Nerd Poetry: Pride and Prejudice, a Poem

Tonight J and I were writing music and, lately, we've been reading Pride and Prejudice. I got one serious song out and then this: 

(It's 1am and I've been reading about architecture in Southern California all evening, so don't judge me. Don't you dare judge me!)

You can't laugh at Mr. Darcy.
No, I daresay not.

You can't laugh at Mr. Darcy,

even if he act a sot. 

Jane Austin says you shan't, 

and so you never shall.

But Mr. Collins puts on airs

and says sorry while he bows. 

Though you dearly love to laugh, 

(a family trait I'd say)

you can't forget your manners

or let talking rule the day.

Talking is not dancing.

And dancing is the best

to encourage great affection

and not make yourself a pest.

Though Mrs. Bennet's nerves may scold you

and Mr. Wickham use you sore, 

you'll end up with Mr. Darcy. 

Let us hope he does not snore!

Goodnight!

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Poor Girl's Spicy Chili

Tonight I'm making my very own chili recipe, and thought I would share.

It is derived from recipes of Facebook friends and other websites. I adapted all of their different recipes to fit ingredients I keep on hand pretty much at all times.

This is what I came up with.

First I take a jalapeno and roast it. This is a technique I picked up in high school from a friend who worked at a Tex-Mex restaurant in my hometown. I just use the same pot I'm going to make my chili in put it on high with nothing in it but the pepper. Then I turn the pepper until it blisters on every side. This helps it release its flavor and makes your chili spicier.

Then I brown the pound of beef I was thawing while my pepper roasted. (If you're feeding a big family or want a lot of leftovers, double everything.)

The tower of spiciness!!! ...and ketchup.

While the beef is browning, I season it with salt, pepper and chili powder. I wait on the chili powder until it's almost done browning. I do this because it's how my mom taught me to season ground beef. I have no idea why, but she's the best cook I know so I just do what she says.

Next, I add a can of ranch style beans, and the forefathers of Texas chili turn in their graves. I love Texas, but I prefer beans in my chili. I am also unarmed and a cat person. Please don't shoot me! I also find that the sauce on the beans adds a nice flavor and texture to my chili.

Then I add a can of diced tomatoes with green chilies. In my house, we call that Rotel, but since I buy the off brand I feel the need to describe it.

This is the part where things get weird.

I next add about 1/4 cup of ketchup because I don't stock tomato sauce in my kitchen. I probably should, but I just don't. That measurement is approximated because I just added 2 or 3 long squirts out of the bottle until it looks right to me. I cook the scientific way, y'all!

Then I add some Worcestershire(I love Chrome's spell check feature!) sauce, about a dozen good drops. 

Then I open up my seasoning cabinet and things get crazy. Okay, not that crazy...

How am I not eating this right now?

I add a generous sprinkling of onion powder. (Real onions chopped up in there could be nice too! But my hubs doesn't like the texture.)

Next, I add about a half teaspoon of minced garlic. That actually came out of the fridge, but I think of it as a seasoning. Garlic salt or powder would work here too.

Finally, add some crushed red pepper til it's spicy enough for you. (If it's already too spicy for you, go back to the North, Yankee! Just kidding! You can add tomato sauce to tone it down.)

I let all that simmer for just as long as I can stand it, because the longer it simmers the yummier (and spicier) it is. Today, I'm leaving it on for an hour and a half, but it's technically ready to eat as soon as it starts to simmer steadily.


There you have it, folks, Poor Girl's Spicy Chili. Enjoy!

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Bringing Home Baby: What's in a Name? Part 2

When you find out you're having a baby, aside from dreaming about their gender, I normally start thinking about names.

Potential boy names...

Potential girl name...


There are always debates among those whose opinions matter (and those whose don't) as to what we should name our next child. There's even polls and voting that takes place. This time, it was on our chalkboard wall. Lots of entertainment for sure.

The most popular, funny, choice would be to have named our daughter Ginger Ales or our son Stout Ales.

Har de Har Har. Not. :)

Clearly, we would not have chosen either option.

How we came to name our daughter Charleigh Marie was really a round about process.

I've always liked the name Charly, Charley or Charlie for a girl. Growing up, I read Charly by Jack Weyland more times than I can remember. I loved that such a strong girl had a boys name. When I started dating my husband, I learned that his father and grandfather both shared the name Charles or Charlie. I remembered thinking it was pretty cool that they shared the same name as one of my favorite teen books.

I used to love going through family history charts looking for unusual but cool names and I've always thought it neat to give our children a family name. As you may know, Freddy is named after Steve's maternal grandfather. Even after going through my family tree's and looking at names, I still could not get the name Charlie out of my mind.

Charlie though, isn't very feminine. I've heard stories of girls who had definite boy names, and them being put onto boys sports teams (despite being registered as a girl), because their name is "boyish" and the organizers thinking that a mistake was made on the paperwork.

I didn't want that to happen to our daughter, and so the search began on how to spell her name. There was Charley, Charlee, Charli, and Charleigh. Though they are all lovely, I really liked Charleigh.

Choosing her middle name though, was quite the task.

Initially, her middle name was going to either be Annette, Ann, or Annabella. Many of the women on both sides of our family have the name "Ann" in their names and it would have been a lovely way to honor them. However, I wasn't 100% confident in any of them and something wasn't sitting completely right with me about it. Clearly, it wasn't sitting with quite a few people because we received more negative feedback about her middle name than anything else I've.

So, Steve and I decided that we weren't going to share what her middle name was definitely going to be, until she was born.

One day, in a conversation with someone I love and wholeheartedly admire, the name of Marie was suggested. My mothers name is Mary Lou, and quite honestly I would NEVER ever name my child Mary or Lou. However, we could totally do Marie, have it be a nod to my mother, and give us an opportunity to honor her.  Steve and I both kept it to ourselves, because... really... we didn't care what anyone's opinions about it were at that point. It was going to be her middle name.

And, so that's how we chose to name her Charleigh Marie.

I love her name, and it really does fit her well. I can't wait to see how it fits her as she grows up!

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Incidentally-Vegan Brownie Experiment

Tonight I got the sudden urge to bake. It hit me like a ton of bricks and I know exactly why--we have no milk or eggs in our house.

I also have no car temporarily which means no quick trips to the grocery store for me. Growing up a country girl, I have learned to adapt.

Someday I'll tell my grandkids about how when I was their age there was no such thing as a quick trip to the grocery store in my best old-redneck-lady voice.
   "Well you see here dearie! First we had to go find a tractor that wasn't plowing something up. Then we had to go on and hitch it up to a covered wagon using our best old mare. It was 200 miles to the nearest general store, so that'd take about a day. It was always snowing too back then."

I think I've gotten off track.

Anyway, so I went back the basics like any good country girl would do. I started Googling for no milk, no egg recipes.

That didn't work.

They all called for vinegar. I don't stock vinegar for some reason. Maybe I should start.

Then I searched for vegan recipes realizing that I was going to omit animal products. (I'm giving myself way too much credit here.)

I stumbled upon a Pinterest board full of vegan dessert recipes. Yay for Pinterest!

But they all called for vinegar too. :/

Except for one, a brownie recipe from this blog.

It calls for a lot of a few simple ingredients I keep on hand. Luckily I had plenty of all of it.

I did get a little concerned when I read 1 cup of vegetable oil. Say what?! That's a lot of oil!

Oh well, Paula Deen's still kickin', and I've got a skinny husband. So why not?

Then I caught myself wondering if I should spray the pan before I put the batter in it.

Then I thought, 'Does this really need more grease?'

Ummm, no.

Sadly, I have really bad handwriting in syrup.

Finally (because I'm so daring and darling of course ;) ) I decided to experiment further and wrote J's name in caramel syrup on the batter before I threw it in the oven. This may be a culinary mistake...I'll blame it on love.

So around 30 minutes in the oven they were done!!!

Here's how they look right out of the oven. Someday,
they'll invent a way to upload smells so you can
understand how strong I am for waiting. ;) 

When your inner child is a little too much like honey boo boo, waiting for brownies to cool seems ridiculous. So I would normally dig right in. But tonight I decided to practice restraint and wait for J to get home. So I'm going to leave you in suspense until tomorrow about how they taste.

Update!

They taste really good, but they are very crumbly. The syrup didn't add a lot to the flavor, but I think if I had added more of it would have made more difference and been very nice. Overall I'd say it's a win. :)

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8 obsessions I don't get

Today, I'm doing a quick, cynical, preachy rant about obsessions I don't understand. If one of these is your obsession, please feel free to explain it to me.

1. Vampires.

...especially abusive ones that sparkle, but also all these spin off TV shows.

2. Unicorns.

Planking is another obsession I don't get. But it's cute when
babies do it. :)

I like unicorns as much as the next girl, but why are they suddenly everywhere? Why is the world unicorn crazy? It's like living a Lisa Frank world. (Bonus points for 90's kids who know who Lisa Frank is.)

3. YOLO

Everyone since the dawn of time has known that they only live once. (Unless you believe in reincarnation, in which case this whole discussion must seem a little irrelevant.) Why do we need a cool new way to text that fact to each other? And why are we using as justification to shorten our already brief lives with stupid activities?

4. "Real" Housewives

First, in what ways are these women real? Second, why do we care so much about them? Third, why are there so many neighborhoods with shows about them? I'm holding out for real housewives of Loraine, TX.

5. Child pop stars/boybands

I was going to just say Taylor Swift and Justin Beiber, but then I remembered that there are now hoards of 10-year-old looking children who sing about things I didn't know about when I was 10. If you want to defend these kiddos, "I'ma let you finish," but personally I'd rather listen to grown ups.

6. Skanky men

This one really irritates me. Since when did women become creepers? Why are we watching stripper movies? Why are we fantasizing about fictional men in smutty books? We're drooling over musicians who change ball caps more often than lyrical phrases and actors with more muscles than facial expressions. There are real men out there, ladies. Nice, sweet, sexy men exist in real life. They have brains, ambitions, and passions just like we do. We've fought so long for men to recognize that we're people not just bodies. Why are we treating them as just bodies?

7. Trolling

I going to admit that I once trolled a person's status, and I didn't feel happy about it afterward. It was perfectly clear that I was kidding, and it wasn't about anything with any greater meaning. I still got a negative feeling from it. So what I'm getting at is, what is the draw? What is the benefit?

8. Pointless rants

This one I do get. It feels nice to rant a little. At the same time, I have no idea who is going to read this, or how it will do any good for anyone. But here it is, people. My very own pointless rant.

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Bringing Home Baby: Finishing up the Nursery

Many of you have asked to see the final photos of Charleigh's nursery. I'd love to say that it's done, and that everything is exactly how I want it. But, alas... it's not! :) I have few small projects I want to finish - that is between her cat naps, loving on Fred, attempting to keep our home clean, cooking dinner, and keeping up with laundry - so these are not the final, finished photos. And, they've been taken with my cell phone, so they are not of the best quality. And, I'm missing a wall (that has a few handmade gifts displayed on it!) However, it gives you an idea of how her room will look!

Nursery Wall 1

I'm not sure she's going to have enough hair bows, flowers, and/or headbands. 

Nursery Wall 2

There's another shot of the quilt I made for her room. The white blanket was crocheted by my mother years ago (and I mean YEARS ago!). I really like how the doily banner and butterfly garland turn out.  It's simple, and it really does look cute in here! Eventually, the framed flower prints will be replaced with framed newborn photos.

Nursery Wall 3

Her changing table/dresser. On the list of things to be finished is a runner for her dresser and to cover the lampshade (both in fabrics that match the quilt I made her). I also have a small pennant banner to hang across the mirror.

Oh the clothes! It is SO MUCH more fun to dress a girl! At this point I didn't remove the tags from any of her new clothes because we didn't know how big she was going to be. Fred never did wear newborn clothes - he went right into 0-3 month sized attire. Little did we know, that although she weighed in one ounce heavier, and a quarter of an inch shorter, she wears newborn sized items - for now.

Hopefully, in the next few days, I'll have a chance to finish up the last of the projects and take better photographs with my camera. :)

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Bringing Home Baby: She's Here!

It's true! She is here! We couldn't be happier and Fred couldn't be more excited! He loves to introduce our friends (and even more strangers!) to his "new, wittle, baby sister." It is so fun to see his excitement. We're still adjusting to being a family of 4, but we're also as happy as we can be!

(This is a mockup of Charleigh's baby announcement. The official ones will be ready for final formatting and will be sent off for printing sometime tomorrow.)

These gorgeous photos were taken by Creative Photography by Amanda

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Glitter Market!

Every year, a fun and inspiring event is hostessed in Oklahoma City by Cindy Winters of the fabulous Paper Crown fame called Glitter Market. If you're lucky, you might catch it twice a year, but most definitely at least once a year in the late fall.

This year's Glitter Market will be held on Saturday, October 27th, in the former Store It In Style location which is just seven doors down from Paper Crown. It is a one day event from 10am-5pm. (Be forewarned, there are eager ladies and shoppers in line at 7am!)

Last year, I really enjoyed being a vendor. I was surrounded by some of my most favorite creative people, and honored to be vending among them.

This year, due to several things but mostly due to our families newest arrival, I won't be vending. I had high hopes that I'd be able to pull it off, but alas it didn't happen.

However, just because I'm not vending doesn't mean I intend to miss out on the fun! I'm still planning to make the drive up to OKC because I've got it on good authority that some of my favorite people will be vending again this year. I have my fingers crossed that I'll be able to make it (that is, if Charleigh can handle the drive!), because it would hurt my heart (to use a Freddy description) to miss out on it entirely.

Some of this years vendors include:

Robin Thomas

Charlotte Perez

Jackie Peters (Oklahoma Cities Premier Paper Artist!!)

Holly Abston

Collette Copeland

Ann-Denise Anderson

Bobbie Saunders

If you have the weekend of the 27th free, I highly suggest you take a drive up to Oklahoma City and visit the gals at Glitter Market. My biggest suggestion is to spend all of your secret stash cash with the girls who are vending and then all of grocery budget over at Paper Crown. (At least, that's what I intend to do!)

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Dressing like a 20-something is weird

Today I went shopping with J at Kohls.

Most recent purchase: a not-so-grown-up t-shirt 2
months ago. Note all the culls I tried on on my right.

I love that store, but today was a weird experience

I walked through the Juniors department. I am in the habit of doing this, but I rarely find anything there. This is probably because I'm not a teenager anymore.

Then I meandered to the grown-up lady department, remembering that I'm a married college graduate. But I didn't find anything there either.

I found some things my mom would like. Don't misunderstand me, my mom is a great dresser and a classy lady, but she's my mom. I'm not ready to dress like my mom.

What do twenty-somethings wear?

I have friends my age who wear clothes, but we don't really talk about it anymore. Mostly because they're either engaged or pregnant, so we talk about that. (Or they're shopping for maternity clothes.)

Where do regular (read poor), non-pregnant, twenty-somethings shop in real life?

I've found an online store or two that I like, but I'm a hands-on shopper. I like to feel fabric, try on clothes, and carry stuff around.

Meanwhile, my wardrobe is a weird mix of university tee-shirts and dresses, bought for special occasions, that are way too formal to wear in real life, and a little in between that is quickly wearing out.

I have lots of coats and scarves, but what do I wear under them?

My shoe and jewelry collection is pretty descent, but a nice, married girl can't go out in shoes, accessories and a coat.

Alas, today with our birthday gift cards, (thanks, Memom!) J and I decided to buy sheets.

We needed sheets, and they're nice sheets. But the experience overall was a little frustrating.

I realize, of course, that I shouldn't be too concerned about clothes. As long as I can appropriately cover myself, I'm better off than many.

But shopping used to be fun.

Anyone have any advice to help me reclaim the joy of clothes shopping? Or a sympathetic whimper?

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Love notes for the modern couple

A little over a week ago I was at home alone, daydreaming about J.

This image isn't mine, but I like it. :) I got it here.

I do that a lot.

Is that weird? Probably, but I enjoy it, so don't tell me if it is.

I decided I wanted to do something sweet for him rather keeping all my positive thoughts to myself.

So I started another blog. It's free. It's easy. So, if you wanted, you could do this too. Just go to blogger.com, and follow the steps. (Or some other free blog site. There are several out there.)

I wrote what I was thinking, as eloquently as I could think to write it and sent him the link at work.

I now update that blog every few days or so. It's fun to have a running log of love letters. I don't put either of our whole names in them because I think it's more romantic that way. And he's the only real person, as far as I can tell, that views it. Not that it matters since I don't put anything specific, just flowery love stuff. ;)

Recently, I've been thinking of fun ways to tell him I've updated it. Tonight, I put a note on his dinner that just has the URL and hearts. (That way he doesn't have to ask if he forgot the address.)

If I were to do something like this again, I think I might introduce it that way. Just a note with the URL and nothing else. It's what I imagine would happen if Humphrey Bogart made romantic movies in 2012.

There are really endless possibilities on how you could use something like this.

For example, it could be a fun date invite. If you were to write a lot of love notes over a period of time, then put an invitation in the last one. Maybe just a time and address...ooh romantic.

You could also do a series of photos with signs instead of writing out text.

You could use it to track a long distance relationship. Each of you could log in as authors and post pictures, notes and vlogs to each other. Then years later you would have it to remember how your relationship survived that distance.

I especially think it could be great for newlyweds to record all those newly committed feelings, and how your love grows over the first months and years. Then later, you can return to it and remember why you fell in love in the first place.

You could even use it to propose, but I'm a little old fashioned when it comes to that.

Anyway, that's my fairly unoriginal 21st century update of the old school love letter. Let me know if you try it for yourself. :)

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Stress!

My life is stressful right now. Perhaps the most stressful it's been in a long time...maybe ever.

But even though it's really complicated and I have no idea what I'm doing, I can't help but think I've got it pretty good.

For example...

When I was super sick all last week, my husband bought me lotion tissues. I love lotion tissues. They're the best. He also cooked, cleaned and kissed my forehead regularly. I am one lucky woman.

When I was going to school Thursday, despite my illness, I was able to park J's truck on campus legally. Just a phone call is all it took, no additional payment, no getting bumped to a lot farther away. It was so easy.

When we are trying to figure out how to buy a new car without having very much money, we have dads who are super helpful. Mine is great with figuring out financing and budgeting, and Scott's has tons of experience and contacts in the auto industry.

...and I have a lazy cat. 

When it was super cold in our house this morning, I had fuzzy socks and hot chocolate on hand. Win!

When I wasn't sure how to balance all my school projects yesterday, my adviser had great practical advice for me.

When I feel like my life is stinky, I have a God that loves me and reminds me to count my blessings.

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