Happiness is..

1. Our Love Cottage. We've been in this little house, our "starter home", for nearly ten years now. It's not where I expected to live for so long and I do sometimes yearn for more. But, over all of these years I have fallen in love with this house over and over again. It is ours and it is home.

 

2. Freshly painted toenails. Seeing my toes with a pretty shiny new coat of color makes me very happy.

 

3. Coffee. Period.

 

4. Cute shoes. This sort of goes hand and hand with my cute toes. Cute sandals showing off my cute painted toes makes me happy. It's the simple things, people.

 

5. SLEEPING IN.

 

6. Jeremy. He is the starfish to my sponge. The thunder to my lightening. The buzz to my bomb.

 

7. A good romance novel. There is just nothing like a good story that makes me sad...and mad..and makes my heart ache and my gut drop..and makes me laugh and smile and have hope. I <3 4-ever.="" endings="" happy="" p="">

 

8. My faith. For someone that doesn't go to church, I have a whole lot of it..faith, that is. I'm always learning and growing in my faith. It brings me a lot of comfort and renews me all the time.

 

9. Pictures of animals. Mine or otherwise. My fur babies bring me so much joy. They are the soul in this house. But I really enjoy animals, in general. Being around them makes me happy.

 

10. My family. They are the foundation of everything I am.

To All The Momma's

Happy Mother's Day

 

 

Inspired by Chubby McGee..this cup-o-joe is for you.

For my Friends that are Struggling

Sometimes its ok to fight your way through the storm, walk into the wind, scream through the darkness.

 

But that takes a lot of energy and strength.

 

And when weathering a storm we don't always have the energy to keep fighting.

 

That's ok. I want you to know that.

 

Sometimes it's also ok to just hunker down and protect your light until the storm passes.

 



Children? {Box Unchecked}

About a month or so ago, I had the opportunity to meet our new neighbor over the backyard fence. If you've been around for a while, you'll remember what a nightmare it was living next to the last tenants. They finally got evicted moved out and after pretty extensive overhaul of the house {it was necessary after they trashed the place} new renters moved in.

Her name is Dreama. Yes, Dreama. And she and her husband have been married for over twenty years. They moved here for his job which is in the oil industry (anyone coming here is coming for the oil). She seems very nice. She mentioned they have two grown kids in college and she asked if we have kids. An understandable question, we get it all the time. When I told her no..that it was just me and my husband and all of our animals..she smiled and said, 'Well, having kids is not all that its cracked up to be..if you are sad about it. But you don't look like you are very sad about it'.

I told her every day I get a little less sad about it.

Somewhere along the line I've crossed over from being child-LESS to being child-FREE. That doesn't mean I'm anti-baby. I'd be thrilled if I woke up tomorrow to find out that we were expecting {thrilled and terrified}. But I've turned the corner from viewing our current zero dependent status as such an awful, terrible, negative, depressing failure. Instead I recognize the blessings and advantages of being childfree. I am eagerly awaiting for God to show me where he wants me be, where he knows I will thrive. I have a feeling its coming very soon.

Soul Deep Beautiful

Dirty Little Secret

I want to talk about something.

It's kinda embarrassing.

I know other people out there must have this same problem.

 

*deep breath*

 

My girl dog humps her toy.

I'm talking all out (non existent) balls to the wall.

She doesn't hump people...or other animals.

Just her "baby". I call it her baby.

 

When she was a puppy, still living at my in-laws house my Mother-in-law would walk around the house in these bull dog slippers. The three little puppies would follow her all around and it was precious. When we brought Lola home with us, my Mother-in-law let us bring one of her slippers home with us. As Lola got older this is what happened with her slipper:

 



  Eventually we got rid of the slipper. And the humping stopped.   Until... I brought home this toy.  

  She humps this thing every.single.night. Until she exhausts herself. When we have company, I have to hide it in the closet just to make sure she doesn't go to town right in the middle of the living room while we are talking about the weather.   I've never seen any other girl dog act like this. It's just...so...LOLA. lol.

Wine + Paint = Awesome Evening

Two girls ready to get their paint on.

Outline finished..we.are.awesome.

I'm going to make millions!

I have this painting thing down.

My technique is called 'sip and dab'.

Serious faces.

The 'magic frame' makes all the paintings look fancy.

Finished paintings.