Friday Favorites/Catching Up

Even though this is technically a Friday Favorites post, since I haven't posted in FOREVER, I have a couple things in here that happened before this week, but still recently. I've already forgotten most of the other stuff that's happened since I posted last, which is why I really need to get better about blogging!

1) The Lion King!!! - I've wanted to see this for a LONG time! We went to NY and didn't see it. It came to Baltimore while we were living in MD and we didn't see it. I had just accepted that we were never going to go see it. Josh surprised me with tickets for Christmas!!! We don't really do things like this and tickets were not cheap, so I wasn't expecting it. It was SO good! The show was last Thursday, so I had to wait a while, but it was totally worth the wait! The performers were great and you seriously forget that you're watching people sometimes! 

Waiting for the seating area to open!

2) Family Visit - This past weekend, we went to visit family in VA. We don't get to see them very often so it was really nice to be able to catch up. We got to go to a Mexican restaurant that we love for lunch too, so that made the trip extra awesome! We got to spend a good amount of time with Josh's grandma and she's doing pretty well. Her memory is pretty awful now, definitely short term and even some long term, but she seemed very happy and was in good spirits.

3) Mushroom inoculation class - A couple weekends ago, I went to a mushroom inoculation class with Kristian. It was at a small farm that is owned by Durham Public Schools, which was really neat! We got to pick out our own log, drill holes in it, and insert dowels that had been inoculated with the fungus of our choice! I chose shiitake mushrooms and Kristian chose oyster mushrooms. Next, we covered all of the dowels and the ends of the logs with wax to keep the moisture in and competition for nutrients out. We had a really good time and hopefully by Fall, we'll have some tasty mushrooms!!! Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures.

4) One more ACC win - There's no sugarcoating it...our basketball team is absolutely horrible this year. We did beat Clemson last Saturday, so there is that. 4-11 in conference play is definitely nothing to be excited about, but I'll take what I can get. Fingers crossed football season is better!

5) Bailey is 5!!! - Today is Bailey's birthday. I'll post an extra post, because I want to and she deserves it. 

She's turned into that dog that can just hang out on the front porch and people watch. We used to pass houses with these dogs and laugh about how that would NEVER be Bailey. She has surprised us. :-)

Recap of the past few weeks

It seems pointless to post a Friday Favorites post on Wednesday, especially when you're covering more than just the past week. How do I let myself get so far behind?!? 

Moving on...here's what we've had going on since I posted last. I've been absolutely horrible at taking pictures, so there aren't many of those to share, unfortunately. 

Gardening!

We've been doing quite a bit of gardening, which I love!!! We planted our garden a few weeks ago. I posted a picture right after we had the majority of the things planted, but since then, we've planted a couple more things and everything has gotten so much bigger! We also put a little fence around it to keep the curious pups out. 

This is right after everything was planted.

 This is a couple days ago. 

 Sugar snap peas. They are already looking for something to climb! We'll be making a trellis for them this week.

This is a spaghetti squash I started from seed. This guy is growing fast! 

Roma Tomatoes!

In addition to the vegetable garden, I've been busy trying to pretty up our yard a little. One afternoon after work, I made this little flower bed around our mailbox while Josh cut the grass. I planted Iris bulbs in it. Since then, several of them have sprouted and I added a few more things. I put some Petunias in there so I can have something pretty until the Irisis bloom and I added a few Sedum plants that will spread and provide pretty groundcover. I planted Shasta Daisy seeds, but they won't bloom until next year. 

 I love the way it turned out! These are the stones I used.

My Iris bulbs are sprouting!!! I'm really looking forward to seeing them bloom!

Concerts!

We're not usually big on going to concerts. We usually feel like they're not worth the money, so we only go when we find really cheap tickets. 

On Cinco de Mayo, we went to see John Fogerty. Josh won the tickets at work, so they were free! It doesn't get better than that! We had some friends come with us and we ate at Calavera before the show and it was delicious! It's like a 2 minute walk from Josh's office, so I just met him there and we walked together. 

This is the only picture we took at the show. We actually had "box" seats, but we ended up sitting on the lawn with everybody else for the show.

Last Thursday, we went to see Jason Isbell and Zac Brown Band. Both acts were awesome! The weather was perfect...it was a great show all together! 

I did get kicked out of the men's bathroom though. That kind of sucked. I should have taken a picture of how long the women's line was, but I didn't. I've waited in lots of long bathroom lines, but never one this long. It was ridiculous. Josh talked me into just going to the men's bathroom with him. We decided I would be fine if he was with me and he could just watch the stall for me. I decided there's no way it could be dirtier than the women's bathroom I had just gone in and I could save at least 30 minutes of my life. I went for it. NOPE...the security guard wasn't having it. Back to an even longer line for the women's bathroom than I left behind. Oh well, I get points for trying, right?

 This is us waiting for the show. We loved where we sat. We're going to go see Brad Paisley here on Saturday and I think we might try to get those same seats in the lawn even though we have real seats for this show. :-)

Chloe

Daddy got a new puppy about a month ago and he brought her to visit shortly after. She is SO cute!

Meet Bailey's little aunt...

 She'll grow into it soon!

 They took turns chasing each other around the house. So cute!

Tired pup!

When daddy came to visit, he also installed a flood light on our grilling deck for us, installed an outdoor fan on our covered porch and moved our breakfast nook light over. I'll post pictures of these things eventually. :-)

Friday Favorites!!!

Happy Halloween & Happy Friday y'all! This has been a ROUGH week, so I'm glad to see Friday finally here! Here are my favorites!

1) Family Visit - Some of my family got to visit this past weekend. My dad, sister, niece & nephew came down last Friday morning and stayed through Sunday morning. We enjoyed catching up with them all. I can't believe we hadn't seen them since MAY!!! We hung out around the house a bit and went to the park. The weather was beautiful, so it was really nice to get to spend some time outside! My back had been bothering me, so I was kind of useless part of the time, unfortunately.

2) Chiropractor - Since I had been having problems with my neck/back, I decided to go to the chiropractor. I have some issues with my spine that are totally correctable and I've started regular visits to work on those. I can already feel an improvement! 

3) Sunday Walk - Josh went in to work a few hours on Sunday. Since it was SO beautiful outside and I was feeling better, I took Bailey for a walk at a nature preserve about 10 minutes from our house. It was a very nice time to get outside and enjoy some sunshine! I let Bailey splash around in the water for a bit and she loved it!

 

4) Bailey's new friend - There's a small, fenced in area in our neighborhood that we let Bailey run around in every once in a while. Monday afternoon, I took her in there to run around a bit and she met a new friend, Loba! She got SO dirty, but she had a ton of fun, so it was worth it!

 

5) Birthday - My 28th birthday was yesterday!

 
I got flowers and cupcakes from my awesome coworkers!


And my awesome hubby got some new cookware for me! I have an unhealthy obsession with cookware and this is a beautiful enameled cast iron skillet that I've been drooling over for a while. I thanked him with a big, juicy that is patiently waiting in the Crockpot right now!

Josh and I went to Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse, for my birthday dinner last night! The food was really good, but we ate way too much! Especially me. I was literally in pain from eating too much meat. It was a really fun experience and a great way to try lots of meats, but I don't know that we will do it again. By the time we left, I felt like I had overstuffed myself at a buffet. Ouch!

6) Jamicures - I haven't done a great job of posting these, but here are some of my latest Jamicures! 

 

Boysenberry Chevron and Icy Boysenberry Polka. This was almost a week in, when I FINALLY took a picture of them. I really need to start taking pictures at the beginning too!

This is my latest one on day 2! I LOVE this combo! It's Venus and Raspberry Sparkle. I'm really enjoying this one, but I'm already planning my next one...my gameday Jamicure for homecoming!!!

Friday Favorites!!!

I'm way behind on posting, so here are my favorites for the past few weeks!

1) Spain! - We had a great time in Spain! I have several more posts I need to get up here, and I plan on working on those this weekend.

2) Off Friday - This is my off Friday and I'm SO glad! There's a lot I want to get done over the weekend, so this will definitely help! It's also been a pretty rough week at work, so I'm glad it was only 4 days.

3) Football! - I'm glad football is back. My Wolfpack hasn't had a strong season so far, but we're still 2-0. I'm hoping we can get our stuff together before conference play starts!

4) Jamberry - I'm still loving Jamberry! I hit my first goal, which was to obtain my first Fast Start, now I'm working on my next! This is my latest Jamicure! I've had it on for 4 days now and it still looks brand new! My polish would have done some serious chipping by day 4!

Sugar & Spice with Diamond Dust Sparkle :-)

5) Home Improvements - We've decided to make some improvements on the house! These are things I've been wanted to do basically since we moved in, so I'm really excited to share more once we start to make progress!

6) Brew Day - We brewed our Punkinlaw (our pumpkin ale) last Saturday. Last year was our first year making it all grain and we really messed it up. This year, we tweaked the spices and used a different yeast. I think we finally have it exactly where we want it! I almost wish we would have brewed another half batch or so to bottle. 

7) Game Night - We had friends over after our football game on Saturday for games. We played Pandemic and Ticket to Ride. They were both a lot of fun and they're now on our list of games to buy! Hopefully it won't be so long before our next game night! They're so much fun and they don't cost a lot of money, so I really don't know why we don't do them more often.

8) Fitness - I'm on a fitness kick again. Haha. I basically had to force myself to start running again. We have a 10K in less than 3 weeks, so we should have actually started training much sooner. We ran 2.5 miles Wednesday night and I wasn't completely exhausted when we finished, so I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the 10K by the time it gets here. I don't know that I'll beat last year's time though :-/. I'll keep pushing and see what I can do though!

I've also started 100 Pushups! It's a 6 week training program. At the end of the 6 weeks, I should be able to do 100 good form pushups consecutively. I really like it so far! I just completed week 1 this morning. It's challenging, but It's been very doable so far. I downloaded the 100 Pushup app and it makes it really easy. I can set reminders for myself, it breaks the whole program down into weeks, then days. It tells me how many pushups to do each set and automatically times my resting periods between sets. I often overlook my arms when I workout, so I'm excited to be doing this challenge! Only 5 weeks to go!

9) Bailey - Y'all know I love my dog! I really missed her while we were in Spain. While I was not ready to leave Spain and return to the real world, I was very glad to see my girl when we got home. 

That's it for now! Hopefully I'll have more Spain posts and house updates soon!

Friday Favorites!

Hey y'all, Happy August!!! By the way, how in the world is it already August?!? This year is just flying by! We have lots going on, as usual...I'll let you know my favorites, then I'll add some updates because I haven't stayed on top of this blogging thing in quite a while!

1) New Schedule - I have the flexibility to work a 9/80 schedule at work and I haven't taken advantage of that. I decided to give it a shot and I'm really excited about it! I will start my new schedule next week. I will work 9 hour days Mondays -Thursdays. On Fridays, I will alternate between 8 hour days and days off. I'm so excited about this new schedule and I look forward to having every other Friday off!

2) Mortons Visit! - Andrew & Kristian came to visit us last weekend. We had a great time hanging out and showing them around Baltimore! 

We brewed beer at Dave's

Mmmmm! I told Josh if I ever consider becoming a vegetarian, he'll need to make some BBQ for me. :-)

Showing the Mortons around Fells Point

Love these people!

We actually went on top of Federal Hill for the first time!

3) Spain! - We're going to Spain in a few weeks (more to come on that) and we booked our last room last night! There's still a lot to plan, but we've got the essentials covered now!

Now to become fluent in Spanish ;-)

4) Jamberry - I discovered Jamberry when I was invited to a party in June. I'm flipping addicted to these wraps! I hate painting my nails just for the polish to chip off in a day or so. Problem solved! 

Ignore the fat hand. That is apparently not a very good angle. :-)

5) Weekday Walk - Josh and I used to walk Bailey together almost every night after work. Now that he's working 2 jobs (more on that tomorrow), that just doesn't happen anymore. Josh came home a little earlier than usual last night and we got to go on a walk with the pup. The weather was great and we really enjoyed ourselves!

I love the wildlife around our house!

Bailey got to search for ducks...

Did you guys see that duck I almost ate?!?

Then she got to play in the water...you know, after she chased all the ducks and geese away.

Friday Favorites!!!

1) Golf Outing - Last Friday was our company golf outing. It was a gorgeous day and I got to drive a golf cart around for the majority of it! We found a HUGE turtle on the course!

2) Beer Release Party - Last Friday, we had a beer release party at our place. It was for our Belgian Pale Ale, 1st Base. It's pretty good. We ended up having a couple friends come over a little later, once everyone else had gone. We ended up hanging out with them WAY past our bedtime.

3) Lunch Date - Last Saturday we decided to go to Bobby Flay's burger restaurant, Bobby's Burger Palace. We have wanted to try it since the casino came last year and we finally got around to it! The food was really good. We walked around the mall a little and had a nice time. We decided to pick up a movie on the way home. We decided on Life of Pi. I started reading this book about a year and a half ago and I still have not finished it. It's actually the first book I put on my Kindle. We were not impressed with the movie at all. I don't think I'll ever finish the book. Haha. 

4) Dog Park - We found a dog park that's only about 5 minutes from our house! It's not as big or as nice as the one we go to in Annapolis, but it's a good 20 minutes or so closer. It's perfect for during the week or short trips to get her some exercise. We've taken her 3 times since we found it. The first time, there were no other dogs, but she still got a chance to play. The other 2 times she met other dogs. I'm SO glad we found this park!

5) Running - I slacked on running for a week or so, but I've finally gotten back on track. I'm on week 6 of my 5K training. Just 2 more to go after this week! I'm up to 12 minute intervals. I can tell a huge difference in my endurance from when I first started. I also ordered a new pinch collar for Bailey, and she is a million times better to run with now! YAY!

6) Hanging out - We had friends over after work on Thursday. We rarely do anything during the week, so it was really exciting. We had such a great time, even though we were both exhausted Friday.

7) Gone Girl - I just finished this book today. It's great! I highly recommend it!

And a not so favorite - We have to replace our heat pump. We have a home warranty, but they only want to pay to replace the compressor. They are covering a little bit of it, so it helps, but not nearly as much as I expected. On the bright side, we should save money on our electric bill. 

January BarkBox

Barkworthies curly bully stick - We're saving this one for a rainy day, but our local pet store has these. I've paid about $4 for them in the past.

3 oz Lamb Toasters from Superior Farms - $7.99

Bailey hasn't tried these yet, but she does love lamb ears, so I'm sure she will love these too. We're saving these for the times she's more distracted since they are such a high value treat. 

6 oz. bag of Peanut Butter flavor yumZies - $7.99

Bailey is a big fan of these. They're the perfect size for training treats. I like to put them in her puzzles.

Jax and Bones, Elton the Octopus - $16

I think this toy is absolutely adorable. It feels very well made and is probably pretty durable if your dog doesn't like to shred everything. They have even cuter ones on their website...so many different animals and other shapes! Kangaroos, turtles, penguins, lobsters, anchors, holiday shapes (the deer is adorable). 

Bailey loves the octopus.

It's great for throwing, but not so great for a heavy chewer. This is Elton after a few minutes of Bailey. Obviously, it was her goal to take ALL of his tentacles off. I think one like the dolphin, without so many pieces sticking out of it would have been better for Bailey. I was able to tie off some of the strings, so he should still last a little while. For this reason, I would not spend $16 on this toy.

The total value of this month's BarkBox is $35.98. Absolutely worth the $10 promotional price we paid for it! Even though the toy is not very long lasting, I still don't think I would have been very upset if I had paid the full $17 for the box. The treats are great, so that more than makes up for it.

If you're interested in trying BarkBox, sign up HERE and get $5 off your first subscription.

Oh, and for a quick update on a previous BarkBox toy...remember the moose from the December box? He's still going strong!

 Still fully intact!

He's only missing a tiny piece of one ear...pretty good for being with Bailey for over a month!

Snow Day, Round 2

I mentioned in my Friday Favorites post that we got some snow Wednesday night. Well, we got some more yesterday! 

Most of what had accumulated melted, but there was still a little left. We got another inch or so, so we probably had about 1 1/2 inch-2 inches this morning. Not a lot, but enough for Bailey to have fun in. She is such a snow dog. Even though I know she gets cold, she never wants to go inside when we play in the snow. She has snow shoes and a hoodie, but I didn't put them on her today. Her shoes are great for walking, but she usually runs out of them when we're playing. 

 Waiting patiently for me to throw her toy...

 Then she found her own toy. She loves tearing up pinecones.

Playing tug

And finishing off with a little fetch.

We have certain toys that we only let Bailey play outside with. This way, she gets really excited about playing with them. We used to let her play with her outdoor toys inside too, but she got bored with them faster that way. We played with her Kong AirDog Fetch Stick today. She loves that thing, and it's so easy to throw! It's perfect for playing tug too!

December Bark Box!

This month's Bark Box came in earlier in the week. Bailey was very excited to get it! I cut the packing tape and let her do the rest...

I'm pretty excited about this box. It has something for both of us :-).

The breakdown:

First, Bailey's favorite...the moose toy from Simplyfido.com.

 It's a little different than other squeaker toys we have tried in that the arms and legs move through the animal. This makes it harder for Bailey to rip them off! It's only been a few days, but that's longer than most stuffed toys last around here.

Next, Puppy Cake, dog friendly cake mix!

 I'm really excited about this! I've been wanting to bake a cake for Bailey for quite some time, but I haven't been able to find a recipe I wanted to make. This is red velvet, how much better does it get?!? I haven't made the cake yet, but it seems pretty easy.

Holiday Feast treats from Bocce's Bakery.

Bailey hasn't tried these yet, but they sound yummy. The combination of chicken, pumpkin, cranberries and cinnamon is the perfect doggy version of a holiday dinner! Bocce's has lots of interesting treat flavors like Truffle Mac n Cheese and Beef Bourguinon. YUM! They're a bit on the pricey side, so this may be the only time Bailey gets to try them!

A 2 oz. sample bottle of Fresh Dog Oatmeal Shampoo.

I saved Bailey's least favorite for last. Giving Bailey a bath is probably the worse thing you can do to her. She hates them with a passion. It is not an enjoyable process, but I enjoy a dog that smells good. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but this shampoo smells amazing!

Simply Fido Moose Toy: $12.99 

Puppy Cake: $6.99

Fresh Dog Oatmeal Shampoo: $11.99/17 oz bottle (so about $1.41 for the sample bottle)

Bocce's Bakery Treats: $9.50
Total Value: $ 30.89

Was this box worth the $10 I paid for it? Absolutely! Was it worth the $17 I would pay if I did another 6 month subscription? I'm not sure since I wouldn't pay some of these prices for the items.