strippin the cotton

Kanyon called me last night to come get Zeb because he stretches out all over the tractor and sleeps..

So while I was out there I took some pictures!

Kanyon, his dad, and his uncle all team up and strip (aka harvest) their cotton all together during harvest. Then they hire one more person to round out the team. So they have two people on the cotton strippers and two on the bowl buggies.. I'll explain what these all do sometime but for now here are some quick pictures of what harvest looks like!

 Kanyon on the bowl buggie following the stripper.

(a field that is already stripped)

 A module builder (I'll also explain this later)

Cotton ready to be stripped!

And after I took these pictures of Zeb.. I realized they resemble the pictures everyone's been taking of their kids in pumpkins patches... I'm okay with that.

More interested in a bug.

Chewing on the bug.

"What, woman!?"

"One more second of this and then I'm.."

".. huh, what?"

Stats

Name: Zeb
Mom's nicknames for me: Zebular, Zebidee, Zebani
Breed: Australian Shepherd, mate.
Age: 4 months old
Weight: about 35 lbs
Daily activities: Waking up early (but I sleep outside so that's ok) and running along the fence with the next door neighbor dog, riding in the truck with my paw on dad's shoulder, sleeping on the tractor, running and sliding through the mud in between the rows of cotton, playing a little but mostly laying in mom's lap when I get home cause I'm pooped. Repeat daily.

It's a dog's life.

Foodie

I am a foodie. I admit it.

I am not a foodie in the usual sense of the word, really only half of the usual definition.

What is the definition? I've come to understand it as someone that loves food and all it entails. NOT a glutton, though. Its someone who loves to make food, loves to read food blogs, and always appreciates a new and interesting recipe. And even the usual recipes.

The other half of the word usually entails being good at making new recipes. This one is not me.. yet. My dream has not been fulfilled.

ANYWAY, I say all this to tell you about the food that I and my friends who have volunteered to help are making for my Willow House party tonight!

Except for a couple items, all of the recipes come from Tasty Kitchen, a recipe-sharing website that Pioneer Woman created that I go to on a daily basis and am constantly impressed by not only the creativity but the amazing photography!

Here is what I made/am making this afternoon:

• Pumpkin Whoopie Pies (I mentioned this yesterday)

• Sun Dried Tomato Spread (I'm using a mix I got at the Livestock Show but here is the same recipe) with Ciabatta bread and cheese and sliced avocado.

• Olives from the Market Street Olive Bar (I was going to make this with them but decided nah.. I'd made it before and didn't feel like going to the trouble but it is really good.)

• Kasha is making Bacon Wrapped Pineapple Bites for me!

• And Vaughn volunteered to make Fudge Revel Bars!

I'm not usually one to turn down help when one volunteers.. a warning to everyone :)

Recipes for Pumpkin Whoopie Pies, Bacon Wrapped Pineapple Bites, and Fudge Revel Bars can all be found on the Tasty Kitchen website (www.tastykitchen.com).

I'm definitely not eating dinner before this party tonight.. Is it wrong that I'm more excited about the food than the products the party is actually thrown for? Once again.. foodie.

Monday Musings

1. I just found out that scallions are not some weird form of onion that I can't find at my local grocery store (which is what I was told when I asked at United). They are just green onions. Which I regularly have and probably had at the time that I needed them for a recipe. This changes everything.

(I know my mom and Vaughn are probably laughing at me right now.. but its probably deserved.)


2. I made these Pumpkin Creme Pies last night for my Willow House party tomorrow and I am very excited about trying them!

 Image courtesy of Cake Duchess

(I didn't want to get in trouble)

And while you're at the Tasty Kitchen website (if you clicked on the Pumpkin Creme Pies link), go ahead and explore because you will never go back to any other cooking website.. its amazing. So many cooking blogs all condensed into one site.

3. Speaking of my Willow House party, if you don't know what that is.. it was the company formally known as Southern Living. I am hosting a party and would like to invite you to the virtual version! You can go to my consultant's website and look at the gorgeous new look of Southern Living. They have some good specials. When (or if) you check out, if you would select me as the host, I would much appreciate ya! But it won't be near as good as ordering while eating the aforementioned Pumpkin Creme Pies. (Yes, that's meant to be plural.)


4. Two embarrassing stories for you from my trip home from Abilene yesterday.. I should warn you that if anything concerning bowel movements talked about in a non-doctor's-visit setting disturbs you, you may want to skip to number 2. But if you appreciate the universal need for humans to go to the bathroom and love a good embarrassing story.. read on. I'm pretty much an open book on the matter.

Story #1 -  As I'm driving home yesterday, I start looking for gas stations where I can stop and take a bathroom break.. I've developed this annoying habit of not ever going to the bathroom when I'm away from home but as soon as I start the drive home, my body says "ok, its obviously a great time to go now that she's in the car and only has public restrooms at her disposal." So I exit And then like, what usually happens, as soon as I am close to stopping.. it becomes urgent. Like, really urgent. So I get out, walk into the Wendy's bathroom only to find an elderly woman with three little girls sitting on the counter while she is redoing (and not quickly) their hair while her friend is chatting up a story from the only stall and obviously in no hurry. I just call it a lost cause and leave. I drive a little too fast down the street to the next gas station. I walk in (what happens next is embarrassing story #2) and go to the bathrooms. They are one-person bathrooms, that's good. The woman's bathroom is occupied, thats bad. Its pretty darn urgent at this point so it only takes me about 30 seconds to jump that ship and bolt into the unoccupied men's restroom. (Again, its a one-person. No worries). About another 30 seconds pass by before I hear the handle jiggle. Great, I think, that's going to be awkward running into a man when I walk out. Handle jiggles again. Oh my gosh. I steel myself for the laughs as I walk out. A) Its going to be pretty obvious to the next person who walks in why it was so urgent for me to use the men's. and B) I'm still pretty dressed up in my church clothes which only adds to the ironic-ness of a nice-looking girl leaving a men's bathroom. I open the door and who should be standing there but a 20-something year old guy with some of his other 20-something year old friends. WHY could it not have been a middle-aged or even old man who was by himself and would be mature enough to brush it off??? I bolted out of there as quick as possible before they had a chance to freak out about a girl in a dress leaving a boy's bathroom where she obviously did not just go #1.

Story #2 - At the above mentioned gas station, when I walked in, I asked the man at the counter where the restrooms were. He turned around. He was a she. A very butch she, but a she. And she was not happy about being called a "sir". I walked out of a different exit.

I will never stop outside of Sweetwater again.

Finally.

This morning I've had a huge headache all morning and I thought it was sinus pressure. Then I realize I haven't had any coffee yet.. First sip.. Headache lessens. I have a problem.

We finally got our chandelier up!! And we LOVE how it changed the room. Before it was very ... school bus yellow. Now with the new curtains and the change of lighting, it's a different room.

Here it is with the light off so you can see what the chandelier looks like.






And here with the light on:












The yellow is so much more warm now with the way the light is now distributed.

And soon, we will have the new buffet on the side wall replacing that little bedside table! But we're very happy with how it is even right now.

Looks like I'm going to Abilene this weekend! I'm so excited!!

gigglebox

Look what I found on my phone today:

Our niece Addalie Kay from our trip to Round Rock a couple weeks ago :)  Doesn't she have a cute giggle?

Its the most.. busy time of the year!

Today is going to be a great day.

Mom is home and I get to finally have a two-sided conversation instead of texting her and realizing mid-way that she won't get it because she's out of the country. I have a phone date with her this afternoon to hear all about Haiti!

Kanyon (hopefully) and I are going to the Lubbock area Young Life Banquet/Round-Up/Friday Night Lights/Fundraiser.. Different areas call it different things. I think Lubbock does a Friday Night Lights theme. We're excited to get to see what the Lubbock area is all about. We'll see if we want to get involved somehow. Mostly I'm just excited to attend a Banquet and not be working it for the first time in 9 years. Seriously. No rounding up high-schoolers and telling them to be quiet while I peek through the crack in the door. That probably didn't make any sense to anyone not involved in Young Life, sorry.

This made my day.. My friend Jackie made her own version of the wreath I bought on Etsy a couple weeks ago and I like it even better than mine! Check it out.

And last but not least.. Harvest time is here!!

Thank you for all the plants and animals.

Lately, I have been getting back in the swing of finishing decorating the house. This has led to me shopping, buying, etc different things. Which in my case, usually trickles over into other categories like clothes and stuff. And the other day, I noticed myself thinking something that inevitably every girl thinks. "There is nothing in my closet that I like." I went about brooding about this for a couple days before God smacked me in the head and said.. really?... God has blessed us RIDICULOUSLY with an awesome house, great jobs, great families.. there's really no end to the list. And I'm moping around about my closet. Sheesh.

So I cleaned it out. I took out anything that I have not worn in a long while and anything that doesn't fit me well or whatever and packed it up and let my mom and my sister in laws go through them. There were several that hurt me to give away BUT I didn't wear them anymore and they looked better on them. I clean out my closet often but this was different. It felt like I was "cleansing" myself from some of my ridiculous attachments to material things. I am resigning myself to love what is in my closet right now. I'm nowhere near where I could be but my new prayer right now is that I would stop allowing Satan a foothold there and I would only see the incredible blessings and be content with everything we have been given. Because there is absolutely no reason for my whining. Why does He put up with us?..

Chris, the pastor at the church I work at, said something very interesting. He said God pointed something out to him the other night as his family was sitting down for dinner. His kids said the blessing for the meal. You know how it goes.. "Thank you for the kitty, thank you for the flowers, thank you for mommy and daddy.." Chris said it hit him then the difference between his kid's prayers and his. When is it that we switch from prayers full of gratitude to prayers of only requests? Of course, God wants us to present our requests to him. He wants to hear our hearts and our worries. But Jesus' prayer that we all know begins with praise. "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven." Not just gratitude for what He had given Jesus, but praise for the God and the Father that he is.

Thanks for listening (reading) to my working that all out in my head.

Thank you, God, for this face:

small changes

Well, we've been able to make a few small and big changes here and there around the house lately. The biggest of which (or at least what I think will be the most dramatic) will be the chandelier and that won't be until later this week at least.

But I did make a few changes to our front porch and its coming along quite nicely, if I do say so myself!

I didn't have a huge choice of different sized pumpkins at the stand I went to the other day so mine look like twins but maybe I'll get some contrasting ones later..

I also put up our cute new wreath and replaced the dingy old concrete planters with some cuter ones. Unfortunately because of the lighting, though, you can't even see the one on the right and I was getting attacked by mosquitos so I took the picture and ran inside..

Isn't it cute?! Kanyon wasn't as thrilled as I was, but then again it'd be weird if he was. I like him better that way..

Also, an update on our plants and such.. They are looking way more promising than they were for a while. The bushes in front are so close to covering up that strange orange paint!

And the front path has had some hard times coming along.. As you can see, we had to finally take out one of the green bushes because it was dead as a doornail and we had to finally admit to ourselves that we couldn't bring it back. Another sting is that I have no idea what its called and have looked for it more than once at Lowe's and Home Depot to replace it and can't find it.. So we stuck one of our yard crosses in its place for now. Which you can't see because of the shade that well. 

Also, our purple fountain grass on the left has taken quite a beating because we don't have rain gutters so it is all dumped on the plant. Its looking quite droopy but its still my favorite!

Can't wait to finally rip up that cinder-block porch and build a new one but that won't be for a while! Until then, I like the new additions.

Round Rock

Guess what was in my office when I walked in this morning? My new chandelier! Pictures will be coming when we get that up.. Probably this weekend.

We had a great weekend in Round Rock visiting Kanyon's family. Lots of babies and lots of birthday cake. :)

Zeb came along with us and I'm pretty sure he loved having Kanyon and I's attention for six hours straight there and back. Look how old he looks!

I didn't take many pictures during the weekend because when you're in this family, your hands are always busy with one of the 7 grandchildren. But I did catch Emry wrestling with Kanyon while Addalie watched.

Emry knows how to hold her own as the baby of four children :) But Addalie better get used to wrestling because she's gonna have a brother in 3 months! Cole and I wrestled all the time until I broke his arm. Because I launched him across the room. We weren't allowed to do it any more after that.

They threw a combined birthday party on Friday for Keirah, Emry, and Leif. Keirah turned 6, Leif is turning 4 pretty soon, and Emry turned 2. Kyla made some amazing cakes for them and we heard the party was a lot of fun. We didn't make it for it because it was at 4:00 on Friday and by the time I got off work at noon, we couldn't get there till at least 6:00. But Kalith and Vaughn had been there for a few days and came back home on Saturday, bringing Sena and Kyla and their girls with them. So Saturday afternoon on, we had Jada and Nick and the kids to ourselves! (If you're confused about who these people are, see the About Us page for an explanation of family.. there's 18 of us now just in Kanyon's immediate family.)

Jada and I stole away for an hour and a half and went to Ikea since I've never been. AMAZING. That's all I have to say about that.

Vaughn and Kalith got Leif all cowboy'd up for his birthday! Real stuff from Cavenders, not just dress up stuff. He already had a hat from Kanyon from our wedding but he got a shirt, a belt, jeans, and nice boots!

Kanyon was teaching him the Cowboy Code all weekend. Like "always wipe off your jeans before you come inside." And then Leif would run around and tell everyone what he just learned. So cute!

Side note - Mom left for her annual (except for last year because of all the mess) mission trip to Haiti on Friday. She texted me to let me know she's there but we're out of contact all week! She goes with a doctor she met a few years ago who needed a surgical nurse to help her perform surgeries in a village in Haiti. My mom has been hooked since. I'll give more details in a later post but please be praying for her this week!

Hope yall had a great weekend!

Sand, Cars, and Being Sentimental

Last Sunday, Kanyon and I gritted our teeth and pushed through finishing sanding and painting the looong hallway that runs almost the width of our house. It was bad. Very bad. Bad enough that I chose to not take a "before" picture and document its bad-ness. Or maybe I just forgot.

The original walls were wood paneling and someone in the history of the house had painted them white. I'm thinking a long time ago because the dings and scratches and rub-offs on that wall was horrendous. Kanyon made me sand it - I mean - we decided to sand the walls down before we painted it because they had this weird layers of .. specks.. all over it. I can't explain it. I'm just telling you what I saw. I tried my hand at sanding it down and thought I did a pretty good job.. Zeb helped.

By the time I got to start painting though, I had only an hour before I needed to start getting ready for something and leave so I painted about 1/4 of the hallway and left it for a while.

Well Kanyon .. how do I say this.. is a ...... downright perfectionist. Me? Not so much. Mine and Zeb's sanding did not measure up and he ended up doing the hall (where I hadn't painted yet, thank goodness) again. At that point, I felt like it would be less of a task to rope him in to help me finish painting and I succeeded! Zeb did not help this time. He did this:

Sorry, I didn't take an "after" shot either. Its just a hallway painted cream. Zeb was a much cuter subject.

That afternoon, Kanyon and I and Mama and Papa Brown headed to Lamesa to attend (and participate in) the First Baptist Church Car Show and Derby Races! Papa Brown takes old antique cars and guts them and makes them gorgeous. I LOVE his cars. Kanyon and I drove away from our wedding in the blue Ford truck we took to the Car Show.

Mama and Papa Brown got the Model A (please correct me if I'm wrong, Mama B!) and they let Kanyon and I drive the blue truck! Obviously that truck means something different to us than the others. I got sentimental for a few minutes when we first got in but then I snapped out of it. Who am I? My friends and husband have made me into a sap.

Papa Brown's Model A:

I'm pretty sure Papa Brown does even the paint job on all his cars too. Unbelievable. And he put up new wooden ... uh oh. I don't know the word.. Wooden runners? They run along the top of the bed. Papa Brown said its so he can tie his sheep to them now- haha.

His truck won Best Truck! .......... I won't mention that his was the only truck there. But it still would have won!

Lauribeth's Wedding

Last Saturday night was Lauribeth House's wedding, an old friend of our's. It was gorgeous. It was held in her parent's backyard and we had plenty of room back there. I wish I had gotten more pictures but I only had my iPhone and it doesn't have a flash on it. (At least I think it doesn't.. I've only had it for a week..)

Of course, I charged my camera and had it ready to go but I left my memory card at work. Typical. I'm either forgetting my memory card or my battery. I hardly ever get anywhere with both.

So as soon as it got dark, I couldn't take any more pictures. What I did get was a picture of where the ceremony was held!

I'm one of those people who never come back with a lot of pictures from a wedding because I always feel awkward about taking them during the ceremony.. I'd hate to be the girl who put a big fat flash in the groom's eyes while he's saying his vows. And then I'm always secretly annoyed at the girl (or guy) who's walking around the reception and is NOT the official photographer, taking pictures of everyone with her huge artsy camera. Or worse, taking artsy pictures of the decorations. Please. Just stop. You're confusing everyone about who is the official photographer and probably getting in thier way.

And yet.. I was extremely thankful of all of the people who took pictures of the ceremony at my own wedding and posted them immediately on Facebook since my photographer didn't show me her's for a week. What does that say about me?....... Don't answer that.

Lauribeth's dad built this amazing solid wood trellis to go over a concrete slab in their backyard for a dance floor and they served Rosa's tacos off the porch of the back house. Vaughn and I were saying how awesome it is that Joni (Lauribeth's mom) gets to keep all of the sweet decorations they bought for the wedding!

Kaitlin was an honorary bridesmaid for Lauribeth so I got to run around with her all night!

Kanyon and I sincerely did not mean to coordinate so well.. I was planning on wearing something else but by the time we realized that we matched to the T.. it was too late because we were already running 5 minutes late because of me. As usual. Late and with no memory stick for my camera. But I promise I am a dependable person.

Isn't he handsome? :)

Sorry, it was an involuntary gushing.

curtaaaains

I'm sorry that I didn't get to post earlier, but our internet was down at work yesterday and we got it back up last night and then I was working all day today.. at work. Imagine that.

I have lots of pictures and stuff to blog about and first up to bat is my new curtains!

We  are so happy to finally have them up. We procrastinated a while and then ran into some snags hanging them but they are finally up. And I love how they make the room already look smaller... and less yellow..

I also ordered a chandelier today to hang above our table so that will be up soon and will change the whole look. I think.

There are a few more changes coming to this kitchen and I can't wait to get them done! Kanyon and I got back into the "home-making" mode and we're beginning to get stuff checked off our list again.

We also painted our loooong hallway this weekend, which was a big task considering we had a football game on Friday night, a wedding in Lubbock on Saturday night, and an event at the church I work at on Sunday night. Actually.. how the heck did we do all that this weekend and paint?

Kanyon also worked under the house to wire the satelite TV service to our office, too, so I can watch TV while I run on the treadmill! So excited about that. Because I was getting tired of watching Step Up and Center Stage over and over again while running.

I'll be blogging about our weekend through out this week but its 5:00 and I'm going home!