Meatball!

Toddlers are awesome.  The world is a fascinating place full of wonder -- things to touch and feel, to ask about, to point out to Mama after Grandma shows them.  And everything is hilarious for inexplicable reasons.  Like saying "meatball!" or "cheddar Bo biscuit!"

Here's a toddler just loving the world (and Grandma off-camera saying "cheddar Bo biscuit!") at her Aunt Meg's house earlier in November.

How Selfs Celebrate

Ok, this is from a while back, but I never posted about it.

We got an offer on our old townhouse back in August.  Elation!  When we got the official offer, the buyers wanted a 45-day closing process.  Bummed that we have to wait that long, but hey, at least we have a buyer.  Contentment!

Then the closing date came and went, and no closing.  Frustration!  Then, a second closing date was set... and failed.  More frustration!  No worries, the buyers finally got their loan, and a third closing date was set... and failed.  Aggravation!  Then, after several months, on November 5, our house finally closed.  Yep, we are the proud owners of one, not two, houses now.  Elation again!

On the 5th, I went out with some fellow teachers, and gave Jason a call that I was heading to the grocery store at 5:00, so I'd be late getting home.  Small world, he was at the grocery store as well, so I met up with him.

What did he have when I got there?  Ice cream and sparkling grape juice.  He said he had gotten our check from closing, and it was time to celebrate!  So how did we celebrate?  Did we go out to a fancy dinner?  Have a night out on the town?  Nope, we went buck wild in Kroger!

Jason is usually not allowed to go grocery shopping with me.  He busts our budget and our waistlines with all the goodies he wants to buy.  That night, though, I told Jason he could put anything in the cart that he wanted, and I would not fuss.  We had a great time at the grocery store, and our receipt showed it!

So that, folks, is how the Selfs celebrate.

some of my splurges... wheat thins and laughing cow cheeses (bottom left)

Nearly-Wordless Nearly-Wednesday

As I was saying my morning prayers on my way into work today, I was actually having a hard time thinking as fast as my heart wanted me to.  I'm so very blessed, and my heart was overflowing with thanksgiving this morning.

Here are a few things I'm thankful...

Fun with Dinosaurs, Day 2

Yesterday, I failed to mention a video that Jason sent me a while back.  I find it pretty funny.  Jason finds it one of the most hilarious things ever.  I enjoy watching it.  I enjoy watching him watch it even more!

It's a clip from Jurassic Park, but the theme music is played with an instrument called a melodica.

Fun with Dinosaurs

I've always loved dinosaurs, even as a little girl.  My two favorite science things were planets and dinosaurs.  These days, that love has really exploded.  I don't know why, but I'm all about dinosaurs these days.

There's a dinosaur on the sign into my classroom:

I painted a dinosaur at the pottery place with Amanda.  His name is Herbert, and he's currently on my bookshelf at work.

I bought dinosaur Christmas ornaments the other day at Target.

I bought this guy (no, not the aliens) and a t-rex that I couldn't find a picture of.  Addison said "rawr!" when I put them in the cart.  Smart girl.

So today's blog is all about spreading that love to you.  Here's a couple of fun things about dinosaurs that came up in the Self household last night.

A video I love to watch when I need a quick laugh.  It's from Disney's Meet the Robinsons.

Here's a shirt from woot.com referencing that video (sorta).

Happy Thursday!  

Domestic Saturday

I'm a week behind on this, but last weekend was quite a domestic one for me!  Friday night and Saturday morning was spent at Holidays Fit for the King.

When I got home, Jason was putting together IKEA furniture, and I decided to continue being domestic.  I made caramel apples.  I've never made them before.  I guess they turned out alright.  Jason liked them more than I did.

Then, I made cupcakes for Brandi's baby shower.  Box mix, but homemade buttercream.  Yum!

After the baby shower on Sunday afternoon, I went by the new neighbors' house to introduce myself and give them some cupcakes.  I ended up chatting for 45 minutes!

Hmm, decorating, baking, and chatting up the neighbors -- good weekend!

Decorations that Put us all to Shame

I do not have a lot of Christmas decorations (but I'm going shopping tomorrow!), but I love love LOVE looking at them!  This was especially awesome at Holidays Fit for the King, where ladies went all out on their tables.  Here are a few of my favorites.

I love adding in some very non-Christmas colors like aqua and hot pink

I'm definitely a fan of glass vessels of ornaments

simple but catches the eye

I think I'm falling for the "new" Christmas green -- especially in this Christmas tree that looks like it's straight from a Dr. Seuss story!

very not-me (where's the color?), but it simple and beautiful

This is more like it!  This one was decorated by Laura R, a member of my Sunday School class

My absolute favorite decoration of the day was actually not for Christmas, but for Thanksgiving (HFFTK is about both holidays, so ladies can decorate one way or the other).  The best we can figure is these are made from breaking the spine of a paperback book and gluing to make a circle.  Seriously, do you not LOVE this???

In the holiday spirit yet?  What's your favorite decoration you put in your house?

Holidays Fit for the King

Every November, my church puts on a women's event called Holidays Fit for the King.  It's a day that focuses on how to make Thanksgiving and Christmas less stressful and more a time of celebration and rejoicing.  Every year, my friend Kristen and I decorate a table together for breakfast time and then go to two workshops together.

Here's our table, which was a Christmas-carol theme:

Let's zoom in on Kristen's a-MAZ-ing wreath she made out of sheet music:

Yep, go ahead and soak in all the awesomeness.

We're definitely minimalists (wait until you see my other post with some of my favorite tables other people decorated), but we have fun getting together and planning and decorating.  This event's supposed to be no-stress, right?

All the women eat breakfast at the decorated tables, listen to Christmas carols sung by One Voice (an amazing female group of teenage girls), and listen to a speaker.  We were encouraged with words about why we need a savior, and why Christmas is a time of good news of great joy.  After the speaker was done, we went to workshops of our choosing.

We attended Biblical Family Traditions and Totes for Hope.  The first workshop was all about creating traditions that focus your family on the purpose of the season.  Most of the traditions were for people with kids, but one tradition I liked was the Thanksgiving box.  When great things happen in a family during the year, they put trinkets and mementos in the box to represent those blessings.  On Thanksgiving, they go through the box and pull out one item at a time, talking about all the great things that have happened to their family during the year.  Then, they write down the items and clean out the box for another year of blessings.  I like this idea -- simple, sentimental, and a great reminder when it's hard to think of what happened in January or February of every year.

The Totes for Hope was more service-minded.  We learn about a mentoring/tutoring program Providence does with the YMCA and we made and packed tote bags with school supplies to give the students in January.  It was a fun way to focus on someone other than yourself during the holidays.

I love HFFTK.  It is by far my favorite event Providence puts on.  Good food, good fellowship, good words, good ideas, and good golly, I'm ready to get my holiday-on now!

IKEA-fest!

The middle of October, Jason looked at me and said he was at the point where he just really wanted to spend some money decorating and furnishing the house.  A few trips to stores around Raleigh, and we got discouraged.  $1000 for a chair?!?  Dining room chairs (don't even get me started on the dining tables!) for $150 a piece?!?  Then, a four-letter words came out of Jason's mouth that made me start cheering... IKEA.

If you've never been to IKEA, go.  I don't care if you don't need furniture, go.  I don't care if Charlotte's a long way for you to drive, go.  It's awesome.  Cool stuff (way different than anything here), cheap stuff, showrooms set up for you to see what it would look like in a room, and Swedish meatballs.

Oh IKEA, the smartest part of your business plan is having delicious, cheap food for people to eat at your store.  It keeps people there for more hours than they would otherwise, and at least for the Selfs, serves as extra motivation to visit you.  I think if I lived in Charlotte, I'd go to IKEA solely for the food.

I've heard a rumor that there's other food at IKEA, but why anyone would buy that food when there's meatballs is beyond me.  For $4 (yes, four dollars!), you get Swedish meatballs, gravy, mashed potatoes , and ligonberry sauce.  It is so delicious!

Oh yeah, we also bought some furniture while we were there (but don't let this downplay the highlight of the day -- the meatballs).  We bought a TON of furniture while we were there.  We're talking one full cart and TWO flatbed carts (I have no idea what to call them other than that, but it's so you can load up all the boxes of put-together furniture).  We're talking get-stuff-delivered-to-our-house-and-we're-still-not-done amount of stuff.

Bless Jason, he's been hard at work putting together furniture.  It got delivered to our house on Halloween, and he's built four large pieces of furniture and two chairs so far.  His back will probably never be the same, poor thing.  I'll post some pictures once everything gets built and once I get books arranged on the bookcase and stuff.

Also, a special shout-out to Jill who joined us halfway through the shopping trip (just in time to eat meatballs with us), talked us into/out of certain items, and helped us lug stuff around the store and load things into our car.  She also went a bit crazy in the kids section, and we already knocked out Addison's Christmas (she's getting an easel and art supplies, shh, don't tell her!) while we were there.  Double score!

Dinner Inspiration

I'm not a fantastic cook.  I enjoy what I make most nights, but the more creative I get in the kitchen, the scarier it usually ends up.  A little while back, I knew I was making chicken and red potatoes for dinner, but I was lacking inspiration for what exactly to make.

That morning, I checked Facebook, and my friend Shannon posted a picture of food cooking in her oven -- bacon-wrapped chicken and roasted red potatoes.  How did she know I needed inspiration?!?

She had gotten the recipe from this blog, and since I followed it nearly exactly (I substituted cayenne pepper for chili powder since I didn't have any) and I want to give her credit, I won't repeat the recipe here.  Seriously, it's simple, tasty, and most ingredients are in your pantry.  I highly recommend.  Here's a picture to entice you:

I mean, seriously!  The only problem I had was that I let the chicken cook too long while I was waiting for the potatoes to get done.  It was a wee bit (ok, really really) dry.  While Jason and I both agreed the chicken was tasty, neither of us wanted to eat it as-is another night.

No worries, the leftovers we delicious!  I'm not a salad person, but any salad that centers around chicken and bacon has to be tasty.  Here's the salad I made the next night.  Yum!

Will I make this again?  You betcha!  Will I hope there's leftovers for another salad again?  You betcha!

You Know You Have a Cold When...

That's right folks, I'm sick.  I was sneezing regularly on Monday and then boom, Monday afternoon, my body decided to tell me it wasn't feeling well.  On a scale of 1-10 where 1 people go on about their normal lives and 10 being a person who takes off work and sleeps all day, I'm at a level 8.  I feel absolutely miserable... but no misery compares to making lesson plans for a sub and hoping your students don't kill each other.  So no day off for me.  Anyway, here are some things I've noticed about being sick.

1. Style and shame give way to comfort.  Do I care what I'm wearing this week?  Not a bit.  Am I embarrassed that I'm carrying around a box of tissues with me everywhere I go?  Nope.  Does it bother me that I'm currently wearing a shirt, cardigan, and a jacket in my classroom?  Hey, if I'm semi-warm, that's all that matters.

2. Every decision or sentence takes you twice as long to make.  I went to Target on Tuesday because I had to buy chargers for an event this weekend.  When they weren't there, I called my friend Kristen to ask her what I should do.  She suggested trying a different store, like Michael's.  Wait, other stores sell stuff?  Why didn't I think of that?

3. Multitasking goes away completely.  It's hard enough to do one task when your head feels fuzzy.  It's another trying to juggle more than one thing.  Walking into work yesterday, I was trying to hang up the phone with my dad, carry in my box of tissues (see #1) and hot cocoa, and walk up a slight hill.  What was I thinking?  I very nearly dropped the phone and ended up spilling cocoa on my tissues and myself.  Fail.

4.  Everything wears you out.  I feel like I need to take a break halfway up the stairs.  You can't breathe through your nose at all, and you feel out of breath breathing through your mouth.  Eating makes you feel like you're suffocating since you're shoving food into the only opening you can breath through!  You sit down to brush your teeth.  You turn off the lights early on trick-or-treaters because getting up when the bell rings zaps what little energy you have left.

5. Your internal clock tells you when to med-up.  You've tricked yourself into thinking you're feeling better, then all of a sudden you feel miserable again.  You look up at the clock and realize your Day-Quil has run out and you need to re-up.

6.  You use the excuse "I'm sick" whenever possible.  You have a bit of shame and realize you look rough.  Before anyone can make assumptions, you volunteer the information "I'm sick."  This also works to excuse poor work, muddled conversations, distracted thoughts, or boycotting errand-running or cleaning.  It's a great excuse!


I'm sure there's more, and I'd love to hear your opinions.  As for today's post, I did not proofread.  I did not read over it to see if it made sense.  I just told you how hard it is to perform normal tasks right now, so give me a break.  "I'm sick."