Brave Girls

I got back Saturday night from spending a few days in the Idaho mountains at Brave Girl Camp. Wow. Just wow. I'm still processing everything and not sure how much I can put in to words.

It was time spent meeting new, lifetime friends. Incredibly talented, smart, funny, creative, loving, loyal and supportive friends. Brave Girls, that is what we are. We spent time laughing, crying, soul searching, listening, encouraging and of course crafting.
And we stayed up way too late!

We went on morning walks and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.



And we ate and ate and ate. The food was absolutely delicious and beautifully and lovingly prepared.



Even our water glasses had these cute little charms with our names on them!



See how adorable the cupcakes were? They were out of this world delicious too.

What I can say is what an amazing feeling to be so supported, so loved, and feel so much trust. My heart is happy and my soul feels peaceful.

I needed this time away - needed time to recharge my batteries and time out to think and to create. I've come back home with a new sense of calm and purpose.

Welcome February!

The end of last week we got another ice/snow storm and I was stuck in the house for 4 days. Although I was starting to get a little cabin fever, I'm not going to complain too much because at least I had lights and heat and the electricity only flickered a couple of times.
Haven't posted too much lately because I've sort of got the winter blues - nothing really "wrong" per se, just I'm kind of crabby lately. Needing some sun and some warmer temps I think.
I did get out of the house to take a class on Sunday at a local scrapbook store. It was working with metal and embossing images on metal and was alot of fun. One of my goals for 2010 is to take some kind of creative class at least once a month. I'm signed up for Brave Girls later this month, in September we are going to Nevada to Inspiration Unlimited 2010 and we will see what else!
Anyway - some *AWESOME* news! Doug worked extremely hard last year and earned a trip!! Sooooooo- we are going to Italy! Whohoo! We have to sit down and book the dates but tentatively we are looking at June - sometime around my birthday. We want to go when the weather is warm but not too hot. Now that is something to get excited about and look forward to planning!
Also, Brave Girls is in a couple weeks! Hopefully, when I return I'll have some new inspired ideas and things to blog about. I'm even boring myself these days....

Lovin' the Mac!

I've had my Mac home now for a little over a week and I am *totally* loving it! I will admit that it is a bit of a learning curve for me. Haven't yet been able to figure out how to sync my iPhone and my Mac with MobileMe so I'll be making an appointment to meet with the geniuses at the Genius bar real soon. Can't wait to take advantage of all the one-to-one classes and really learn how to use this thing, especially the photo editing stuff!
I'm disappointed that my clutter clearing class with Pam Case is cancelled once again for next weekend but I've been decluttering a few things on my own which feels really great.
I'm starting to think about Brave Girls and getting really excited. I've been following all the links to the blogs of some of the women that attended the first Brave Girls Camp in October and the more I read, the more excited I get! Can't wait!

Computer update, Art Camp and Clutter clearing

Okay, so, no Mac just yet. My Dell has spent two days at the Apple store getting its files transferred over to my bright shiny new Mac. Apparently, I had *alot* more files on there than I even thought! I've been trying to patiently wait and have been using Doug's computer to check email and calendars and stuff. It's so difficult being without my computer - just goes to show how dependent I have become on it. However, I just got a call that the computer is just about ready to be picked up but since I'm already in for the night, I'll have to pick it up in the morning.
Some other exciting news for me is that I am attending Brave Girls Camp in February. I can hardly wait! The best way for me to describe it is that it is a workshop for creativity, art and fun! The Camp is held in Idaho (I know, am I totally crazy for traveling to Idaho in February!?!) and facilitated by Melody Ross and her sister Kathy. I'm keeping a positive thought that the weather is going to be fine for traveling and I'm sure Idaho will be beautiful at that time of year. The first Brave Girls Camp was held in October and from all I've read about it, it sure sounds wonderful.
I've been working away at going through some old papers, scanning what I need and shredding the rest. Trying to seriously clear clutter in this new year. My clutter clearing workshop that was scheduled for this coming weekend has been rescheduled for the week of the 30th. That is not stopping me though - I'm going to keep working at it and take the workshop with the anticipation of learning new clutter clearing techniques and hopefully returning with a renewed sense of getting rid of stuff that maybe I couldn't get rid of the first go around. I'll let you know how that all works out.

I got a new Mac today!

Tonight I'm blogging from Doug's Macbook as my Dell is currently spending the night at the Apple store having it's files copied onto my new Mac. I'm so very excited! I've never had a Mac but I'm so looking forward to learning all the great features on my new machine.
Lately, my Dell has been acting as if it may be on its last legs. I've had a computer guy look at it but I can't help but have the feeling something isn't quite right. I bought a external hard drive and tried to transfer my most important files on to that. After spending hours copying stuff, I thought we were all set. The next day, I hooked up my external drive only to find out that NOTHING copied! If my pictures were to be lost I think I might have a heart attack.
I'm looking forward to sprucing up my blog, editing some pictures and just having fun checking out all the other fun blogs.
Yay me!

Disappointing and sad news.

So I found out this week that not one, but TWO of my favorite scrapbook stores are closing their doors forever at the end of the month. Just4Keeps in Edmond and ScrapHappys in Tulsa are both saying goodbye. I had a feeling this was coming and the official announcements were made earlier this week. It kind of feels like I'm losing two good friends. Sad and disappointing.
I do have a couple of exciting things coming up in the near future that I'm really looking forward to. I'll be blogging about them in the next couple of days.
I'm also getting ready to do a few Valentine's Day crafts so keep your eye out for those!

Happy New Year! Welcome 2010!

Before we get into the New Year's eve festivities, I just wanted to say that this little snowman makes me happy. I'm not sure if it's his little crooked smile or his short, squatty stature. I just like him and I'm not ready yet to pack him away with all the rest of the Christmas decorations. So, he might just stay out for a little while. ;)


So, here we are! Our usual "self portrait".
Last night we made the journey over to OKC to once again see The Flaming Lips in concert. This is our third year in attendance. Honestly, I didn't feel much like going this year - it's been a very busy year for us and I kind of just wanted to relax and take it easy but I'm glad we went. We always have so much fun and the people watching is extraordinary!


Once inside the venue, we took another picture of ourselves.

Here is Wayne Coyne in his bubble going out over the crowd. No spaceship this year. Bummer.

Ringing in the New Year! See all those balloons in the background? There were thousands of them being bounced around.

Can you even get a sense of how many balloons? Always so much fun!

And don't forget the confetti! Another fun, fun, fun New Year's Eve with the Lips!

Now, it's 2010. Crazy. Lots of ideas of what I would like to accomplish in this new year and new decade. The last ten years have been interesting but some were very tough. I'm looking forward to taking things easier, not so seriously, and overall, just enjoying life much more.

Happy New Year!

Oklahoma Blizzard of 2009

Looking out our front door on Christmas Eve, this is what we saw. The wind was blowing and the snow was piling up and it was just beautiful!
How grateful we were to be inside and warm and just spend some time together enjoying Christmas Eve.
When we woke up Christmas morning, the snow had stopped and most of the highways had reopened but the weatherman said to stay put if you didn't have to go anywhere. Needless to say, we didn't make it to Doug's mom's house for the festivities. Instead we stayed bundled up inside, I made some breakfast and we just enjoyed a quiet Christmas at home.

When I heard the weather was going to turn bad, I thought I would be "smart" and pull my jeep into the driveway so that if the driveway got icy, I could walk on the crunchy grass and at least get into my car. Well, that didn't work out as planned - the way the wind must have been blowing during the storm placed a four foot snow drift on our walkway from the front door right to the front of my car. Since I don't plan to get out there and shovel any time soon, I'm going to have to make my way out through the garage, down the driveway and around to the drivers side door. Or, maybe I'll just stay home until the snow all melts!

This is a view from inside Doug's car as we just pulled out of our garage and are headed down the street. Pretty icy! Glad he is driving and not me!

This is a picture of Teddy Bear sitting out by our fence. Right near where he is sitting is a little knot hole/peep hole that looks into our neighbor's back yard. Next door live two little cute dogs named Boomer & Sooner. Teddy sits by that little knot hole, listens for a while then peeks his eye up to the peep hole like this:

If Boomer and Sooner are on the other side, all the dogs go completely NUTS trying to get to one another. It's one big fun game for them. Watching him look through that peep hole is so funny! Just thought I'd share.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

This is the view out my front window - we are in the middle of a blizzard! You probably can't see it in the photo but the winds are blowing the snow sideways and the snow is piling up in drifts everywhere.(If you click on the photo, it should make it bigger.) And If I didn't see and hear it for myself I wouldn't have believed that we actually had thunder and lightening - in the middle of a blizzard!
The highways in Oklahoma are closed for travel for now. I guess becareful of wishing for a White Christmas ~ you just might get it! ;) Hopefully things will look better in the morning and the roads will be cleared a little bit so we can make it to the festivities at Doug's mom's house.

Look! It's Santa!

Guess it's time to make me one of these - Bailey's in hot chocolate. Mmmmmm.

Merry Christmas!

December musings...

Isn't this little man CUTE!

Just trying to enjoy the holiday season without going too crazy.
Today I baked some peanut butter cookies with Hershey's kisses on top.They are for a potluck luncheon tomorrow.
I also made a delicious beef stew in the crockpot. That was for us though. Yesterday was very chilly and gray but today actually turned out fairly nice - around 60 degrees or so and sun - which I love.
Last night I worked on a few crafts upstairs in my craft room but I ran out of "snow" for my little painted houses so that meant a trip to Michaels today in all the craziness. After I get a few things done in my office I'm heading back upstairs to hopefully get those finished.
I'll try to get some pictures of the things I've been working on.
One of my goals in the new year is to really learn how to use my camera. Yes, I know it was one of my goals last year. Let's not talk about that.

Wow! This month is getting away from me!

On Friday, I drove to Oklahoma City for an Open House hosted by Barbara and Paul Cardin. Then, back to Tulsa for another Christmas party with the people Doug works with at Stryker Spine. We had dinner at D'Alesandro's and then went to Sherburn's bar for a few drinks. Saturday was spent running errands and doing things around the house. Then, Sunday it was back to Oklahoma City for my BUG investment group Christmas Party.

Monday I had to go to the dentist (no fun!) and had an incredibly busy day at work. After dinner, I went straight to bed and slept until 6am this morning. Today was another incredibly busy day and I'm ready for things to slow down a bit.

Happy December!

I've been busy with the usual December activities: planning for Christmas, Christmas shopping, decorating, crafting... I always have these big plans for all the things I want to do in the Christmas season but somehow time always gets away from me.

I DID get some crafting time in this weekend which made me very happy! I made one of the cute ornament wreaths for my front door. When I get a decent picture,I'll post it. Simple, easy, and pretty!

These little snowmen have been making appearances around the internet and decided to give one a try myself. Came out pretty cute, didn't it?



I've also seen these trees made several different ways and tried one myself. Time consuming but I'm so happy with the result! Sorry about the dark picture. If I don't take photos in the morning when the light is bright, I have a hard time capturing good pictures.



Lots of activities coming up this month. Hopefully, I'll be a good blogger and write about the goings on. Trying to stay peaceful and enjoy the season.

Thursday is a luncheon for the Case Managers Society here in Tulsa. Dr. Webb is the sponsor this year. Thursday night I am taking a scrapping class - should be fun! Friday is an Open House for the people who manage my website.

Next Sunday is my investment group party at Suzanne's house. She always goes full out decorating and I'm sure she won't disappoint this year! When I was invited to join the group I met everyone for the first time at Suzanne's house at a Christmas party and I remember Christmas trees in EVERY room - some rooms had more than one and gazillions of Christmas decorations everywhere. I need to make something for dessert to bring to the party although my baking skills are kind of shaky as of late. I'll let you know how that turns out!

Thanksgiving and a nice weekend

We had a lovely Thanksgiving with Doug's mom and sister Dee. The turkey was delicious and turned out really nice. Don't mind the mess on the counter or the smirk on my face - Doug likes to have me say funny things while he is taking my picture so I'm pretty sure I'm mid sentence on this one. Just focus in on how delicious the turkey looks.
This year, I even remembered the rolls. Last year, they were purchased and put in the pantry where they stayed until the middle of dinner when somebody said, "Hey! Where are the rolls?" Doug's family has teased me all year about how last Thanksgiving was ruined because I forgot the rolls (didn't forget to buy them, just forgot to bake them. This year, I bought the kind that you have to defrost, let rise and then bake. I managed to remember all the steps and get them defrosted, allowed them to rise and popped 'em into the oven. They were fabulous - all light and fluffy. Yum! You can see them right behind me, all ready to go.

I made pumpkin pie and an apple pie for dessert along with seven layer cookie bars. Ever since the Pumpkin Whoopie Pie Cookie disaster,(not sure if I posted about that one) it seems I'm no longer a fan of pumpkin flavor. I took a couple of bites (yeah- one bite wasn't enough) and decided I'm off pumpkin pie. The pie itself should have tasted good, in fact it tasted like it always does but I'm just not liking that flavor anymore.
Funny thing is I used to be such a good baker but I've had a few mishaps as of late. For one thing, I thought maybe our oven was "off" and it turns out I am right. I bought an oven thermometer so I could check (I didn't want to wreck Thanksgiving) and it is under by 15 degrees! However, I can't really blame the baking disasters on that.

Dee and me. And yes, I know I look chunky. I *AM* chunky. But I'm going to fix that. Doug and I are starting the gym TOMORROW! It is a tough time of year to start but I need to start now before I get any bigger. It is NOT going to be easy because I love cookies, and cake, and holiday food....I'll keep you posted how that goes.

Doug and I like to take a "self" shot so here is our Thanksgiving photo. We have fun, that is all that matters, right?
In other exciting news, Doug bought me a Gypsy for my Cricut. It is an early Christmas present. I haven't had a chance to try it out just yet but I can hardly wait! I spent 13 hours upstairs in my craft room organizing, purging and cleaning. I'm getting ready to do some serious holiday crafting. I'm not going to post any "before" pictures until it is actually all clean and I can post some after pics too.

Little House on the Prairie

When I was a little girl, I LOVED Little House on the Prairie. On Thursday nights, my mom would let me stay up past my usual bedtime and watch the show. I'm not sure exactly what I liked about it because I would NOT have liked to have lived under those conditions or during those times. I LIKE modern conveniences.


Shari (in blue) & Me in the outfits our gram made for us:
(I know, embarrasing..But I'm cutting us some slack
because we were just little girls and we didn't know
better.)

Yesterday, Doug and I went with Frank and Tonya to see the musical Little House on the Prairie. Melissa Gilbert was supposed to be starring but had a back injury requiring her to have surgery today. Even though we were disappointed we wouldn't be able to see half-pint, her understudy did a good job in her place.
The show itself started out a little slow but got better as it went along and we ended up having a nice time.

Prior to the show we ate pizza at Joe Momma's. Pepperoni, half olive, half jalepeno. One review that I read online was from someone from Connecticut who remarked that the brick oven pizza could rival any of those famous pizza places in New Haven. Yeah, right...The pizza was good but by no stretch of imagination did it compare to my all time pizza love: Pepe's. Frank Pepe's Pizzeria Napoletana on Wooster Street in New Haven, Connecticut. OH. MY. GOD! If you haven't had Wooster Street Pizza, you are soooo missing out!

The other famous pizza joint on Wooster Street is Sally's. There are some pretty die hard fans that choose one place over the other but honestly, as long as I can have Wooster Street Pizza, either Pepe's or Sally's, I'm happy!
In other news, Doug made it home safely from Ft. Lauderdale. Yay!
Work has been busy for the both of us. Lots of long days and nights out networking. It is nice when we get a chance to just stay in.
I made a taco soup on Saturday night and it turned out pretty well. We are gearing up for Thanksgiving. I'm cooking again this year. Doug's mom, sister and niece are coming to dinner and I'm going to *try* to keep things low key and not go overboard cooking a million different things. We'll see what happens...

Four Dogs, No Doug...

Yep, just me and four furry little friends tonight.

Niles:

Nestle:

Teddy:

Phoebe:


Doug is in Florida for a Stryker meeting. Wish I was there too. It's very quiet around here tonight...We miss you honey!

Wedding Pics, Wendy, U2, Flaming Lips & More!

This is a LONG post, so feel free to just skip through and enjoy the pictures if you want ;)
So wow, where the heck have I been? Let's see. We got back from Maui and life has been a crazy whirlwind since. Here are a couple of wedding pics from Frank Baranik of Maui Professional Photography (must give credit where credit is due!)Thank you Frank! We LOVE our pictures!




I got one day of "rest" so to speak, if you can call doing laundry, taking one of the dogs to the vet and just trying to get ready for the next week, rest...Yes, I picked up the dogs from the Kennel on Sunday night and on Monday I was on my way to the vet with Nestle. Not only did he have an eye ulcer but he lost quite a bit of weight while we were gone. He went from 6.1 pounds to 5.5 pounds which is pretty significant in one week's time.
So, I've been putting drops and ointment in his eye since we've been back and he is STILL not healed. But, we are working on that and I am rapidly sinking into debt as we continue to try and change medications and go for follow up after follow up. Oh well, he is my baby and I don't want him to lose his eyesight. In a couple of weeks he gets his little shark teeth cleaned. Yeah - I'd better keep working. Anyway ~ I think I've fattened them all back up too.
The following day (Tuesday), I picked Wendy up from the airport. She came to visit for a few days. We did lots of fun things. We went to Oklahoma Aquarium, ate at a bunch of different places around town(Fuddrucker's, McGills, Oliveto, In the Raw, Los Cabos, BBD,) we got pedicures:

(Real Men DO Get Pedicures!), did some shopping, and did some beading:

Wendy made a couple of bracelets and I helped her attach the clasps.
She was originally going to leave that Saturday but we had extra tickets to U2 on Sunday and I convinced her to stay and go to the concert with us! Yay!

We had so much fun!
Doug called and got a limo so this was our luxurious ride to and from Norman:

I was thrilled to not have to be the designated driver!
Me & Wendy ~ I'm thoroughly enjoying my glass of wine ;)

Me and my honey enjoying the concert (it was a little cold!)


We got home around 3am and MAN! it was hard to work on Monday. In fact, it kind of made the rest of the week a little difficult.
Wendy went home on Tuesday and I was sad to see her go. It was fun to have my friend to pal around with.
The rest of the week went on as usual busy with work - I had to go to Norman for three days for the Physician's Assistant Conference and then on Saturday we went to OKC for the third annual Ghouls Gone Wild Parade. We were just spectators the first year for the March of 1000 Flaming Skeletons but we've marched this year and last. Here we are in our scary makeup!

Yep! and me getting a little squeeze from WAYNE. COYNE! (The lead man from the Flaming Lips - for those of you who don't know) He is so awesome! (Don't worry honey, YOU are my MAIN Squeeze! Mmmmwah!)

Finally on Sunday night we went to an art fundraiser at Holland Hall. Doug and I had planned to just stay in, cook a roast in the crock pot and just chill. Just after we got the roast started, the phone rang and it was Dr. Sherburn. Leigh Ann was the chairperson for the event and had extra tickets and they wanted to know if we would like to go. We picked up Frank and Tonya Tomecek and sat with them at dinner which was catered by the Palace Cafe. Overall, it was a fun evening with some laughs.
Don't ask me where this week has gone because it is Wednesday already and I have no idea how we got here.
I've been feeling the stress creeping up over the past few days so today I went and got a massage at The Spa with Amber. She is FABULOUS~ and my back and neck feel 100 times better. I've got to remember not to let myself get so stressed and to just go get a nice massage when things start feeling like they are getting to me.
This weekend is Halloween and I'm looking forward to seeing all the little goblins and ghouls spooking up the neighborhood - just hope the dogs don't go too bezerk!