Christmas Cards

Shutterfly is offering a great promo for Bloggers! If you blog about your favorite Holiday Cards you will receive 50 FREE. I had already been checking different websites about Christmas Cards and had my sister-in-law take a picture of Annie and I on Thanksgiving! So I was set, then I saw this great promo and thought I would give it a shot. I looked at all the different designs and have picked out my Top 4. See pictures below.

Option #1

Option #2

Option #3

Option #4


This is a very hard choice for me but I think I like the “Get Glowing Christmas Card” (Option #3) best. My second favorite is the “Pine Cone Toile” (Option #2). These two are very different in my mind but I think I am going to go with the more fun looking option than the classic one. Maybe next year I will do the more classic one. Tell me what you think and check out Shutterfly and see which designs you like best and let me see them. I could spend days looking at these designs. I also want to try one of the photo books. Andrew’s sister made one of the photo books and it looks great. I am starting to gather and take pictures now so that I can make one soon.

Kelley

Home Sweet Home

Sorry I did not update last week. I have been super busy because I have just bought a house. Click on the link “Details” to see some pictures of the house. I am still waiting on the appraisal of the house, but my expected closing date is between December 8 and December 17. It was originally December 17, but everything is moving pretty fast so they think it might be sooner. I am super excited about the new house, but it is going to be a big change. I love my condo that I live in now and I am very comfortable in it, but now Annie is going to have a good size backyard to play in and we are going to have a much bigger Kitchen.

I am very excited about decorating the new house and I am constantly going through magazines and looking online for ideas. I am most worried about the Living Room. I need to pick out curtains and pillows and I am not sure what color/design I want to go with. I know I have time to decided and that everything does not have to be perfect right when I move in, but I need something to do to keep me busy with the house cause if not the waiting game to move-in is going to drive me crazy.

This house is a 3 bedroom 2 bath house so I am ready for some visitors. However, I am not sure when the extra two bedrooms will be decorated/have furniture. I talked to Mave on Sunday night and I want to do a girls weekend soon. I miss all my girlfriends so much and it is crazy to think that we all live in different cities now. Maybe we can do something close to New Years or maybe later in January.

This week is going to be a lot slower than last week. I am off on Friday! I have worked full-time since May 10 and this will be only the 2 day I have taken off. I love my job, so I like to come to work, and when I am out of the office I get behind on things, but I have important things to do on Friday. That is to sleep then watch Harry Potter again. Yep! Harry Potter comes out Thursday night at Midnight and I will be there. My brother and I are going to this together and we are very excited! I have my Harry Potter shirt ready to go!

That’s all for now! I will try to update again soon with more details of the house.

There will be days like this…

Yesterday was one of those days when everything I did went wrong. Things started going wrong for me before 7:00 a.m.. This was the first sign of a bad day. I over slept and had to rush to get ready. Andrew being the kind person he is, let me start getting ready and took the dogs out for me. Well, we don’t always put Annie on a leash when we take her out with Bo. So Annie was taking care of her business and so was Bo, Bo and Andrew start walking back to the condo, Annie looks at them like they are crazy and goes the opposite way. I believe Annie was thinking, “Those boys are crazy! There going the wrong way!” Andrew was thinking, “Annie must not be done with her business”. After Andrew puts Bo inside her turns around to discover Annie is missing.

Now Andrew did not come and tell me Annie was missing immediately, because 1) He thought he could find her fast and 2) He knew telling me would make me upset. Well after looking for a while and no sign of Annie he comes inside and tells me he needs my help finding Annie. I run outside in my bath robe and slippers with wet hair looking frantically for my dog. The first area I look is the parking lot, because I have a huge fear of my dog getting hit by a car. I could not find Annie. Now about 15minutes has passed and we are both circling the complex looking for this dog. I decide to go get Bo and see if he can sniff her out like a hound dog.

Not even half a lap around the complex I see Annie peek her head out the rails of the building next to mine (literally one stairwell over). I was already crying at this point and frantic so I call out to her. She wouldn’t come down the stairs to me! In her head she was thinking, “Mom come open the door, I’m cold out here!”, I am thinking, “Why the HECK is my dog standing at this random person’s door!”. After I carry her down the stairs and to my condo, I have mixed emotions of relief and disbelief that my dog could be that stupid to forget where she lives.

Don’t dogs have a unique sense of smell? My lord, the dogs in Homeword Bound found their way home after going through a national park! Annie could not find her way home following Andrew and Bo (a 42 pound dog). I worry about her. However, this was not the only bad incident of the day but this one turned out with a happy ending. The other incidents include but are not limited to, being without power for 8 hours the night before, missing a meeting with my Realtor, losing my car keys at the mall, my internet modem box breaking, getting lost going to Comcast, and getting pulled over by the cops. Let’s just say when the day was over I went home and stayed home! Valerie asked if I wanted to go walking with her and I was afraid I would break my leg if I attempted to leave the house.

Hope no one else had a day like this. Today has been much better thus far and for that I am very thankful!

Only WEDNESDAY~!!

Wow! It has been a crazy few days! We have lots of new material at work that is needing lots of my attention. I also went home on Saturday! It was a short weekend but I am glad I got to spend it with the family.

I did something Saturday Morning that I never want to do again. I did yard work! It was hard and I got dirty and I hope to never do it again! Well, I have a feeling that doing yard work will be inevitable with the possibility of buying a house with a yard in my near future, but still, it was hard work.

ACU and our Adopt-A-School Rock Quarry Middle School worked together to do landscaping in the front of RQMS. First we had to move the rocks they had covering the entire ground area. Then we have to dig holes. (holes the size of Texas) However, I dug 3 holes by myself and 1 more with the help of a co-worker. After we dug holes we had to mix the dirt together and plant the trees and shrubs. The actual planting was mostly done by the landscaping company we had out there to help us, but still we did a lot of work.

I have posted a few pictures of our project below. It was hard work but it was very rewarding to see how good the area looked after we were done.







Beside’s doing yard work I am once again house hunting. Instead of the SMALL condo that I live in now I am looking for a larger house with a good size backyard. However, I want to stay close to the central Tuscaloosa area. This makes house hunting lots of work. However, I have a great realtor named Trica Gray! I have found a subdivision that I like and I am now trying to figure out what to do with my condo. Let me tell all ya’ll home buying virgins a secret; buying a home sucks. There is a lot of little expenses here and there, you always have to consider the resale value and the appraisal value and in this economy you are always second guessing yourself in terms of rates. Will rates drop again, will they stay the same. WHO KNOWS.

Home buying is stressful and not near as much fun as the HGTV shows make it out to be.

Wish me luck as I continue looking at houses and weighting my option.

Volunteer- someone who does something without pay

I am currently teaching a Junior Achievement class to Kindergartners and this is one of the first words we had to talk to them about. Surprisingly most of the class knew what a volunteer was, however as an adult I find that few adults understand its meaning and want to become a volunteer. Maybe this has to do with the fact that by definition a volunteer does something without pay; and we as adults are always trying to make money. Don’t get me wrong, we need to make money but why not doing something out of the goodness of our hearts without trying to make money on it?

This is sad to me, because there is so much more we could do with our time than sit at home or sleep(lots of my volunteer activities happen very early in the morning!). I volunteered when I was in high school for different things but never to the extent that I could have and should have. While in college my time was spent studying or with the sorority. Now as I begin my career (working a minimum of 45 a week sometimes much much more) I find that volunteering has become an important part of my life.

There are many reasons why this has become so important to me; one is that I feel it is now time to give back to AOII and when Ms. Frey asked that I help I could not turn her down. However, the main reason I have started volunteering with different organizations is that the company I work for and my boss are passionate about volunteering and encourage me to volunteer. This is something I never thought would happen for me. Boy Was I Wrong or What?!?! My boss truly inspires me to be a better person. How many people can say that about their boss?? I can! She volunteers her time and gives without ever thinking “what’s in it for me”. Last week she was awarded a Community Service Award for the second time in three years (Guess they couldn’t give it to her in back to back years) and was recognized by many of our peer’s in the credit union world. I was so proud of her!

The reason for this post about “volunteering” is that this morning a group of employees from work volunteered at the West Alabama Food Bank to stuff food packs for the Brown Bag program they sponsor. This program provides food to needy elderly once a month. When I say morning I mean MORNING! I got up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready and get breakfast for our volunteers. What was truly amazing is that I asked Andrew to help as well. We were afraid we were going to be short on volunteers due to two of our main employee volunteers being off on vacation this week. Andrew said, “sure no problem” and when I told him we had to be there at 6:00 a.m. he still never complained. I have always known that Andrew had a big heart and is truly a great person, but today he amazed me even MORE. He was there at 6:00 AM no complaints with a smile on his face. When I returned to work today, everyone that was there has come up to me and said how nice it was of him to come and help and I know they truly meant it.

I want everyone to think about an opportunity that they could become involved with and volunteer their time. Ask your company what community service projects they are involved in! Adopt-A-School and Junior Achievement are two groups that are always looking for volunteers. I love a busy life and feel that I am more productive when I am going 90 to nothing. See for yourself, when you volunteer your time I bet you will find a more balanced life.



Thanks

Kelley

Three Day Weekends ROCK!

So I have had a three day weekend. Yep, it’s the wonderful holiday of “Columbus Day” and banks are CLOSED. With this long weekend I have not very little other than relax and spend time with Andrew. As many of you might be aware, Andrew and I became Facebook official this week. I am not sure why this is such a big deal, we have been “seeing” each other for a few months but we felt it was time to just throw the news out there to everyone. I think some people were a little surprised by this news flash.

Since Andrew and I are seeing more of each other our dogs have become quite close. Ok this is a total lie. The dogs spend time with each other because they have no other choice and I am positive if they had to choose a best friend they would not choose each other, but I think they are super cute together so I like to make the sit, lay, and play together. This is the ONLY picture I could get of them together and it took lots of work.



Cute picture of Bo wrapped in a blanket.



With my three day weekend, I got a haircut, went to the lake and watched the game, started the process of looking for a house (Yes, I am once again on the house search) and cleaned my apartment. That might not sound like a very busy or productive weekend but it was a great weekend!

Today Annie has been loving having her Momma at home. She had not been far from my side all day. When I went to run so errands she went for a car ride. She is now taking her afternoon nap, she has been so excited with me cleaning and being at home today to take a nap.

I am not sure when I will be able to post again this week due to a short week at works makes for a very busy week at work. But I will try to post at the end of the week. If Brandi is reading I still need her to send me pictures from the NOLA trip!

Thanks
Kelley

Brandi has inspired me....

Well, it has been a long time since I have last updated my Blog. For that I am sorry. Brandi has inspired me to continue with my Blog and update more often.

This past weekend I was able to visit Brandi in Mobile and go over to New Orleans with her and Natalie (Brandi’s cousin). We had a great time! I will post pictures from our trip once Brandi sends them to me. While in New Orleans we were able to do lots of fun stuff. We watched Alabama beat Florida and we went to a awesome Jazz Lounge. I believe the Jazz Lounge was one of the best things about the trip. We heard about the “lounge” while out shopping in the French Market. A guy Brandi was buying candles from told her about the band that played at the Jazz Lounge. The lead singer/trumpet player was in the Harry Conic Jr. Band. Overall the band was great and I think Brandi had a crush on the guy. He was pretty cute.

However, during the New Orleans trip I received bad news from home. On Saturday morning my Mom called to tell me that Annie had suffered from a seizure the night before. However, Annie was very luck she was already at the vet receiving her yearly shots. The vet said it could possibly be from an allergic reaction from the shots or could be something she is starting to develop. I hope it is the allergic reaction issue but this is not the first seizure Annie has had. A few months back Annie had a similar episode while we were getting ready for bed. After talking to the vet about this episode, they felt at the time it was a muscle spasm due to the long walk we had gone on earlier that week. Now we believe it too was a seizure. We will be monitoring Annie’s condition for the next few months to make a better decision on what to do to help her. Keep her in your thought.

That is all for today but I am going to try and update again later this week with pictures from the New Orleans trip.


Thanks

Kelley