Beep boop beep, cannot compute.

I swear, it's been such a busy week at work! I started tech training this week, so I'm currently learning all about display issues and drivers and diagnostic tools and other computery things. I'm definitely not a technically inclined person, so I've been super nervous about this training for a good month. Thankfully, we have some awesome resources and step-by-step charts for most issues. So hopefully I won't completely suck at this and won't bomb the test when that rolls around! Also, thankfully we don't do tech via the phones, so I will only be using it to start tickets for people with technical issues. PHEW. If I had to walk people through a technical issue on the phone, I'm sure I would be like "Uhhh, just turn it off and eat a sandwich." :|

Oh, and the second day of training (when I was super stressed out), my QA, Lauren, left me this amazing present on my desk! She ordered a cute messenger bag online, and this gigantic Hello Kitty one came with it. I thought it was sooo sweet! She had it hanging on the leaf that hangs above my desk, and it surprised me and just plain made my day! Oh, ps- the other side is My Little Pony!

Here's a picture I found online. Seriously, it's enormous!


And here's mine with toesies included for size. Enormous, I tell you!


I've also been trying to get back in the social swing of things! Going to Nashville wore me out big time, so I've been staying home a bunch and trying to focus on Spring cleaning and getting things back in order after being gone and then sick. But I'm over that now, I think! So I'm hoping to take part in the weekly game night at work on Tuesday. And I made a new friend at work, so we're trying to hang out now and then, too! And hopefully I can start going back to girls' night with Lauren, Katy, and Autumn, too! They introduced me to margaritas. Friends and drinks errrrwhere! I love it. ♥

Oh, and I finally sucked it up and made my first hair appointment in yeeeears! I've only had my hair professionally colored once, and that was back in like 2006 when I had the black stripped out, went back to my natural brown, and had blonde peekaboos put in. And I've been touching them up myself since! But my roots have gotten out of control and now that my hair's gotten so long, trying to touch them up myself is just crazy. (I also won't let anyone cut it, so that's going to be another venture when I need a trim.) So I'm going to the Ulta Salon on Wednesday, and I'm so excited to not have to bleach my stripey babies by myself.

I finally got some real monies after being back at work, so I went on a little spring shopping spree!

Things I've bought this weekend:

♥ 3 plaid shirts
♥ 7 new pairs of undies
♥ grey jeans (since I loved the pink ones so much!)
♥ shoes for summer that aren't flip flops!



Also, I gave Matt a super cute summer haircut, and he shaved his beard (both his idea). I told him he looks like a 12-year-old with a moustache. It's cute, I swear! I haven't had short hair in years, so I forgot how much fun I used to have cutting hair.

We tried so hard to get out and do some thrifting yesterday, but I was just not feeling it. I think the combination of being super busy all week, all the stress from tech training, really mean calls from customers (seriously, people were sooo angry this week), and then all the rain just put me in such a poopy mood. And neither of us found a thing! I think I really just needed to be at home and relax a bit. So I've just been eating cheese and crackers and soup and loving on Peaches all weekend. There's always next Saturday, though!

I havehavehave to get up off my butt and do more laundry! I've been watching Frozen Planet and playing Fairway Solitaire all stinkin' day. Pfft!

St. Patty's day outing and a real outfit post!

I was determined to get some photos using my good camera so I could make a proper outfit post, so I asked Matt to snap a few quick pictures out in the backyard before we left this morning!





♥Outfit details♥
Wet Seal cardigan
thrifted floral button up shirt
J. Crew skirt
Target leggings
Target boots


Yay! So excited!

As for my list of things to do earlier, not as excited! I only got a few things done. (The things besides cleaning, of course.) Matt and I went to Goodwill, and we found a few cute things:

For us:
♥ two pink ceramic birdies
♥ a little red bubble gum machine
♥ a tiny German house made of wood to add to our other one!

For me:
♥ a pink and white striped button up shirt from Target
♥ a military-style button up shirt from J. Crew

For Matt:
♥ a tan vintage work jacket
♥ a light blue vintage work shirt

After our Goodwill trip, we headed over to this awesome new sushi place that just opened up, Sushi Maru. The Indian place wasn't really on the way, and I was completely fine with this decision! Sushi is my favorite. I had my typical stuff; a dragon roll, seaweed salad, their yummy cream puffs, and raspberry cheesecake. I know it sounds silly, but as much as I love sushi, I am terrified of the ngiri ones with the meat on the outside. I hate looking at raw fish for some reason, but today I decided I wanted to try a Rainbow roll, which are wrapped in sashimi. And I loved it! I'm so glad I tried it. I don't know if I'm brave enough for the flat-out ngiri quite yet, but I'm proud of my baby step!

After sushi, we saw The Lorax, which was super cute! I really, really enjoyed it. And the colors and artwork were just amazing. I couldn't stop picturing Andy from The Office, though!

Now I'm about to Wii fit a bit and hit the shower so my itchy leg will quit driving me crazy! I hope everyone has had an awesome, fun-filled St. Patty's day!

Outfits and ads!

Happy St. Paddy's day everyone! I completely forgot to put on green this morning, but my toesies are seafoam. So that kiiiinda counts!

I've wanted to do outfit posts since I started my blog, but I just haven't had the time quite yet. But yesterday I did take a quick iphone shot that I think will suffice! (Pardon the dirty mirror!) I wish I had been running early enough yesterday to actually bust out my real camera, but I was going so slow trying to get ready while blowing my nose every few minutes and taking inhaler puffs!


♥ Outfit details♥
Wet Seal cardigan
ModCloth Love Ballad top
Forever 21 belt
Target leggings
Deer necklace was a gift from Mom!
Target boots


Next time I'll make sure to use a real camera! :P

Something I've been thinking about lately is promoting other blogs. I see everyone supporting each other with cute little sidebar ads, and I love all of the positivity and sweetness! So since I'm trying to get more readers and want to help friends do the same, I've been thinking about swapping ad space. I'm gonna make some banners this weekend, so let me know if you'd like to trade!

I'm still feeling kind of yucky, but if I was well enough to go to work yesterday, I'm well enough to play!

Today's plans include:
♥ Goodwillin'
♥ seeing The Lorax
♥ Indian food for lunch (YUM!)
♥ taking pictures for ebay listing
♥ and then super cleaning this messy house!

Now I need to get up off my lazy/still kinda sick butt and get all of this started!

Cupcakes, Christmas, and puppies!

It's been forever since I last posted! I've been sooo busy with my new job that I just plain haven't had time. But I've really missed it, so you better believe I'm taking a good little break from all the craziness to sit down and get my blog on.

Let's see. Quite a bit has happened since the last time I've posted (which was over a month ago)! I got my car all nice and fixed, thanks to my wonderful mom. So I've gotten back to driving, and I hope to start paying her back super soon. I love having my car and being able to go wherever I need to go whenever I'd like. I had completely forgotten how crappy it is to feel stuck and not be able to come and go as I please. It was awful! Oh, and trying to take groceries on a bus is ridiculous. So I'm so glad to be mobile again!

In work news, I'm absolutely loving my new job! I'm talking to little old ladies about games all day, and it's so cute. Oh, and I have tons of cute stuff on my desk, too! Here's everything I packed up to put on my desk the night before I decorated:


I had an awesome Christmas, even though I was away from family for the very first time. Matt and I went Goodwillin' on Christmas Eve and saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And then on Christmas Day we went to my favorite sushi place and saw Sherlock Holmes. And I had my very first real Christmas tree! My mom and I have always had fake ones, so I was really excited. And it made the house smell soooo good! I had so much fun decorating the tree, and I wanted it to be super colorful.



Oh, and by the way, I got a puppy! She's a 1.5 year old Staffordshire Terrier and Lab mix named Peaches, and she is the sweetest darn thing ever. And I'm so glad I rescued her! I drove an hour and a half to pick her up after finding her on Craigslist. Once I got her home, I realized that she was covered in fleas and had never even been to the vet; she hadn't even had her rabies shot. And after spending a little time with her, it was obvious that she had been mistreated and ignored for a really long time. She didn't use the potty for the first 2 days she was at the house. And anytime we went outside, she would climb up my leg, grab me around my waist, and bury her head in my belly as if she were begging me not to leave her out there. D: How sad is that? I don't know how anyone could not fall in love with her. She's such a big baby! She needs so much attention and love, and I just can't imaging being able to resist this:



And now with a puppy in the house, I've been trying to keep things picked up. So I've been trying to get the house nice and organized. I try to do a bunch on the weekends since I have to be up so early and need to have everything ready to go each morning. I need to do get more stuff put away, but here's the awesome progress I've made getting all of my clothes, jewelry, knick-knacks, and other bedroom related stuff under control.




Today, I went to Goodwill to grab a few things before the monthly potluck that our neighbors have every 2nd Saturday, and look at this cute stuff I found!


And here's what I made to take! Yellow applesauce cupcakes with dark chocolate icing. Everyone really liked 'em!

Birthday recap: excellence, ice cream, and toys!

I seriously had such an amazing birthday! As if all of those awesome gifts from my mom and getting my new job weren't fantastic enough, the actual day itself was a lot of fun too! I didn't want to do anything too special; just little things that we always do on the weekend like get lunch and ice cream. We started the day off by rolling out of bed and heading to Baskin Robbins for birthday breakfast ice cream. Matt got chocolate donuts, and I had my low-cal peanut butter chocolate frozen yogurt. I cannot get enough of that stuff! Then we came back home and watched Golden Girls while I painted my toenails something that was birthday appropriate.


Then we headed to Blue Fin Buffet, and I had tons of sushi and yummy desserts!
I had two plates of this. Sososo much sushi! I love the seaweed covered ones and the spicy almon ones the most.

I love their teensy, tiny little layer cakes. They have tons of different flavors, but the cheesecake with the cherry pie filling in the middle is the best!


And after lunch, we walked over to Toys 'R Us, and I got Jake and Finn Adventure Time figures and four little Hello Kitty lego toys!


After we went home and let our tummies settle a bit, I opened and set up my new toys and played with the kitties. And then we headed to a new park that was nearby, and it had a playground! I lovelovelove swings, so I was really excited, because most of the parks we find are more for trails and walking areas and never have playgrounds. So we sat on the swings for a bit and Matt pushed me, and then we played the who can go higher game, but he's almost six feet tall, and I am not. Then he pushed me on the merry-go-round until it got too dark and I almost got sick.

Here's a video I took while on the merry-go-round. I think the colors and lights look so fun.


And on the way home, I jokingly suggested ice cream again for dinner, thinking Matt would be like 'pffft, no way', but he said whatever I wanted since it was my birthday. How sweet. :) So after dinner ice cream, we headed back home to relax, and I counted a total of 117 happy birthday's on Facebook. Having that many people just take a second to say that definitely made me feel super loved being so far from everyone this year. I thought it was so sweet, and it definitely added to the awesomeness of the entire day. What an excellent birthday! :D

Weekend(s) recap: pizza, ice cream, and more ice cream.

Holy moly, the past week has been full of all sorts of things. Mostly buying fun things for little monies and some very-bad-for-me-but-oh-so-delicious foods! And lots and lots of pictures.

Last weekend we headed out to Goodwill, and Matt found a keyboard and some records, and I found a stripey yellow and grey t-shirt and a button-up shirt that I plan on dying another color. (Hopefully I can do that without making a horrible disaster of the shirt and the surrounding area.) Then we had Olive Garden for lunch, which I hadn't had since last October, and it was just as delicious as I remembered. I had a never ending pasta bowl, which ended at one bowl because I already knew I needed the apple pie and ice cream as soon as I saw the picture on the table. I wanted to take a picture, but I wolfed it down so fast, I didn't have a chance.

So instead, here's a picture Matt took of itty bitty kitty jammin' on the new Goodwill keyboard.


And here's a Cinderella picture I colored while my tummy was way too full of noodles and apple pie.


On Sunday, we made our weekly Baskin Robbins trip, and I had even more ice cream. (Multiple ice cream weekends make me feel like it's a holiday.) They had a flavor that I hadn't tried yet, and it is definitely my new favorite! It's reduced fat lemon cream pie with no sugar added, and it was low-cal and soooo good!


Throughout the week, I found a few cute little things for decorating that I'm really excited about. I got this cute little plushy owl, a wooden acorn, two white leaf dishes, and two yummy smelling candles. And it was all about $30!


And my favorite purchase of all, I bought my very first crock pot, and it was on sale for $21! And it's full of Matt's favorite soup.


I also found two yellow planters, a hello kitty shirt, two tank tops, and a stripey sweatshirt. And I spent maybe $30 total on that stuff too. I was all over some awesome deals this week.


Then, we started off this weekend by having sweets for breakfast! Matt really wanted donuts, and the Baskin Robbins is conveniently attached to the donut place, sooo I had ice cream for breakfast! Being an adult means making grown-up decisions like this.

Sugar-free chocolate overload!


And Matt's donuts! He got chocolate iced, chocolate cake with chocolate icing, and strawberry iced. I tried a bite of the strawberry, and they were so stinkin' good.


And then, Matt decided that we needed a dining room table. Eating at the table is something we have never done together. We always ate sitting on his couch at his old house, and we've always had to eat sitting in the floor here. So we were both super excited to go pick one out. We made a trip to Ikea, and we got this cute birch table and four chairs!


On Sunday, we decided to stay home and get some house stuff done. Matt worked in the kitchen, while I did some unpacking and went through the boxes in the bedroom. I found lots more stuff to sell on eBay and listed some more things. We didn't want to leave to go anywhere for dinner and nothing we had really sounded all that great, so we ended up ordering pizza and wings. I rarely eat pizza, and I never eat hot wings, so it was definitely a treat. I ate waaay too much Hawaiian pizza and ended up rolling around in the floor feeling full and fat for the rest of the night. (Good thing I got a little stretch cord exercise thingy last week, because I will be using the heck out of it this week thanks to all that pizza!)

I went to go review the place on Yelp because it was so yummy and we had such good service, and there were only a few good ones. I was really surprised! Everyone was complaining about how it wasn't that great and being really, really picky and honestly kind of rude. I feel so bad for really awesome places that end up getting crappy reviews because they aren't a five star restaurant. It's delivery pizza, so the expectations shouldn't be so dang high, you know? It was above and beyond big name chains like Dominos or Pizza Hut, but they still had so many people saying "nothing special" and "forgettable". It made me so sad, so I left a really nice review and gave them 4 stars. The only way I would ever leave a place a bad review is if the employees treated me badly, to be honest. My granny always taught me to live by the good ol' polite rule of not saying anything at all if you don't have something nice to say. I feel like the reviews were just so unnecessary and rude. It was delivered really quickly, it was still super hot when we got it, it was a good price, and it was really yummy. Why wouldn't I recommend it? Some people are just big ol' jerks. Hrmph.

So then I went on a reviewing spree and ended up writing one for the post office nearby and the Baskin Robbins that I go to every weekend! I love giving out kind words to places that get overlooked or that other people are too hoity-toity to appreciate. And it makes me feel good to think that someone might look up a place they weren't too sure about going, and they'll see my review about how sweet the employees were among a sea of "ehhh, not impressed" reviews, and they might try it out and love it as much as I do! :)

Labor Day weekend extravaganza!

Oh, man. The past few days have been all kinds of enjoyable! I was a little unsure of what this three day weekend would consist of since I'm used to spending Labor Day running around with my mom looking for sales, or eating burgers at a family member or friend's get together. Being so far away from both friends and family, I wasn't sure what I'd do. But we ended up filling our weekend with all sorts of fun stuff!

On Friday, I was crazy productive and unpacked and organized my half of the office. I hung my note board, put away all of my art supplies, coloring books, and sketch books, and threw a few of my stuffed animals in some of the empty areas on the shelf. (Yep, I still buy stuffed animals. I loved them when I was a kid, and I still do. I had that huge pink and white pet net hanging in the corner above my bed. And some nights while I was sleeping, a random teddy bear or fluffy puppy would fall out of the net and smack me right in the face. Did anyone else have that problem?)

Here's how it all turned out! Click each one for a larger view!



On Saturday, we ran a few errands, and I finally found a Disney princess coloring book. I've been talking about getting one for a good 2 months, and just so happened to spot one while picking up eBay packaging supplies. Then we made our first trip to the Goodwill nearby, and I found a cute pink lamp and an old chair that had been painted white. It has a "Property of the U.S. Government" stamp on the bottom, so I'm really curious about its history. (They're both in the pictures up above!)

Afterwards, we headed to a new Indian restaurant near the house that was the best! I've only been to maybe 3 or 4, but this one is definitely my new favorite. I had never had Indian food until Matt took me. It's definitely not something I expected to enjoy. I refuse to let my foods touch each other, and I use separated plates if I'm eating anything in a juice or sauce. So the idea of all these runny things mixing all up made me very, very nervous. But most all Indian dishes have some sort of creamy, runny sauce, and when they mix together, it's the perfect mix of yum. It is the one kink in my perfectly constructed food logic, but I'll allow it based on pure deliciousness!

After lunch, we came home and walked around the cemetery at the end of our street. I love that place so much. There are areas that are completely canopied by huge trees, so moss has started covering the headstones. It's gorgeous! And the grass in those shaded areas is so soft and smushy that we'll walk barefoot. I love seeing all of the cute old names like Mabel, Fannie, and Woodrow. I love reading the inscriptions and learning a little bit about each person and remembering people who probably haven't had visitors in years.

Then we made our weekend Baskin Robbins trip (part one) where I had some yummy Wild "N Reckless sherbet.


On Sunday, we made a trip to the Carkeek park beach. We walked up and down the shore looking for rocks to add to our collection, and I rolled my jeans up and waded through the water. Matt found a jellyfish and a completely intact crab that had washed up and some smooth black stones covered in barnacles. It was so breezy and nice. The lakes and waterfront areas here are completely different than the ones back home. The shores here are covered in rocks, and the water is ice cold. It's a completely different climate, but it's still so much fun to explore.

After our beach adventure, we decided since it was a holiday weekend, we should make another ice cream trip! So we made another Baskin Robbins run, and this time I had Peanut Butter Brownie Frozen Yogurt. I usually try to stick with the lower calorie options, and I was super excited about this one because they had never had it before. It was excellent!


Today, we got up super early to make it to the Goodwill Labor Day sale in hopes of finding a dining room table and a desk for Matt. But apparently, everyone else was just as excited about the sale as we were. The place was packed, and we had a hard time looking for anything with the crazy amount of people everywhere. And since I'm so dang polite, I wouldn't step in front of anyone or get it anyone's way, so I pretty much just stood around overwhelmed by everything! We browsed through the furniture as best we could, but we didn't find anything we needed.

We took a break and came home to rest since we got up so early. Matt flew his remote control helicopter around the living room while the cats chased it, ran away confused, swatted at it, and chased it again. After our silly kitty time, we had a yummy lunch at Qdoba, and we drove around to two more Goodwills that weren't too far away. We still didn't find any furniture at those either. But I did come across a grey stripey sweater that I had a few years ago and absolutely loved but lost when my house got hit by the Nashville flood. And it just so happened to be $3 and part of the 40% pink tag sale! I also found an American Eagle stripey button up shirt and an H&M plaid tunic as well. And Matt ended up finding a handful of really neat old records, two of which are homemade recordings of a college concert from 1950! So we did find a few little treasures!


I forgot how much fun Goodwilling is! My mom and I used to go all the time on the weekends when I'd get off work or on days I didn't have school, and we loved it. I hate that there were just too many people to be able to look around as much as I would have liked, so I'm going to go back sometime this week and take my sweet, sweet time. Hopefully, I'll find something spectacular!

This weekend might not have been the typical ones I'm used to having back home, but it was super eventful and lots of fun. I hope everyone had an awesome Labor Day weekend and did something fun and fancy!