Storms and Good Food

On my way to the chiropractor yesterday I drove into this lovely thunderstorm that was hitting dallas.  I love the dallas skyline, can't wait to move there at the end of the year. I already work and go to school there, its time to live in it. I'm tired of commuting from Arlington every day.  Once I got out, which was about 30 minuets later on my back to dallas, the skys were clear. I was on a different side of the metroplex but still, I thought it was going to be an all day storm type of thing, guess not. 

  I went to have chinese for lunch and ended up dropping a mushroom onto my shirt and pants. I wanted to take a picture of outfit too, phewy. I went to pick up my best friend, Kendall, so she could be my model for my photography class. After we  got done, on the way back to her place we stopped at the cutest little italian place. It was BYOB so we found a liquor store and got us big lime-a-ritas to have with our dinner. I got the spinach manicotti, which was delicious!! It was so good I ate everything on my plate, as you see below. The cans we got I couldn't drink all of it, but it was still good.

Oh, we also found out that they have free beer from 6pm till 10 (I think). The food was fantastic and there is free beer, even better! The people are super friendly too. We had a mini girls night, and it was fantastic. After I edit the photos I shall post them. We had lots of fun.

Wishing Everyone a Good Memorial Day

I am a day late in posting but that's alright. I ended up working yesterday and didn't have time to do a post before that since I had to write a paper. It seems kind of dumb to say happy with memorial day, its a day of memory and thankfulness to our people in the military. I want to thank every single person who is either currently active duty, reserve or veteran. Thank you so much for doing everything you do, even if you didn't get deployed you still serve our country. I would also like to thank all the family members that support their service member.

Chris, my husband, just recently completed his contract with the Marine Corps so we are still getting use to the civilian life. He did 2 tours in Afghanistan, so I know full and well what goes on state side with a loved one being gone for over half a year. This last time he did get injured, he took shrapnel and hit 5 different IEDs. On his third IED however, he got a concussion and got a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). He still has yet to be treated for it. I will go into that some other day but for right now I will leave it at that. I know that no one can physically see his injury but it is there. I am just so thankful that he made it back to me twice! He has sacrificed so much for our country, for me and definitely the rest of his family. I don't know how it feels to have a brother or a son to be deployed. But I do know how hard it is to have the person I love the most to be in danger every day and not be able to talk to him for days and even weeks. It is very hard, and not many people can go through deployments and make it through them and support their loved one the whole time. I am a proud marine wife and will always be.

Semper Fi

Photo Fridays: Jasper & Toby

Today's picture is of my mom's dog, Jasper and my first dog, Toby. I love using window light, I work with natural more than any other light. Mainly because I don't have any lighting to work with other than natural yet, but that is perfectly okay, I will learn soon enough. 
Jasper was playing a lot with that ball of paper, I finally got him to drop it and look at me and created this picture. :)


Do you have pets you like to photograph? 
I find myself taking more pictures of pets then anything else.

School Work Logos

I always say that I am busy but its hard to understand how busy I am if you don't see what I have been       up to.  Here are some of my logos from the previous quarter that I created at school.

I'd have to say the Catfish Sam's logo was a little more difficult than the rest of them. It was an interesting project. My professor wanted me to make it look very rugged and not very attractive looking, which I tried to do mind you, but it just wouldn't work. I'd do it the way that he wanted and then he wouldn't like it (probably went through that a good 6 times). Thats when I finally just completely changed it to where the whole body was visibile and then manipulated the typeface. It was a fun process to say the least. :)

P.s. For some odd reason the first two sentences won't align to the left, its even in the html to do it and no matter what I do it won't stop being centered.  -_-

Full Day In Pictures

Tuesdays are my full days this quarter. I have school from 8am 'till 5pm, and then when I get home I normally cook and do something else productive, other than school work. My brain is normally exhausted from being in school all day so I'll do other things once I get home.


Morning 
  I woke up later than planned (which has been happening a lot lately) and took Busa outside to go potty. There is this ugly, creepy bug that has been outside our apartment for the last couple days and only moves a little bit every so often. (Picture 1) Busa took his time to do his business, he even stopped to look at me and see what I was doing, haha. (Picture 2) Took Chris to work (I will explain why he isn't driving his bike in another post), got stuck in traffic and got to school a little late but thats okay. Me taking notes, writing in my planner and coming up with reasons as to why I need to replace my current DSLR camera. (Picture 3)

Afternoon
  After my second class I headed home and pick up my hubby, and on my way to his work I saw this BBQ place called "OH MY BBQ" it caught my attention and made me giggle a little and I had to take a picture to share. (Picture 4) Lastly I picked up my wonderful hubby from work. He doesn't like his picture being taken so I took one when he wasn't looking. ;) (Picture 5)
  The picture on the right is me wearing one of my home made lanyard. (Picture 6) This was the first completely done lanyard that I plan on selling in my Etsy shop. There is still some kinks to work on but it is a start. Rome wasn't built in a day so I can't expect to have these be perfect the first day that I get them up and running. 


Is there anything that you have been working on lately? Any cool little dives that you have seen or visited? Do you have a day that is fuller than the rest of the week? 

In the Kitchen : Every Piece of a Whole Chicken

A couple mondays ago I had a whole chicken to cook. Normally I season it the night before I cook it and then slow cook it the next day in the oven. I didn't do that this time since Chris has been getting tired of me roasting chickens (even though its so tasty!!) This time I cut up the chicken and oven fried it (I think that's the right phrase). I love cooking a whole chicken due to the fact that I save so much money. When I roast it I use what wasn't eaten and use it in other dishes. (I've done stir fry many times with this method.) Then with the bones I just boil them and make chicken broth and it normally tastes better than the store bought stuff too. :) A whole chicken for me costs around $6-$7. So by the time it is done I've used it about 3 or 4 different ways and it costs less than buying the pre cut stuff. Granted that is more time cutting it up but its worth it to me to just do it myself.

While the chicken was cooking I took what was left of the caracas and boiled it in some water with some veggies to make some homemade chicken broth. :) The chicken broth is now in the freezer for when ever a recipe calls for it I can just pull it out and use it. 

I also prepared bread while both of those were cooking, but I don't have any pictures of them finished. 

They came out perfectly chrispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I am sad to report that they tasted gross. :( I'm not sure what happened, it might have to do with my fridge and or oven. When my mom and I cook it at her house it tastes really good, but I haven't had a loaf that turned out good at my apartment. 

*Edit: Forgot the y in every in the title

The Dainty Squid: ONA giveaway

The Dainty Squid is giving away a wonderful bag from ONA. Visit her blog and definitely enter before May 27th. 

  I had to share this because, mainly due to the fact that I have been in the market for a new good looking camera bag for who knows how long. My nikon camera bag has the nikon on the front and I don't like taking it out because then people know what I am carrying around. It also doesn't have enough sections for my lenses.

 If you aren't a reader of her blog, you should definitely become one. I love her blog, and her hair. :)

*pictures from http://daintysquid.blogspot.com/2012/05/giveaway-ona.html

Wake Boarding Attempt 1

Sunday Chris, myself, our roomie, Brett, and Travis went to the lake to go wake boarding. Even though it was probably going to turn into me just taking pictures and them doing the wake boarding like normal. I want to try it since it looks like tons of fun, but my roomie doesn't have smaller boots, so I have to wait.
  While we were waiting for Brett to pick us up at the dock with the boat. Chris saw him jump out of the boat and into the water. (uh oh!) Apparently he had forgotten to put the drain plug in the boat so it was starting to fill up with water. Luckily Brett knows their boat well enough to know where it is and put it back in, even in the water. When we got in the boat there was a little water in it but it was no big deal. Something ended up being wrong with the boat and we wouldn't be able to get it up to the speed we needed to so we just loaded back up and just headed to my parents house to get ready for mother's day dinner at Chris' parents house. We actually got back home at a decent time so it wasn't too bad. At least we got some sun :)!

Case of the Mondays

Yesterday just about everyone I ran into, except Chris, was having issues. At school we couldn't use the T drive, which has all the professor's folders on it. The computers were glitchy and my poor little 500 gig hard drive is dieing.. :( Oh and when I visited my mom at work they were having computer issues too. So I blamed it on being a case of the Mondays :)/ Besides all that it was still a good day, just stuff decided to not work.
I was going to do a blog post about it yesterday, but when I got home I didn't even want to cook. I'm just plain old tired. I did get a lanyard done for my shop though! :) Finally got one that looks good and is done properly. Once I do my product shots I will definitely share them! :) Another reason yesterday's post didn't happen is because of my hard drive. I can't save or edit any file on it what so ever so I am now in the process of attempting to get everything onto my smaller 350 gig hard drive that I got when I started school. Which I had to reformat it since I don't use Windows at all anymore. I just need to have a back up just incase my main one goes out. With it having me not able to save things to it is causing homework issues, blog issues, freelance issues, just issues all around. I'll be getting me another one, 500 gigs to 1 tera byte to keep at home as a home base and thats where everything is type of thing.
  While transferring information it stopped working.. :( it unplugs itself randomly. I thought it was the cord, but I changed cords 3 times already. It's just time to get another one.

Planner making

I already made myself (digitally), my mom and a friend a planner while I was not able to get out of the house the past couple weeks. It looks a lot like one that I found on the internet but instead of buying it I made myself one. The picture above is me in the process of folding and getting ready to poke holes into it to make it into a hardback. I decided that I am going to just do a monthly booklet rather than the whole year. I am currently working on one that I can sell and will post it once I finish it and have it available for purchase. :) Its coming along very well, and faster than the previously one I made.
Short post today, but it's something! :D

New Look for Blog

As you can see if you are at my blog (and not a reader) my blog has been upgraded! :) Which makes me so happy! To be honest, I didn't like the feathers but it was just something and it was something I actually did in illustrator, but I just didn't like the way it looked on here. 

The reason I actually got to get this done is because this morning my Social Psychology professor was really sick and we got out of class super duper early. I was going to go home, but it was a waste of gas and time so I figured I would just stay at school until my afternoon class. Since I am here from 8am to 5pm I really didn't want to use my spare time to do homework.. that sounds horrible haha. All seriousness I'm spending all day learning, I need to have some creative time. I am very happy to say that 3 hours was well worth it. Worked from the ground up, and a brand new idea that I didn't think of earlier. 

I'm just so excited :)

I Love Garage Sales, without the dizzies

Around the middle of May, my mom and I had a garage sale. I would have posted this sooner, but earlier that week and the two weeks following them I had really bad vertigo spells. It was weird because I had vertigo a good month almost 2 months before and it went away and then while I was at work 3 weeks ago (almost 4 now :( ) I couldn't balance myself and was all sorts of dizzy. I waited to see if it would go away, since the doctor last time said that it just takes time for it to go away especially if its not the inner ear that is giving problems. Last time they gave me steroids and an antibiotic and pretty much said to sleep it off till it went away, which after a couple of weeks it did. But this time, no such luck. My mom went to our chiropractor and told him about my vertigo issues and he told her that he actually treats that! I thought it was perfect! I went in last week and we did some x-rays and he felt my neck and skull to see if there were any abnormalities. Of course there were, apparently my neck was swollen. I didn't notice the fact that it was swollen mainly due to the fact it didn't feel swollen, it felt normal.
  Today we looked over my xrays and turns out that my neck is flat (as in straight) when a healthy neck has a natural curve, not only is it straight but it is also crooked so it leans a little to one side which then brings us to my skull where that is off balance too, as well as my jaw. Now I will be going to therapy weekly so I can hopefully get back to normal. I've been to my doc 3 times in the past 6 days, and it has been working! I feel so much better, I only had one dizzy spell today and that was while I was at school. It feels so good to feel better. Granted, I'm not completely fixed but it is just really nice to be able to function and think clearly.
  Back to the garage sale..When we moved all our stuff from California back to Texas we had a lot of stuff we needed to get rid of. I felt like we only needed like 1/3rd of what we brought back. The rest was either trashed (because it was broken or not sellable) or put in boxes to put in the garage sale. I'm happy to report that lots of the stuff is gone and did pretty well on it money wise. It was hard for me to stay outside the whole time or move a whole lot due to my vertigo, but I have the best mom in the world and she helped with it especially when I was unable to.  Some of the stuff that was from when I was little and just collected dust. Like my dolphins and whales that I used to bathe with. :) Definitely brought back memories.

  I got really sunburnt, and oddly for that matter. The top of my right arm was crispy, of course the top of my breasts were burnt, the top of my feet where my toms don't cover and my knee caps. My knee caps! Of all the places to get burned its just my knee caps, haha. Talk about awkward. They started peeling the other day and it was weird just to have my knee caps peel.
  Here's a cute picture of my puppies cuddling together after the garage sale :). I love my Busa and my Toby.