I find it helpful to focus on good things (how very Martha of me) whenever my days have a more plentiful supply of the bad.

♥ tea w/ a little milk and sugar
♥ sweet coworkers
♥ lunching with the ladies
♥ SILENCE.
♥ smiles on faces
♥ people who are happy
♥ cold, cold water
♥ knowing that i get to spend the evening with Kevin
♥ LOST on wednesdays
♥ mafia movies
♥ pie (even though it’s not really in my life anymore)
♥ birthdays!

Weirdest chat ever with Kevin:

me: also: when we are married we can watch the Red Green show on friday nights
me: score
me: it’s going to be awesome being married.

It’s been a weird, rough past week and a half. First I was sick and while I was sick, I realized that I’d had enough. Some people know what happened. If you don’t, I’ll be glad to tell you in an email, I’m just not interested in airing any dirty laundry online.

This morning I wrote something for my SparkPeople blog to sorta motivate myself and help me to remember in the future why I did what I did. I’m pretty bad about forgetting my reasons behind serious action and this is something I cannot afford to forget.

Your mind and spirit are just as important to be nourished as your body. I know that I can lose sight of that pretty often. This is a note so that I will remember, and maybe encourage other people, to take whatever steps are necessary to remove the poison from your life. I firmly believe in trying to remain strong and a good example to those around you, but there comes a time when you have to choose to remove yourself from the situation. If you are not being built up, you’re being dragged down.

When we’re talking about our bodies we decrease the bad intake and increase the good output. It’s the same with our mind and spirit. I am choosing to refuse the insensitive, uneducated, and unknowledgeable criticism aimed at myself and my life. It is tearing down my mind, bringing down my spirit, and taking me to the same level as the people doing this.

Instead I am embracing the things that matter:
The love of my Lord, Jesus Christ
My loving fiance
My devoted family
Friends that love and support me

I am turning away from and refusing to take the following:
Unfounded criticism, intended to hurt and bring chaos
CHAOS, encouraged by those whose lives center around it and therefore believe other’s lives must as well
Hatefulness
Insanity, I will not take diagnosis from people who need to be diagnosed themselves
Divisive speech
Direction from someone who is not my superior
Uneducated advice

And I will no longer listen to the voice of inexperience. I am committing today to continue working towards my goals with my success in mind. Looking toward the future and refusing to let anyone else drag me down. I will embrace my success, not be ashamed of it, and go forward.

For more information about the wedding ceremony, or if you’re looking for travel accommodations for that day, please visit our wedding website: kevinANDlizabeth.com

This page is a work in progress and I will update it periodically throughout our engagement. It’s basically where I am storing all our options and ideas for things. Some are set, some are not. Everything is subject to change.

Bethel Assembly of God
Duncan, Oklahoma
June 6, 2009 at 6 p.m.

Colors & Themes
→We’re going for a blackberry theme during the ceremony and reception. Our primary color will be some shade of dark purple.

Along with the purple we will be incorporating cream/white.

Wedding Attire
Bridesmaids
I will be having four bridesmaids and each will be wearing a chiffon dress with vertical rouched bodice and horizontal rouched waist. (Ava by Mori Lee, style #427 Chiffon)

Reception
Like the rest of the wedding we are going for a southern feel here. Right now the plan is to set up a large tent inside the youth facility at the church and create a garden look. The rough plans are to create the illusion of sitting beneath a large tree with lanterns, lights, and crystals hanging from the “limbs.” There will be a head table for the wedding party, a few reserved tables for immediate family members, and a few dozen tables for our wedding guests.

I really hope all attending are able to stay for the reception because as we’re planning it now, it is going to be gorgeous. While we had been planning on using the reception hall and the lawn, it was looking like there were going to be a few snags in setting up the tent outside and I didn’t want to trouble the church with it. The tent inside the building does sound a little odd, but I think we’re going to get the perfect effect–a really beautiful, nighttime atmosphere.

My first cooking video! Maybe I’ll do more of these?

Finished product:

I haven’t laughed this hard in a long time. Sure, it may be because I’ve been fine tuning my Bjork impression since I was 15 (along with my “If I Could Turn Back Time” Cher), but who cares. Kristen Wiig is quickly becoming my favorite SNL cast member.

Almost an hour into it already. Let me say that I liked Justin Timberlake, Boyz II Men, Al Green, and Keith Urban and Coldplay. Kid Rock? I’ll pass.

• Miley Cyrus isn’t my taste. I like Taylor Swift though. Enunciate Miley, enunciate! And stop pronouncing things like a cross between Tori Amos and Bjork.
• Alison Krauss has hair like a goddess.
• Jennifer Hudson. Sing girl. Someday her life is going to be a movie. That’s got to be so difficult to be up there.
• You mind if I liveblog the commercials? Cause I really want Heidi Klum’s hair in the Guitar Hero commercial.
• *too busy watching the Jonas Brothers to liveblog*
• Blink 182 is back. I’m in junior high again.
• Katy Perry’s performance = a Fruitopia commercial. Oh, and she can’t dance. Or sing while dancing. Wait. That’s not conditional on dancing.
• What year is Kanye borrowing his hair from?
• Oh hooray! It’s my girl, Adele. I want to be her pal. Looks like we share the same kind of love for the Jo Bros. And she loves Duffy! Score. Okay, now we all just need to get together, get Amy Winehouse cleaned up, and form the ultimate girl group. ‘Kay? ‘Kay.
• Is Natalie Cole wearing paper chains on her dress?

TAKING A BREAK SO I CAN SHOWER AND WASH THE FLU OFF MY SKIN.

• Did I miss anything good?
• Oblahblahblah.
• I can handle this Four Tops stuff. Quality.
• Don’t get the appeal of Lil Wayne. Robin Thicke, well, that I understand.
• I want T-Pain’s hat.
• Oplease. Keep the politics out of it.

And with that, I end my post. I took some Nyquil a bit ago and now I’m fading. Up early for work in the morning and taking the Daytime Theraflu with me. Night folks!

I’m dedicating this one to my brother Kyle, because he was obsessed with watching Captain Bucky O’Hare for a period of time. It came on Sunday mornings and he had this coloring book that he would carry around…a lot of places. This was also around the time that he was always wearing the yellow (I think? Correct me if I’m wrong on that one) ball cap, olive green quilted vest, and either black or red cowboy boots. He was like 4 or 5. Man. There’s video of that ensemble somewhere.

Or any craft show, really. These are just a few observations I made while fighting may way through the crowds of mostly 40+ women who flock to this biannual event at Oklahoma City’s State Fair Park (back in the fall). And get excited! It’s happening again this weekend! Head out to the fair grounds on February 6, 7, and 8 for this fantastic display of things rich women with nothing better to do bought at Market and marked up by 300% crafty talent. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy AAotH, but gracious me–every crazy, countrified craft you can think of ends up in this place. And then the most annoying of all are the booths that look the same–the ones where you can tell they all went to Market on the same weekend and came home with all the same goods (ridiculous shirts that have a shot of Paris in the background with the word “Chocolat” emblazoned across the bosom in faux rhinestones…give me a break). But here you go vendors! A consumer’s (tongue-in-cheek) list of ways to succeed at An Affair of the Heart.

1. Food. You’ll block an entire aisle’s worth of booths if you offer a free sample of any edible item. Shoot, it doesn’t even have to be edible. You could probably stir some hot tar in with a little cream cheese and dill, slap a label on it (“Black Gold Bean Dip” would be a winner with this crowd), set out some tortilla chips and wait.

2. OU/OSU. Tote bags are usually the best way to go with this, though I can see a lot of potential in throw pillows made out of trash bags (white with the red ties for OU, black with the orange ties for OSU). Why has no one tried this?!

3. Pet apparel. If you can personalize this stuff–even better. And collars with charms to spell out names are especially great. They can double as bracelets or you could even use them to jazz up your child’s leash once they are big enough to walk and no longer ride in the stroller you are using as a shopping cart to block the way of the 100 people walking behind you. Sorry. Lost my train of thought… Arrange your booth in such a way that everyone has to file through in a line and once they’re inside there’s no turning back. They are forced to look at every item because of that one Tri Delt with her mom who can’t decide if Abigail Persephone, her Min Pin, would prefer purple or pink. Get with the program honey, you’re a Tri Delt. Cerulean blue.

4. Things painted on saws. I cannot see the appeal and there is very little I can comment on here. Sorry. Yeah, I know, this is a blog and I’m supposed to write things to entertain you. I’ll leave you with a picture in case you haven’t seen one of these things…

5. Faith, Hope, Love OR Live, Laugh, Love OR Sing like no one’s listening…yada yada. SIGNAGE. My hatred for this stuff is something that I am incapable of expressing. If I were to try to verbalize it, it would be some guttural death growl. And that Mark Twain quote? I challenge you to find more than a dozen booths that DON’T feature it in some way. I will give you cookies if you do. Here’s a thought on this one–go against the grain. Don’t use the most tuckered out quote that half the females on the internet put in their “favorite quotes” section on whatever social network they’re using, thinking they are original and livelaughloving life like no one’s done before. Or go ahead and do it and make money. Wow, this makes me seem angsty. Other signs that are ridiculous and garner close to the same amount of hatred: Paris, Chocolat, It’s All About Me, If Mama Ain’t Happy Ain’t Nobody Happy…I can’t go on.

6. Crosses. You can’t go wrong. Especially not in Oklahoma. I’m not sure that I ever had a conversation with a person who didn’t at least claim to be a Christian until I came to OU. Popular materials to construct crosses with: fence posts, barbed wire, sheet metal. For some women, crosses seem to be to them what very big trucks are to their husbands. I’m not going to elaborate on that, but if you know what I mean, feel free to give me a wink. I’d like to know that I’m not alone in thinking this.

7. Random photographs with shapes that might be construed as letters of the alphabet and placed in a frame to spell out your last name or first name or SOONERS. The first year these things were at AAotH the booth didn’t even bother to have any on hand other than display pieces. It looked like that was a smart idea because it forced people to make a decision: do I place an order or do I attempt to live my life without this work of art in my very Southern Living, Country Sampler-fied home? And I can tell you that year people were placing orders right and left. The booth was crazy busy and the ladies working it barely had a moment to breath the few times I passed them. But the second year? There were no fewer than 5 booths selling the same thing. I don’t know whose original idea it was, but the moral of the story is that you MUST be one of two things at this show. A complete sell-out (Market goods crowd) or so original you aren’t going to be able to take care of all the people who want to buy your product.

I’ll take the latter of those two any day, but if you do fall into that spot at a show one thing you have to accept is that next year someone else is going to be cashing in on what you created that year before and they may even be better. I grew up in the craft show circuit (it’s not much different from being a Ren Faire kid–free craft fair food, your run of the place, and all the wooden swords and popguns you could want) and sometimes I feel that urge to create something kitschy and fantastic and sure to suck in a certain portion of the female population. Then I remember what it was like to unload tables from a trailer and set them up in a fair barn that smelled like pigs until enough cinnamon scented candles had been lit and orange spice potpurri was lining the aisles. Hanging crafts from hooks on pegboards before we’d even had breakfast. I remember how Mom would be up until all hours of the night to get one last doll sewn or just a few more pinecone Christmas trees flocked. And I think I’m content (for now, because who knows how I’ll feel when I have slave labor children) to roam the aisles without the added burden of thieving people’s ideas.

(So glad Chad over at The Lost Ogle didn’t forget this was happening. And for those of you who aren’t interested in wreaths and raffia he’s got a few other ideas for the weekend.)

My second video blog, first real video response to LOST. Let’s hope I can keep this going!

Also: The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack: Ep. 4.7 “The Little Prince”