UGH

I hear people say they are scared of paint. I have the complete opposite problem. I wish I was scared of paint. I wish bright obnoxious colors covering my walls terrified me. They don't. They make my heart pitter patter-in a good way. But then I realize that it looks tacky. And then I start imagining people talking about how our house looks like a kindergarten classroom and laugh maniacally behind our backs at (gasp!) our poor color choices. And then I repaint.
The first color I ever picked out for our house...
Sunburst yellow. The name alone should of been clue enough that maybe it was a teeny bit bright. Or maybe the fact that we had to wear sunglasses while painting the room. Not really, I lied, but how awesome would that of been?


So then when choosing color for the living room I thought I should "tone it down", and somehow I thought jalepeno jelly was the perfect shade of green.


Um, yeah, I was wrong. Way wrong. At one point I like it, I even blogged about it here. But my love is gone and I felt the need for change. And I had two weekdays off work this week so thought "I can totally paint the living room, entry, and dining room one day and then clean up the next day." I'm a fool. I painted non-stop for 9 hours on Thursday, and then 5 hours of Friday. Apparently Key Lime takes about 15 (okay 3) coats to cover my nasty dark green. I.CANNOT.PAINT.ANYMORE.
So, here is the current state of my living room.


And I show you this to let you know that I have no plans of finishing. Just thinking about painting makes me let out a long teenager-esque UUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH groan. So if you come over, be prepared to shimmy around ladders, step over screwdrivers, and secretly judge me.

Okay okay- so maybe I will finish, but not today, or tomorrow, and maybe not next week...

Livin la vida Austin

Last night was a good one.

I had a true blue Austin-y night out on the town and since I am suppose to be working but we are having major technical issues (both pro and con of working from home) thought I would share my adventure.

Let's start with my companions for the evening- my way awesome friends John and Kim. John is the coolest. Period. I have to nod knowingly every once in a while and pretend like I know what band/current event/whatever he is talking about so my complete lack of coolness isn't found out and he reevaluates our friendship. Kim is the kindest, most gentle spirit I've ever know and one of my best friends in the true sense of the word. So yeah, that's why I had a good night- I got to hang out with these guys.


Our night started at Casa de Luz- an organic, vegan, macrobiotic- well just throw about every hippie word you can use to describe food- kind of restaurant. What an experience. We started with salads, broccoli soup, and twig tea (ps. John wins the quote of the night for "This is the best twig tea of my life"). Then we were brought our entrees. I won't even try to explain what all it was because, well, I don't know what all it was. Most of it was good, I would even go out on a twig (hehe) to say some of it was down right delicious.


So after you have a healthy macrobiotic meal the clear choice for dessert is ginormous donuts of course, so we went to Gordoughs. This may be hard to express is written form, but let me try. MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmm.
For reals dude.
Amazing. If I knew how to write a haiku, I would write one about the spiritual connection I had with our coconut and chocolate covered raspberry filled donut. Yes, it's haiku worthy.


I know this is an awful picture, but it captures the moment so well. We were all happy and excited to tear into that donut that we were giddy.


Gordough was along with some other trailers (I'm begining to think some of the best food comes from trailers) in a really neat little area with tons of picnics tables, quintessential Austin experience to eat a table with strangers with food from a trailer.


To finish off the evening we did what I like to do every weekend- attend a dracula themed moon bounce party. Yes, you read that right. And yes, it was awesome. Not many pictures of that, because, well we were busy getting our moon bounce on!



So that was my fun Friday night out enjoying this amazing city I get to live it and my even more amazing friends. Who knew perfect Friday night started with twig tea and ended with a moon bounce?

Graham cracker fail

So yesterday I attempted home-made graham crackers. I was so proud of them and they were relatively easy to make- I even made the little dotted lines to snap them in half! Well,I nearly chipped my tooth trying to eat one. Those suckers were rock solid. If I decide to give everyone paper weights or door stops for Christmas I'm all set.



I did find someone that would eat them...


Oh well. My attempts at baking have consistently failed, still searching for a good wheat bread recipe that isn't a dense as a brick. Anyone have any suggestions?

Andy gone=Ashley gaudies up the house

This weekend Andy went on a boy's trip to marble falls for a friend's bachelor party. He had a lot of fun and got some good quality guy time. I was left alone to my own devices for three days. I cooked a lot of meals to freeze, did a few little house projects, had dinner with a friend (and by dinner I mean we ate just massive amounts of guacamole and talked all night), got to go celebrate a friend's birthday at Chuy's (seriously, are there any 12 Step groups for Mexican food?). One of my projects was painting the hall closet doors. I was just looking for projects that required time not money, so I just pulled some of the paint we already had, making this a free project! Double score! I think it turned out pretty well, but as you can see the walls totally clash with the doors now, so I'm excited to finally get the walls repainted. Jalapeno jelly green just isn't doing it for me anymore. After I repaint the walls I really think I am done with any house stuff for a long time.

Before:



After:




In the spirit of full disclosure, I will tell you I had two painting projects this weekend and am only showing you pictures of the one because the other project was a FAIL. I attempted to paint the front door. Attempted is definitely the operative word in that sentence. I am going to attempt to fix it tonight and will post pictures later!

Simplicity.

Okay, so I've been wanting to write about this for awhile but didn't know how to not come across as preachy or self righteous. So please don't take it as such because well, we are all different, or my Okie roots tell me "different strokes for different folks" Here goes...

While hopping around in blog world, I stumbled upon some really awesome blogs about minimalism. Come to find out it's not just about not having a bunch of junk laying around. It's about living simply so you can enjoy what really is important to you. Hmmm...it sounded reasonable. But do I have to get rid of all my clothes and have empty walls? Some people do, in fact some do this 100 thing challenge, where they literally only own 100 items. There's also the no-buy pact, where people commit to not buying anything new for a certain period of time (usually a year or so). I can see us maybe doing that, although I would miss my Target for sure. Let's see, what else? Oh, the Small House movement, this one is pretty self explanatory. You buy a big honkin house and you get a big honkin mortgage, and inevitably you fill it up with stuff and there is more to maintain, etc. Big house definitely have their perks for sure, but maybe it's because I'm lazy, our 1400 square feet is more than enough for us when it comes to cleaning and maintenance. Anyways, the bottom line is that it's about not getting sucked into consuming and focusing more on living and enjoying.

I think I was most excited cause it was a lot of things we were already doing, but there was a name for it, and lots of other people live this way too! We don't buy junk food, plan on staying in our house till we retire, sock away money every month, buy everything with cash, just not buying a lot "stuff". Now, we of course have our money splurges, mine being travel and Andy's being his project car, but that's the cool thing about this whole "living simply stuff", it's not just about eating beans and rice and living in an empty tiny place for the sake of being a minimalist, but we can spend our money on what we want to spend it on and what makes our lives better. Great example of this being that I am off work today- and every Friday. Yes, I could make more if I worked 5 days a week, but because we don't have a bunch of bills I'm free as a bird every Friday.

I will definitely be posting about our attempts to simplify our lives and exactly what that means for us, here are a few things we have started the last six months or so:

-Home-made cleaners (bathroom cleaner, laundry soap, dish washing soap)
-Eating out once a week
-Cancelled netflix (admittedly I did this one very begrungingly since we don't have cable, but I was just spending way too much time watching tv)
-No store bought presents for anniversary/b-days
-Buying little to no processed foods (tough one for Andy so I've been making bread which seems to help)
-Having date nights include hanging out at the dog park, hiking, riding bikes
-Weekly drop-offs at Goodwill

I am super excited about this and admittedly I know people (cough cough dad) will think Austin has made an already earth loving wannabe hippy a little more crazy about being green, and they are probably right. But I do think this is bigger than that and am excited to simply enjoy life.

A breathe of cool air

We had the luxury of getting to spend four glorious days in Oklahoma this past weekend. When we arrive Thursday I was cold! COLD! I barely recognized what cool air felt like. It. was. glorious. We got to spend a night with Annette and go eat some seriously good breakfast at Jimmy's Egg (one of the places I must visit when we are in the city) before we headed up to Tulsa. My dad answered the door and did a little jig for us! I hadn't seen him since he has been walking and it was a wonderful sight to see! He is doing so incredibly well and seeing him up and around was definitely the best part of the trip. We had a wonderful weekend of just hanging around the house, watching old movies (dad thought it was completely unacceptable that Andy had never seen Young Frankenstein), ate lots of yummy food. Saturday mom and I went thrift shopping and got some CRAZY awesome deals. Thrifting in Austin almost isn't even worth it, I feel like I can find stuff on clearnace at Target for cheaper than Goodwill. Well that is not the case in Tulsa, I spend about $30 and got 8 shirts, 1 dress, and 2 sweaters. Really nice brands too, we were in hog heaven and definitely got some awesome deals. While we were tearing up the thrift store, dad and Andy went to a drag race for a little bit. A drag race! a few weeks ago my dad was in the hospital and couldn't walk! I'm telling you, he is a rock star. Sounds like they had fun. Here are pretty much the only pictures I took this weekend.


Emma, the 2nd cutest dog in the world ;)

On Sunday we drove to Lake Keystone for a picnic lunch and then hung out on the "beach" for a little bit to let the dogs play. Perfect day with beutiful weather.


Molly LOVED the swimming and actually threw a little bit of a temper tantrum when we had to leave, she started whining and barking. Thought I had a dog so I didn't have to deal with that stuff yet, apparently not!

One night we went out to eat at Red Rock (i think?). It was crazy de-lish. I feel like Austin has some crazy good food, especially Mexican and bar-b-que, but Oklahoma knows how to do home cooking and we definitely had our fill of it! Mmmmmm....


It was a wonderful weekend and I love that every time I get to see my dad he is just doing better and better. Thanks mom and dad for a perfect weekend! Love you guys.