Monday, July 30, 2012

Olympics So Far...

{My Thoughts on the Opening Ceremony}

Am I the only one who had tears glistening throughout various parts of the Opening Ceremony?!?
So amazing!!
So unique and quintessential Great Britain!
I love the torch!! And how it was lit!
Favorite Parts had to be JK Rowling & Paul McCartiney with Hey Jude
(the song John sings to me all the time!)
I love when the world comes together for these games!

{Various thoughts about random aspects of the games so far} 

Did y'all see Michelle Obama give the USA Mens Basketball team hugs after they beat France?
Talk about some sweaty hugs. (I love it when I have a thought or say something
when watching TV, then the announcers say the exact same thing after!)
First Lady Michelle Obama gets a few sweaty hugs from the American players after watching the USA Men's Basketball team defeat France during the 2012 Olympic Games.
Zimbio
Lots of people are bummed that Michael Phelps isn't doing as well in these Olympic Games.
I honestly think it's kind of awesome that his unfortunate lack of gold metals allows us to see some other awesome athletes... like Ryan Lochte!


... Notice how I said "various" thoughts like I had many... well the issue is I do have thoughts, but then I can't remember what they were. I've always wondered what I would talk about on Twitter if I actually used my account... now I know.
Follow me! @RebekahLewis




Friday, July 27, 2012

Dream Cake

This post isn't nearly as random as it seems...
Brooke over at The Little Delights in Life is having a contest.

We submit our pictures of our dream cake, she will select 3 of all the entries to create a tutorial for
then the readers will select which of those three she should blog about!

(how awesome is that to be so talented at your craft to be able to say "give me a task... I can do it and teach you too!" ?!?)

I'm putting my picture here and linking to it because the picture of the cake I would like her to do a tutorial on is on The Knot
(when you link to the knot all you see is their main page images... pretty useless for this purpose)


This is the beautiful cake I would love to see Brooke do! 

The pinstriping and ribbon detail on each layer of the cake exuded vintage romance. Jennifer had the baker design flowers that looked exactly like the ones on her gown.
Link

I found it when I was searching for the perfect wedding cake.
I choose to go with a different design, but when I think romantic and food in the same thought...
...this cake comes to mind!

Thursday, July 26, 2012

My 5 Little Delights this Week


I'm linking up to The Little Delights in Life for this weeks post of My 5 Little Delights this Week!

 https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjUBAOq6ijausduzpDANLah42qACzdOeyfOtjFZ6_OdE5Cint3y5Bu6-pG9JsxDWWbKYR0O8UoE3_fxBSLN6UYSXdaB9va08Kj_boeRki0cHR4JM5ReeJBUQwZoEcwbMacUyCUxRCCXKnC/s1600/button2.jpg

1. I am LOVING my new couch! 
Hey it was free (a post about how I got my fabulous free couch soon) and it actually matches (ish) our existing couch!
2. Our living room is almost cleaned out!! It will be finished this weekend!
Yes you heard me, only things that belong to the Hubbs and I remain! 
We finished ripping out the carpet in the office, living room will be finished today so now all there is left to do is pick a color and paint those ugly white walls!!

3. We got a gym membership!!
I have finally accepted that it is going to take establishing an actual routine to get the weight
of a small child off my body. Diet is going great...but I'm just not seeing the results quickly enough for my satisfaction.

4.I am going to bake this weekend! I haven't gotten a chance to recently and since we're having guests over Saturday I will get a chance to use the oven again!

5. The Olympics begin tomorrow!! So unbelievably excited!!

"It's Okay" Thursdays

       It's amazing how much fun I seem to miss out in the blogging world!!  Bestie linked up to "It's Okay Thursday", I thought 'oh, how cool!'... then looked at the rest of the posts from blogs I follow on Blog Lovin' and realized that apparently half the world does it too...

... so like they're all jumping off a bridge... here I go too!

Its Ok Thursdays 

It's Okay...

To have guests coming over on Saturday and have no idea what you're going to serve them...

To refuse to eat lunch for going on 3 days now because nothing sounds good...

To have filled your DVR with Olympic events because you're soo excited that it starts tomorrow!

To spend wayy too much time reading blogs each day

To eat the cookies that you bought from the cute little girl wanting to go to summer camp and not count the calories.

To be excited about such a cool link-up!

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Blog Lovin'



       Do you use Blog lovin'?  My bestie, Lauren posted a week-ish ago about Blog Lovin' and I honestly had no idea what it was! Then I stumbled across several other bloggers talking about it and I decided I had to check it out! 

       Turns out it is pretty cool! You should check it out and follow me there too! : )

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Olympics!!

 

The Olympic games have been a summer (or winter as the case may be) pass-time for my family for as long as I can remember! 

The first games I remember were the 1996 Olympic games hosted in Georgia.  My parents exposed us to all the coverage about the games (not so much about the terrorist attack).  I still have trading pins from the games!

I stayed up in the middle of the night to watch Live events in the Bejing Olympics (2008)
(it helped that I was a nanny so my day job requirements were limited)

Attending a Summer Olympic Games is on my bucket list! John thinks it would be great to work for the IOC... I'm not so convinced, but how cool would it have been to live in London for four years leading up to the events (London because I can speak English!)?!?

I'm anticipating that this will be the best Olympics in many years!

I'm excited that they're in England!
I've had English fever for a while and can't get enough gossip about Princess Kate and her handsome Prince. I'm sure that there will be various sitings of the royals throughout the games.

This will probably be the only year I take an interest in Field Hockey... apparently it's Kate's sport of preference.
Photo Courtesy of NBC Olympic Coverage







What are you looking forward to the most about this years Summer Olympics?

Will you be watching the Opening Ceremony? (Friday evening on NBC)

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Balsamic Vinegar Saucy Chicken

       I am so excited to share this recipe!  John actually said it was the best thing that I have made!  I don't quite agree with him, I have some recipes I prefer more so than this one; but it really was good!!

       I don't exactly know where this recipe came from, if it's yours - let me know! I got it from a co-worker, Stephanie. It's amazing how much we discuss food, swap recipes and talk about upcoming meals, restaurants and desserts at work. It probably has something to do with the fact that everyone in the office is always dieting! 



This is what it looked like all put together before it was cooked.
       I would say that the angel hair pasta is a must. We used whole-wheat linguine because it was what I had around... the texture left something to be desired (not because of the whole wheat, just the size of the noodles). John isn't the only one that gave this recipe a thumbs up by the way... if you haven't already, check out my disastrous Monday that gave my entire office the opportunity to smell this delicious dish cooking!


       On another note, my dear friend Lianne has just announced her engagement to her darling fiance Josh!  I couldn't be happier for them! They are a cute couple and are a great example of a real relationship, one that takes work and mutual respect! They are high school sweethearts and have had to grow, and grow up together and fight the ever evolving relationship challenges that come with age differences, family life, distance . I'm so proud! 

Monday, July 16, 2012

Success & Failure (Pt. 2)

       I was going to just write about todays events... but John said that this is "funny if you really think about it". I find that ironic since I'm usually the one that laughs in the "laugh or cry" moments when John is so mad you can practically see steam coming out of his ears! So in the name of humor that must be lost on me (or more likely I'm still to upset to see the funny), I am sharing the email I sent to John about the first half of today.

_________________________________________________________________________
To: John (Work)
From: Rebekah Lewis
Subject: My Monday

Well, let's start on the positive notes -
I was on time to work!  I got dinner started so all I have to do is boil water for noodles for dinner tonight before Bible Study! I met Sonya and ran my Week 1 Day 1 with no problems!! I have a lead on a party for the first of August for Thirty-One!!

Now for the not so positives:

The hallway door is now completely off it's hinges as you may have noticed this morning when it fell on the floor. That isn't something we can just screw back in. It will be a major project that I am not capable of. Something about counter sinking screws?

When I was going out the back door to check water for Clyde & Bella the bottom half of the back door literally fell off the frame so we have half of a back door now. I can send you a picture if you want. It isn't going to be a ply-wood will fix it all solution. I have called Robert, he will come out and look at it tonight. It is most likely going to mean we have to buy a new door to fix that problem. That's going to get expensive fast and I don't know a way to make it any cheaper or a make-shift solution until we can afford a new door. Don't forget that this means hanging sheet rock if we decided not to replace the doors with French Doors again.

Since the hallway door and the back door are both now broken, the dogs essentially have the run of the entire house and back yard. Here's to hoping they don't get out of the window or fence or all the other nightmarish things that can happen now. I closed the child gate in the hall and our bedroom hoping it will keep them in the dining room/kitchen area.  I also shoved those end tables in front of the hallway child gate so that hopefully Sasha won't go out the window or out back and under the fence.

Now that the dogs have the run of the house, I couldn't leave dinner there. Pepper was quite interested in the smells coming from the crock pot. I don't think you can put half cooked chicken back in the fridge. Sooo.... I'm cooking dinner at work today. No one is exactly happy that I have some delicious smelling chicken dish cooking in the kitchen that you can smell throughout the entire office. : /  But, I used some of Chips herbs for it!! : )

And on to the informative pieces of my day:


Drew texted this morning to talk about their plans for when he and Maddie come to visit in a couple of weeks. They want to tour UNT, TWU, and TCU while in town. I'm working on setting up school tours for Saturday morning and maybe Friday evening if I can get that worked out. But as best as I can tell none of the schools are offering Saturday tours?!?! Since when do people have time to visit other towns and walk around talking about random old buildings in the middle of a freeking work week??? Right now it's looking like:

Arrive Friday - UNT or TWU tour
Dinner with your mom & Chip

Saturday - School tours
Golf? Shopping?
Dinner at our house - I'm cooking

Sunday - Get up for church
lunch at our house or out to eat after church - they leave after lunch.

Suggestions on menu plans for 2 breakfasts, a dinner, a lunch and maybe a lunch out to eat?

.....

Needless to say, I'm stressed.

Love you!

Rebekah
________________________________________________________________________

To conclude. A picture of our now maimed back door.


Nope. I wasn't exaggerating. Half of the door is gone.

Success & Failure (pt. 1)

       It has been an interesting weekend, and in the name of a complete idea - I'm throwing todays events in too. I suppose we must have failure and obstacles in life - how else would we know that things are going well or "easy" if we haven't had difficulties.

       John and I are scrambling to get some of the last HUGE projects finished on the house.  There are still so many more to go, but the majority of those are more cosmetic (though I will admit, it isn't quite what I would call "touch-ups" - they're big projects).  We need to rip the carpet out of one final room... but it's the largest room in the house.  We still need to finish cleaning out the second bathroom and the guest room that have been nothing but storage space. The urgency is because we have family coming to visit the first weekend of  next month!

      The largest project is probably cleaning. We still have belongings stacked on furniture rather than put away, or a few remaining boxes that just cant seem to find a 'real' home somewhere. It's hard to do every day cleaning around stuff like this and of course these things really need to be put away or given away. So, Friday night I gave myself the task to put away the books... a real issue because we have so many! We've known our need for more bookshelves, but just don't want to give up floor space for them (not that we really have floor space to spare anyway). Then it dawned on me, in our office area we could build a bookcase at the top of the wall above the door and windows!! I had a vision and I was hooked!

       A simple enough project it seemed. I measured the wall and stopped off for my bub on my way to Lowes.  Obviously the project wasn't well thought out so the store took a while to gather all the supplies we needed, or thought we needed. We figured it would be a 3(ish) hour project. Uh... So not the case!

      First of all, the moron who built the house didn't put the studs in the proper locations on this wall. On Friday night, we weren't certain there were any studs. We looked for hours; hours of tapping and nailing and high hopes crashing. I also didn't consider the fact that to have enough space to put books on the shelf, there was no space to put an L bracket under the shelf above the french doors (easy fix, hung it upside down in two spots).

      A looongg story short...It took the entire weekend to complete. I now have some major holes in my wall. Many are well on their way to repaired thanks to Joint Compound and patience. Joshua has a new found hatred for flathead screws. And I have a shelf!

      It's perfect!! It fits our needs exactly, although because of weight restrictions associated with the lack of studs in the appropriate places I can't put all our books up. So for now we still have one large, overflowing box of books under the shelf just waiting until I sucker Josh into helping me with the same project again on the two adjoining walls.

It has a great deal more on it now. This was the first "after" picture.


      On the cleaning front, things are looking much better. The kitchen is almost clean, which was the easiest since I keep it pretty clean on a regular basis - it still needs a spit shine and some organization. (Oh! And I got my kitchen curtain rod hung on the door!! It was magnetic and kept falling, but with the help of liquid nails and Krazy Glue Josh got it to stay!!) The dining room and sitting area look much better thanks to John cleaning and his liberal decisions as to what goes into a trash bag...! When the bathroom is finished being cleaned out I will have the cabinet space to finally put away the last of our straggling boxes in that end of the house!