The Nifty Foodie's Life

NaBloPoMo has had me brainstorming more post ideas and I thought that I could share some cell phone pictures that I’ve caught throughout the week.

For Halloween, Millie was a yellow submarine. I actually bought the costume last Halloween on clearance, and miraculously, it still fit her. Well, except for the length. Ah well. She was still adorable!

We had the fence on our house installed sometime last week. It was a huge goal of ours to find the next house with a great yard for our dog, and finally, she has room to run around and play! It’s so awesome to give her a yard to play in since the new place we moved to doesn’t have a dog park.

This is a picture of LSU’s campus, which I took on Saturday. The campus was so quiet…gotta love away game weekends.

This week, I ordered some new food coloring. My Wilton dyes were dried out and I’ve been really wanting some Americolor dyes, since I’ve heard such great things about them on blogs. I can’t wait to use them!

Does this photo even need a caption? And no, it’s not a cell phone picture, but it really needs to be shared. LOL!  GEAUX TIGERS!

It’s crazy how quickly the past few weeks have flown for us. We’ve moved almost everything from our fairly cramped 1300 square foot home to our new house with a lot more wiggle room.

After the closing date was set, I remember telling myself to do 2 boxes a day. Totally feasible, right? Well, the procrastinator in me didn’t really get into packing boxes until a couple of weeks prior to closing. Last minute, much?

It was so weird sorting through everything, filling up boxes for moving and boxes for the garage sale. There were so many things that I forgot I owned, so the garage sale stack is a pretty good size. Note to self…don’t buy crap. Seriously, stop buying crap.

I also found a few things that brought back memories.

Were any of y’all a girl scout back in the day?

Before we knew it, we closed on the house. The keys were in our hands and our cars were filled to the brim with boxes and cleaning items. It was time to make this house feel like a home.

We took a good week to clean, bring some of the packed items to the house, and paint the master bedroom. The next weekend, we hired movers to bring the bulk of our belongings to the new house.

I HIGHLY recommend hiring  movers. For the Baton Rouge people who read my blog, we used Two Men and a Truck. Again, HIGHLY recommend them.

Why did we hire movers? Well, the furniture we would have had to move on our own was just insane, not to mention padding it all, and making sure it stays in place on a truck. The peace of mind was well worth the $600 we spent. It made moving day much less stressful for us, and not to mention, much more efficient. Nothing got scratched or broken during the move and everything was unloaded in the new house in less than 5 hours!

Lately, we’re still unpacking our house a little at a time, because as crazy as it was to pack, unpacking is a different animal. Unpacking means finding a whole new place for everything. While we have much more space in the new house, it’s taking us a while to find just the right place for everything. Thankfully, we’re almost done with the house..just a few more boxes and bags to unpack!

I’m sure you’re wondering how Millie is doing with all of this. As you might know, our dog is pretty easy to scare or make nervous, sadly. Since we adopted her, we really don’t know what caused her to be so scared and nervous, but I will say that this was hard on her.

When I let her walk around the old, empty house, you could just see that she was very nervous and scared. She basically walked around the room, would sniff and softly whine. It was really sad to watch her act unfamiliar with the place that was once our home.

When I brought her to the new house, she whined anytime we put her in her crate. (We had to crate her at some points, because she will put everything in her mouth, and well, with tools and tiny screws all over the floor, it just wasn’t worth taking a chance.)

After about a week, though, she relaxed a good bit and got back to her favorite spot: lying on the floor next to the sofa.

 It has been quite an adjustment for us, but I love our new neighborhood. We’ve already met quite a few of our neighbors and Millie is already making new puppy friends. Stay tuned…I promise I will be posting more house pictures very soon!

I’ve been really vague in my tweets lately. I tweeted last week about how tired I’ve been, how anxious I’ve been and now, how happy I am. I also disclosed that I’m not pregnant, so we can throw that out the window as to what’s been going on.

Well….let’s go through the emotions, shall we?

I was tired, because we spent a couple of late evenings in an office. A realtor’s office.

I was anxious, because we put in an offer on a home. A home that had at least one other offer that we knew of.

And now, I’m HAPPY. HAPPY, because the owner accepted our offer! YAY!

Thursday is the big inspection, though, so fingers crossed for us. We’re very excited about having a real backyard (current house has a strip of grass), and a garage!

I remember my first bully. She lived a few doors down, and for some reason, just hated me the second I moved in the neighborhood. It created some really awkward moments in the neighborhood. Most afternoons, a bunch of neighborhood kids would come to my house to play basketball or wall-ball (does ANYONE remember wall-ball??), but sometimes this bully would tell some kids not to come to my house or else they won’t be “cool” anymore. This bully was considered a “cool” kid back in the day, so no one wanted to get on her bad side. Honestly, it really hurt that I was being isolated when I never did anything to her.

Well, it started to escalate in middle school. In middle school, they combined the bus stop to where it was at her house, and at some points, I’d watch from my house until the bus was in sight and I’d RUN to the stop to make sure I got on the bus. I just figured not being at the stop was the best thing I could do to avoid being hurt. Well, one year, I had a huge project to bring to school (yay science fair), so I had to take my time to get to the stop. When I got there, I dropped my backpack full of books on the sidewalk and sort of stared at the ground. Next thing you know, a neighborhood kid ran up to me, took my backpack and plopped it in the bully’s yard. I didn’t think it was a big deal  until I picked up my backpack. He put my backpack in a pile of dog surprises. The bully then told me that this would teach me that I don’t belong at HER bus stop. I’ll never forget how much the kids made fun of me on the bus ride to school. I can’t say I don’t blame them. I smelled like crap to them. The usual 5 minute ride from the bus stop to the school felt like an eternity, and the 20 minutes I spent in the bathroom cleaning and drying my backpack was a much larger pill to swallow. I ended up with a ::fun:: nickname after that day that didn’t really go away until high school.

I also remember another bully in high school. He hated how fat I was, so he made it a point to tell me how fat I was everytime he saw me. I was able to try to ignore this guy, because I had my friends in school to hang out with and they would cheer me up afterwards. However, after school during the usual rush to the bus, he screamed “Hey Fat (insert last name)…I got something for you!” So, stupid me. I walked towards him. He then decided that the “something” would be a huge wad of spit on my jacket. Well, actually it was my Dad’s jacket that I accidentally took that morning in a rush. I got spit on for no reason. So, I ended up sneaking the jacket in the washing machine before my Dad knew about it. My thoughts leaned towards worrying that my Dad would be mad that I got his jacket spit on. I don’t think I ever told my Dad about that day, but in hindsight, if I told my Dad, I know the jacket wouldn’t have been on his mind at all.

Bullying sucks. I know it first hand. I never was a popular kid in school. Sure, I had a few friends, but most of the popular girls and almost all boys weren’t very nice to me. I was a class A dork: frizzy hair, glasses, fat, band dork, smart. I guess I was a moving target for the bullies, and boy oh boy, did they strike!

It’s been about 10 years since I graduated from high school. Since I left the bullies. The bullies never followed me to college. I guess bullies didn’t belong in college, and I was thankful for that. I actually sort of forgot about the bullies until last week. Last week, one of those bullies tried to add me on Facebook.

Of course, a good chunk of those bad memories came back. The taunting…the jokes…the pranks. It’s amazing how much I remember, and how much I tear up just thinking about it. I’m just relieved that those bullies aren’t a part of my life anymore, and I’m surrounded by amazing people who really make me happy. Oh, and no…that bully is NOT my friend on Facebook. I guess I hold a grudge…

As much as bullying sucks though, I think I have to thank those bullies. Those bullies made me a nicer person. They made me realize just how much words and actions can really hurt. Now, I’m not perfect…I do get snarky, but overall, I’d like to think that I’m a nice person. Bullies also made me realize how amazing friendships and family are. Whenever a bully pushed me down (verbally, physically, however), my friends and family were there. I could hide in my group of friends and have a good cry over it. I know they would always be there for me when things got tough, and for that, I’m so thankful for them. I was never a depressed person, but I know that without my friends, I probably wouldn’t be who I am today or where I am today. So, my friends/family (you know who you are), thank you so much. Thanks for the hugs, the kleenex and the after-school bike rides to the Icee store.

Did you have bullies in school? Do you think you’re a different person because of them?

…however you name it, it’s another New Year. It’s also another new decade. Does that mean that my resolutions need to be 10x more awesome? I guess so!

Since I have my 101 in 1001 list almost done in May, I’m focusing my 2011 on those. As of 1/4/11, here’s my stats:

43 done
23 in progress
31.5 not done
3.5 can’t be done

So, I do have a good bit to go here, and the categories that need the most attention are:

Health/Fitness
Cooking/Baking

I mentioned yesterday that I’m redoing my priorities. Etsy isn’t my priority right now, so that got nixed. Obviously, I need to devote my energy mainly to my health. Cooking/baking will probably get done as well, but in my mind, I need to really ensure that I check some of those things off on the health/fitness category.

Stereotypical, I know. We ALL want to get healthier and better ourselves. I’ve made this a resolution for years, and the only time I got some success was pre-wedding. I showed myself that I can do it, so I need to just do it.

I rejoined Weight Watchers before Christmas. I’m hopeful that this will be my last time I’ll ever join again!  (I am the person who joins W/W for a month, then quits…then rejoins again.)

How many of you are on healthier resolution bandwagon this year? What are you doing to make it happen?