Tuesday Catch Up!

Good morning! It's a gorgeous Tuesday! I'm up and powering through my day, armed with a belly full of cornflakes and coffee! (That sounds gross....) I just realized that I haven't been updating on here lately. Not as much as my brain says I have. I'm always writing and scribbling down ideas, but life has been pure insanity.

So I thought I'd take a minute to catch you up on all the lovely things that have been happening lately.

Firstly. I chopped off all my long hair. And when I say "I," I mean literally, "I chopped off my hair." It was pretty fried after getting it over processed back last September. The ends were just snapping like twigs. So one morning a few weeks ago I get up and pull my hair down out of the bun that I had slept in. When I noticed an abnormal amount of hair sticking to my hair tie I ran my fingers through the ends. Aaaaand I pulled out an entire section of my hair. It was bad. So I jerked it up in a ponytail and started cutting away. 

This was what it looked like when I was done.  

After a week I knew I wanted it shaped up a bit more, so I called my mother-in-law and had her help me out. I've never had a bad haircut from her. Here was the finished product. I was worried about how damaged and dry my hair was, but she told me it really wasn't in terrible shape anymore now that the ends were gone. Since then I've gotten onto a serious hair care kick and my horses mane feels like silk now!

I LOVE IT! It's grown so much since then!

We love our date nights, and try to go every Friday night. This particular night, we ended up all matchy matchy accidentally.

I've been so into #cleankitchenatnight. This is a fun hashtag started by Allison from "The Life of a Homemaker." I just love her! She has the cutest kids ever! And I know she's been known to swing by here every now and again, so HI ALLISON!! There are tons of nights when I don't post, but this has always been a philosophy of mine. Y'all know about my 15 minute Pick Up before bed.  I posted this a week or so ago. There is just something about a perfectly clean home that centers me. If I'm jittery or all anxious (which has been a huge problem recently) I just get up and do a little cleaning, get everything back in it's place and I am good to go.

I have been LOVING my open shelving. I can't even tell you how much I enjoy this. A girlfriend told me it looked like something out of Southern Living magazine. And it's funny that she said that. My Mom and I were discussing our home decor styles the other day. She said, quote, "Your style is more Southern Living and mine is more Country Living." And she's hit it right on the head.

We FINALLY got a new TV (and a new sound bar that isn't pictured here). Here's the story with our TVs. The summer before we got married we bought this huge old console style TV, it was a 52 inch with the big speaker on the bottom.... Anyway, we loved it. Aaron moved it into his room at his Dad's house during our engagement and right before we got married and moved into this house together, we moved it. It lasted in our house a month. It got us through Christmas and New Years. I was off work one day, laying around and watching a movie, when it just suddenly shrieked this awful noise, turned red and shut off. So we got a new TV. A 42 inch (or 46, I'm not sure) from Wal-Mart, by Sanyo. Almost the exact same problem with it, right out of the box. So we figured it was just the wiring or something in this old house. Fast forward to now. 5 years. The picture on that Sanyo was going in and out too. And Aaron's brother has the TV below for sale. Aaron's Dad mentioned we were having trouble with ours and he sold it to us for way cheaper than we could have bought a new one. It's such a relief to watch TV and not have it scream at you every 15 minutes or so.

I gotta sunburn!  We spent the Sunday before last at my sister-in-law's house in her pool. I completely forgot about sunblock. I took this shot to send to my best friend in Alabama. I was miserable for the whole week.

I went "junkin'" with my Mom a few weeks ago. She and I both are having to run back and forth to doctors appointments right now (her for an esophageal spasm she had in January, trying to discover the cause, and me to the fertility doctor) and so whenever one of us has to go, we go together and make a day of it. This particular day she had a test scheduled for 7am and so we decided to take the rest of the day to hit up all the consignment stores in our town. We did good, we didn't spend a whole lot of money at all. One of my favorite things from that trip was THIS tray. It's a Coca-Cola tray that was made in the 1970's. It's a re-print of a 1940's tray, but the difference is that one was rectangle and this one was oval. I don't care, I love it, and I couldn't walk out of the store without her. She's such a beauty! We have this laying on our coffee table, and it holds our remote controls.... we have 7.

The worst news EVER was that my glasses broke! Y'all, I'm blind. I am so blind it's not even funny! This happened on a Wednesday night after we got home from church. I took my "face" off, and popped my contacts out and when I went to put my glasses on I saw that they'd broken. So I tried to fix them but after 4 and 1/2 hours of trying and crying, I admitted defeat and called Zenni. Turns out my 30 day warranty was up. So I had to order a whole new pair. Thank God they weren't expensive.

I love you all. Really, I must, because I'm sharing this with you.

To celebrate their arrival, I took this goofy shot and sent to my three favorite people, my Mom, Aaron and my best friend, Mandy. 

Boy oh boy was this a titanic moment for me! I'm currently tackling the epic novel by Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. It's over 1,000 pages. So I decided it may be easier for me to LISTEN to it, rather than read it. So I searched and searched and the only place I could find it was Audible. Turns out, I already had an audible account AND I had 6 free credits! Regular price for the audio of Atlas Shrugged is nearly $42. I snatched it for free. :)

#winning #whoisjohngalt #freebie #dagneyandhankforever  

But the thing that's been taking most of my time, is my writing!

I've decided I want to do a thorough, in depth comparison of all the Jane Eyre movies. It's a massive undertaking and I've only made it through one film and already it's 20 pages..... this will be more of an article than a post and should I decide to post it here, I will clearly title it if you aren't interested. HOWEVER, with that being said, Book to Film Comparison's are something I am interested in doing and I think you can expect the first one to pop up here soon!

I write at night, usually. And this is the reason why.

My novel is so detailed and so twisty and turny that I just have to shut life off for a while to work on it. These characters are in my head 24/7 (did anyone see that failbook post where the girl said 'he be on my mind 31/7 cause even when I sleep I dream of him' or something and her friends were like 'there are only 24 hours in a day, even when you sleep. She was stunned.) and it's either write about them or go crazy. So I've been doing a lot of planning and a lot of plot working and a lot of writing. I finished my intro and my first chapter within a couple of days so I was tickled! It's progress!

Thank you all so much for supporting me, I'm so so sorry I'm so far behind, but like I said, it's been wild around here. I love you guys! Check out Allison's channel (clink on her link!) for all kinds of goodness. She's the Norwex queen and has really inspirational Speed Cleaning videos to watch too! (Amongst many other things!) Try not to melt over the cuteness that is her little girl and her two little boys! I'll be back soon! Love y'all!