Pretty Binkie!

Well, last week I received a freaking awesome late Christmas present from my sister - a handmade quilt! It is HUGE and I know it took a lot of time and work to get it done - she did a fantastic job!

Maggie was pretty excited about it too - she loves blankets/quilts/anything to cover up with - the dog's always wanting to snuggle somewhere....

The colors are very bright and I love that. My master bedroom is green, so I might even put it on my bed in the summer months when I don't need my big comforter. It will look fabulous!

Here's Maggie 'shaking' on the new quilt...

She definitely approves of our new blankie.

I just love quilts - and we wore out the last quilt that Kristi made for us. Maggie accidentally chewed a few holes in it during the puppy years (trying to get at a toy that was on the other side of the quilt...instead of going under the blanket to get it, she thought she would just chew THROUGH the quilt).

She did such a nice job and I'm sure we'll be cuddling in it all the time. Maggie sniffed every single inch of the quilt, so I think she smells her 'cousin' Alice (Kristi's italian greyhound). :)

Maggie, playing with her toys on the quilt - not even 10 minutes after I laid it on the floor!

And the inaugural nap in the quilt!

Thanks, Kristi - we love it and will take good care of it!

Stressful Situations!

I saw this quote recently and I thought it was too funny not to share. And it's definitely good advice, don't ya think??

Handle every stressful situation like a dog does…Pee on it and walk away.

Imagine if whenever we had a very stressful moment, we could just act like a dog: relieve the stress, walk away and never think about that subject again.

How cool would that be?! Issues at work, kids acting up, bills to pay, fights with your spouse, rude drivers, whatever the problem - just relieve and walk away (I just instantly thought of Rex Kwon Do from Napoleon Dynamite - "Break the wrist, walk away." - Love it!)


I truly do envy dogs' ability to just let things go and move on. Why can't it be that easy for me??

Big Dreams

I have always wondered what it really meant when people say "God spoke to me" or "God told me to do XYZ." I mean, did He really TELL you that, or was it your gut feeling or was it a lightning bolt or a dream?

Well, the other night I feel like I had it happen to me. I was just going to bed and was in my silent, dark bedroom...just waiting to fall into unconsciousness. Then all of a sudden, behind my closed eyes, I saw a bright flash of light (I was in a pitch black room) and just felt the exact words "I MADE YOU FOR MORE THAN THIS."

WOW - it was not wishy-washy, it was not fuzzy, it was not ambiguous.....it was CRYSTAL CLEAR and the message was precise and direct.

OK, hearing that was the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what it means for my life! It's true, I have finally become comfortable where I have no big traumas, heartbreaks, longings or discontentments in my life. I am plugging along, doing just fine, but not really stretching myself too much.

Now I have been given a challenge of sorts! I have no idea what I am supposed to do with this knowledge and direction! But I know that there are signs everywhere, so in 2010, I am officially looking for a way to experience, do, impact, and challenge myself "MORE THAN THIS."

Anyone else have an experience like this???

Demo Skillz

Ever since I bought my house, one of the things I STRONGLY disliked was my master bathroom shower. It was brass, the caulking was crappy, the tiles were kind of damaged on the bottom of the wall, etc. I just pretty much hated it.

Well, recently, the tiles on the bottom have really started to get bad, so I decided to finally remove the shower and get a brand new one!

Here's the "before" shot (you really can't see any damage in the pic):

And since I am dating a fabulous guy, he offered to do the demo work and take the old yucky shower out for me! Here he is looking tough in his toolbelt.....

And here are pics of the demo progression throughout the day on Saturday.....

2 walls down......

Chris getting wacky.....

Now for the tile walls.....you can see the water damage on the drywall....

We're gettin' there - and Maggie tried to help, but once again, her lack of opposable thumbs posed a problem.....

What hot safety glasses!

Those tiles were a pain in the rear for Chris, but he kept plugging away.....

Making progress....

Still in a good mood - impressive!

Maggie realized she couldn't help with the demo, so she took a nap on my bed right next to the bathroom - I have NO IDEA how she managed to sleep through the loudness of chipping tiles off the wall and having them fall to the floor!

Getting down to the studs - almost there!

Ready for the plumber to show up and put the new one in! Chris knows how to put the new shower in, but I'm going to have a licensed plumber put the new one in so that I don't void the warranty on the new shower. Also, then the work is insured - so I'm covered for labor and the shower. So Chris did the dirty work so that I would save a ton of money on labor. What a great guy!

My new shower, which we already bought, is a neo-angle shower, and here's the base! I'm really excited! Now I just need to get estimates from a few plumbers and get the new one in. It will be sometime in the next week or two. Luckily I shower at the gym on weekdays and then I have another full bathroom to shower in, so there's no rush (except that there is a HUGE box with a shower in it - sitting in my living room and it's going to drive me nuts!

I'll post "after" pics when I get this puppy installed!

No Going Back

Change is the very nature of life, - welcome it. No glass ever became sand again; No bread ever became wheat; No ripened fruit ever became a flower. Welcome change, and choose what kind of glass you create, what kind of bread you bake, what kind of fruit you harvest.

Wow - this last week or two have been very reflective for me - lots of DEEP thinking. And I have found lots of inspirational and thought provoking quotes lately. GOOD STUFF.

I liked this one because I often find myself reminiscing about the past and wistfully remembering a really great time in my life that has come and gone. I really miss certain phases, but I know that all of the ups and downs of my life have been necessary to bringing me to the place I am now, which I love. I have to take the bad stuff in order to appreciate the good stuff. Go figure.

During my years spent in Ohio, I wasted a LOT of time thinking, pondering and lamenting about the past - what could've been, what should've been, the things that were happening that I didn't ask for or deserve, etc. It was a pity party to end all pity parties for a while there! I knew that I was doing it - I was very conscious of it, and I hated EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of it......but yet I was stuck in it. I couldn't get out of the past and the injustices that had happened.

What a blessing I have found in my 30's! Moving to Texas wasn't just about cowboys, warmer weather and living in a bigger city (although those are some fabulous attributes of living here!) - moving down to Texas was about much more than that. It was a very symbolic shift in my life - both in my physical location, but moreso in my mental/emotional/spiritual state.


I was finally doing something (BIG) that was on MY terms, in MY time and by MY CHOICE. It was not reacting to a parent's death, it was not reeling after a spouse leaves, it was not picking up the pieces from someone else's actions and poor choices. It was something I had always wanted to do and I DID IT! I decided that I didn't need a husband in order to buy a house - and it turned out just fine! I knew that if moving down here was a collosal mistake, that it would be MY mistake and I would live with the consequences. I was totally OK with that - it was just so exhilerating to be doing something monumental in my own life based on my own decisions, PROACTIVELY, not reactively.

So while I enjoy looking back through my photo albums from college, studying abroad in Spain, when I was newly married and on cloud 9, when I could hug Dad in person - all of those wonderful times in my life.....I also can finally say that I am just fine right where I am, right at this moment. I am finally content. I don't need to long for the caterpillar days, for I'm now a butterfly! Ahhh....it feels so good to finally be at peace with my life. It's not perfect, but I'm at peace... God is so good.

Bailouts - NO MORE!

I heard a radio commercial the other day for one of those debt consolidation companies and I almost had a car accident when I heard what they were saying! They were talking about the overused, abused term of "bailout" in the context of people and their credit card debt and I wanted to SCREAM.

It is so wildly against anything and everything I believe in to tell people that their bad choices 'aren't their fault.' WHAT?! How about some personal responsibility in this country?! If you ran up credit cards, why on earth should you be bailed out?! For every person who defaults on their credit card debt or claims bankruptcy to get rid of it, that just means that the rest of us pay higher prices on goods and services to compensate for that bad debt. If you think that this problem doesn't affect you, you are dead wrong. We all pay for the bad choices of others and it SENDS ME UP A WALL!

I live a pretty modest life - I don't go on flashy vacations all the time, I buy most household items in the generic brand if I find that they do a decent job, I use coupons for oil changes, I shop the clearance racks, and I splurge on the things that are really important to me - but ONLY if my budget allows me to. I don't buy things just because "I think I deserve it because of XYZ." I may well have deserved a treat, but that doesn't mean I can afford it.

I think a HUGE, MASSIVE problem in our country these days is the sense of entitlement that some have (and it's only getting worse with each generation). This world, country, government, society don't OWE you anything. Earn it yourself and take care of YOURSELF! I try to keep politics out of my blog world, but sometimes I just feel like I'll explode if I don't say SOMETHING.


Most people who have known me for longer than 5 minutes know that I am a conservative and love Glenn Beck. One of the reasons I love him is because he is all about owning up to your mistakes and failures, celebrating your successes and taking personal responsibility for your choices - either good or bad.

Back to the commercial I heard - WHY on EARTH would any of us that live within our means want to BAIL OUT people who have been living way beyond their means and doing nothing about it, just waiting around for someone else to shoulder their burden and 'make it go away' so they can sleep at night again???

The commercial actually said "When is the government going to help with our credit card debt?" Holy crap - I almost swerved into the ditch when I heard that. Ummmm......if you want that kind of government, then go to a communist country where not only does your government handle your finances, but they also make all of your other decisions for you as well. This is America and at least for the time being, we are still a capitalist nation - so get out if you want the government to take care of your mistakes and bad choices! Get off your rear end and take some responsibility and make better choices! UGH!

Who's with me?!?!

Plans for Life

My Plan for your life is unfolding before you. Sometimes the road you are traveling seems blocked, or it opens up so painfully slowly that you must hold yourself back. Then, when time is right, the way before you suddenly clears – through no effort of your own. What you have longed for and worked for I present to you freely as pure gift. You feel awed by the ease with which I operate in the world, and you glimpse My Power and My Glory.

Do not fear your weakness, for it is the stage on which My Power and Glory perform most brilliantly. As you persevere along the path I have prepared for you, depending on My strength to sustain you, expect to see miracles – and you will. Miracles are not always visible to the naked eye, but those who live by faithLiving by faith, rather than sight, enables you to see My Glory. can see them clearly.

Written by Sarah Young, Jesus Calling

I saw this on a friend's blog recently, so I decided to re-post it on my own blog. I just read it over and over and over - I love it! And it's so true. There have been MANY times in my life - mostly my late 20's - where I have been waiting (IMpatiently), wondering when my ship was going to come in, when good things were going to come my way, when the pain from a divorce was going to stop, when I was going to feel like I truly belong somewhere again.

When I was in Ohio, I would send out resumes for jobs in Texas throughout the whole time I was in Toledo after my divorce.....and heard nothing or very little. I never gave up hope that I would get there someday, but my faith wore so thin at times.

I watched as friends of mine got married, had babies, started new jobs, moved to new places, went on fabulous vacations with their families, etc. All the while, I was wondering what I did that was so bad to deserve the isolation, loneliness and despair that I felt inside. There were many days that I really felt that God forgot about me or just gave up on me and moved on to everyone else to pour blessings on.

But just like the "Footprints" poem says, when I felt most alone and abandoned, it was then that God was carrying me. He had something BIG in store for me, but he needed some time to get it just right before he revealed it to me.

Then, when the time was right, Allison introduced me to her cousin Tammy in Dallas/Fort Worth and I found my job - my ticket to Texas! It was all lining up! And then the house drama started - I moved across the country with clothes and a dog with no place to live! WHAT?!

Teresa and I looked at house after house after house and none were the right one. I felt like Goldilocks, except for the bowl of porridge that was "just right" wasn't presenting itself! But sure enough, the 2nd to last house that we looked at (before I was going to break down and just rent for 6 months) was THE ONE!

God clearly had a plan all along - I was just not patient and faithful enough to find peace in that plan at the time. Hindsight is always 20/20 and i can see it all unfolded now, but I certainly didn't see it at the time.

Looking at all of that in hindsight gives me the skills and knowledge that I need in order to trust that God REALLY DOES have a plan when I'm going through a rough patch in my life, if I just have faith. He always turns struggles into something GOOD!!

Museum Madness

At the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, there were a few parts of the museum that were geared more for adults (YES!) and so TJ kind of took one for the team and tagged along.

The first one was the Cattle Herders Museum - lots of stuffed longhorns to be found - I love them!

It was like all-things-cowboy! I didn't realize that there were so many different kinds/styles of barbed wire.....There was a huge display of all of them - check it out (this was only some of them)!

And the same goes with Brands. There are tons of them - each rancher makes up their own signature brand and then marks their cattle with it. They had a whole bunch of them hanging from the ceiling - so cool!

And as a special exhibit, there was a CSI Experience area where you pick one of their 'crime scenes' and then you go gather clues and observe the scene.

Then you go to all of these stations and look at forensics, analyze fingerprints, learn about DNA, toxicology, autopsy findings, etc. Then you make your theory and present it to Grissom at the end. It was fun!