Rolling In The Deep

Been enjoying this song lately.  I like Adele's soulful voice.  Kinda makes me feel like I could be vintage, which I'm not, but I like that her voice kinda takes me back to what I imagine the 30s or 40s to be like.  Anyway, for your listening pleasure.

Color Coded

For the most part I consider myself normal.  Whatever that means.  But I do have one slightly weird obsession.  Maybe it is better considered an obsessive compulsive habit?  I was reminded of it this morning as I ate my Gushers.  That's right, I eat Gushers.  They're like a childhood teleporter.  Only, not really b/c I don't think my mom ever bought us Gushers for our lunches when I was growing up.

 

Anyway, my obsession is this.  I have to eat things in pairs or combinations.  But this only applies to colored candies, for instance, Skittles or M&Ms.  Even if I just have a handful I find myself picking off the lone colors, or the colors that have more than any of the others until I have an equal number of each color.  Then I eat one of each color at a time.  Then, and this might make me weird, when I get down to only one of each color left I pair them up.  Kind of like a color coordination marriage.  Favorite combos:
Blue/Orange
Blue/Green
Blue/Yellow
Red/Green
Red/Brown (my least favorite, but you gotta eat the brown somehow)
Yellow/Orange
Purple/Green
You get the idea...

 

Not sure why I felt the urge to share this tidbit about myself.

Credit, credit

Closed Caption

Oh man, if you’re in need of a laugh, watch this!

Pixie!

Am I brave enough to pull off something like this???  I don't know, but it sure would be fun!

  

Minus the creepy face Winona is making I'm really digging these short cuts.

What do you think?  Could I rock it?

Credit

A couple quotes

Framed

Ahh, it feels good to check another project off the list!  Back in February, when we went to DC, we took a quick detour on the way home and stopped at IKEA.  We’ve wanted to do a frame collage above the love seat in the living room for a while, and IKEA’s inexpensive, classic-looking frames were just what we needed to get the project started.

I honestly thought that it would be months and months before we actually got around to finding pictures, artwork, whatever to put in the frames.  But, thanks to Kristin we got a jump start on the project.  She gave me the following print, appropriately entitled Twins.  I decided today to put it in a frame and then felt motivated to find other things to fill the rest of them.

After putting in the Twins print I kind of felt at a loss of what else to put in the other frames. Brian suggested scraps of some of his old patterned fabric.  He also sacrificed his old Ansell Adams posters of Yosemite’s El Capitan, which we cut up and put in two frames.  Anyway, it’s hard to describe so I’ll stop and just give you the pictures-you can click on them to make them bigger and possibly see what we put in each frame.

We figured out the general layout on the floor.  Then I taped up cutouts of each frame so we could make sure it looked how we wanted it above the couch.

Thanks to Brian for figuring out where to put all the nails. I think it turned out really well!

In other news:
My leg looks like I got mauled by a bear.  I fell off my bike.  Again.  I hit my leg in the same place as before, but this time the sprocket actually pierced the skin.  I think what was most embarrassing was that I fell over right in front of the window at Char Grill!  The ladies sitting inside had shocked looks on their faces.  I’m not sure if they were shocked to see me fall, or shocked that Brian didn’t try to help me up!  I’m really not THAT bad at using my clipless pedals; it just so happened that I had my right foot unclipped and my bike tipped to the left.  There’s just not much you can do in that situation.  The unfortunate part was that my foot didn’t come unclipped when I landed so I had to sit there with the bike on top of me while I wriggled loose.  Well, I got a good laugh out of it, picked my bike up, dusted off my pride and off we went.  Let’s just hope this doesn’t scar!

Spring Fever

It’s that time of year when the days get longer, the sun shines brighter, and warmth finally makes its debut.  Now, you wouldn’t know that based on the forecast for the coming week and this weekend. 

But in honor of spring we attended an NC State baseball game tonight.  It was fun!  I haven’t been to a baseball game in a couple years; at least I don’t remember having been to one in a while.  NC State was taking Clemson to task by the time we left at the top of the 9th inning.  We even got to see a 3 run homerun, niiiiice!  We attended the game with our friends the Apples (picture not taken) and the Hortons.  Thanks for a fun evening, y’all!

You can’t tell from this picture, but Kate is 1 week out (about) from her due date! 
We can’t wait to meet you m-dubs!

In other current events:
We went mountain biking with Snoke at Crabtree before the game.  I would consider this my inaugural ride using my new pedals.  Yes, yes I went riding at Harris Lake a week or so ago, but didn’t really do anything that may have resulted in a difficult (or not so difficult) climb.  And it’s not that Crabtree is very difficult, but I definitely fell about six times today.  I’m going to have some pretty good bruises.  But it was good practice getting in and out of my clips. 

I think Dave got some good laughs at me but I sure felt dumb falling so much.  But what can I expect, I’ve only been using these clips for a week!  I think the funniest fall happened as I was going along easily watching Dave attempt to go over some big rocks, when out of nowhere my handle bar caught on the tiniest tree beside the trail.  Next thing I know my handle bar is all cockeyed and I’m falling to the ground.  It happened pretty quick and I had no time to react, except to fall.  But I guess that’s not really a reaction, more of an ohcrapicantdoanythingaboutthis consequence result.  I guess the one thing I can be thankful for is that every time I fell my feet popped out so I wasn’t left stuck on the ground with the bike on top of me.  Now, why can’t they unclip before I hit the ground? Hmm…. Good times, good times.

Juliana, I’m ready for you to get here, but I can see I have a lot more practicing up to do!  Hehe.

Creativity

Not a quality I claim to possess.  But, every now and then I feel obligated to try to do something artistic.  Sometimes I feel like I’m surrounded by creative people in my life.  It’s a good thing.

Anyway, here is my attempt at creativity.  I went to paint your pot with two co-workers.  It was really relaxing to have the studio pretty much to ourselves.  I chose this vase to paint.  Maybe I’ll get some flowers from someone to put it in once it’s done…hint, hint.

After the initial nervousness that comes every time I begin something I am not confident in, I decided to just dive in.  Here’s the finished product, pre-firing.  I hope the colors (yellows and oranges) turn out vividly.  I can go pick it up on Saturday.  If I remember, I’ll do a before and after comparison.

Catherine and Crystal working on their projects.  I really like seeing each person’s creativity come out in their work.

Here is Crystal’s other piece she completed that night.  Adorable.

Catherine’s completed paint your pot project from her previous visit.  Love the colors and the random pig. Nice.

Thank you, ladies for an enjoyable evening! 

When I got home that night this is what was waiting for me on the banister.

That’s right.  Be jealous!  Brian occupied his evening alone with making me a new purse.  Love it.  I love the color, the design, the functionality, the size.  It’s great.  Maybe, if you ask nicely, he’ll make something similar for you or that special gal in your life :).  I haven’t asked him about this yet, so I can’t guarantee he actually will.  But he’s a pretty nice guy…and he loves to design things.  I bet for the right amount of dough he’d do it, though.

Thanks, B for your creativiTY.  (I like that it rhymes.)

Taste of Fun

Ha!  I really liked these cups.  They made me smile today.  So I'm posting it for you to enjoy, too.  I had another post I wanted to put up but the pictures wouldn't format correctly.  That one will have to wait.

These bikes make me think spring and warmth because of the colors, and  fun and adventure because of all the places a bicycle can take you!


credit

House on Fire!

Well, that’s the way it looked anyway.  Check it:

So, if it wasn’t on fire, what in the world caused so much “smoke”, you might ask?  Well…

         

You got it.  Due to an enormous crack from what appears to be a repair the previous owners did on that wall there was a ton of spackling that needed to be done.  Also, the previous owners had surround sound and the wires ran behind some molding that had been placed in the corner.  We took out the wiring and Brian ripped out the molding so the corner needed some TLC.  The result, a “firestorm”, if you will, that covered every square inch of our downstairs with a layer of fine dust…and if you notice in the corner there, not just a layer, but a pile. 

This all happened between 9:30 am and 11:00 am on Saturday, before we headed out to play spring league. 

We got home from that around 4 and were met by Kristin soon after.  She helped us jump into gear.  We had to beat out all the cushions, dust every surface and wipe every wall.  We even tried vacuuming the couch and tables.  I’ve vacuumed, swept, swiffered, and sharked the floors several times and I still feel a little grit under my feet when I walk.

         

Next, we finally began painting.  So long icky pink!  Hello, calming gray!

         

I’m very happy with the way it turned out.  I think I’ve been sold on Behr Premium Paint & Primer in one.  We did the both rooms in one coat and with less than a gallon of paint.  I was so happy to not have to do a 2nd coat.  HUGE HUGE thank you goes out to Kristin, Brian’s sister, for her incredible help.  She had, by far, imo, the toughest painting job...the big roller.  She worked tirelessly for 2 hours with no complaining!  I am so happy to have this project behind us, and couldn’t have done it without her!

A BIG thank you also to Brian for sanding and edging everything.  He worked really hard and didn’t complain either.  Those Lowthers sure are great :). 

Mixed Tape Rewind

Ok, just kidding. Who really has mixed tapes anymore?
But I do have some mixed CDs and stumbled upon a really fun one the other day. I've been rocking out to some Five Iron Frenzy lately and I think it's been fun music for this warmer weather. I forgot that I like ska. It takes me back to high school and the Brewery (Becky, remember that?!).
Up beat, peppy, a little weird, but overall enjoyable. Here is one that I like a lot. There are many others, but this one is fun. Let me know what you think! (the video is, um, interesting).

Washington, DC: Day 2

Day two we got up and checked out of the hotel.  We lugged our suitcases back to the car and headed off to do a few more site-seeing things.  On the agenda for the day:

• Get tickets to go into the Washington Monument (check)
• Eat breakfast/brunch (check)
• Get a picture of the White House (check)
• Visit the Holocaust Museum (check)
• Do a cartwheel on the White House Lawn (semi-check)
• Go up into the Washington Monument (check)
• Visit the Air & Space Museum (fail)

The ticket office for the Washington Monument opened at 9am so by the time we checked out and walked the 2 miles there we were able to get tickets, no problem.  Picked 2:00 as our tour hour and headed off to find some breakfast. 

We thought we’d go to this breakfast buffet place we saw along our walk and decided to swing by the White House on the way there.  We finally found the place with the “best” view, seeing as there are military and secret service guys blocking the roads leading up to White House.  The pic below was the best we could get.  Don’t you just love the rusty barricades in the foreground?  Brian pondered how far he could run up to the White House before being stopped.  Then he wondered if they would actually shoot him or would they just subdue him and arrest him?  I was pretty sure they would shoot first and ask questions later…if he was still alive to be questioned.  Oh, and I think we saw Malia peeking through one of the upstairs windows.  I don’t know, I guess it could have been Sasha…we were pretty far away :).

So, on to breakfast we went.  We decided not to go to the buffet and found a Bruegger’s instead.

After breakfast we headed to the Holocaust Museum. No photographs allowed, so, sorry, just a wordy description.  It was by far the highlight of the trip.  The museum was fascinating, heart-wrenching, shocking, infuriating, informative and so many other descriptive words.  We spent over 3 hours making our way through the building.  Other than the enormous crowd of middle-schoolers there on a field trip it was an incredible visit.  The Holocaust has always fascinated me and to read about the events leading up to it and the devastation during and after the war was a large dose of reality to swallow.  I think the most intriguing aspect was the astounding swiftness of the rise of the Hitler and the Nazi party.  To think that a country can experience such a dramatic swing in political power in such a short amount of time is frightening.  Also, there was a room called voices from the past (or something like that) where you can listen to actual survivors describe their experience in the concentration camp.  The most gut-wrenching portion of the museum were the looped videos of the ally troops coming into the camps and finding survivors wasted away to the point of almost nothing and also the numerous people that had been killed. I could only watch that for so long before my heart felt too heavy to do so anymore. 

We would have lingered longer in the museum but we had a 2:00 appointment with the Washington Monument.  Oh, and if you couldn’t tell from the above pictures…there weren’t no chance we were getting a picture of me doing a cartwheel on the White House lawn.  So, we settled for cartwheels on the Washington Monument lawn.  It’s almost as cool.  Almost.  My favorite part…Brian looking like he’s diving into the ground.  I was impressed with his cartwheels…and the funniest part was he was convinced his legs were straight the whole time :).

It was a bit windy out that day…can you tell?   Ummm, yikes.

So, it was cool going up into the monument.  At the top you can see out over Washington in all 4 directions.  I think my favorite part was in front of each window was a picture of what DC looked like in like 1910, 19xx (30’s? 50’s? 80’s?  I can’t remember ) and you could see how much things had changed over the course of time.  Oh, and you can see they’re working on the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.  It definitely made things a bit uglier.  Wish some of the trees had been in bloom, but this was February, so I guess you can’t always get what you want :).

Looking um, west, yeah, we’ll go with that:

East.  White House zoomed out: and in:

North.  Lincoln Memorial zoomed out: and in:

South:   Capitol Building zoomed out: and in:

Annnnd, the following are pictures I didn’t put on the first day, but wanted to include on the blog.  So here you go.

Brian liked the police tank-like vehicle.  We saw this parked outside the Justice building.  Dang.

The original Ford Flex. (for j&b)

And Mr. Lowther used to own a sweet 1970 something civic, similar to this one! Oh and I liked the caution sign on the wall.

After a full day we headed out of dodge…and crashed at our friends’ (G & Mary) house.  It was a fun, random trip.  But we agreed that it’s ok if we don’t make it back to downtown DC for a while.  I think the only thing we missed getting to see was the Air & Space museum.  That would have been fun.