I spent last weekend sitting at the beach watching movies and trying to learn to edit photos while recovering from my cold. Fortunately I had 300+ photos from our 10 days in California to play with.

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It may be Friday night but my work week isn’t over just yet. I like my new job but it definitely won’t beat a weekend at the beach.

Last Saturday we had a few hours of awesome weather and decided to take a walk on the beach.

And someone may have gotten to enjoy a little off leash time.

Even though it wasn’t bathing suit weather (and rightly so since it’s January) we still had a great time with the sun and sand.

Until next time.

I can’t believe it is already January 17th. I feel like the past few weeks have been as much of a blur as the holidays.

Since I have been fighting a cold for the past few weeks and am in no frame of mind to attempt writing a real post I thought I would do a photo dump of my phone to show you some of the stuff I have been up to.

- For starters, I can tell you what I have not been doing. Editing photos.

I have read a few tutorial and now just need to put it to action. I am hoping to have some downtime this weekend to get to work. Fingers crossed!

- Working out.

And technically, I am not a January joiner because I started at my new gym at the beginning of December. I love this workout and I love this gym. It is so close to home (walking distance) so I have no excuse not to go!

-  Taking a [iPhone] photo a day.

I have been trying to do a Project 365 photo-a-day sort of thing, which is kind of fun, except I often find myself at 8 PM with no photo and no natural light taking photos of my only [semi] willing subject.

I also think I have managed to find out what breads our precious mutt is made of. After seeing this photo on Pinterest I stalked info on the dog pictured and found out he is a cocker spaniel/boston terrier mix. I think Piper and Buddy could be twins.

                                                                  Source: etsy.com via Jessie on Pinterest

What do you think?

- I have amassed a collection of Sharpies.

What can I say, Staples had an awesome sale on the markers ($3 pack) and Office Depot ran a deal on the pens. I couldn’t resist.

I must say though, I am not a fan of the Sharpie liquid pencil at this point. It just doesn’t write consistently. Really, it is no better than a Bic erasable pen in my opinion.

- I got a really great haircut that made me feel great.

This is the inspiration photo. My hair isn’t as long but I think we are on the right track.

Source: marieclaire.com via Jessie on Pinterest

I love Reese’s style!

- I have [idea] shopped for some potential DIY projects.

It is one of my goals to refinish a piece of furniture this year. Ideally I would like to recover a chair but will likely have to settle for refinishing a small table until we buy a house with a little more space.

I happen to have a house in mind, now I just need to get B to use his imagination a little and take a look at it with me.

- I have cooked.

Some of my cooking projects have include the above risotto, whose leftovers were also repurposed as fried risotto balls; green curry tofu, carrot cake cookie sandwiches, boston cream pie cupcakes, and split pea soup. B has really picked up the cooking (and cleaning) since I haven’t been feeling well, but I think I have already squeezed in some delicious meals this year.

- Made room for a kegirator.

I am not thrilled about this one. I grew up in a house where drinking rarely occurred, so keeping this kind of supply in the house makes me a little uncomfortable. Plus, kegs are expensive!

This [used] kegirator was gifted to B by a coworker who no longer had room for it. Despite living in a 1000 sq ft home B thought we could squeeze it in….and we did.

Thanks to my cousin’s boyfriend we got it in working order and shared drinks over a stir fry dinner on Sunday night.

- I ended one job and started a new one.

I am now working at the front desk of Y2 Yoga a couple times a week instead of working in the store. I will miss all the lovely ladies at the store, but I am excited about this change and future opportunities with my other job.

That’s about it for me. What have you been doing since the New Year?

Happy New Year!

I am still recovering from a 9 day Christmas/New Years trip to California….where I turned out the lights and went to bed at 11:52 PM in New Years Eve. No, I could not wait 8 more minutes to ring in the new year.

I am truly looking forward to this weekend in hopes that I can catch up. Catch up on housework, catch up on sleep, and catch up on anything else I can think of. Plus, this girl needs to get to editing some photos so I can share my trip.

The scenery is beautiful, but being away from home for so long is exhausting. I have never been so happy to end a vacation and get back to work!

Plus, I couldn’t get wait to get home to see this face!

It’s only Wednesday and I am already feeling overwhelmed! I should be checking of items on my to do list, to include cleaning my bedroom but I can’t manage to do more than this…

Although I am happy to say that I have started out the new year with some quality time on my mat and was thrilled to get back to Fight Gone Mad. I am sore and it hurts so good!

Check back next week [hopefully] to see pictures from my trip! Until then, I amy dying to know how your holiday was!

Apparently the holidays (yes, I am going to blame it on the holidays) are making me a complete space cadet. I am normally so organized with my to do lists and putting things in their place however in the past 4 days I have:

- Written and published a Tuesday Things post on Monday, while genuinely believing it was Tuesday.

- Thrown away $40 in cash along with completed grocery list and receipt and did not realize it until 24 hours later. Thank goodness we hadn’t taken the trash out yet! Although, the cash may have been damp and covered in coffee grounds when it was recovered from our trash can.

- Misplaced $800 worth of checks that need to be deposited. Brian found them and is now wondering if I have also lost my brain. It is possible.

And these are only the things I know about so far. Who knows what other items will be lost or confused in coming days. And lets hope that this does not spread from my personal stuff to my work….that is disaster waiting to happen!

It has been a while since I did Tuesday things and thought I would use this Tuesday to get you caught up.

Edited to add: I just realized that it is not Tuesday. Hah! I am not sure how I managed to get it so wrong. I could try to play it off that my scheduled post published early, but sadly that is not the case. Oh my!

Things have been busy…as is always the case at the holidays. In addition to the normal holiday business B and I also decided to go house hunting. If you think holidays with the family/in-laws/pick-your-stressful-holiday situation throw house hunting in the mix and you will take being emotionally drained to the next level!

Getting qualified for a mortgage was no problem thanks to B’s long standing, stable work history but finding the right house, in the right location, is hard. Who would have thought that moving 5 miles down the road would feel so far away. I have a house that I kind of love in a location that is [hopefully] up and coming and only 1-ish mile for our current neighborhood. The house needs some love, which is kind of what I want so we can really make it our own, the schools are icky (but that’s the case in our current neighborhood too and not a matter of concern for several years), and the house would be sold As Is. There are several factors telling me [logically] that its not the right choice but my heart is saying something different. I went through something similar when picking out our current rental property that is a good 600 sq ft smaller than our previous house and was poorly maintained by the previous renters. After 3 visits we finally signed on the dotted line and have loved life in this house although we have been a tad cramped.

I see some slightly stressful conversations in our future over the next few weeks.

In other news, which I may have mentioned before, B finally let me upgrade my camera!

Sadly, we haven’t been doing much that is photo worthy so Piper has had this lens in her face more than is fair. I hope to change that soon.

At first I let myself get overwhelmed with the idea of learning all about my camera, digital photography, and Photoshop and I quit taking pictures until I had time to learn it all. Fortunately a friend recommended a great photography website that made me remember that I won’t learn any of it if I don’t take pictures.

Regardless of how many cameras you buy, or how many Photoshop and printer profiling classes you endure, the only way to learn is to pay attention to taking pictures, and not to your equipment.

It really hit home. So instead of trying [likely unsuccessfully] to learn everything and try to shoot in RAW right away and learn to edit and process everything I am going to set my camera to auto, pay attention, and work on framing and composing beautiful photos and hope that I can grow from there. Although I will continue to read photography blogs and take whatever photography and Photoshop tutorials and tib-bits of knowledge wherever I can.

Do you have any fave photography/Photoshop how to blogs?

I have also done some cooking and some snacking in the past few weeks.

I don’t have a recipe per se but did take some pictures I could share if you want an idea of how I put it together. Let me know if you would like to see it!

I have been snacking on these delicious morsels provided by Tropical Foods. These snack mixes are delicious and my coworkers agree! I have to admit though that I have a tendency to pick out all of the chocolate first, then all of the nuts, and then finish off and share the rest.

I gotta say that although the veggie chips they sent me earlier this year (i am pretty sure that blog post was eaten by WordPress somehow) were delicious (except for the okra), these snacks were way more up my alley.

I also decorated for Christmas.

Things that still need to get done before the holidays (actually we are in full swing of the “holidays” I need to revise that to say Christmas)…which is only days, yes days, away. How did Christmas get here so fast?!

My drawers are overstuffed and completely unruly.

My kitchen is in a state of complete disarray. Although I am about to say goodbye to that icky camera bag that came with my camera for something a little more fashionable (I know, I am not fashionable, but my new bag is definitely an improvement. Promise!). Since i don’t have a photo yet I will have to share that another day.

I really meant to write a post tonight. I took photos and even had some ideas.

Instead I went for a workout (my second this week!), cooked dinner, celebrated some good news with B (his good news!), and talked to my brother on the phone. Ben is finally back in the States and I no longer have to worry about international phone rates when I want to talk to him.

We talked for over an hour about photography and Photoshop. It was soooooo nice. But now I don’t have time to write a post and edit pictures and what not because I am tired and ready to go to bed.

Be ready though…because I plan to share some recipes and lots of trial and error photos with my new camera and Photoshop and whatever else crosses my mind.

For now, I am going to leave you with this cute face.

Have a great night!!!

Has it really been over a month since I last posted? Yikes!

I know I’ve gone too long when my coworkers even mention they haven’t seen anything new out of me. Thanks Britt!

Fall TV has really sucked me in. The list of TV shows I have been trying to keep up with is ridiculous!

1. Pan Am
2. Once Upon A Time
3. Gossip Girl
4. Top Chef
5. Revenge
6. New Girl
7. Bones
8. Big Bang Theory
9. Grey’s Anatomy
10. Private Practice

What have you been watching?

That is no less than 9 hours a week of TV time and doesn’t make for much interesting blogging. Truthfully I can’t recall having done anything meaningful on weeknights aside from my once-a-week yoga class. In general I would have to call that a life fail, especially when I can think of a list 10 items long that I should be doing instead. Lets see here…

1. Blogging…duh
2. Exercising more than once a week…I really want to do more yoga and try Fight Gone Mad
3. Reading…a book, not blogs….somehow I still find time to read blogs
4. Spending time with friends
5. Keeping our house clean
6. Helping rake the massive amounts of leaves in our yard
7. Taking Piper for walks
8. Trying a DIY project…I have a Pinterest board full of ideas
9. Learning a musical instrument…I have had a guitar for around 10 years
10. Learning to use Photoshop

There is definitely more but I see no sense in shaming myself further when I have clearly gotten my point across.

Aside from the exorbitant amounts of TV watching I have squeezed in a few other activities in the last month. For starters B and I met his family in Asheville for a weekend trip. It was awesome. The weather was just right for walking all over downtown and visiting a brewery or 4. We also stayed in an affordable, pet-friendly hotel downtown that made the whole trip that much better. Affordable hotel room = more $$ for food and beer tastings….and chocolate.

Here are some highlights from our trip:

I was trying to get a picture of the hotel room...fail!

Beer samplers at Thirsty Monk...sadly these were also a fail

Cheese plate from Laughing Seed

Shrimp and grits from Good Egg

Chocolate Gem

We only stopped in for hot chocolate but left with a bit more

Love the street performers!

Doggie bakery....wish I could remember the name

Piper is a beer hound

What a face!

No caption needed

We had some green curry mussels from The Market Place...and I adore the fact that out check came in a jar!

French Broad Chocolate Lounge was packed but definitely worth the wait

Best pancake ever - sweet potato pancake a la Tupelo Honey Cafe

Brilliant leaves!

I found a shop completely dedicated to pie!

In addition to all of this I also got to visit Early Girl Eatery for the first time…and it was delicious. Normally I am not a raspberry kind of girls (strawberry all the way for me, thank you) but I could not get enough of their raspberry jam and biscuits!

We also squeezed in a weekend trip to the beach. We made no plans and spent one entire day just watching movies. While we were there we were happy to find out that B’s sister delivered a beautiful, healthy girl on 11/11/11!

I finally managed to rewrite my goals and vision to be posted in the store. My vision requires a bit more tweaking but I feel like I am finally moving in the right direction….it only took 6 months.

I had a really hard time with these because  society seems to tell us that we need to be ambitious and climb the ranks in our careers but that thought process just wasn’t working for me. I always knew what I wanted for myself professionally but it took me a long time to feel like it was okay to put it in writing. Now that I have finally put it in writing and out for others to see I feel like it is more likely to become a reality.

Do you know what you want you life to look like in 10 years?

If you are interested in the worksheet above you can find it here.

That is really all of I have been up to. With the holidays here (can you believe Thanksgiving is next week?!?) I know this next month with be much more eventful. Plus, my little brother and his family are moving back to the States in a matter of weeks! I can’t wait to see them all!!

What are you looking forward to in the next month?

Did you miss me last week? My schedule got changed up at the store and completely threw me off my blogging schedule. That and I decided I was bored with What I Ate Wednesday and What I Wore Thursday. I figure that if I am bored with it so are you.

1. A couple weekends ago I ran into someone at the store….my date to my junior prom. We havem’t seen one another in close to 10 years (Yikes! that makes me feel old) so it was fun and random to see him in the store. Hi Kelly!

2. Last week was the best mail week ever. I received a package every single day. We got our bike rack, an iPhone case, bandaids, a new trash can, and my new iPhone. Such a random list of items. Right?

Speaking of iPhone cases….I order this iFrogz case but don’t love the boring black or the uneven back. I have heard great things about Otterbox cases but I don’t love the colors. Anyone have recommendations for cases that offer good protection but are cute and come in fun colors/patterns?

3. About that trash can, there is a sort of funny story to go with that. We got our previous trash can when we got married and have never really liked it. At least twice a week most weeks B has had to wrestle the garbage bag out of the can to take it out and finally he just go so frustrated he just pitched the entire can outside.  Now we have a new, easy to empty, simplehuman trash can that we both love (as much as you can love a trash can, at least).

4. lululemon socks are the best. I know I work there and all and that I love their products…. they really do make a ton of great products, however the no show ultimate running socks are one of my favorite items. They have a little extra padding at the ball of the foot and they are labelled R & L for your right and left feet. They are so ridiculously comfortable.

5.  This past weekend B and I met his family for a weekend in Asheville. We had beautiful weather, ate tons of delicious food, and had a really great time. We regularly joke about moving there. Or are we joking? I will share more later but here is a sneak peak!

6. I can’t go without mentioning the deliciousness that is the Tupelo Honey Cafe sweet potato pancake. I really wasn’t sure what to expect after a recent attempt to make sweet potato carrot cupcakes that came out a bit too sweet (also the reason for needing to order the aforementioned bandaids, this girls needs to watch her fingers when grating carrots!) but I knew we had to give it a try. Everyone at out table was blown away by its amazingness….I may have to buy the cookbook just for that recipe.

7. I am dying to do some kind of DIY project in the very near future but there are so many great ideas that I just can not decide! Does anyone have any recommendations for an inexpensive (crafting supplies can be pricey) DIY projects that you are loving right now?

What things do you have going on this Tuesday?

This week was one of those weeks that I just didn’t care….or maybe I cared and just didn’t try. Not about my clothes at least. I did watch a tutorial on how to curl my hair, which I did care enough about to give it a shot.

The most effort I put into my outfits this week was to make sure not to wear Toms everyday. They are just so comfortable! This is mainly because every outfit I wanted to wear involved boots and that just could happen when our weather was hitting close to 80 degrees most days.

I need help figuring out how to layer for our weather. Cool mornings, warm afternoons and cool evenings. What are you favorite layering tips and tricks for fall?