Good morning Lady Loves!

I’m starting to wish that I was the type of blogger who could just sit down and crank out a post really fast… do those bloggers exist?  In my mind, I imagine that every other blogger (besides myself) just sits, writes, and publishes.  Yeah, I know that can’t actually be the case, but I don’t feel like I’m any good at just sitting down and coming up with interesting enough content to capture an audience without putting serious thought into it and starting a good draft that then becomes a scheduled post.  Anywho, that’s besides the point… I say all that to let y’all know that I’m working on this and the way I’m working on it is by sitting down and writing my posts when I have time.  I usually like to publish posts at 6am central time, but now you may find a post early in the morning or late at night or even in the middle of the day.  I’ll see how this works for a while and decide what is best for me.

I’ve been loving the refresher on vegan living from Main Street Vegan and it seriously makes me wonder how the entire world isn’t vegan (myself included) when there are so many health benefits and not to mention how great it is for our environment and seriously y’all… veganism could make a huge difference in world hunger!  Anyways, I’m pretty sure that once I move out of Starkville and get my own place (meaning, I don’t live with 8 other girls like at Disney and I don’t live with my sisters or my parents and I have a real job) I’ll probably turn into a vegan at home, vegetarian out and eventually a full-fledged vegan.  You really should read about it if you’re into the whole going green and saving the earth deal – or just interested in losing some weight and living a healthy fulfilling life!

On that same note, I ran into some vegan cookbooks that I’m dying to have now.

Also some books on professional development… needless to say, Amazon may be hearing from me real soon and they will probably enjoy the chunk of change I want to throw at them!

Nick and I started a new 10 day challenge today!  Usually we do something related to health or fitness, but this 10 day challenge is focused on financial health!  We each have $35.00 to spend on eating out for the next 10 days and whoever spends the least amount wins.  There is a mathematical way we calculate out the prize that I’m really not interested in getting in to, but you should know… I’m determined to win!  So here goes lunches with my co-workers and here comes lunch at my desk prepared by ME! 

By the way… the pictures in this post have absolutely NOTHING to do with anything, except that when I decide to write a post based solely on brain power at this particular moment, I don’t have a lot of good material.  I’m surprised if you made it this far!  Congrats!

I’d also like to point out the amazing fact that my parents are celebrating their 25th anniversary today! Holy smokes, 25 years!  I love them and I’m proud of them, they’ve overcome a lot in 25 years and I’m blessed to have them as parents! Happy 25th Anniversary y’all (Because, I’m pretty sure you’re reading!) Love you both!

 

Hope you’re having a great week!  I hope all of you participants of the Bloggers Helping Bloggers are enjoying getting to know your partners!  I know I’m already swooning over my sweet new friend, Sarah, and I’m excited to be praying for some really exciting stuff going on in her life right now!

*I asked Nick for a good title… That’s what I get for asking for his input on the blog! haha*

Holy Guac! I don’t know what happened to the past few days… well, that’s a lie.  I had every intent of posting at the end of July 4th to share what I did that day… that didn’t happen.  So I thought I’d post about it first thing July 5th… that didn’t happen.  Then I was gone all day July 6th… so that didn’t happen again.  And now here I am!  I thought I should probably catch you up to speed finally before I forget all the wonderful memories I’ve made!

I love blogging, but I’m learning that I love living even more and sometimes blogging takes a back seat, which is fine.  I’m living in the moment, loving every second of it, and soaking up the joys of this summer.  That literally defines the last few days of my life.

I’m going to approach this in time-line order, well because that just makes sense I guess…

I had a very low-key 4th of July.  I just found out the night before that Nick was actually going to be in town a day sooner, so I’d have someone to celebrate with!  I imagined my July 4th being pretty lame with me drinking a few of my favorite beers, sitting on the couch watching some tv, cleaning my apartment, and attempting to make jalapeño poppers without a grill (Even if I had one, let’s be honest… I wouldn’t have a clue how to use it safely!), but dang it, I wanted some jalapeño poppers!  So swoops in Nick to save the day!  I got some good cleaning done before he arrived and I did all the shopping beforehand so when he arrived we could tackle the grilling.  We decided on some Hawaiian chicken, jalapeño poppers (of course!), and some oven-roasted veggies.  I had baked cupcakes earlier that day and decided to festively decorate with strawberries and blueberries.  They were amazing, heck, it was all amazing!

Enjoyed my morning quiet time with peanut butter pretzels, Beth Moore, God’s word, and coffee w/ soy milk & cinnamon.

Catching up vegan living

This was the perfect relaxing day! The entire day was filled with rain and thunderstorms which was the perfect excuse to spend the time packing up Nick’s apartment.  We opened up the door every now and then to watch the rain.  We enjoyed the evening watching Identity Thief and ordering a delicious pizza!

The MSU VISTA’s decided to go canoeing with the Ole Miss VISTA’s so we all met in Clarksdale, MS and canoed down the Mississippi River with Quapaw Canoe Company!  It turned out to be so much fun and you never know what life may bring.  We ended up canoeing with a guy and his son who were in town from Fort Worth, TX and we all really enjoyed spending the day together!  He gave me his e-mail address so I can e-mail him my resume and if he hears of anything, he’ll pass it along!  You never know who you’re going to meet or the kind of influence you’re going to make on people.  He genuinely loved what we did as VISTA’s and showed compassion for our futures and knew that we were job hunting now.  It was such a rewarding day!  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves now!

Stopped on the bank of the river for a mid-morning snack!

Lunch!

Hung out on this beautiful beach for the day!

This is our “Charlie’s Angel” pose.  We laughed a lot over this because Lacy said that she shows off her muscles that way because she thinks it makes them look better haha, so we all did it!

Hope y’all had a wonderful Holiday weekend, I apologize for taking up such a long blog post on this update, but I enjoyed the time away from the computer, spending quality time with friends!