DSLR

Yes, ladies and gentlemen.

It finally happened. The stars aligned (and I got my tax return) and I am now the proud new owner of the Nikon D3100.

 

And hopefully those will be the last bad pictures you see here! Too bad you can’t take pictures of your awesome camera with your awesome camera.

So last Saturday Victoria and I went to go play with our cameras in Deep Ellum. A lot of the photos turned out great! I’ll post just a few, but you can check the whole album if you are fb friends with me!

 

LOVE that one.

Love that one too. Great shot Victoria!

I think I’ve come home from work every day and made a beeline for my camera. I have lots more pictures from my first week with the camera, even a few I was brave enough to attempt to edit. But I’ll save them for another day. I must say, I ADORE photography.

Nephew Sit!

I’m spending the next 4 days nephew-sitting while my sis and her hubby are in Grand Caymen.

Yup, you heard right. They are spending 6 glorious days in Grand Caymen and my parents and I are tag-teaming the baby-sitting. I’m super stoked to spend a few days bonding with Will (and not working)!

This morning started off great. I woke up and was craving a smoothie, Kath style. She calls them a SIAB (Smoothie In A Bowl).

Greek yogurt, mixed berries, milk, ice, and a blender aaaand…

topped with super chewy granola and honey. It’s like eating a bowl of ice cream for breakfast. I ate out on my porch (which is one of my favorite things in life!) while I watched Deb’s cat wander the yard and listened to my Stevie Wonder pandora station. It put me in the BEST mood! Here’s a few samples-

Does anybody else think of this episode of The Cosby Show when the hear “The Right Time?”

I love Rudy in this clip!

The music carried me through breakfast, packing and all the way the the airport to pick up my dad!

My mom has been here since Thursday, but my dad flew in today to join in the babysitting expedition. We drove in to Ft. Worth while we chatted about Teddy Roosevelt, the Civil War, and books. =)

We spent the rest of the day hanging out with the nephew.

And best of all, Will is 2 months old today! Since Em and Freddie aren’t here, we took his 2-month pictures in his chair. I realize I’m biased, but seriously, could he be more cute???

And look how much he’s grown in the last month!

Apparently he can also stay awake longer.

The weather is also GORGEOUS this weekend, as it has been for the past week. The snow and ice was fun for a few days, but it’s so nice to have spring come early! I thought the groundhog was lying there for a while, but it turns out he was right. And today was the first day to rock the chacos!

The rest of our day involves mom making chicken-fried steak and watching the Baylor basketball game.

Lots of things I adore!

Epic Snow Day

This snow day was one of the best days ever. I have to say, that although I’m sure I’m going to regret it when we are making up our snow days at the end of the school year, yesterday was filled with awesome after awesome.

I knew before we went to bed that the school was going to have a delayed start, but I woke up at 6 to my phone ringing with the news that we had the whole day off!

After that I tried to go back to sleep, but I was wiiiide awake. I got up about 7 and found Deb had already made coffee! Since we teach at the same school, we had the day off together. Let the fun begin!

We started out by watching tv and making breakfast- veggie frittata with spinach, mushrooms, bell peppers, and onions, and fresh blueberries! We were also enjoying the Casi Cielo coffee from Starbucks, which is one of our favorites in this house. It’s seasonal, so we’re all enjoying it while we can.

We caught up on 30 Rock and The Office from last week, and sat under the couch under lots of blankets. It was cold outside!

After breakfast, we decided to bundle up and go play in the snow. There wasn’t tons of it, but in Dallas you only get 1, maybe 2 good chances a year to play in the snow, so we decided to brave the cold temps and get outside!

After exploring the front and back we discovered that the snow was not, in fact, snow. It was ice. Sad day. No snowmen to be made. Deborah decided to do a little “snow-ga” in the back yard anyhow.

And she snapped a few photos of me too-

We also tried our hand at a little sledding and luging (more on that later!), before we officially turned into popsicles and had to come back inside. A few minutes later, our friend Tricia popped by to pick up her computer she had left at our house. She’s a Yankee, so she braved the weather over, but she had enough snow-know to realize she probably wasn’t going to make it home safely. Hooray, another friend to play with!

I started a big pot of chicken soup, and we started a movie while I started working on my new header! I liked my old one, but if was downloaded from another site and just wasn’t me. So the blog went from this:

To this:

Lots of pictures I’ve taken that showcase things I adore! Being outside, coffee, travel, books, teaching, being barefoot, going to festivals and fairs, and photography. It was hard to narrow it down! I didn’t even include cooking, friends, spinning, music…I could go on and on…

During the movie I also enjoyed my soup- Lemon Thyme Chicken Noodle. For the enquiring minds (who know I don’t like to follow recipes) I put 1 box chicken stock + 2 c water in a pot and added 2 small carrots, a quarter of an onion, and a few mushrooms on to simmer. Then I cubed 3 thawed chicken tenders (you could use 1 to 1/12 breasts) and dropped them into the water, poaching them. I added 2 bay leaves, s&p, and some thyme. I let it simmer for an hour or so, then dropped in some egg noodles. I finished my bowl off with lemon zest and juice. Yum!

I also served it with a piping hot mug of Earl Grey tea. And we all know how people in this house feel about tea!

Tricia thought it only fitting that we bake some cookies, so I whipped up a batch of cranberry dark chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies, which were only okay. (That didn’t stop me from polishing off several of them.)

Sarah got home from work about that time, and the four of us took our cookies with espresso- Deb and I had lattes, and Tricia and Sarah had theirs straight up with a touch of milk. (I need to branch out my coffee drinking to include straight espresso!)

Since most of our house has hard wood or red countertops, my photos are usually so warm! So I took advantage of the nice white snow to take some cooler photos. What a change! Also, for some reason I put my espresso in my milk before I frothed it instead of after, so my latte looks a bit funny. Woops!

After we had lots of warm beverages and cookies, Deb and I decided we had to introduce Sarah and Tricia to alley luge-ing. (I keep wanting to spell it luging, but that doesn’t look like it’s spelled right…)

We bundled up and headed out to the driveway again. Earlier I had taken this photo of my back alley with my pudding camera app.

Little did I know it was foretelling my doom.

We all sledded down the driveway, and took turns push starting each other into a luge down the alley. I took my turn, and well….you’ll see what happens.

Alley Luge

We laughed so hard for so long. As you can see.

Needless to say, that ended our outdoor adventures. I was soaked and my coat had lost a button, and we were all freezing. We scurried back inside, warmed up, and put on a movie. We had watched 2012 the night before and laughed our way through the ridiculous disaster drama, the bad movie lines, and the stage whispered monologues. So we decided to make a theme of it. Netflix instant viewing had Volcano, so we started that. Another ridiculous disaster drama. Just what the doctor ordered during what people are now calling “Snow-pocalypse.”

About that time we got the call that there was no school tomorrow either, because the roads were just too icy and the temperature wasn’t going up any time soon. Woo hoo! We realized that if we were going to survive another day in, we needed to venture out to the store and pick up a few supplies.

Sarah and I piled into my Jeep and with the help of my four-wheel drive   and lots of slow driving, we made in safely to the store, picked up our staples, and made it back home.

We finished the evening with board games (Balderdash and Taboo) and frozen pizza, along with wine all around. After such a long, fun day of lots of excitement, we got pretty tired. And the wine didn’t help.

Day off work full of friends, baking, movies, soup, board games, wine, and lots and lots of laughter. What’s not to adore?