Bone to Pick

It's Friiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiday!

I'm excited and I feel relaxed and I'm reeeeeadyyyyyy to PARRRRRRRRRTYYYYYYYYYYYY yeah, with the best of friends. I'm gonna go down to the RIVER!

Okay that's not true. I'm not going to a river. I'm going to Houston to see my Houston lovebugs and I'm going to the Hess annual employee appreciation party at the Museum of Natural Science!

I mean, c'mon. It's FANCY, I'll be with lovely FRIENDS and there will be DINOSAUR BONES! It's going to be so wonderful.

This week has been a little nutso and I'm glad to see it come to an end. D and I have been talking to a couple realtors, taking some real steps toward buying a house and next week I plan to get my pre-approval done so we know what kind of budget we're looking at! Very exciting, very confusing, a little scary.

I also have a bone to pick and it's with the bowl of candy in the lobby of our office. It's GOOD candy. Like peanut butter cups and Twix and KitKats and Snickers and I can't walk by without grabbing THREE pieces of candy. Not one. Three. So I take an alternate route to the bathroom but sometimes I just can't resist. It's undoing everything I'm working for!

So I have a couple options for a plan.

1) Request the bowl get moved a few feet in to the receptionist's office and ask her to slap my hands if I try to get some candy.
2) Put the bowl of candy under a Beauty & the Beast style glass cover. I feel like an extra barrier would make me eat less of it.
3) Bells. On strings. Hanging from the ceiling around the bowl so everyone can hear when I go for more candy.
4) No more unlimited free candy in the lobby petition! We do NOT have that many guests. 99.9% of that candy is eaten by insiders. And we don't need it! It's not good for us! Down with refined sugar!

Option 4 would never ever work. The operators would petition to have ME moved under a glass cover in the receptionist's office, I'm thinking something similar to when Jasmine gets stuck in the hour glass in Aladdin. But no one would save me. And they'd all be eating their KitKats laughing while I suffocated.

Lots of Disney references today.

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(Different) Challenge Accepted!

Oh yea, duh. I forgot about that organizing challenge I undertook last month from Delightful Order! It was fun and it cracked the whip on me to get the paper sorted in our house. Which I really did.

All our manuals are in that binder  I made. And I've even added to it since. So... it's become a pretty useful little book.

I bought this cheap-o file box where I can keep all of our work paperwork, tax stuff, Kanye's vet papers, passport info, ect. 

We also have a solid mail sorting system, an accordion-style file folder for bills... and pretty much everything else is digital! So, boom. Done.

HOWEVER. February's challenge on Delightful Order is about getting your pictures organized. This is not something I have an issue with. I could count on my fingers how many printed photos I have in our home. So... pass, Delightful Order.

But one of my OTHER blogs is doing a monthly challenge and she's doing the kitchen in February. Which is absolutely something I can get on board with. So here's the original post from I Heart Organizing. My plan going forward is to just browse blogs until I find one telling me to do something I already wanted to do anyway and then say, "oh, challenge accepted!" but it won't really be a challenge. It'll just be me doing something productive with some formality.

My kitchen hit list looks like this:

• Find a canister for frequently used utensils so I'm not digging through cocktail shakers and turkey basters to find a spatula
• Get new drip pans for the stove that fit so our burners lay flat and thus our pans lay flat and thus our pancakes will no longer be oval.
• Hang the curtains I already bought
• Change out the hardware I already bought
• Make the under the sink area more user-friendly

I'm sure as I go along I'll find other things but that's what I can think of off the top of my head that I'm willing to commit to accomplishing. If I do more than this list, I win. It's already Feb 5th and this is a short month so... don't hold your breath.

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Weekend High-Lows

Thiiiiiis weekend. Leeeeeeet's see.

It was a busy one... so I'm going to go with High-Lows for each day. My family kinda did this when my sis and I were younger and just loooooooooved to hear ourselves talk. Instead of asking us how our day was and listening to every bathroom run and broken pencil lead story, our mom would ask us for the High-Low of the day. Our favorite part of our day and the crappiest part of our day. This may be a good way to recount weekends from now on.

Friday High - D and I tried the cool new bar in Midland and really liked it, despite the lackluster service and above average drink prices, because HALLELUJAH it's non-smoking! And has a pretty lovely atmosphere and the heaters on the patio are baller.

Friday Low - My workout was super lame. I was just tired and not feelin' it. My 'trainer' was leaned on my treadmill the whole time talking to someone else and for the first time I was like, uh, yea, I'm tired. Judge away. I quit.

Saturday High - Easy. It was definitely scoring KILLER deals on a solo shopping trip that afternoon. I just zoned out and shopped and it. was. glorious. Everything was on sale. Got a dress for the party I'm going to this weekend in Houston, new jeans and two purses at TJMaxx.

Wine-colored quilted leather DKNY <3 <3 <3

Poppin' tags!

Saturday Low - The instructor at the spin class I took with my sister and her bestie. I love spin and I've taken spin classes at probably 5 or 6 different gyms and this lady was literally telling me to do everything exactly opposite of how every other teacher has told me. She said "push with the balls of your feet" "breathe through your mouth." and the whole time I was like, this does not seem right. AND she was kind of snotty AND wearing a bedazzled tank top with the name of the class "RPM" on it. AND wouldn't start the class until everyone stopped talking and at the end, during cool down, said "I GUESS I'll let y'all talk now" and I was like, well, yea, otherwise I'll just leave. Because class is over, you power-hungry kindergarten teacher!!!

Battle of the Minds at Cracker Barrel Saturday night before dinner

Sunday High - TOO HARD TO PICK! D and I got up early and got all showered and dressed and ready  and went to Barnes & Nobles and got coffee and I got a Mind & Body Connection magazine and read an article out of Elle about Claire Danes while D looked at maps and then we went to Best Buy and Target and it was just a lovely date morning. But, I mean, does that really compare to Beyonce? Get real. Especially not when I got to watch it at the party Casey and Ashley threw while eating s'mores and drinking REALLY GOOD Francis Coppola Pinot Grigio.

I drove D home after he had just enough whiskey to make him jabber 

and he proceeded to keep me awake while he "trained" K to sit, roll over and play dead.

Sunday Low - Missing my Cydney-bear. She was in town for the weekend and we had hoped to find time to see each other but she wasn't feeling well. She's such a shining little light of happy so I really, really hope to catch her when she's back in town here in a couple weeks but if not, guess I'll just have to make my way up to Kansas City!

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Craving

A little sumthin' sumthin' I do to help me not go shopping crazy is keeping a wish list at all times. Ask any of my family, come birthday time, Christmas time, ValentinesEasterFlagDay time, if they ask me for a wish list, it's in their inbox within 2 minutes. Not everyone would agree with this... it seems greedy maybe? But it works. If I want to make a big purchase, it has to go on my wishlist for a while. When it's there, I can prioritize if I want it more or less than theho other things on my wishlist. Thus, fewer impulse purchases. 

Then, when I'm ready to make a big purchase, I buy the thing I most want. And I get so much satisfaction from it and zero buyer's remorse.

Currently on my wish list (not prioritized, just how it fit best on Polyvore):

1. Tory Burch 'Amanda' thong (teehee) for literally every outfit ever this spring (however they're sold out pretty much everywhere. Everyone's switching to the 'Miller' thong (teehee) now.

2. Tory Burch Reva flats with the leather little symbol thingy. That is absolutely crucial. Must be the leather symbol.

3. Louis Vuitton Delightful GM Handbag - in my wildest, drug-induced dreams

4. Oh gosh, how did that get in there?

5. Everything but Water Elan's Guaze pants - for when I'm a professional yoga instructor and stuff

6. A new undies wardrobe.

7. A king size bed (and all new Ralph Lauren solid white linens to go on it)

8. A house big enough for a king size bed! And a treadmill and a space for D to study and a walk-in closet. Preferably all at the same time.

9. Just some teensy tiny conflict-free diamond studs. Like 1/2 carat. Something I could wear all the time.

10. My Chandlers from Warby Parker.

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