These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Here are a few things that I've been loving lately...

Pinterest - I have to admit, this is my latest addiction! Pinterest is where I find recipes, DIY projects and inspiration. It's also a great place to store ideas that I find on the internet and in blogs. Here are some recipes that I've found on Pinterest and made:

Lighter Chicken Enchiladas

Chicken Teriyaki

Lemonade Cake

Painting - Since Ryan's been in Grad School for almost 2 years, I've picked up some extra hobbies. Lately, I've tried acrylic painting and most recently, watercolor. I'm definitely not a professional, but it's been something fun to do while Ryan's in class. I'm still trying to figure it all out!

Acrylic Print

Acrylic Fruit

Watercolor Hummingbird (in progress)

Hillsong Chapel - Yahweh: This cd is constantly on repeat in my car. It is so good!

Summer - My favorite season of the year is here! Ryan and I have been spending lots of time at the beach and at the pool. We're also looking forward to our mission trip to Philadelphia in July and our two vacations coming up!

Blogging

To blog, or not to blog, that is the question...

Up in the Air

This past weekend, we took our high school students on a retreat to Camp Silver Beach. We had such a great time! One of the things we did while we were there was climb the giant 55 foot Alpine Tower.


Ryan went last and one of the guys from Silver Beach asked him if he was an experienced climber and if he wanted to climb the tower a different way than everybody else. Ryan of course, took the challenge!

The tower had 3 different sides with all kinds of different ways to climb. The tower supervisor challenged Ryan to climb up the ladder that was suspended from the tower by two ropes. He told Ryan to climb the ladder WITHOUT touching the ropes...while it was swinging in the air.


Ryan made it up the first 3 out of 4 rungs before giving up on the challenge and climbing to the top. I have no idea how he even made it that far. It looked pretty impossible to me! On his way down, the guy that challenged Ryan told me that he's never seen anyone actually make it to the top that way. My man almost did!

Jewels in the Crown

After college, I had a blog. I went back and found it and re-read some of my old posts. I would link to it, but some of the entries are really cheesy and a lot of the links are dead, so I won't. But, I did come across this post from 2007 and it cracked me up. This paints the perfect picture of my family...

Last night after Common Ground band practice, Dave and I met up with my family at Cardinal to finish up all the wedding invitations. We were sitting around laughing and talking and then I remembered that I left some stuff at church that I needed for this weekend. I knew my Dad was going to swing by the church in the morning, so I asked him if he would pick my stuff up for me. (This was after my sister and I had asked him to do several other things, I'm sure) He just sighed and said something to the effect of "what would you girls do without me?" I looked at him and said "Dad, one day, you're going to get your crown in heaven, and all the jewels will be because of the things you did for me and Amy." He laughed and then said "as soon as I get my crown, I'm going to lay it down at Jesus' feet." My family started to laugh and tease him because apparently, he heard that quote from Beth Moore. I said, "Shoot! I'm going to wear mine for a little while!" My family just burst out laughing. My Dad said, "are you going to take a picture of yourself in it and put it on MySpace?"

My family is nuts.

Pottery Barn Wannabe

I went through all my old blog posts recently and realized I never showed the finished project of our dresser makeover. Here is the before...

And here's the after!

Our landlords came down from Connecticut to check out the house yesterday and loved it! She said "Did you get that dresser from Pottery Barn?! It's beautiful!" I explained that we got it for $15 at a yard sale, but it's a Pottery Barn Wannabe!

She also said that our bedroom should be featured in a magazine...

I don't know about all that, but I definitely love it.

Here are my newest decorations. The glass containers were $5 from Marshall's, the sand was from our very own beach, the candles were on clearance at Michael's (which I found out why once I got them home...they didn't match) and the shells were from our vacation stop last summer in Venice Beach, Florida.

Come on summer!

Let's Try This Again...

Ok, so my sister is kicking my butt. She just had a baby two weeks ago and she has done 16 blog posts. I have no babies and I have done TWO blog posts in 2010. Shame.

As you can tell, the biggest news of 2010 so far is that Ryan and I are an aunt and uncle! Carter David Watson was born on March 31, 2010. He's pretty much the cutest baby ever.

Don't you agree?

Snow Days

We've been experiencing winter around here for the first time in years! I don't remember snow like this in Virginia Beach since I was a kid. I think the last time it snowed this hard, I was 7 years old!

We took Tyce to the walking tracks behind our house and he LOVED playing in the snow! He ran around like crazy. There was absolutely no one on the roads or no one outside. It was almost like we had the whole neighborhood to ourselves. You couldn't tell where the road was, the snow was that thick!

I made a snow angel on the ground and Tyce thought I was trying to play. He ran frantically around me having the time of his life.

Can you tell how much he loves to play with Ryan?

This is our street. It was one solid block of ice!

We had some fun with the new camera Mom and Dad got us for Christmas. As always, Tyce was our loyal (and cute!) subject!

Busy Bees

As you can tell by the lack of postings on this blog, we have been busy! I could write 50 posts on the things that have been going on to bring you up to speed, but honestly, the thought of doing that completely overwhelms me. We'll just pick back up and keep on moving.

2009 was such a great year for us. We're looking forward to 2010!

Friends are Friends Forever

My best friend Tiffany and I met in college and were roomates for 3 years. That's a lot of together time! When I graduated, I moved back to Virginia Beach and Tiffany moved to New Orleans to go to seminary. I got to see her a couple times before we both got married. But in the last two years, we've only seen each other for each other's weddings! Ryan and I got married 14 months ago...so that was the last time we saw each other!

Tiffany called and told me that her seminary asked her to be a representative at some conferences in Virginia for a couple of days. She said that she had some free time on Thursday. So, I jumped in the car on Thursday and drove to Richmond to see her!

I met her and her mom Shelby for dinner at Baker's Crust in Richmond. It was so good to see them and spend time with them! We didn't get to spend a lot of time together, but it was definitely worth the trip! I miss her already!

We were trying to re-enact this pose at Camp Little Crossroads. It's one of my favorite pictures ever...

Here are some Beth and Tiffany classics from over the years...

What was I doing with my hair?!?

Aaaandd...this picture pretty much sums up our friendship for some reason...

Love you Tiff! It was SO good to see you!

Happy (belated) Halloween!

I got a little crafty this month and made some cute fall/Halloween decorations!

The first project are mason jars mod podged with tissue paper. The faces are made out of construction paper and the tops are painted black. They look really cool all lit up!

The second project is a fake pumpkin. I used some spray glue to glue a doily to the top of the pumpkin. Then I painted over the doily with paint before peeling it off. It didn't come out that great...but from far away it looks really cool. I then traced an "A" onto the pumpkin and filled it in!

Can you tell that I have some free time now that Ryan's in school?