New Year is Upon Us

I can't believe that tomorrow we will stop writing 2013 and commence writing 2014.  It does not feel like a year has gone by already. This year has been filled with so many new and wonderful things.  God has blessed us so much this year.  I am so incredibly thankful for all that He has done.

I was in my first mainstage opera with Tulsa Opera through TOC...

Traveled to Boston/Vermont/New Hampshire for my first time, with my wonderful husband and got to spend time with his amazing family!...

Celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary...

Got my very own concealable handgun for my birthday...

Witnessed beautiful snow and got to enjoy half a snow day...

Got to be a blessing to others and ourselves while volunteering at Church on the Move's Christmas Train...

 Spent tons of time with my Handsome Husband...

Finally got my dream red leather jacket (Thank you, Husband!!)...

...and so many more things!!  Thank you to those that lent to a fantastic 2013!  I couldn't have done it without you.  Your memory will live on in my heart.  I hope to make 2014 and even better year!  

Happy New Year, everyone!!

Being Thankful

Well folks, it's happened!  After all this waiting, all this preparing myself...94.1 FM has finally started playing all Christmas music!  Now, not only can I listen to Christmas music all day at work, thanks to Pandora, but now I can listen to it anywhere I go in the car!  It makes me happy.  You can't say that you've ever listened to Christmas music and been anything but happy.  Except for that Christmas Shoes song.  Makes me cry every. single. time.  No lie.  So I generally change the station when that song comes on.  My eyes are actually getting that welling up sensation just thinking about it.  Moving on!

 Our house is beginning to look more and more like Christmas has arrived.  Now, I know what you're thinking: Sarah, you can't skip Thanksgiving, what about Thanksgiving??  I have my handmade wooden Turkey and fall centerpiece still sitting on the dining room table (surrounded by all of the Christmas stuff I'm still trying to find places for...) so don't worry.  And I'm being thankful a lot.  I'm thankful for such a wonderful husband.  A wonderful husband that put up with me starting to decorate for Christmas the day after Halloween.  A husband who is so kind and patient with me.  A husband whom I love very much and enjoy spending time with.  Sometimes I wish we worked in the same office so I could see him all day every day!!  Too much?  Nah...
(also, the nerd in me came out when typing this.  When typing nah, my caps lock accidentally got pushed to where it said NaH.  My first thought was that it looked like a periodic symbol.....  So I had to look it up.  Sodium Hydride: "NaH is a representative of the saline hydrides, meaning it is a salt-like hydride composed of Na+ and H- ions." Makes me feel so smart.  Also reminds me of a time when friends and I thought this guy in our church play was a hot guy.  We couldn't very well going around calling him 'hot guy' for the whole world to know what we thought!  He would know!  So we started calling him Hg, which for those of you that don't know is the periodic symbol for Mercury.  Thus, the nickname Mercury was born!  We all thought we were so clever.)  Anyway, I think I have way way digressed.  I have chased that white rabbit to his rabbit hole and beyond!

Anyway...here's what our house is looking like for Christmas so far:

 Those bottles I am actually going to start selling in an craft mall about the first week of December.  I am pretty excited!  I've been itching to get a business started, so this will be just a small taste to get me started. Also, the hanging owls probably aren't going to stay.  I think I was a little delirious from being sleepy and it being past my bedtime.  I just decided to play around with them a little.

Y'all just thought I was going to put of some pretty pictures for you to look at without my narrating.  For a second, I did too!  But...I just couldn't let that happen.  I like talking too much.

This is an assorted ornament trough that's on our coffee table.  I love it.  Put it together last night before I went to bed.  As I've mentioned before, when Husband and I moved into the house it came with a shed FULL of stuff.  All but the silver ornaments were in a small box inside one of the boxes in the shed.  I wonder if they did something similar with them or if it was just a box of random stuff that they'd bought at a garage sale.  The later seems more plausible.  I like the mixture of the red, silver and gold.  I also had to throw in the little guy on the horse just for diversity.

This is just to assure you all that I do still have thanksgiving out.  I'm not completely bypassing it.  It's just currently coexisting with Christmas.  

Thank you all for stopping by today!  Happy Thursday-almost-Friday!!  Tomorrow, Mama, Grandma, Sister and I are going to Texas. On Sunday, I have a long overdue reunion with my best friend in Philadelphia and her family!

My Weekend and Me

This is the beginning picture of a future post about these cookies I found in Pinterest called Swig Cookies.  They sounded delicious!  They are a nice thick sugar cookie.  I actually think they came out thicker than intended since I might or might not have used half bread flour on accident.  I can't tell them apart!  But they still tasted amazing.  All I lack is the colored frosting to go on them.

 My weekend Christmas craft!  They actually turned out better than I thought they would.  They look even better from a distance. They match the bright vibe that I am going for in the dining room. There will be many more crafts to come.  Especially since I will be getting a booth at a craft mall.  Finally!!  I found one I liked that is going to be opening in Sapulpa.  All I need to do is get my inventory up.  We will be selling decorated bottles, Christmas-y things (during December only of course,) and David's photography, and really anything else we fell like stuffing in the booth.  I am pre-tty excited!

It always cracks us up when Bandit sites like this. We were getting ready to leave and he went in and sat in his 'my owners are getting ready to leave' perch.  It was so cute!  Sitting like a human.  I just can't get enough of him!  I wish I could take him to work with me, if I knew he wasn't going to bark at people that came in.

Mmmm Sunday dinner at Grandma's: bacon wrapped pork tender loin, sweet potato casserole (for me, since I will be out of town for Thanksgiving,) mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, and for dessert, pumpkin bread pudding!!!

A really fun and intense game that I was introduced to this weekend when I met some friends for coffee: Pandemic. a 2-4 player game in which you try to  find the cure and eradicate the diseases from the world before time runs out.  Each person has a different role and you work together to rid each country of the raging disease.  There are outbreaks, infections and epidemics.  It gets pretty intense!

Why did the chicken cross the road?  To get away from me!  My parents' neighbors have a flock of chickens and roosters in the middle of a city neighborhood.  They're a lot of fun to watch.  I wish I could have gotten a still picture of mister rooster.  He had such pretty coloring!

Happy Monday everyone!!

My Week at a Glance

As I move into having been at my job for a year next week, I get overjoyed at the little things.  Things that make my job easier.  Such as this headset that i got to set up yesterday.  I was a little skeptical at first, but after that first call from a client, I was in love!  With the headset.  Hands-free.  Mostly.  I do have to drag my finger up and push a little button on the earpiece to answer the phone.  That's ok.  It gets my little finger some extra exercise aside from typing on the keyboard all day.

    After one call, I was hooked!  There's a little box with an arm on it that attaches to the phone and lifts up the receiver when I answer it.  Caught me off guard at first since it was my first time to use a headset and didn't know what to expect.  As I said, it's the little things.  It allows me to immediately start typing when a client calls in without having to juggle the phone on my shoulder at the risk of dropping it. (Which I've done a couple of times.)  Plus, I think it makes me look a little more professional!  What do you think?

Tuesday was a very important day: voting day! My voter registration was the last thing I forgot to change when I got married.  Luckily I smarted up the day before and thought to get a temporary voter i.d. and update everything so I could vote.  

Last night was a fun night!  Husband, Grandma, Sister and I got together for dinner at Mexicali in downtown Tulsa.  The food was, as always amazing!  I got the breaded tilapia fish tacos with cabbage relish, avocado, pico de gallo and a delicious, sweet mango pico de gallo.  Ah, it makes my mouth water just thinking about it!  Grandma, Sister and I then went and saw Irving Berlin's White Christmas at the PAC.  It was a wonderful show!  Great music, beautiful staging, costumes and lots of dancing!  They had spectacular tap numbers that made me want to get up and dance...if I knew how to tap or dance...

  It was a good time spent with some of my family.  I enjoy doing that a lot, spending time with family.  Our parents were on a cruise, having left last Saturday and getting back last night.  It was good being able to welcome them back after we got back after the show. I miss my family when they are gone!

  I hope you all have a happy Friday!!!

One Year of Bliss

This may be my longest post yet.  I have so much to share, so much for which to be thankful.  A year ago today I married the man of my dreams, my best friend, my partner in crime, and the love of my life.  I feel so blessed to be able to call such a wonderful man Husband.  All of our family and friends were in town, (some of which [family] I was meeting for the first time.)  It was such a joyous moment and one that brings a smile to my face and butterflies in my stomach every time I think about it.  I'm excited to see where this God-given journey takes us in the years to come.  Looking forward to sharing many more memories and making so many new ones.  Thank you to everyone who has helped us along this path and who helped make this day so extra special for us!

                               {I love this one of Mom putting on David'd boutenniere.}

                                        {How many girls does it take to put on a wedding dress?}

 {That's right.  Part of my dress fastenings broke as we were putting it on and I had to be pinned in!}

 {Hand-made invitations. Mom and her group of friends put so much effort into them.  They even made the clay leaves themselves.}

 {Some of my wonderful friends whom I am glad could be there.  They sang one of my favorite choral songs in the wedding: Where Your Barefoot Walks By David Childs. (See a YouTube video of the song here)}

 {Our photographer Ruth Reese told the bridesmaids to pretend like they were throwing their pumpkin at David.  One bridesmaid actually threw it and Ruth caught the pumpkin mid flight!}

Bomber Jacket

Happy Wednesday, y'all!  (I refuse to call it happy h day.)  Today is nice and dreary.  To cheer me up I went with a neutral colored sweater with a lacy camisole, cozy leggings and boots, and my bomber jacket.  I'd been wanting this jacket from Target for so long.  The first Black Friday I actually got out for was with Husband and Rayah Sunshine and her husband.  This was their Christmas present to me.  I have loved it and used it a lot ever since.  For a pop of color I added a bright turquoise and gold necklace that I got at Vintage Market Days when it was here in town earlier this year.
  The iPhone case is another one that I made myself. You can read about it in an earlier post here.  It's my Halloween case.  I guess I'll have to be coming up with a Christmas one before I know it.  This hear has been going by so quickly!  Our one year wedding anniversary is going to be in 12 days!!  That's so hard to believe.  It hasn't felt like it's been that long.  I told Husband that there must be a time conspiracy afoot and that it's been increasingly getting faster.  Thanksgiving, then Christmas will be here so soon!  But until then, I think I'll enjoy my Halloween decorations just one more day.  Then I'll be putting them away and beginning the process of sorting through my Christmas decorations!  I have a lot of fun new ideas for this year.  I can't wait to share them with you!

Misty Morning

God is love.  Love is beautiful.  God, the god of love makes beautiful things.  Sometimes something happens in nature and I'm just left speechless and in awe.  Saturday morning was one of those moments.  A long moment.  As I was driving to my grandmother's house at 6am I was fascinated by all of the fog and mist that was suspended in front of me and around me.  On our way to Arkansas we saw misty fields where you couldn't really see into them beyond the roadside, beautiful ponds that had mist suspended in little clouds above them, and then the sun making its magnificent rise to start another day.
    How can you see all of this beauty, all of this wonder without knowing there is a god.  The God.  The same god that made the smallest molecule all the way up to the vast, vast outer space.  Planets, stars, all light years away.  I am thankful for the diversity, thankful for the creativity, and thankful for the care with which my God created everything.
  I don't even remember the last time that I was up before 7am, let alone before 6am!  But if I hadn't been, then I wouldn't have been able to witness the beauty that God created in the 'quiet, misty morning.'  Next time you're up earlier than you usually are, take a  moment to just observe and soak in the creations that you wouldn't normally get to see.

  Happy Sunday, everyone!  This is the day that the Lord hath made!!

Happy 100 Posts!

It is with excitement that can say I've finally reached 100 posts!  To commemorate, I am going to repost some of the milestone posts from our lives.  These were some pretty exciting moments!  Proposal, getting our house, decorating house, our puppy's first birthday... So many wonderful things and big changes have happened since starting this blog way back in the day. Hard to believe I've had it for about 3 years now.  (Though really it's like it's been one since I wrote in it mostly this year.  But 3 years sounds better.)  I hope you all enjoy the walk down memory lane.  Thank you for reading and I'm glad you could join me today in celebrating my 100th post!

         September 26, 2011

"David and I spent most of the 4th of July at my grandmother's house popping firecrackers, baking cookies and spending time with my family.  That night, we went to Riverpark's big fireworks show.  My cousin and a couple of mine and David's friends were in attendance.  One of his friends happened to be taking photos of the fireworks.  David casually asked his friend to take pictures of us.  So we stood up and hugged for the pictures.  David began digging in his pocket and before I knew it, he was kneeling down on one knee!  With the fireworks blossoming in the background, David asked me to marry him!!  I squealed as tears sprang to my eyes and said YEEEESS!!  That was the happiest moment of my life!  I was completely and utterly surprised.  I cannot wait to spend the rest of our lives together.  I could not ask for a better man to be my husband and take care of me.  Say hello to the future Mrs. Linde!!"

February 1, 2012

       The house is ours!! 

"We closed on Tuesday.  And by 'we' I mean David.  I was unfortunately stuck in Edmond doing mundane things such as choir and opera rehearsals...(during which we did get a lot accomplished.)  It is move in ready and we (and again I mean 'we' as in David and my Parents) have begun moving things in.  My parents came down yesterday and help load up the bedroom suite that we got from EARC Thrift store.  It's very nice!  A 5 piece set at a very decent price.  We also got to enjoy a delicious dinner at Earl's Rib Palace, (home of Oklahoma's best BBQ!!)  Though I will be going there this weekend to help with the moving process.  Maybe now would be a good time to clear out a few of my holiday decoration tubs that are sitting in my kitchen in Edmond and taking up space in the shed out back... Surely there's room for 4 tubs somewhere..."

                                                              January 31, 2013

"Pardon the mess, but it's almost heard to believe that this is the same living room.  Everything in the house was white, white, white!  We needed some color in there ASAP.  The paint color is Pomegranate I believe, and it was a perfect match for our red barn paintings.  The paintings actually have a fun story behind them.  The first one shown in the corner with the table lamp (from Kirkland's, love that place) was from a place in Tulsa called Persimmon Hollow Village.  It's a neat place full of rustic buildings containing anything from wood working to Coca Cola memorbilia.  We got it for about $5!!  The 4 small ones, we found on one of our antique excursions somewhere in Oklahoma. They are all 5 painted on what looks to be linen, or a fine burlap, all bearing the same signature.  I call this my Christmas room because of the red and the snow pictures.  Decorating this house was just so much fun!!"

                                                                       February 17, 2013

"Today, our little puppy turned 1 year old!! Back in September, we adopted him from the SPCA. One of the best decisions we made! He is so precious. We couldn't have chosen a better dog. Actually, he's the first dog I've ever had, so naturally we spoil him rotten! Both of his grandmothers came over today with precious gifts for our precious puppy! I baked a cake for the special occasion. (None of the ingredients harmful to dogs.). And it was super easy to make!! And it didn't taste half bad, only a little bland: natural peanut butter, flour, shredded carrots, being the main ingredients.  The recipe can be found HERE."