Puppets On Our Fingers

Happy Monday Morning all my bloggy friends and real life friends and family! I'm surprisingly chipper right now, even though I'm actually quite exhausted and also real hungry because I didn't eat breakfast today. But, I'm chipper because I had such a great weekend, it so still makes me happy!

I went down to Orlando for my friend Jenni's housewarming party! Three of our friends from St. Augustine came too, and we just all had such a good time together! So good in fact, that I barely even had time to take pictures, which is why I have hardly any... :( Oh well, a few pictures are better than none and at least I have a good memory! We played games, made waffles, warmed Jenni's new house, visited IKEA, went country line dancing, helped her set up and prepare stuff for the party, met new friends, talked until 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning, drank a lot of coffee, and just had such a great time with each other!

So, here are the few pictures that I actually have...

Thank you, stranger, for taking a blurry picture for us...

Mmmmmm IKEA Swedish meatballs are sooo tasty and yummy.

Needed an iced PSL at 6 pm, after shopping at IKEA for 3+ hours!

Dani and sweet little Katie dancing at the housewarming party :)

The theme was "Won't You Be My Neighbor," from Mr. Rogers, and so we all wore cardigans :)

Found these as a 10-pack at IKEA for $4.99, and we couldn't resist them!
Also, Scuba and Baby felt haunted whilst enjoying their Sunday morning coffee...

The sky was so pretty during my drive home on Sunday afternoon.

Oh, and last Thursday I painted my nails in honor of breast cancer awareness month, so this is what I'm rockin' right now! :) Although it is starting to look a bit shabby, so I'm looking forward to doing my nails again in the next day or so! (I might have an obsession...)

I hope y'all are having an OK Monday so far, and that your weekends were all enjoyable as well! I guess now I will read some of your blogs should attempt to get some work done, and try to warm up a bit because I'm freezing right now! And I'm linking up with my usual Monday link-ups at: Sami's Shenanigans, Glitter & Gloss, Synfully Delicious, Life on Leroy, and Covered in Grace! Did y'all do anything fun and exciting this weekend?!

Much Love :)

Porridge, & Other Stuff's

Friday's Letters -- Round 2 -- here we go!!

Dear Boyfriend: You are in Alabama camping and mountain bike riding for the whole weekend, and I really miss you already! Please have fun up there, but also please be safe! And try to come back home all in one piece, with only minor scrapes, bumps and bruises.

Dear I-10/I-75/I-4: Please don't be too crazy and congested with tons of traffic today as I drive to Orlando for the weekend to meet up with some of my favorite girls!

Dear Some of My Favorite Girls: I am so stinking excited to spend the weekend with y'all! This is going to be the best, and I can hardly contain my excitement until I see y'all around 8:30 p.m. tonight!!

Dear iPhone: let's play the bestest music ever for our drive, so I can sing at the top of my lungs for 4 hours straight, mmmK?

Dear Work Day: You kind of stink, so let's get this over with as quickly as possible. OK? Thanks. At least I look cute though, right? And also, Dear New Jeans: You fit great and are oh so comfy. Loving you, new jeans. (And who doesn't love a cheesy bathroom pic or two, or three?)

Dear Pinterest: Thanks for another great recipe last night! This was my second time making soup, ever, and I think I did a pretty good job. My family all enjoyed the Creamy Tortellini Soup ("porridge" as my future BIL kept calling it..) & grilled cheese sammies for dinner last night! (Even though my boyfriend said the food in the picture looks gross, I'm sharing my picture anyways...oh well. What do y'all think? I mean yes, the Pinterest one obviously looks prettier, but mine still tasted yummy!! Oh, and a dash of hot sauce definitely kicked it up a notch.)

Dear Soup Leftovers: I'm pretty excited to eat you for lunch today at work. So please try to be just as yummy the second time around as well!

And I think that's enough letters for today! I'm linking up with Adventures of Newlyweds for Friday's Letters, AunieSauce for Just Because, as well the usual Friday Chaos hop at Oh So Amelia!

And Dear Family, Friends and Readers: Thank you so so so much for faithfully reading my little bloggy-blog! Less than two short weeks ago, I was excited to reach 50 followers, and now I have 70! I'm growing and it makes me so happy and so excited! Can't wait to keep growing and meeting new friends and bloggers out there!

I wish everyone a happy Friday, and an even happier weekend! Much love to all :)

Presence

"Seek the Lord and His strength; seek his presence continually!" --1 Chronicles 16:11

Seek his presence continually.... sounds like kind of a hard thing to do right? It does to me at least. I mean sometimes I don't want to, or I don't know how, or I don't know where to begin... I think though, that the easiest way to seek his presence, is to spend time with him in prayer and reading his Word. Simple as that, right? Right. So today, I simply want to encourage you seek the presence of God. It's not always that difficult to find it, but it's always worth it. Seek to be in his presence, and for it to be apparent to you.

Think about how different each day would be if we spent the day in the presence of our Lord! I think maybe we should try it out, and just see how it changes our day and our perspective.

And on a completely unrelated, and not-so-thoughtful note, I'm guest posting over at my friend Tiffany's blog today, with a tutorial for my Halloween mani I'm rockin' right now! So check that out HERE.

{Blogger friends: link up your more thoughtful posts from the last week, and share my Thoughtful Thursdays button on your page!}

Parmesan-Crusted Date Night

Last night my sweet boyfriend Jeff took me on a mystery date! He picked me up at my house, and when we got in the car, he told me, "We're going on a little trip!" How exciting! I love little surprise road trips! But who doesn't, am I right?! We sat in traffic for a tiny bit, and a chance to snap a quick picture of course :)

I apologize for the quality of the front-facing iPhone camera self-portrait...

So we drove an hour north to the cute little town of Thomasville, Georgia, where we ate a delicious dinner at Jonah's Fish & Grits. It's this precious, tiny little restaurant with a great atmosphere, in a family environment. Everyone there is so sweet and nice, and it's so great and cozy inside.  Here are some pictures of the outside, since I was too embarrassed (which is silly, I know), to take pictures of the tiny inside with everyone staring at me...

And the food was so super yummy. We started off with Cyclone Shrimp for our appetizer, which rivals the Bang Bang Shrimp from Bonefish Grill. Apparently the chef here used to work there, and so he made his own copy-cat version, which I think is actually better! We both got the specials for the night, so I had Parmesan-crusted Grouper with white cheddar grits and veggies, and Jeff had a salmon filet stuffed with a homemade crab cake with mashed potatoes and veggies. Both were delicious, but the salmon definitely won the taste contest, of the year probably. (It was a ton of food though, and couldn't eat all mine so I brought about half of it home for later.) And then we shared pumpkin cheesecake for dessert!

After dinner, we tried to walk around the cute little town a bit, but everything was closed, so there's not much we could do or see. We did however happen upon a lovely yarn-bombing project I've been hearing so much about lately! Also, since everything was closed, we had to quickly make our way back to the restaurant again for some restroom facilities, because I have a bladder the size of a four-year-old... (TMI maybe?) We tried to take another picture of ourselves, but it was almost dark, and there wasn't good lighting, so this is the best we could manage. Oh well - at least it's a small way to remember our night there! However, that "test shot" of Jeff turned out great! :)

All-in-all, it was a lovely surprise, and such a great date night. I always love spending time with this man, and he just makes me so happy! :) Thank you again so much for a great date night! Love you.

And Happy Hump Day everyone!

Pinning My Workout

The last week or so of September, I really started thinking about my eating and exercise habits from the past couple of months. And it wasn't pretty. I was still being active and exercising at least once a week, but it's not like that one workout could make up for all the crap I was still eating. So things were getting a bit out of control. I then decided that this month was going to "Healthy October," and I've been trying to stick to that. I didn't set any real limits or boundaries, I'm just trying to make healthier decisions in regards to what I eat and how often I exercise.

You know I had to make a cute little PicMonkey inspiration, right?!

So I've been doing Jillian Michaels' 30-Day Shred again. And this time I. Am. Determined. I AM going to make it through this thing, without quitting 11 days into the program again. It's not fun getting up earlier in the morning. And it's certainly not an easy workout, but it's worth it. I know it is. I'm a little sore, and definitely tired - but I know that means it's working! As Jillian says, I'm "well on my way to being shredded."

Also, in addition to the 30-Day Shred that I do every morning, I've created a little night-time routine for myself as well. My night-time workout though is specifically geared to one target area - my HIPS and love handles. I've noticed in the past that no matter how much weight I lose, it never comes out of my hips. I lose it in my thighs, boobs, arms and waist. But the hips and love handles remain. Always. So I scoured Pinterest for about an hour or so and found some moves that were specific to this area. I have now started doing these moves at night right before I go to bed.

Click on the following exercies from my "Gotta Git Fit" board on Pinterest, to be taken to the link to explain the moves. It's some good stuff, and I can't wait to see it start working! I forgot to take measurements yesterday morning, but I have some from last week that should be pretty accurate. Hopefully I'll be able to share some inches-lost-progress in the next few weeks!

Basic Plank

Oblique V-Up

Saxon Side-Bend

 Speed Rotation

 Side Plank with Arm Sweep

Kelly Rowland's Love handle crunch

Then I'll finish it all up with some pre-bedtime yoga poses, found at THIS link. Anyone want to commit to doing this with me? Could make it more fun to be able to talk about it with others, and keep us motivated and accountable!?! Let me know, and we can encourage one another during Healthy October! :)

Pictures Galore

I hope y'all are in the mood for lots of pictures, and not a lot of reading. Because I have a ton of pictures from this weekend, and I don't feel like writing too much, so let's just jump straight to it, shall we?!

Friday night = dinner at Pepper's with some friends, followed by bowling, which was a blast, even if I came in dead last place... but what was weird was that we were the only ones there for the first hour or so, and it was a Friday night! The place was eerily empty, and we were sure there was something going on that we were missing somewhere, but it was nice to have the place basically to ourselves!

Saturday morning/afternoon = yummy and fun breakfast out with my family, and then learning some guitar chords with Jeff (I now know how to play A, C & D, I think...). I did decide though that my hand just isn't big enough to do it easily, so I might need to learn to play the ukulele instead...that's more my size I believe. So I might scratch " start learning guitar" off my 25 Before 25 list now, because at least I tried, right?!

Then we rode our bikes to Old Navy, where I bought 2 new pairs of jeans. We rode back home, got changed and headed downtown to the Asian festival where we ate some good food, watched some interesting dances, and just wandered around for a while. I tried Thai food first from Taste Budz Cafe (so that's new restaurant #2 of 6 on my list), but didn't actually like it very much, so I threw it away and got that same yummy Indian plate from last year, which was still so yummy again. I mean, hello - that butter chicken stuff is delish.

Thai coconut shrimp I tried first. I ate about 5-6 bites, and decided it wasn't for me...

Jeff got his usual Chinese again, from Azu - which was amazing. So fresh and obviously not frozen. Yum!

Saturday evening = exhaustion. So we watched "You've Got Mail" and Jeff fell asleep for the majority of the movie. After I woke him up, I painted my nails, and he actually helped me do it! (I did a Halloween theme for a guest post on a friend's blog, so the "tutorial" will be on her blog soon!) Such a super sweet and willing boyfriend I have :) We watched the sad Florida State game, ate a late dinner of some homemade chili with cheese, and then had some popcorn for "dessert."

Trying to do a spider, but it kept not working out, so we nixed that idea...

Jiffy Pop is super yummy popcorn. Try it out sometime if you haven't. Better than microwave kinds for sure.

Sunday = early morning church and Sunday school, lunch with a couple of good friends at Red Elephant, and then playing frisbee for 2 hours in the atrocious 90 degree weather. (Side note -- Florida! It's October and "fall," so let's get on with it already, OK?!) The rest of the day was pretty low key and chill, and was wonderfully great because of that. I ended up falling asleep around 10 pm while we were trying to watch "The New Girl" since Jeff hasn't ever seen it. He laughed his head off, while I just dozed off.

And then this morning I took some pictures of my finished mani (since I forgot to previously) before heading into work!

Jeff did that accent nail for me! How awesome is he?! :)

And today I'm linking up with these lovely ladies for weekend updates and Mani Monday: Sami's Shenanigan's, Glitter & Gloss, Covered in Grace, and Synfully Delicious.

Popular Letters

A popular blog post and link-up every Friday in the blogosphere is always "Friday's Letters." A couple of the blogs I follow all participate in this, and I like reading them, I've just never done it myself... But I'm changing that today. So here goes my first round of Friday's Letters, hopefully I do this right :)

Dear Friday: Thank you for finally arriving, now I just really need you to speed up a tiny bit and fast forward to 5 p.m. so I can get off work and go bowling with my friends and boyfriend!

Dear Paint the Town Pink: You looked awesome yesterday, and I loved seeing pink balloons and ribbons everywhere. And the pink newspaper also looked so cool. And it was fun bringing that theme into our family dinner at home last night as well!

Dear Boyfriend: I'm looking forward to spending the day with you tomorrow riding our bikes, and eating delicious food at the Asian Festival downtown. Yum!

Dear Asian Festival: Last year I tried Indian food for the first time, and it was sooo good. Tomorrow, I'm planning on Thai food for the first time, so please don't disappoint.

My Indian food from last year - that I ate every single bite of...

Jeff's Chinese food from last year - that he ate every singe bite of...

Dear hair and makeup: Thank you for actually looking good today. Always a nice treat.

Dear stomach ache: You absolutely MUST be gone by the end of the day, because I'm not putting up with you during this weekend's festivities. Am. Not. Doing it.

I'm also linking up today with Sippy Cups & Pearls, AunieSauce, Oh So Amelia, and Monkey's & Tutu's.