is this goodbye?

I'm really not sure how much more posts I'll be able to make. With back to school prep creeping up, and RA training stuff, and door decs, and final summer to-do's with friends, I have no idea how I'm going to fit it all in and keep making crafts and foods and such to keep this going...
sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo adios till I find more time!!

I'm back!

Phewf! I have finally gotten back to regular life after my week and a half away on a cruising adventure around the Atlantic. But I'll recap all of that once I finally gather the time to upload all those thousands of photos.

Tonight, I want to fill you all in on my most recent of lifestyle changes. (This sounds like I'm preparing ya'll for news about some gender orientation switch or something of the like, but trust me, I still love Mike. I just refuse to call this new lifestyle what it really is... a diet). GASP! I am now officially a vegan. I will only eat plant-based foods, no animal products. I'm not going on this "diet" because I feel I need to, but rather because I think it may make me better in the long run. Plus, I really didn't like meat anyway. The only really hard part is all that dairy. My goodness, I've been three days off the stuff and I feel like cheese and chocolate were drugs. Oh and ice cream. I want ice cream.

My mom thought about trying this lifestyle change with me until she tried vegan rice cheese. She nearly cried. It doesn't quite melt the way regular cheese should. haha

I do plan on being more lax on Saturdays though... a girl has to keep her sanity somehow, right? The one-day-off-per-week idea came more or less from Jenna Marbles. If she can do it, I totally can! The rest of my dietary change came from Alicia Silverstone's "The Kind Diet." I have notes in my phone typed out from the book, things to remember. Just a few include the fact that frightened animals produce cortisol and adrenaline right before slaughter and we can become stressed from eating their meat, dairy farmers pump their cows full of estrogen to allow them to keep producing milk till their udders become infected and swollen, and no other animal drinks milk from another animal (as human's do with cows) and not even from their own mothers past infancy. Oh! and it takes three days to digest meat. Silverstone backs all of her health and animal mistreatment claims with credible sources (trust me, when I found out what they do to little chickens, I checked.) And now, if I'm ever going to have eggs again, I'll have to buy a few hens and treat those ladies right. Mike suggested the name Clucker for one. Any other ideas? ;)

 These are the things I've been eating, and it's so perfect. I feel like I'm eating summer.

 Fresh veggies from my dad's huge garden!!

Eating rabbit food hasn't been bad at all. It's only the few moments I sit down and just think about the foods I can't eat that I actually begin to miss them. So far, I'm really glad I've taken on the challenge. I'll let you know how I feel this time next week....

July: here it comes, there it goes

I can't believe it's already the 10th and we leave for our family cruise tomorrow! (I haven't started packing... or finished laundry...) And the only reason I've been able to type this up at 1:43 on a Tuesday afternoon is because my kids (J and B) are currently having a playdate with my siblings. This is the outcome of me coming back to the house to grab a swimsuit before Zoombezi, the children get fantastically sidetracked.

But anyway, the happenings in my life as of recent.
Friday, Saturday and Sunday were spent with the boy :) I always wish our visits could last longer than they do. Really, the weekend was a blur of instagram photos and errands to run, but there's no one else I'd rather do them with. Except maybe Ellen DeGeneres for a day. She'd be hilarious at the grocery store.

I hate driving home, and away from him. 

But I did come home to this!! At least Grace loves me...

As soon as I got home, I started (mentally) packing for the next trip. Whatta life. 

Also, I have decided I will try to be vegan (after the cruise). Hahaha, a cruise would be a horrible place to start this lifestyle change and will allow me to end my meat and dairy eating days with a BAM! I'll detail my findings from "The Kind Diet" (again, lifestyle change, NOT DIET, lol. I have to keep telling myself this) once I get back from Bermuda. 

Till July 21st, ciao!!

Dizzy from the Busy

I have been busy like a mofo these past two days.

Tuesday night I went to see Red, White, and BOOM with friends down on the OSU campus. (They set the fireworks off downtown, but downtown is scary and campus was deserted) It was awesome! I had greatly missed Gabi, who I hadn't been able to get together with all summer (gah!) and of course, Andrew, Robert, Gabe, and Ryan tagged along. Our girl to guy ratio really beats me.

Hustling up to the top of the whispering wall at OSU. 

It's sweet. You whisper from one end and can hear it clearly at the other!

  

Gabi going for Andrew's rear end... he didn't notice for a loooooong time. 

Gabi and Gabe. 

Gabe couldn't stand still. This picture took five tries

Frisbee on the oval. (Gabi and I stuck to sitting in the plush grass)

Fireworks from the car garage rooftop!!

 The gang and the girls :)

All of the Fourth was spent in Cleveland visiting family. Grandma Hiltz had been in the hospital for 20 days due to various illnesses and today she was finally released to go home! hallelujah!!
Grandpa and Grandma are the sweetest old couple, always bickering, but always there for each other. When I asked Grandpa to leave the hospital to come to dinner with us, he responded, "Squirt, I need to stay here with your Grandma. She needs me." They held hands when leaving the visiting area and heading back to her room. I love them and hope that someday I'll be blessed enough to celebrate 56 years of marriage with one man.

 When we weren't in the hospital, we were swimming at our other grandparents' pool. This tired all of us out and made for a sleepy, late night ride home. (Hannah was catching flies and I just had to catch the moment ;)

Finally to today. I've spent today running errands with the bug catcher above and making Goodwill finds into usable clothes for our trip coming up soon.  I turned this large dress into a fitted sundress in a fashion very similar to the green and white striped one a while ago. It's so easy to do! Here I noticed I had fabric that matched the stripes and added triangles to the sides of the dress making it flare a bit. 

 I also finally made the first of the maxi dresses on my to-do list. This one, I kept the skirt separate from the top so that it can double as a maxi skirt! Tada!

Sorry for the uber long post, but be prepared for a few more like it... I leave tomorrow for Beaver County to see Mike over the weekend, and then I leave for our family cruise on the 11th! All of these are going to deserve talking about, and knowing me I'll probably ramble. Just a warning ahead of time!!

P.S. please note new hair. I was overtired last night and shed a few tears at the loss of my summery blondeness to a box that was supposed to be "light brown" and it's ability to make my hair near black. But reading "The Last Lecture" definitely put things in perspective! It's just hair.

Birthdays

July 1st was Grace's 12th birthday, but she wasn't home till yesterday. Since I didn't have to nanny, I decided to go one step above the usual cake from a box. I put jello in the cake. (Pinterest told me to...) I was worried at first that it would be a failure of epic portions, but actually, it was a hit! So, I'm sharing the step by step recipe with y'all.

First, I made a box of white cake. (easy enough).

 I put it in two 9" rounds and followed the directions.

Then comes the best part, licking up all that batter.

After the cake cooled (about 20 minutes), I placed each half in two larger pans.

I prepared two packets of strawberry Jell-o and poked holes with a fork all over each of the cakes.

Then I poured the Jell-o equally on each cake. I was surprised it absorbed it all! 

I then placed each half in the fridge for a good three hours (I wish I had given it more time, but Grace was antsy for her celebration and I wasn't sure how long it'd take to set) 

I frosted and stacked the cake halves with CoolWhip and 

returned it to the fridge while cutting up strawberries. 

With strawberries and candles, the cake was ready to go! 

I was still apprehensive how it'd be recieved... 

But after the cutie blew out her candles and we dug into the cake, it was a hit!

Yum yum yum.

The cake was cool and moist and the perfect taste of summer.

"Get Clean"

My mom isn't the great chef. She really isn't a chef at all, and since she was gone this weekend, Dad relied on me to create edible masterpieces for the family to enjoy. I'm not half bad at cooking and I really enjoy it, but typically after nannying I'm too pooped to make anything and decide to nibble on whatever Mom has reheated (haha). I wish I had pictures to share, but I supposed that'd just be mean cuz you can't eat it!

When I wasn't cooking, Dad had other meal plans... Gooseneck Tavern. He is obsessed, especially since they're the only place in town that actually shows Browns games in the fall. We went there twice this weekend. It's delicious, I won't lie, but with the local Urban Active shut down due to power and it being too hot outside to run, I haven't been extremely active. (Adam and I did run 5 miles yesterday around noon, but that was just plain dumb. Heat advisory kind of dumb.) But ok, lack of activity plus lots of food equals reallllllly full belly and bloating. So, I have decided to take the Pinterest route to solve my problem... with Jillian Michael's detox challenge.

I'm going to drink 60oz of this concoction every day for the next week. I couldn't find Dandelion Root Tea like it called for at Whole Foods, so I went with this: 

It has dandelion root plus a whole bunch of other interesting things...

I've weighed myself (after eating, of course, and I had to pee, so that when I weigh myself again mayyyyyyyyybe there will be a bigger difference? hahaha I'm not sure.)

The little sister, Bekah, came with me and decided that she loved all of these "get" teas. She wants to get more sleep, get gorgeous, get charged, get relaxed, and get happy. She wants it all. Unfortunately, that would require drinking quite a lot of tea.  

When we walked into Whole Foods, sunflowers were everywhere! It was amazing. Sunflowers are almost definitely my favorite flower, so I thought I'd share their beauty with you. Spread the joy.

Fire and Rain

Today was the finale of PowellFest, the community festival full of live music, food carts, and fireworks. It's a great time, but this year people weren't thinking about this event; they were more worried about pulling the fallen trees from their yard, getting the power back on (so AC can work), and avoiding the heat at all costs. On Friday afternoon, a surprise storm swept its way through Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia. (We were actually on the news! OMG)

I was driving back from the library with J and B when it hit. Adam called me to complain about the winds, when suddenly the power went off, hail started blinding the windshield and all the cars on the road came to a stop. A tree fell down in front of us, and all I wanted to do was get back home. J found this extremely amusing and started acting hysterical, which in turn scared B more than anything.

I took this at a stop light before it started raining, just because it was 4:50pm and I was amazed at how dark it was outside. 

About five minutes later, no one could move anywhere on the road. We were stuck.

But once we did make it home, I was soooooo happy. I absolutely love storms, just not while driving a 12 passenger steel death trap with two other valuable lives in my hands. Hearing the thunder and running around the house to find candles is always something I've enjoyed.  

It's just so pretty, isn't it? :)

We were one of the lucky families. Our power was restored late last night, our home was structurally alright, and none of the family was injured. But even in just the subdivision over, I had friend's lose trees, mailboxes, tops of chimneys, and many in Powell are still out of power.

The only thing of ours that was hurt was Dad's vegetable garden. The tomato and pepper plants were laying on the ground, but after dinner, Adam and I helped stake them back upright. And look! They still had their beautiful fruits! (technically fruits, don't roll your eyes)

Back to PowellFest....

 

Dad, Adam, and I were the only ones home this weekend. Bekah has basketball, and Hannah, Mom and Grace are all at Hannah's national dance competition in Sandusky. The three nerds braved the bugs and heat to watch the fireworks. 

Dad took his glasses off, but we were all sitting there in our folding chairs with our glasses and talking about the chemical construction of fireworks... you would've judged us if you were there. 

The fireworks were beautiful.

Until another storm came in and we all had to sprint to the car to not be pelted with the thick raindrops. Let me tell you, half the fun of fireworks must be the sound, because they were no where near as exciting once in the car.  

Strange weather we're having. 

Who knew fireworks could still explode in pouring rain?