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Thank you
Just 2 simple words but somewhere somehow they seem to get lost. I find this true day in a day out. Not very willingly I sometimes work with customers and there are times I feel I will go out of my way to help them with something. I always think it’s great to get that “thank you!” email in return but mostly I find I get this email from the random customer I did very little for. The customer’s I’ve bent over backwards for continue on their way without so much as a thanks. {I remember this too.}
A few weeks ago I had someone randomly contact me regarding our travel agent via facebook. The girl had questions about the agent and St Lucia. I feel I went above and beyond to respond to her with helpful answers. I mean I wrote a nice sized message in return with activities, links to my wedding pics and my personal pics of St. Lucia. You know what I got…..a big fat NADA! Not a thanks so much, thank you that is great info, or even just thanks! I’m not gonna lie, it really pissed me off. Like I sat there and took the time to be nice to a stranger and I can’t get a thank you?!?! Well f*** you too!
It’s not hard to say thanks, it doesn’t even really take that much time of effort. For crying out loud it’s TWO measly little words. Granted I know I’m not perfect and I’m sure there are times in my life where a thank you was warranted and went unsaid. With that said I do feel like I try pretty hard to say thanks when thanks is due.
And while I’m on this subject I just have to throw this out there. A few months ago a friend got married and had an at home reception. She told me “do not get a gift I hate writing thank yous.” HA! So I made her a gift. 😉 I did it just because and I knew I would not get a thank you card nor did I expect one. {She did thank me for the gift while chatting a few days later.} But then, what did I receive in the mail a few days later, a thank you card which I totally did not expect. 🙂 I was really touched knowing how she felt.
So see people, it’s not that damn hard!!!! It’s just not hard especially if you receive a gift that was shipped to you. At least that way the person who sent the gift knows you received it!
And rant/soapbox over.
~k
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I CAN SEW!
So one thing kind of lead to another. Yesterday while I was
blowing upperusing Pinterest I stumbled cross this cute little guy, a frog bean bag. The a little later I saw an idea for homemade heating pads using rice or beans. Hmmm. {You see where this is going right?} Of course I thought I could totally do this. AND I have a sewing machine I’ve been dying to use.This afternoon on Matt’s way home he stopped by the store. I asked if he would pick up some rice so I can make my cute little frog. After my work out I finally cleaned off “my” desk downstairs to make room for my sewing machine. It took a little while to clear the mess I must admit but now I have a permanent place for it. It only took me about 45 minutes and reading the instructions to get everything set up. Yes, I actually read the directions and let me just say this is not a beginner machine. Or I should say the instructions are definitely not beginner friendly. Thankfully my mom had a sewing machine that I’ve used so I knew most of the basics but I’m still not sure exactly what some of it meant but…..I SEWED!!!!!
I grabbed some of the scratch fabric I bought a while back cute a little piece and tried a few stitches. The machine itself really doesn’t seem so hard. It is super easy to change the stitch, you just push a button and BAM! done.
All of this leads to my new goal of a Pinterest post a week. My hope is to post a craft one week and a recipe the next. Since I have a mild obsession with Pinterest I think it’s dumb to not put some of these pins to use. I mean really, what is the point if I’m just going to pin something and never look at it again? This week that all ends. Come Friday I will post pics of my new little buddy. And next week I will choose a recipe and post the results on Friday. Hopefully I can keep this up for a while. 🙂
~k
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Pound Cake
Just a quick update on the pound cake I made last night. I got the recipe from one of my fav blog’s Dear Baby. Click the link for directions. Anyway I took about half of this to work today and everyone LOVED it! I think this was definitely a success considering it was my first pound cake. 🙂
Not bad. {I may have had a slight issue with the greasing/flouring of the pan.}
~k
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Bake me a cake!
Currently there is a pound cake sitting on the counter cooling. Honestly I’m not sure I’ve ever really had pound cake but I came across a recipe the other day {and if it really is delicious I will share} and I thought to myself, hmmm I should make this. As you know I LOVE to bake. I’m not sure why since following directions is really a pain point for me. Maybe I just like sweets or maybe I feel like baking takes a little extra skill. 😉
I made some delicious strawberry cupcakes for Valentine’s day. I found a great recipe on Pinterest. Use one strawberry cake mix and add one can of Diet 7 Up. You skip all the other stuff and just add the soda. It was super weird because the mix kind of foams up. I will say the cupcakes were amazing and super light. If you use a light cake mix it will make your cupcakes low cal. Of course then you add icing and you blow that out of the water but hey it’s dessert right?
Oh and just one more thing I must say. If your Kichenaid looks like this you are CLEARLY not using it correctly. Mine looked like it got flour bombed after I made the pound cake.
~k
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Baby Shower – VIP Style
Where to start about this weekend? In three words, it was AMAZING!
Sarah flew in from AZ late Thursday night and then we met up with Kayla Friday morning before heading to VA Beach. I guess I should mention that I had a small surprise for Brandi. It was Sarah! 🙂 I wouldn’t normally surprise someone with another person, especially when staying at their home, but I thought this might be okay. I was right. 😉 When we arrived at Brandi’s house Kayla and I went to the door. Finally we were like we might have picked something up at the airport, and out pops Sarah. Brandi was so excited. It was too sweet. We got all of this on video I might add. We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting before heading out to dinner.
Saturday me, Kayla and Sarah got up early so we could run some errands and get the house decorated before the other girls arrived. After a quick trip to Target we dropped Sarah off at the house. She was going to finish decorating while me and Kayla picked up the food. {I guess I should also mention only like 2 other people knew Sarah was in town.} Sarah was in the middle of decorating when the other girls arrived so she went back upstairs to hide until we got back.
Like an hour and a half later Kayla and I finally got back to the house. First the food platter wasn’t ready when it was supposed to be. Then the bakery was a pain in the ass to find. The others arrived while we were still waiting on the food. I felt awful because I knew they would be hungry and we were taking forever. Then once we got back to the house we finished decorating. After that it was smooth sailing.
The shower was great. Brandi got a ton wonderful stuff for the baby and everyone had a blast. That night we all went to dinner and then came back to Brandi’s for a little more girl time. On Sunday we met the girls out at the beach for breakfast. Unfortunately the place we wanted to go had a long wait so we went to Cracker Barrel. After brunch everyone headed out and a few hours later I was home in Raleigh. Overall the weekend was great and the girl’s were amazing.
The girls minus me. 🙂
~k
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Long weekend
I’ve been running around the house like a chicken with her head cut off tonight trying to get ready to head to VA Beach tomorrow. Me and a few other girls are having a baby shower for our lovely friend Brandi. {Here’s a linky to her blog so you can see her journey in to motherhood.}
This weekend should be a blast. A girl’s weekend if you will. I think Brandi has kicked the hubs out for the weekend to make room for us girls. Me and Kayla should arrive late tomorrow afternoon and we are going to make Brandi cook us dinner. 😉 I’m totally kidding! We wouldn’t make her do that. But I am looking forward to spending some time together and decorating her home. I’m not sure she knows the theme yet so she’ll have to wait until I get there to see what we have in store but I’m sure she will love it.
Saturday the other girls will arrive. The shower will be that afternoon and then the group {of 12 I think} will go out to dinner. It should be blast. I am really looking forward to meeting the other girls. We all talk daily but have never met before so things could get interesting. HAHA!
There will be plenty of pics taken and I will post them next week. Until then.
~k
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Looky looky
Someone got flowers for Valentine’s day. 😀 I had a box of flowers waiting for me at my desk after a meeting yesterday. I think I was the only girl on the floor to receive flowers. They are beautiful! Matt did a great job and quite a few of the guys said he did a good job.
We had a nice quite dinner at home with perfectly cooked steaks, baked potatoes and cupcakes. Everything was delicious and the night was great!
Not your typical rose bouquet. 🙂
Don’t judge me I can’t arrange flowers.
Playing with manual on my camera.
My handsome assistant.
Sometimes you just need to stop and smell the
rosestulips.I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine’s day!
~k
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Our Love Story – Valentine’s Edition
1. How long have you and your significant other been together? 4 years in May2. How did you meet? {What’s your “love” story?} Matt and I met at Topsail Beach. I went on a trip with my co-workers and Matt happened to be friends with them. This is our first pic together.
3. If married, how long have you been married? Nine months and 1 day.4. If you are married, where did you get married at? Big or small wedding? We had a small wedding in St. Lucia.5. Do you have any nick-names that you call one another? Do share! MattE (Matty) or hon. He calls me sweetie.6. Name 3 things you love most about your honey. He makes me laugh. His laugh. And I love that he takes care of me, he is sweet and caring.7. Tell us how he proposed? He proposed the night before my birthday at home with a ring pop (and a real ring.)8. Is he a flowers and teddy bear kind of guy for v-day, or strawberries, champagne, and rose petals? He is more of a flowers and teddy bear guy.9. Are you a sunset dinner on the beach kind of girl, or pop a movie in and relax on the couch? Both please.10. Tell us one thing you’d like to do with your significant one day. If you could do anything? Go anywhere? Bora Bora or Tahiti.11. Tell us what you plan on doing on this Valentine’s Day. We are doing the same thing we do each year. We will stay home, cook steaks and I will make dessert. Valentine’s day 2009
12. Are you asking for anything this Valentine’s day? Not really. We don’t really do gifts for Valentine’s day. Flowers and candy are standard.13. Give us one piece of advice of keeping a relationship strong and full of love. You both have to compromise. And you need to laugh, at yourself and with each other.14. Show us a picture of what love means to you.
Happy Valentine’s Day!~k -
A splash of color
I came home to a nicely painted house Friday afternoon. Can I just say how nice it is to have this done? It probably would have taken me and Matt quite a while to paint the whole area. So it was really nice to go to work and come home to everything painted. I’m not sure you can really see the color in the pics but I will post a few. It’s a subtle difference but I think it really warms up the space and makes it look more finished.
As you can see we had this weird area where the wall and ceiling essentially met. Matt and I really had no clue as to how to tie this area together. The painter suggested this and I think it was probably our best option.
Over all I am pretty happy with the overall job. There is one spot by the stairs that will need a touch up and there are several places above the kitchen cabinets that were missed. Even though you can’t see them from the floor, I feel like we paid a lot of money and frankly I want it fixed. I just need to email the painter and let him know.
~k
~And let’s not forget today is our 9 monthiversary. We are getting sooooo close to a year. Watch out! 😉
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Cuts and Color
This week has been crazy busy and isn’t going to slow down I don’t think. Last night I got my hair cut. I am really like the new stylist I am going to. For a few weeks I’ve been eyeing this really cute cut I found on Pinterest. It’s basically just a long bob but it’s adorable. For the longest time I’ve been in “grow out” mode with my hair. It finally hit me, it doesn’t matter if it’s long or short I never do anything fun with my hair. I am a complete hair dunce so even when I try to style it it normally doesn’t work. Since my hair is so fine and I rarely use product it is hard to make things stay. (Maybe I should use more product.)
Anyway I finally decided to just go for it and cut an inch or so off and get the bob. I showed my stylist the pic and she gave me something similar that works for my hair. So far I love my new style. It falls just how I wanted around the bottom and I think it will grow up pretty cute too. I even went and bought some product {shocker} today.
Tomorrow the painters are coming. I am so excited. Matt and I just spent about an hour moving all the stuff around and off the walls. I can’t wait to get home tomorrow and see how good everything looks. We are having both stairways and the main floor done. This just leaves the three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs. Once the painting is done I can finally get new carpet. OMG I never thought I would be excited about carpet but I am really excited for new carpet. Don’t get me wrong I am happy about paint too. I hope this will start to make our house feel a little more like home.
~k
