cute!

oh my, totes cute bags [totes].

found the first via designmilk, but they are from etsy. so cute. but i'd love a smaller, more purse-like one.

dad and i were spontaneous yesterday and ran out to see Prince Caspian at the dollar theater. i love those narnia books/movies. now i need to read that one. i hear it didn't do too well - i say it's because it wasn't publicized enough, because the 4 Pevensie kids were so good in it [i just love them all] and i enjoyed the guy that played Caspian as well. so - if you loved or liked the first narnia, you'll love or like this one!

my besest friend Alicia got into town today. we've known eachother since we two [i think] and have been best friends, though far apart, ever since. she lives in Florida now [for the past 3 years], and i definitely miss her. we may not talk as much as we should [say, once every...um...other month] but every time she's in town we get together and it's just like it used to be! we are hanging out tomorrow, going to our traditional dinner spot of Max & Erma's. for Alicia's 16th birthday [i think 16th...] i started a scrapbook for her. ever since, we've put pictures in it as well as momentos, quotes and old "letters" from when we had our make believe businesses. i've got some more pictures for her to put in [we trade the book back and forth, doing pages for each other]. i love it! it is so cute.

i printed out a bunch [over 150] pictures i've taken in the last several months and put those in an album. i also started a scrapbook from our England vacation [2 years ago] and have never finished it. i miss scrapbooking. i when kc and i move out, i vow to have a room dedicated to it!!


just kidding. that'd be nuts! :)

that's all for this boring post. oh, and the kitties are doing well! looks like 4 girls & 4 boys? i think...anyway, i want to keep this little boy - Geppetto.

is it seriously the last week of July??

i can't even believe it. this pretty much always makes me feel that summer is over. i've been to the beach once! i haven't really taken advantage of being outside! blah...oh well.

this is what's going on in my life this month:

• bosses leave for Germany next Wednesday for two weeks. i told him i'd stay at their house and watch the doggie. i hope they ask me to!!
  
• weddings, weddings, weddings! one this friday, one next friday and one the 16th.
• "teen-sitting" for some church friends. the woman getting married this Friday asked me to stay with her two girls Saturday & Sunday night.
• ONE OF MY BESTEST FRIEND'S BIRTHDAY! yes thats right folks - kt @ Holy Vataha is turning the big 24 this Sunday! unfortunately i don't see a "birthday ushe" in the cards for me :( :( :( but we do plan to celebrate in some way on her actual birthday. i have an awesome idea for cuppies...can we say Mudslide Cuppies?? or maybe Trifle Cupcakes?!?!
  
• volleyball! eek, i'm not ready for this. practices are supposed to start next tuesday. first game is the 22nd! first tournament the 30th.
• church picnic
• Pittsburgh Post-Chicago training event the 21st. don't know if i'm going to this or not...
• singing at church!

i guess that's it...but it seems like enough...this month is going to fly by as well. we also are expecting a bunch of major projects to deliver and be installed by the end of the month.

dory bought some fun things for the office. more notebooks and some black & white folders with polka dots on the inside - in this pattern [bottom black & white pattern]:

by Jackie McFee

geography book

every once and a while i take a peek at some of my old college books. tonight i picked up "The Geography Coloring Book" [yes, my college teacher had us work from a coloring book, and do the coloring...eh, i enjoyed it]. i went to the United States section and read about Pennsylvania, then moved on to New York.

image from amazon.com

this is what New York's blurb had to say:

"The Empire State Building, built in 1931, was again New York City's tallest structure (1,250 ft) when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed in 2001 by airliners hijacked by terrorists."


ok, so, i know this is "what happened" and all, but does this statement bother anyone else? maybe it's because it's the first time i've read it out of a "history" book...maybe because it seems so blunt and unfeeling...just a fact, not an awful event that i can remember [what do i remember? oh, that's right, our high school teachers turning off the TV's because our principal "didn't want us" to see it. i don't think to this day i've ever seen any more than 10 seconds of the event]. or maybe i'm bothered because some people don't believe that's what happened or because i feel that "they" have no right to write about this history that's still so fresh. maybe because these "terrorists" are still a "threat" to us, or maybe because we're still fighting "them" 7 years later. or maybe it's because "terrorist" has begun, to some people, to mean anyone of Mid-Eastern enthinicity...



i used way too many quotation marks for a post about our nation's history.
i'm not sure what i really wanted to say with this post.
maybe i just want to know if reading that rubbed anyone else the wrong way...

"go up 5 beaches"

yesterday we had our youth group's end-of-the-year summer bash at Erie's beautiful Presque Isle. we had yummy food [mum's awesome fruit pizza!] and an absolutely gorgeous day. it was truly a blessing with the morning being dark and stormy for it to turn out as amazing as it did!

yesterday's event marked my last youth group event as a youth leader - at least for a while. no one knows what the future holds, but after continuously being involved as a youth leader/mentor/creative team member etc since...oh, 8th grade...it's time for a break for me. volleyball [coaching] is coming up in a few weeks and i've been more involved in the music/tech ministries, so i figured a break and reevaluation was in order. i'm definitely going to miss it, but it's going to be nice to have a little more time to myself and all the other things [and people] going on in my life.


and happy wednesday!! josh and i might catch a movie later. and tomorrow i have a dentist appointment. they are going to yell at me for not doing anything about my wisdom teeth yet [i have two only - on top - and they told me last year to look on getting them taken out...yeah, i haven't].

[title quote from student Joel, in reference to a friend who had gone to beach 6 instead of beach 11. it was funny...at the time]

outside wedding

Friday night was my co-worker Bethany's wedding! the weather held out - as in it didn't rain - but it was quite hot and humid outside. after the ceremony, Josh and I were treated to drinks by my boss and his wife. the ceremony was beautiful, Bethany was beautiful, and I believe a pretty good time was had by all. here are some of my favorite pictures from the event. you can see the rest I took here.

Yesterday I tried out one of the recipes from my new Real Simple magazine I got over the weekend. The dish was cheese ravioli with zucchini sautéd with garlic, salt & pepper. For some extra goodness, we added some cut up chicken to the sauté. It was pretty good - and definitely simple. The magazine has 20 recipes that take 20 minutes...a lot of very, very yummy looking ones.

And I like this blog post about pomegranate being healthy for you...and if that means a pomegranate martini is good for you...mmm i love that pomegranate-blueberry juice from wegman's...but i don't remember the brand...

or check out this sorbet...

[photo courtesy of recipe4living.com]

EXCitED!

gosh, i have several posts with that title...

today i'm excited about:



these shoes i bought to go with this dress i bought to wear for bethany's wedding


bethany's wedding!


painted toe nails! [and yes, those are my toenails!]

weekend!



hmmm that seems to be all. sorry, boring post. :)

how we do it at my office

OCCASION
co-worker's upcoming wedding [tomorrow!!] & client's birthday [she's turning 39...again...on saturday!]
WHERE
behind the barn @ AJ Grack, outside, under a tree
WHEN
Wednesday, July 16th - 1pm until whenever
ACTIVITIES
eating [pita chips, humus, wedding soup, sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella balls, peppers, cheese, cantaloupe, cupcakes, two kinds of olives, prosciutto, salami, bread, sushi and calamari] and drinking [champagne, wine & S. Pelligrino]
REQUIREMENTS
be ready to talk about anything [from furniture to religion to stories of family deaths and ex-husband's new marriages]



unfortunately i left my camera AT HOME yesterday and didn't get to capture all the food and fun with it. my boss brought her's - i'll have to steal it to get the pictures.

i was outside yesterday from about 1230 to 330, then came in and did...a little work...until 5. the rest of the crew starting cleaning up right as i was leaving a little after 5.

i like how we celebrate.

day 5!

this post is going to have a little about iPhones and a lot about worthless crap no one will care about.

• yes, so it's Day 5 with the iPhone. no complaints so far - except some random "restarting" of the iPhone...oddly enough, that doesn't bother me at all. maybe i realize that i bought this THE DAY IT CAME OUT...and it's going to have issues. also, it takes about 15 seconds to restart, so, i just for some reason don't care. i believe the phone is interacting with my speakers at work, and i get some crazy fuzzy...staticy-robotic-like noises every once and a while. now that i've moved it more than 6" away from them, it's not doing it anymore, so, i don't know what that is all about. but, so far, it's fun, and i love it. :)
• Friday is my co-worker Bethany's wedding. i'm very excited for her [also because tomorrow we are having a "send-off" party for her and a "b-day celebration" for a client and our rep from Knoll is coming to visit as well]. so i'm looking forward to a fun day tomorrow. her wedding colors are brown and green/white polka dots...and i'm going to make some cupcakes in that theme i think. don't know how i'm going to have time to do them, but i will!! bethany will be gone for two weeks. i'm not sure what i'm going to do without her here. i'm going to have 10x more work, no one to answer phones for me and no one to chat with for the first 15-45 minutes of every morning.
• my dad wants to see the new batman movie this weekend. i might join.
• today is my blogging friend Jenn's birthday! Happy Birthday Jenn!!!!
• we had a death in the [extended] family last week. Sunday i was able to see my two beautiful cousins and my aunt that i don't get to see much. i miss them so bad. i need to start making it a priority to get down to pittsburgh and see them every few months. we also visited with the kitties...sooo cute...
  

• apartment hunting has slowed down. kristen has some listings we need to check out, but as she is in full force planning Behrend's reunion [only two weeks away!!!], and now i'm getting busier now that we know bethany's on her way to 2 weeks of vacation...
• kristen and i went to the greek fest this weekend. freakin awesome. it also poured. but it was sooooo yummerz.

that's pretty much what's going on with me. yep yep yep.

day 1!

well yes, if you didn't know already, my impulsive self & i DID buy the new iPhone yesterday. my thoughts were to give the store a call towards the end of the day and talk to my customer service helper guy [jon] and see if they had any left. well, he called me at about 1100 telling me they have about seven left, and only the 16GB white ones. so i figured this was a sign - as that is the one i wanted anyway, so i took my lunch at 1130 and drove over to the peach street store to get my new phone!

i was pretty excited on my way over, and jon was saying he was pretty excited to give it to me. he was extremely helpful and i spent about an hour there switching over my plan, getting some accessories, going over crap and trying to activate the phone. he said they had been having problems all day activating through iTunes and that i may have to activate it at home. in the end it didn't activate at the store, so i took it with me and planned on activating it after my next stop.

the new Erie Bank location has had it's open house the last few days. i went in and got some pictures of the furniture...and the amazing [wedding] cake they had on their second floor. mmm soo good. after the bank i ran back to rach & bri's to activate and play with the phone a little before running to my next meeting. below are some pics, more can be found here.

well i spent 30-some minutes at home with no luck. first, my iTunes needed updated. then the computer needed restarting. then it just didn't work. i decided to try r & b's upstairs computer - which also wasn't updated, then needed restarting, then needed a password - which brian called and gave to me 4 minutes after i left the house.

so, needless to say, i was getting pretty irritated and frustrated. i didnt understand how it STILL wasn't working...3+ hours after i had picked up the phone.

after my last meeting i went back to work and was hopeful it would work there. this post is really long so far. it didn't work again. i talked w/ josh and he was having issues uploading the new software. all of the sudden, i received a text saying that my phone was now usable - that the "portal" had switched over...i was confused, cause i didn't know when the activation started...but it worked!!

josh came over for dinner [um...at 845...ish] and we compared phones and applications we had downloaded. mine is a little thinner than his [and i have the white back]. we both downloaded this funny application that makes light saber noises come from the phone. it was pretty funny.

for dinner i made chicken, potatoes & broccoli w/ homemade cheese sauce. i had two pieces of chicken and i pounded them out...somehow stretching them to four fairly large pieces [it was crazy - like they multiplied on my cutting board]. the chicken was dipped in butter, then flour, then egg, then seasoned preztel-crackers [italian seasoning, parm cheese and smashed pretzel crackers]. baked them at 400 or something [oops don't remember] for about 20-25 minutes. i put them in first for 20 min, pulled them out, cut into the middle of the thickest and screamed - it was almost perfect. i was so freaking excited that it was almost 100% cooked in the middle and super juicy. i did some potatoes suggested by Robin, which were pretty darn good. i had some issues with the "smashing" [i had no potato masher so i used a cup...and i think that they should have been cooked more]. i made some homemade cheese sauce with velveeta...mmm very good.

i was very proud of myself. other than the potatoes, i "created" the meal and cooked it per my own directions [with a little help from my culinary-teaching mother...]...and it wasn't a disaster!!!

rach has been wanting some flower updates while she's been away...i'm not quite sure what flowers exactly...but these are from her "backyard"

phew. this was a long post. thanks for pulling through if you did ;)

today's the day!!!

well folks - today is the day! the launch of the new iPhone!! the past few weeks i've been discussing the phone's features with others and reading up on the "reviews"...and i've been leaning towards waiting until September to get the iPhone [when my Verizon contract is up]....however after talking about it w/ my skank's yesterday, i'm reaching the point of really really REALLY not wanting to wait anymore. i hope to pick it up sometime today or tomorrow [i wonder if Erie will "sell out" on the first day...]

yesterday i stopped by Betty's Cookie Korrell in the Village West Plaza in Millcreek [it's about a 2 1/2 minute walk from my office...but i stopped by as in drove...]. they have some awesome cakes and cookies there. i bought a bunch and brought them back for my sweet-tooth-ed "coworkers".

also, the awesome boys of iNSPiRAL played at Sherlock's last night. it was an odd show for kt and i [people showing up we didn't expect...just...odd things, not the ushe...] but it was good. good turn out and they rocked it hard as always!!! kt made some pretty awesome new "business cards" for the boyz. i want to post them, but she could do that i'm sure...or maybe i'll get a pic later.

anyway...having a rockin weekend!

something like a picture update

i've been staying at sissy & brian's since last friday. it's been fun...i tell you - that 12 minute drive to work is wonderful! however, sleeping has been SO comfortable...i've been getting up later...and later...

tycho was trying to get a moth yesterday. i didn't get a great picture of it - but at one point he was literally HANGING onto the wall. it was so crazy.

and he's pretty much as bad as is the ushe. if you don't give him enough attention, he climbs on top of things and knocks things over [remotes, cell phones, glasses, candles, earrings, rings, napkins...]. he also kept trying to help me cook yesterday, mostly w/ the raw chicken.

mum and dad came over for dinner last night. i made this easy Betty Crocker Cheesy Chicken Casserole - with chicken, frozen veggies, cheddar cheese sauce & Bisquick/Parmesan biscuits on top.

Tuesday went something like this...
i went to see the kitties again...

then mum and i went to our friend Diane's to see her and her new baby girl, McKenzie!

the josh came over and we watched the new Futurama movie!