love this necklace Staishy is wearing!  I really like the shape of the links-kind of rectangular.  It's so versatile-can be worn long or in a double/triple strand.  I can see why she has gotten so many compliments.

Both of these pictures are just awkward.  How do you pose to show off a ring?  Guess I should practice that....Don't you just LOVE this ring?  Nanny had three of these and now I understand why- they are so fun! I can imagine her showing these off at her many military dinners and parties.  I certainly felt like a princess all day Saturday.  There are about a million sapphires on this beauty!

I just love this picture!  Lookin' like a boss! :)  There are so many options with these twister beads.  This combination of colors are one of my favorites and they look perfect on Staishy!

I wish you could see the detailing a little better, but this may be my new favorite!  Circle of elephants? Yes.  There are more elephants to come so stay tuned!

fathers

 This was my interpretation of Hawaiian day at work...ahh the corporate workplace. There were so many beautiful necklaces to choose from and some that were actually from Hawaii but this one just seemed to work. :) It is quickly becoming one of my favorites.  Don't look too closely- I have Whitestrips on.  You're welcome Crest.

Nanny had a love for everything elephants and although we didn't necessarily jump on the elephant belts and some of the "elephant bling" as Staishy called them, there were a few really interesting necklaces that we were excited to showcase!  I must say this jade elephant necklace is just perfect on Staishy!  She is also wearing Nanny's white blouse as well. :)

This week was pretty uneventful and this weekend was devoted to errands and cleaning.  Those kind of weeks can seem the most satisfying though!  

Happy Father's Day Dad, Ray, Papa, Grandpa, Sean, and Alton.  These two pictures are older but my favorites-aww!  

celebrate

Staishy and I have decided to celebrate Nanny's life this year by wearing pieces of her jewelry every week and photographing it.  I can speak for both of us when I say even though we just decided this a couple of weeks ago we wear a piece almost every day and have gotten complements on all of them.  It makes us feel so special to have so many beautiful pieces and share something special that was hers-there is a sense of closeness and physicality to it.  Some pieces are more valuable than others but they are all just as special to us.  Some pieces we remember her wearing often and some I'm sure haven't seen the light of day in years decades.  Here's to celebrating and remembering a beautiful, classy lady.

Staishy looking beautiful in one of her favorite pieces.  She has always had a guilty pleasure for hematite! :) 

I couldn't decide which piece to upload this week so I cheated and picked a few of my favorites-so here is a taste of what's to come this year.  Paul and I attended a wedding yesterday and I had chosen to wear the earrings that Nanny is wearing in the picture above but unfortunately I will need to get one repaired!

!

Congratulations Stefan!

Yesterday Amy, Paul, and I attended Stefan's Graduation in Denton and headed over for food and drinkage at his parent's house in Fort Worth!  I am so proud of you Stefan!  Friday night at work I mentioned to a coworker that I was going to a friend's graduation on Saturday and I was really excited and proud of him.  She then asks if he was graduating from high school.  Good times!  I'm not sure if that made me feel old or young!  Either way, Stefan- here is the announcement you SHOULD have received at the end of the ceremony:
...and now I present to you the newest alumni of the University of North Texas, the class of 2012!!!!!!!!!
Ideally at this point Stefan will be throwing up his cap in celebration.  This whole exciting moment was skipped in his ACTUAL graduation.  Instead, they chose to just awkwardly start playing music.

I love the moment after you wake up and realize it is still the weekend! I also woke up feeling like it is fall.  I know its not, sadly, but the apartment just felt so crisp and it seemed cloudy, (or was it that I just woke up so dang early??), and it just put me in a good mood.  Today is one of those days that I feel like  drinking tea and spend the day crafting and baking with my sister.  Sigh.  This feeling could have come from falling asleep listening to Christmas music again.  Love it.

My plans for the day:

• Salivate through the new Ikea catalog
• Internet surf (do people still say that?)
• Speed clean?
• Listen to more Christmas music

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend, and may you enjoy today so much that is carries through the week! :)

speed

As much as I would like to start out this entry with the positive notes from yesterday, I must purge the negative first.  Lately I have been having the feeling that everything has been going too well:  The air conditioner hasn't gone out in my car (or apt for that matter), the computer hasn't suddenly stopped running, we are all in good health, the tv and ps3 are still going strong, and I have been able to take care of all my current items on my running list of things to pay for in july/august.  I was looking forward to having some "extra" money for the month!  Nope.  That extra money is going towards the speeding ticket I got in Irving yesterday...

Why was I in Irving?

Last night was Alton's belated birthday celebration with friends!  We went out to Bosses Pizza for dinner- it was compared to Mama's Pizza, but hands down, Mama's is better.  After pizza we went to see the batman movie, which I thought was great and heart-warming.  Yes, heart-warming.  Happy birthday Alton!

Earlier in the day, I laid out by the pool with Amy and did the all important speed cleaning with Meredith!  What is speed cleaning you ask?  I know no one asked because all of you who read this have probably heard my advocation of speed cleaning, but I will divulge anyway.  Speed cleaning can be done alone or with a friend.  So, I first initiate a speed cleaning session via text with the appropriate friend, (in my case, Meredith, because she is always usually up for a good cleaning!), and if they say they are busy the appropriate thing to do would be to continue on with the plan of cleaning, but typically this causes a sigh of relief and a "that was close!" moment.  If they agree to the session, we then usually establish a cleaning timeframe; usually about an hour, maybe an hour and half or more if we have company coming.  My apartment REALLY only gets a good cleaning when we have visitors, but I try to maintain the general chaos between visits with speed cleaning.  We usually decide which room we want to start with first and more often than not start texting a leisurely conversation to postpone the inevitable.  We then establish a timeframe and a room, usually capping it at 20 minutes, because any more than this and you experience the sitting on couch for  a minute to watch the Glee dance dream sequence set to 80's music, thinking those precious 3 minutes of pop are not going to make a huge difference.  They do!  You don't realize how much you can get done in such a short amount of time!  In those 20 minutes you clean as quickly and efficiently as you can, choosing carefully what you can clean that will give the maximum results!  When I was a kid I would pile everything on my bed and race against the clock, pretending it was a time bomb and if I didn't get everything cleared off within a certain amount of time the entire city would be destroyed (or something equally as traumatic to mankind).  I'm not sure why they always trusted me with the safety of the people, but about half way through I usually decided I was ok with not finishing.  Anyway, yet another reason why the timeframes should be short.  After the set timeframe has ended we text each other about the results and praise one another for our accomplishments.  This interlude should be brief, as to not get caught up in each other's self destructive tendencies. We then choose the next room and establish a timeframe, and keep on this until the hour is up.  I usually leave a 10 minute timeframe at the end to rush back through and finish up anything that was missed, or sometimes use that time to do the dreaded sweep/dust chore.  To keep this up between speed cleanings I try to do a nightly 15 minute cleaning before bed, which makes a huge difference!  This method is also great to do on your own, but not as exciting and hard to get motivated.  Good luck with your cleaning endeavors!  To hear about Meredith's never ending battle with domesticity, check out her blog!

Other than cleaning, since I have last updated we have celebrated Alton's birthday as I mentioned, celebrated my grandparent's anniversary, celebrated Meredith and Dan's birthday, got to have a Courtney and Daina day of hanging out like we did in the olden days, (although now there are children in the mix :) ), had a visit from Paul's cousin, had a visit from Paul's friend, and Cameron and her family came to visit for Baby Bennett's baby shower and general TX time- they are moving back to Texas in about a year, by the way!  So excited!  Coming up is Stefan's graduation next weekend, Mom and Dad's anniversary, Paul and my's 5th anniversary, my birthday, and Paul's birthday!  I'm sure I will have more drama to update soon.

Today my plans are to make a master to-do list of all the things I keep putting off, tackle the bedroom, (which I conveniently left out of our speed cleaning session because I dread it), and chat with Staishy about all the family gossip and general goings-ons of our exciting lives!  Love. It.

Happy Anniversary my dearest.  It has gone by so fast, and  I am looking forward to the next 100 years with you! :)

perfect day

It's sad when you haven't posted in so long that that the format has changed (probably multiple times) on the blogging site. :)

To recap this year first:
Alton turned 30, Ada and Parker turned 1, Cameron is on baby #2, Courtney just had baby #2- Tyler, my cousin, Meghan, just had baby #1-Will, My grandparents just celebrated their 60th anniversary, and I made my 1 year at my job!

It's been a over a year since my last post but today was such a perfect day that I felt I must share and break my dry blogging streak.  My perfect day doesn't seem particularly special and was about 30 degrees warmer, hotter than I would have liked, but it just had a ring to it I guess you could say.  I woke up without an alarm at the exact time I was hoping to, sun bathed with Amy by the pool while munching on cherries, (yay summer fruit), and DID NOT end up with a weird tan, dropped by the pharmacy and experienced no line on a saturday, shopped for a couple new shirts for paul and in addition ended up finding new jewelry for myself, got a random discount at one of the stores and used a gift card from Christmas, (thanks santa!), for the other, and then headed to our real goal of the day:  ride the McKinney Ave Trolley!  Up to this point, it has been one of those days that seems like no matter how quickly you are sure that time is going, it isn't.  Time is standing still enough to let you catch up on all the errands you have to run and all the relaxation time you need to recoup from the week.  We headed out without a plan as to what we would do, other than riding trolley, so we ended up driving around Uptown a little bit to get our bearings and find a place to park.  Part of that trek we were actually driving behind the trolley...but there is something fun about seeing the sites in your own city from a trolley instead of your car.  We parked and walked out of the car and right up to a stop, where an approaching trolley was already pulling over as if we had pre-planned the route times.  We rode the whole loop and then ended up getting off somewhere in the middle at an upscale pizza place where we rounded off the meal with *cocktails, mine being a blueberry mojito!  We caught the trolley back to our car, and headed back to our side of the tracks.  The experience was fun and we didn't even seem to mind the heat.  Since then we have had time to nap, do laundry, have leftover pizza, and start a Godzilla marathon, (so when I say we, I mean Paul.  He would like to add they are having a "Fu-zilla" marathon on Crackle if anyone is interested).  Next up: board games and more Godzilla.

*strong

seattle

Here are a fraction of the pictures we took in Seattle! I would have updated sooner but I was not ready to deal with my post-Seattle depression. We had an amazing time visiting the city and the family! : ) By FAR the highlight of the trip was Ada. Isn't she adorable? I realize it doesn't look like we spent much time with Staishy and Sean, but in fact we did- we just didn't document their every move like we did with Ada. We ate: mussels, various/large amounts of/yummy breads, salmon, sushi, blueberry pancakes, clam chowder in a bread bowl, spicy sausage soup, the MOST amazing hotdog with cabbage, onions and cream cheese, (it sounds gross but I promise you it was fulfilling on so many levels... we were in disbelief before we were enlightened), Thai food, oatmeal cookies, surprisingly yummy cinnamon roll, milkshakes, AND anything else left off this list was fulfilled when we went to the mother of all brunches Sunday morning.... and all washed down with lots and lots of tea. What an amazing week o' food and drinkage. Things we did: explore the city, ride ze bus, ate lots of food, went to Pike Place... my personal favorite, got pedicures with Staishy... also my favorite, got coffee/tea and treats, went shopping, went walking, saw movies, visited bookstores and music stores, played lots of games- dominoes, Scrabble, Cranium, and Trivial Pursuit, and primarily adored Ada. Best of ALLLL, was time spent as a family. Yes, this is corny but it was an absolutely wonderful week. Ada was amazing- I got to pre meet her the week before we went to Seattle, and just in the few days I didn't see her I could already tell she had grown stronger and was learning new things. What a beautiful, smart girl that I get to be an Auntie to! Needless to say, it was hard to leave. : ( What is your favorite pic? Also, who wants to go with us on our next trip?!