"Dennis Quaid is here!"

Okay ya'll.... some of you may have seen this before but if you haven't, you HAVE to watch it. Most of you know that I LOVE the Ellen Degeneres talkshow! I watch it when I can and youtube missed episodes. She never ceases to make me laugh. [side note: she is the sole reason that I am watching American Idol this season!] Anyway, about a year ago or so she had Dennis Quaid on her show. She had him go to Starbucks and do this prank. She sets up the scene in this clip so please just watch it! I laugh so hard everytime I see it. I had forgotten about it but she had him on her show again this past week and replayed this video so I thought I would share it with you. I hope you enjoy it. It's 3 minutes long but I think it is well worth it!!!

VOTE FOR BELLA!!!!

Bella has entered into the Bissell MVP pet photo contest. PLEASE click the button below to vote for her!!!!! The more people that vote, the better chances she has at winning. If we win she will be on the Bissell boxes!!!!!! How awesome would that be? We could also get a variety of prices like money donated to a pet charity of choice, Visa giftcards and more! Voting starts TODAY and goes until January 28. I am not sure if you can vote more than once.... maybe you can vote once a day! Feel free to get everyone you know to vote for her too! :)















Just in case that doesn't work, here is the direct link: http://mvp.bissell.com/mvp_PetDetail.aspx?id=8589956046

Kiddie Sleepover

This past weekend I got to babysit Camden, Ava and Claire during their sleepover!!! We had dinner and then decided to go ahead and get in their pajammas to have a pajamma party.

Camden arranged this picture. Look at him with the ladies!

Then they had a dance party!! It was so cute!!!!! I just sat in the chair and watched them dance!

And then we had a movie night with popcorn!!! We watched Pippi Longstocking, one of my very favorite childhood movies! These kids are so much fun and it was a great way for me to spend my Friday night! :-)

Birthday. Birthday, Birthdays.

In the past 2 weekends, I have celebrated 5 of my friends' birthdays. Woah! My friends Kathryn, Cara and Julie all have birthdays a week apart so we usually have an almost month long celebration. I love January! This year I also celebrated my friends Liz and Gardner's birthdays. It was easier because Liz and Gardner combined their birthday as did Cara and Julie! The celebrations came to an end this past weekend and it sure was fun! Here are my favorite pictures of all the celebrations!

Charlsie (my roommate) and I at Liz and Gardner's birthday. It was a combined party but a surprise party for just Liz..... Gardner was in the the surprise.

This is my friend Gina.... she moved back to VA at the end of last summer. Liz is her best friend and she came back for the surprise!

Liz was SO surprised!!



Then we celebrated Kathryn's birthday! We ate at the pit, went bowling and then went to sing karaoke!

Cara and her bowling ball baby!

Kathy and Carol.

And Kathy and Carol again. I love this picture of them!

Tay Tay and Kathy being loving friends.

The girls singing karaoke.... I sang 2 songs with them!




And then we celebrated Cara and Julie's birthday. We had a dinner party at my place for both of them with chocolate and cheese fondu. YUM.

Taylor and Cara: the lovebirds.

Cara and Julie blowing out their candles. Sadly this is the only picture I got of Julie all night! :-(

I am very proud of my happy birthday banner. I made it with all my leftover scraps of paper that I had used for my frames!

Here is a close up of Cara's name.

And then this is their "birthday cake." I made my mini cupcakes and homemade icing!

Virginia Taylor at 6 weeks

My friend Heather's little girl is almost 6 weeks old! I can't believe it. She is so sweet and SO cute. I have gotten to spend some time with her and it just goes by so fast. I just love her so much. She has started to smile a lot! The mommy and daddy are both doing well! I have lots of pictures but these two are my favorite!

The Great Wolf Lodge

WOW!!!!! Let me just say that if there is ever anyone out there who wants to buy me an expensive present, I WOULD LOVE TO GO TO THE GREAT WOLF LODGE. I am not joking nor am I trying to be funny. I sincerely want to go. Ever since they have been playing that catchy commercial 2 years ago, I have been obsessed with the idea of going. It is a bit on the expensive side but it is right up my alley. I love lodge/mountain type places and it has a huge indoor water park.... and I love water parks! Ahhhhhhhhhh. I just want to go. When Cara and I were driving home from Ikea when I was there, I saw it!!!! Anyway, its a bit of a small dream of mine to go. Yes, I dream big. HAHA.

NYE

For New Years, I went to Salisbury, NC! I missed my friends here but I also had so much fun visiting the town of several of my close friends. We went out to eat with a big group of people and then went back to our friend Devon's house where we ate some food and played games! We had champagne at midnight and then we had a dance party!! It was super fun. The next day I went with my friend Cara to a mall in Charlotte! I was so excited to go there and have only been once a long time ago so I don't really remember it. I went shopping and spent some Christmas money while Cara was getting her hair done. And then..... we went to Ikea. I mentioned this before. I guess it wasn't smart going after I had walked around a mall for 3 hours and because it was New Years Day. I would like to go back sometime because I felt like I had a negative experience.... it was just SO overwhelming and WAY too many people. Anyway, I hope everyone else had a great New Years too!!!!!

Christmas

Like always, I did not take many pictures at Christmas either. The only pictures I got are from our traditional poker game. I spent Christmas eve with my sister and then Christmas Day at my dad's with my grandparents. It was a fun time and I ended up staying over there for a couple of days.... with Bella too! They graciously let me bring her and she actually started to behave herself towards the end.

Barry (my oldest stepbrother), me, Sharon, Pops and my dad.

Natalie talking to Granny Jo about some Poker.

Popsicle and I. I started calling him Popsicle since his name is Pops. I have no idea why I have never thought of calling him this before, especially when I was little. I think it is cute.

My stepsister-in-law, Kristi and Sharon!

Natalie won the poker game and I got second place! Haha.... who would have thought?

Aunt Natalie and her neice

On Christmas eve, my sis and my pup had a little photo shoot:

I have about 10 more but these are my favOrite. I think they are cute!

StUcK in some mUcK.

I went to eat some Chili at my friend Taylor's house before Christmas. Well, it was RIGHT after we had all that rain for like a week straight. I pulled up to his house and the usual line of cars wasn't there so I pulled right up front. Well, there was no one parked there for a reason. The ground was a bunch of mud and sure enough, my car got stuck. And because I am not a very good driver and didn't know how to handle it, Cara and Taylor had to get my car out of the mess!

Cara turning the wheel.

Some of the damage I did to their yard..... oops! I feel really bad.

Notice Taylor pushing it! It turned out not to take too long.... maybe 10 minutes? But I definitely made a mess in their yard. And my tires had mud on them for days! My little car has never been in a situation like that before!

More frames!

Just wanted to show some more of the frames that I did. I think these turned out better than the first ones I took pictures of. The grass one is what I made for my dad since he loves golf... I thought it turned out cute! I have had several offers from people who were interested in buying them.... now that I am done with Christmas presents then if you are still interested then I would be happy to make some. I don't know how much I will charge yet. I think they are easy but they can end up taking a lot of time! I don't really think I will be making many more for people in my life because I gave so many out during Christmas. It's a fun little hobby though and I am very gracious for the compliments that I have received thus far!

My Christmas Party

I can't believe that it has been almost a month since my Christmas party!!!!!! Oh my goodness! I feel like this was just last week. Anyway I threw a classy Christmas party with my friend Cara and my roommate. It was so much fun and went by way too fast!

Cara and I. I am so thankful for her!

My cute sister.

My friends opening gifts. Haha.

Kathy and I in front of the tree! I like this picture!

And I hate this picture of me but I like the love that is being here... this is my longtime friend Adam. He is my buddy!


I had so much fun at my Christmas party! Despite the absence of a few people, I had almost all of my favorite people in one place. What could be better than that? I will tell you, we had a slumber party! I absolutely love slumber parties.... I have loved them my whole life! About 8 of my friends and my sister sleptover all in one room. After everyone else left, we stayed up telling jokes, tickling backs and eating junk food. I love it. We all got up early the next morning and went out to breakfast. I was so sad when it was all over. And I love that everyone was able to come to my place. I LOVE hosting and having people in my home. Sadly, I didn't get very many pictures because my camera messed up really bad. I had thought I lost all of my pictures on my memory card but thankfully it was just some button I had pushed. Anyway, I love my friends and I am thankful that we were able to have such a fun night!

Goodbye Christmas!

Phew.... it has been a while since I updated..... again. Sorry about that! Sometimes I love to blog and other times I hate it. I have a mini update on my life below the pictures but please stay tuned over the next few days for some scheduled updates that I have planned! Here are two picture of my pup in her Christmas sweater that I love:

This picture here she was actually sleeping but the flash woke her up. Aww.

Update: The month of December was extremely busy for me. Despite starting my Christmas shopping in August, I still found myself rushing around 2 days before Christmas. And I took up making the frames so that took up SO much of my free time. I would make about 4 frames in a round and that would probably take me 3 or 4 hours to finish just those! In total, I think I made 17 frames. Anyway, I didn't go anywhere for Christmas but I did visit my friends in Salisbury, NC for New Years! New Years day I went to IKEA for the very first time and I definitely think that was the wrong day to go! There were so many people there that it was hard to look at anything at all. I was completely overwhelmed and after about an hour of getting pushed, I was ready to get the heck out of there and run for the hills. So, I had a very bad first impression of the place and can't say that I am that anxious to go back. I spent a lot of the past 2 or 3 weeks being sick..... which was NO fun. There were 3 days straight where I did nothing but lay in my bed. I definitely caught up on my movie watching though!!! If you want any movie recommendations then I would say 500 Days of Summer, All About Steve and Inglorious Basterds! All About Steve is very cheesy but I laughed out loud so much.... and it includes Bradley Cooper!!!!!!!! Other than being sick, I had a pretty good Christmas and I hope everyone else did too! I was so sad to take down my Christmas tree yesterday but I am ready to get back into normal life.... and I am ready for it to turn back into summer. I would be excited for Spring but I have a bad feeling it will be a bad season for my allergies. Okay, I have probably bored you long enough. Most of you know that I usually don't type this much! Again, stay tuned for some more updates. :)