Scraplog

Everyday Life: 06.22.12 – 07.05.12

I hope this week has gone well for everyone! We had record breaking heat last week and then a crazy wind storm yesterday with winds up to 65 miles an hour! It was kind of fun to watch last night especially since all is well here although I know there are lots of trees down elsewhere in town. Whew! We get insane weather here in the South! I never really thought about it before we moved here but it sure gives us great content for conversations :)

Since I was unable to post last week, I have a bit of catching up to do… again! It seems I am always in that spot.

I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago and one of my favorite things about having a bday is the free Starbucks. I finally got around to using it and it was delish! Thank you Starbucks. I love you.

I thought I was pretty cool with my glow bracelet on. These aren’t just for kids. It was fun for me too :)

Not the best photo but who cares right? I was taking this photo for my mother-in-law who gave me that shirt for my birthday. I love it and I was happy to show it off for her :)

Another Starbucks date with my sweetheart. Yeesh! You would think we live there. We don’t actually go that often but we happened to have another free one and we had to take advantage of it. And adding a cinnamon roll to the mix made our date even better!

I was at Target and I saw this new display. I was in love. So cute. The colors and packaging are perfect!

I had taken a break from the Photo A Day challenge but I started up again for July. July 1st was self portrait. This is my version with my blue toenails.

2. Busy. I had a hard time coming up with a photo for busy. Then I realized I was too busy finishing this book to be busy with anything else :) I enjoyed the book but it is very sad.

3. Best part of your day. For me it’s bedtime. Really, I love snuggling up and going to sleep. I love naps too. Anytime that involves sleeping is wonderful :)

4. Fun. I really enjoy puzzles and every once in a while I get one out and (duh!) put it together. Our library here in town has tons of puzzles that you can check out. It’s pretty sweet. Now I never buy them, I just check them out. Free puzzles are even funner.

Look at us on July 4th all red, white, and blue! We went to a friend’s house for the holiday at the lake and watched fireworks and ate yummy food including smores. I have been craving smores ever since :)

People are crazy for fireworks here. Another thing I didn’t know until I moved here :)

5. On the floor. What is on the floor? The cat. Always :) She likes to park herself on the carpet where you enter the living room. Or on the stairs so you have to walk around her. She’s a crazy one…

It’s not the best but here is a little shot from our wind storm yesterday. I captured it much better on video but I don’t know how to post a video :) You can see a little bit the blur of brown, that is all of the leaves as they blew uphill. It was insane. We had a bunch of sticks afterwards but there weren’t really any leaves left in our yard.

And that is all the news that’s fit to print around here. I have been making lots of stuff lately and having so much fun doing it. So, I guess I’d better get back to crafting :) Have a great weekend!!

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Tagged: Everyday Life, Personal, Photography

Everyday Life: 04.27.12 – 06.21.12

It’s been so long since I’ve posted Everyday Life that I’m just going to do a recap rather than post all of the photos. That would be a really long post if I did that :) Even with taking over half out, it’s still a long post :) Ready? Here goes nothing…

Jason and I love smoothies. We put lots of yummy stuff in them and this one was particularly colorful. Bananas, yogurt, strawberries, red bell pepper, spinach, carrots, pineapple, peaches, and blueberries. Then, after they are all blended, I pour mine into popsicle molds and have frozen smoothies. Super tasty! My go-to for summer.

Another summertime staple around here… a frappuccino. Seriously can’t get enough…

Outfit photo. Blue and yellow. I love this color combo. It feels very bright and cheerful, doesn’t it?!

Mmmm, coffee cake. Jason makes the yummiest coffee cake and it doesn’t last long here at our house :)

Our car had to get a new transmission last month and so we drove around my parent’s Mini. It was fun but we couldn’t haul much :) We had to buy a board for my garden and this is how we took it home with us.

We’ve had some beautiful sunsets around here lately. The other night the sun was bright red. A photo doesn’t do it justice.

We took a little road trip. Before every road trip we take a photo. Love this one.

In May my parents returned home from Brazil. Oh happy day!

Yes, our very favorite time of the year. Half-price frappuccinos. We didn’t get one every day of the promotion but we definitely got our fair share :)

Another outfit. I love to wear skirts.

I have really been enjoying my hydrangeas this season. They are so beautiful and I have cut many for our kitchen island.

See?! Don’t they look beautiful?!

A photo of a photo. This is my Mom and me when I was young and she was getting me dressed for bed. It’s one of my favorite photos I have of my childhood.

We all love sleeping in. Not very often in the summer, but occasionally, the cat sleeps with us.

Um, ya, you all know how much I love Fro Yo. We go regularly and here is my bowl compared to my friend’s bowl. I like the rich flavors and she likes the fruity flavors. Mmmm… I could go for some right now!

Yellow skirt again, this time paired with stripes.

Colorful food is my favorite!

Just a sneak peek at a project I’m working on. I should be done by now but I had to put it away when we had guests and I haven’t gotten it back out again. Oops :)

More colorful food. I really love it when fruit is in season. I suppose that is one thing I enjoy about summer. And my new favorite thing right now? Steak tacos. I have never been a steak fan but when it’s sliced thin and put on a corn tortilla… now you’re speaking my language!

I’ve enjoyed the sun a bit this year. Trying to get rid of my pasty white legs :) And see that bunny in the background? How cool is that?! We were sunbathing together!

Pretty clouds. Love.

More stripes, this time I’m all ready to go to the lake. But no, I didn’t take the cat with me :)

And here I am, at the lake. So pretty!

Another smoothie. This time, it’s already blended. This one was a simple one with just strawberries and bananas and it was the prettiest color of pink and so I had to take a shot.

A photo from last Sunday. I took my Dad out for breakfast for Father’s day before church. I love spending time with him :)

I also had a birthday on Monday and my dear, sweet friend brought me a cupcake. It was so yummy and I ate the whole thing by myself :) Peanut butter cream cheese frosting on chocolate cake. Who can resist that?!

I read a blog post somewhere several years ago that the blogger always gets a new birthday dress. So I adopted this tradition as well and it’s super fun. Then, for the rest of the year, the dress feels special. I love it :)

So there you go. A quick (haha) recap of what has been happening in my world. Lots has been happening and now that summer is in full swing I’m sure the busyness has just gotten started!

Enjoy your weekend!!

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Tagged: Everyday Life, Personal, Photography

Everyday Life: 04.21.12 – 04.26.12

Another week of photos! I love taking photos with my iPhone. It’s so easy and convenient. But I need to start venturing out again and take photos with my real camera. You know, for artistic reasons. And for practice. There is only so much practice you can do with an iPhone :) But for this week, once again, these were all taken with my phone. And the bottom line is, it still captures life. The ultimate goal for me anyway.

To start off, here is a photo of my new hair cut. I’m still getting used to it but I do like it. I actually have to do my hair now instead of just letting it dry. When it’s long, I do that a lot. But now, I have to either pull it back or use a straightener. I have really straight hair but the ends get all funky if I just let it air dry. So when I am staying close to home I just pull it back. When I’m going out, I straighten it :)

My outfit from last Saturday. I told you I would show my thrifted finds and this outfit definitely qualifies as that. The skirt was $2, the white button down shirt was 50 cents, and the shoes were $2 and they had never been worn. Score! So my whole outfit was only $4.50. Pretty good :)

21. Bottle. These are the bottles I spainted for Christmas a year and a half ago. Now they are in the dining room.I love it that you can see my hand in the mirror as I took this shot. I like to keep it real :)

22. The Last Thing You Bought. Our library sells their old magazines for 10 cents each. Sometimes when I am there I will pick up a couple. They have magazines from 10 years ago sometimes! But these were just last year so they weren’t too bad :)

23. Vegetable. The older I get, the more vegetables I like. Things I thought I hated, I now like (for example: beets. I love them now!). This is a photo of romaine lettuce and it made its way into my tummy via a wonderful salad full of beets (and other yummy stuff).

24. Something You’re Grateful For. I am so grateful for our house. Yes, there is the never ending maintenance and projects but I love it. I’m thankful to call it home.

25. Looking Down. Since I always do my outfit posts looking down, I figured this would be perfect for the day’s word. In this outfit the only thrifted item was the shirt ($2) which I picked up last summer.

A before and after side by side of my garden. Instead of planting my veggies in pots this year, I am planting them in the ground. So I cleared out a very sad overgrown flower bed in the backyard and we are building a raised bed in it’s place. I am super excited about it. We are even going to work on it this afternoon. Yay!

26. Black and White. There are a lot of places in my house that are black and white. Since my cat is gray, she kind of fits in most of the time. I snapped this photo from above of her looking down toward the family room. She’s funny :)

Okay, so this is my last post for the day! I promise!! Now I am all caught up and next will, hopefully, be back to normal!

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Tagged: Everyday Life, Personal, Photography

Everyday Life: 04.13.12 – 04.20.12

Happy Monday! The start to a full week has begun at the Dykast household. We had get up early this morning to drive to Chattanooga to take our car in to get a new transmission. Not so fun. But then I came home and immediately took a little nap. Lots of fun :) I know, I know, a nap before noon? I couldn’t help myself. And now I feel so much better, ready to tackle the rest of the day! In fact, I already have dinner ready. I made something that has to simmer for a long time so I got it ready early. How’s that for productive?!

I was gone all day on Friday and so I didn’t get my Everyday Life post done. But don’t worry, I have it ready for you today :) Last week already feels like a long time ago. It was good to look back and document it!

13. Something you found. I found a magazine in my mailbox! O happy day!! I love getting magazines. I felt like I hadn’t gotten any for so long and then I got a whole bunch last week. They just kept coming and coming. Now I have a pile that I get to look through. Usually I subscribe to mags when Amazon runs their $5 deals. It’s the best. $5 for a year subscription? Sign me up!

14. How you feel today. Lazy was how I felt at the moment of this photo. It was a Saturday and I was in my pj’s relaxing with my cat, reading a book. It was a great evening!

Sunday’s outfit. Hot pink skirt + stripe shirt + belt + wedge sandals. I love getting dressed up for church. I never used to do it but I started to a few years back because it was the only time of the week that it made sense to wear a dress consistently. So now I dress up every Sunday and it’s so fun. And by dressing up I mean I wear a skirt or dress and usually heels. That’s pretty much as far as it goes for me :)

15. Sunset. Okay, so this happens to me every time. Whenever there is a photo that is to be taken at a specific time, I forget. I remembered all evening that I was to take a photo of the sunset and then I missed my 5 minute window of opportunity because I forgot. So I ran outside just before it got really dark and took this. Shame. Even if I had remembered the photo wouldn’t have been much better because we have too many trees blocking our sky. But at least there would have been some streaks of color behind those trees. Oh well, maybe next time!

16. Flower. A confession. I had actually taken all of these photos of this bouquet of flowers gathered from my backyard and posted it before realizing that the subject for the day was flower. How lucky! It sure made it easy for me :) These flowers are now dying but they were so beautiful, weren’t they? And they smelled so good! I think I might have to go back out today and pick some more. There is nothing like fresh flowers brightening up the kitchen.

I can’t remember if I have ever talked about this before or not but there is a fudge shop in Newport, Oregon that Jason and I are crazy for. Not just any old fudge, the tiger butter kind. Tiger butter is peanut butter, caramel, and fudge. It’s amazing. And the tiger butter from this particular fudge shop is the best we have ever had. So what a joy it was to open the mailbox this week and find two blocks of fudge sent to us from Jason’s parents from the Newport Candy Shoppe. They had made a day trip to the coast and remembered how much we like it and mailed it to us. They are the best. And this is not the first time either :) We are so blessed!! And for those of you wondering, yes, we still have some left. A whole block in fact. We are savoring it :)

17. Something you don’t like. I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday painting. I did not spend all four days on the same project but I still spent 3 full days painting and part of the fourth. Not my favorite task. It definitely qualifies as something I don’t like to do. What I do love though, is the results. And I’m super duper excited about that part. Especially since now I am done :) Later this week I will show you the completed room. Anyone care to take a guess which room?

Jason and I were invited to go see a Chattanooga Lookouts game on Tuesday. We had never been before and we had so much fun. The couple we went with had tickets for a skybox so not only did we get to see the game but we got to see it in style :) Although they lost, we had a great time.

This photo cracks me up. Of course we made Jason try on the big wonky hat in the gift shop! But sadly, we didn’t take it home with us. Ha!

This is a photo of me and one of the mascots, Blooie. He came around to visit our skybox and so I had to have a photo with him. Isn’t he cute?! Thanks for the photo babe ;)

18. Hair. It’s kind of funny that the word for this day was hair. It was actually perfect really because the next day I cut it off. That’s how I roll. I let it grow for a while and then I get tired of it and chop it off. The last time I cut it short was just before we moved to Tennessee 6 years ago. If you want to see a photo of the new do, I posted one on Instagram here.

19. Orange. When searching for a subject for this photo I realized I don’t have very much orange in my house. I don’t really decorate with it and I don’t really wear it much. While I was fixing dinner I realized the roasted sweet potatoes would be perfect. Have I mentioned how much I love sweet potatoes? Because I really do :)

20. Something you drew. Okay, so I don’t really draw. But I do doodle. This is what I was doodling during church on Wednesday night. I find that if I doodle or take note during the teaching I can pay attention better. Otherwise, if I just sit there and try to listen, my mind starts wandering. So now, I doodle :)

What a full week! Fudge, the Lookouts, doodling, hair, painting, magazines, sweet potatoes, and flowers. It was a productive week and I’m thankful for it! Now, I ready to tackle this one!

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Tagged: Everyday Life, Personal, Photography

Everyday Life: 04.06.12 – 04.12.12

It’s almost the weekend everybody!! It’s another gorgeous day here in Tennessee, just the right temperature at 70 degrees, my favorite kind of weather. I just finished sipping on my coffee and now, all is good :)

I’ve done a bunch of painting projects this week and I can’t wait to share them all. Now I just have to take photos and write posts. Because the weather is so great I am in the middle of sprainting stuff too. There is always something to be sprainted at my house!

And now for another round of Everyday Life:

6. Lunch. Okay, so I didn’t actually eat only an apple for my whole lunch. But I forgot to take a photo of my lunch that day and I usually do have an apple with my lunch so I thought it would work :) I love apples. Braeburn is my favorite and I have pretty much tried every variety I could get my hands on before I settled on a favorite. But everyone once in a while, I like to mix it up :) How about you, do you have a fav?

7. Shadow. I meant to take a shadow photo outside and completely forgot (this seems to be a regular occurrence for me) and so I took one inside when it was already dark. If you can’t tell what’s going on, that is my hand pointing to my other hand which is holding my phone while taking the photo. How cool am I?! That’s talent right there folks!

8. Inside your wallet. I am such a dork and I posted this on Instagram with my license number showing. Thankfully, someone pointed it out to me and I deleted it. I never even thought of it. Duh! So I have blurred it here and I don’t think there is any other pertinent info you can read :) Except that now you all know my birth date and my middle name. Sheesh!

9. Younger you. I’m not sure how old I am in this photo, maybe a year old? I don’t think I look that happy though :) Looks like they had a hard time getting me to smile. Haha! Sorry Mom :)

10. Cold. So, this is what I am totally into right now. Making smoothies and freezing them into popsicles. Seriously good. This particular smoothie pop has spinach, red bell pepper, carrots, non fat plain yogurt, almond milk, applesauce, orange juice, strawberries, blackberries, mango, and pineapple. I’m all about the more the merrier. It’s so good. Every time I make them I change it up a bit and they always turn out awesome. Mmmmm….

11. Where you ate breakfast. This is our breakfast nook. I have showed it many times. This is where I always eat breakfast. Seems appropriate, right? The photo is not really in focus but it makes it feel a bit dreamy. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. I’m sort of in denial.

See that vent on the floor under the table? Well, in the winter it blows warm air so I sit on that side to warm me up. In the summer, it blows cold air, so I sit on the opposite side so I don’t get frozen. Hey, whatever works!

My outfit the other day was very colorful. I found these pants at Goodwill for $4. I have been wanting some colored springtime pants and I was super excited to find some for so cheap. They actually were flare pants but I wanted skinnies so I remade them. They turned out so good you can’t even tell. Maybe someday I will post another photo so you can see them from a different angle. The shoes were thrifted too (last year), $2. And the shirt is from Old Navy for $5 so my whole outfit was only $11. Not bad :)

My husband loves me, he really does :) He came home with these roses earlier in the week. So sweet. I love him too :)

12. Stairs. Right before I took this photo I had just scrubbed our floors and the stairs on my hands and knees. It’s a job but sometimes it needs to be done. And scrubbing it gets it cleaner than if I just use a mop. It’s not one of my favorite chores but I love it when it’s done!

Any super duper plans this weekend? I am hanging out with some friends but other than that, nada. We finally finished our taxes this week, we like to put it off for as long as possible, so now I don’t have anything pressing. It feels good. Now I’m ready for a carefree weekend! I hope you are too!!

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Tagged: Everyday Life, Personal, Photography