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Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Lake Lotoawana

Who doesn't love the lake?

This past weekend as I mentioned yesterday I hit up Lake Lotawana with Walt and his friends and my girlfriend Lindsay. Unfortunately it was rainy and icky ALL day on Saturday so we opted to hang out at the house rather than go out on the boat.

To our surprise the next day when we woke up the weather was PPERFECT! Too bad we had to head back to Kansas City.  But I just couldn't resist getting a quick picture off James' deck.




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Monday, May 30, 2011

Where was Lulu?

I will get this out of the way right now.  I am SO sorry for the lack of posts this weekend. I've been a little all over the place.  Errands. Dinner Party. Lake. Pool. BBQ.

The good news is I got some great pics!

I'll save the long boring stories for you and get right to the good stuff.

Here's my Friday night dinner party at our friends' BJ & Katie's house with our friends Bobby and Anne.  BJ and Katie are getting married NEXT weekend and were still nice enough to throw us a dinner party! Can you believe it?  I can't wait to show you all the pics from THAT wedding!








Last one was priceless and gives you an idea of how much fun we all had.  Katie trying to read her catch phrase with one eye... AWESOME.

Now onto the pictures that Katie actually took. She wanted to try out my SLR and boy did she go wild :)  These are only SOME of the pictures as there was about a 100 total that were taken this night! 







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Thursday, May 26, 2011

Twenty 20

No... not 2020.  Twenty 20.  It is a local restaurant in Kansas City located right next to our other downtown office. After we were huddled in the basement for over an hour DURING lunch... we were all starving and decided to run next door to Twenty 20 to grab a bite to eat.

To my surprise, I had ordered a vegetarian panini sandwich.  There were a few items on the sandwich I hadn't heard of and figured that must be some kind of italian meat considering the sandwich was called "Little Italy." It had artichoke hearts, carmelized onions (I think...), tomatoes (got them taken off), banana peppers, and red peppers. It was MM - GOOD!

You probably think I'm a fatty with all this talk about food the past two days (and I sorta am - I ALWAYS eat out and really need to break this habit). But why not share the love with you?

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Blanc

I normally am not one to rave on and on about how much I just love hamburgers and how they are the best hang over food ever...

When I was a kid I decided I did not like them, and would always ask for "no nuts" when I ordered at McDonald's (i.e. no onions) and would only like cheese on them.  Eventually I just stopped eating them for years.

My freshman year in college, I eased into eating them since I was running out of food options in our dorm cafeteria and still kept them on the bottom of my list of foods to eat when given an option.

To this day, I basically only eat Turkey burgers smothered in goat cheese at the local restaurant Blue Moose.  So when my best friend Kara suggested we go to Blanc Burger for her going away dinner I was less than thrilled.  Until she highly recommended this amazing burger called the "Inside Out Burger" which consisted of a hamburger filled with bleu cheese, topped with bacon and an onion ring and an onion bun.  I was a little apprehensive once I ordered it when the waiter was giving me the warnings about eat it.  Do not squeeze the burger, you must cut into the burger before eating it, be careful that the cheese doesn't spill all over you... But he promised it would be a great choice.

Both Kara and the waiter were RIGHT! The burger was SO good.  Like I said, I am not normally one to rave about hamburgers, but this was one hamburger I will pass onto others to give a try.

Not to mention, the atmosphere of Blanc is so clean and crisp with a little old school feel which makes me love it even more now!


Go ahead and give it a try.  Sure is gooooood!

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

I See, You See.

Here we are again with "I See. You See."

This week our theme was: BLACK 

Our friend Carrie from work gave us this one today since we of course wait until the last minute to decide every week.  We would LOVE it if anyone gave extra theme suggestions too.  So if you think you are creative (which I'm sure you are) give it a shot and come up with a theme for next week!

Here is what I saw today... I looked outside and the sky was literally BLACK. It was actually pretty scary looking and I was a little nervous to go outside to get this picture in feel of getting poured on or sucked up by a tornado!


Here is what Megan saw:



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Monday, May 23, 2011

It's That Time Again

The Bachelorette started tonight!!! It was 100x more fun watching the show when Lisa was on, so I'm hesitant to watch it for yet another season... but let's be real...I WILL watch the whole thing because what else would I do on a Monday night?

To ring in the new season I thought I'd do something fun for my post tonight. A series of "Would You Rather" questions for our favorite Bachelor girl Lisa M.

So here we go:

Would you rather have a funny man or a cute one?
Funny

Would you rather go shopping for shoes or shopping for clothes?
Shoes! 

Would you rather be a giant hamster or a tiny rhino?
What? Uh..... 

Would you rathe be able to stop time or fly?
Fly

Would you rather go about your normal day naked or sleep for a year?
Walk around naked

Would you rather go on The Bachelor Pad or be the next Bachelorette?
The next Bachelorette

Would you rather get even or get over it?
Get over it! 

Would you rather love and not be loved back, or be loved but never love?
I'd rather be loved and never long 

Would you rather find true love or 10 million dollars?
Find true love

Would you rather live in NYC or L.A.?
Both at the same time! 

create avatar

Little secret... if you look close enough to her right foot on the inside you will see Lisa's rose tattoo her and a few other girls got while on the show!

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Happy SUNday

I was so excited when I got up this morning and looked at the weather. SUNSHINE and 80s. I knew exactly what I wanted to do today. NOTHING ;)

I threw on my swimsuit, went to the back patio, posted up on my $10 lawn chair I got from CVS forever ago, turned on Pandora (the Jack Johnson station), and whipped out my Kindle (I just started reading Jodi Picoult's "The Pact").

I was in much need of a tan and a do nothing day.  In fact, Ed decided what I had was going on was pretty spectacular and joined me.


No.. I don't have the prettiest feet in the whole wide world thanks to running track and cross country since 8th grade...



PS - To top off my day I saw Bridesmaids with some girlfriends. HILARIOUS and I highly recommend you seeing it.  I laughed so hard I was crying.

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Friday, May 20, 2011

Happy, Happy. Joy, Joy.

My friend Matt at work FINALLY got his house he has been hunting for! After months of searching he finally found a house that suites him. Not to mention he went through some struggles to get there....

  1. Falling through the ceiling of one house
  2. Finding out that the house he finally wanted had TWO roofs.  Not one, but TWO!!! Apparently they thought instead of just getting a new one they wanted to layer on another. Weird, right?
After realizing that no one in their right mind would buy their house with two roofs they finally gave in and sold it to Matt - WITH a new roof! Go Matt! 

To celebrate, my co-workers put together a little surprise party for Matt.  Kristin distracted him while we set up and asked him to go grab her power cord so when he ran up the stairs there we all were waiting for him!  HOWEVER, he waved and ran right by us.  We all yelled after him to come back and that we were throwing HIM the party! He was completely surprised! We had set our "bull pen" up with his favorite beer (Coors Light and Unfiltered Wheat (Boulevard Wheat) and gave him a Home Depot gift card to get started with his new house! 





Thursday, May 19, 2011

Pa Pa

Now this was one of the words I used frequently when I was a kid and still to this very day. This is the name we called my grandpa (my mom's dad) growing up. From this day forward, any time I hear hit or see it I think about my Pa Pa.  He's been through so much and is such a strong man and I love him SO much.

He is the man who would put the worms on my hook as I fished off the dock. When I caught a fish after hours of waiting, he was the one to take the fish off the hook for me.

He is the one who would give me a big huge goodbye before our 10 hour drive back home and slip me and my sister $20 (at the time I thought this made me rich) to calm us down until we got out of Morgan City, La.

He is the man that I will love forever and always keeping making memories with.



Not gonna lie... I took this picture with my iphone since I couldn't resist and didn't have my SLR.  Another one of those moments when I think... "Stupid, why did I not bring my camera?!" Thank god for the app Camera+. Have you used it before?  You take a picture and then have a multitude of options to alter your picture however you want.

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

SLR for Dummies

Today I saw a tweet on feeling clueless when it comes to SLR from Sparkling Foot Steps.  I thought I'd send her a tweet about my post I did a while ago regarding the 10 easy steps of using an SLR.  Then I noticed she linked to this awesome SLR Camera Simulator.  I thought this was a cool tool to use allowing you to play with the settings on an SLR camera.  This tool allows your to experiment with the lighting, ISO, aperture, shutter, and distance settings while observing the readings in the camera viewfinder.  Give it a try! Pretty fun once you get the hang of it!




Tuesday, May 17, 2011

I See, You See.

This week's "I See, You See" project was... drumroll please... First thing I see when I wake up in the morning.

For ME, what I consider to be the first thing I wake up in the morning to is my cat Mia.  Either walking on my face, pawing at my bed side making this REALLY annoying swooshing sound just faint enough that is wakes me up, or sprinting back and forth between the living room and my bed hopping on top of me at 4:30 a.m. That's right 4:30 is the first time I crack my eyes open most mornings.  I am not a morning person and I really don't need to wake up until 7:30 most mornings, however, lovely Mia feels like that is time to eat and play therefore I get up.. sleep walk to the kitchen to pour her some food... sleep walk back to bed (after shutting my door, putting a towel on the outside under the door crack, and putting a ginormous pillow as a barracade to block Mia from scratching at my door after she is done eating).

This is what I see most mornings:



You will notice there are TWO water glasses there as well.  Flower cup for Mia and another cup for me so she doesn't drink my water in the middle of the night!

This is what Megan sees EVERY morning, because she is a happily married woman ;)



Just a reminder. If you have any photo suggestions, Megan and I are always open to new and different ideas for our pictures we post every Tuesday. Thanks for following!

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Monday, May 16, 2011

What an Honor...

To have a sister that graduated the school of nursing at OU with honors! This past weekend I was quite the busy bee.  I dashed to Tulsa Friday to have a fun dinner/night with my mom.  Woke up early Saturday, got dressed and headed to Oklahoma City to go meet up with Katie before graduation and getting a little shopping time in. Then headed to Norman where Katie's graduation ceremony was held in a hotel.... that seemed a bit odd and much different than my KU graduation.... but nonetheless exciting to watch my sister walk across the stage to get her diploma and cheer her on! On Sunday I made my way back to Tulsa where I ended up staying an extra night to spend some much needed time with my mom and then off to KC at 6 a.m. this morning... MAN am I glad to be sitting on my bedroom floor knowing I don't have to travel for another three weeks.

But back to bragging about Katie ;) Katie just got offered a job at the OU Medical Center in OKC.  Her first big girl job!!! She is really hoping that the hospital in Chicago she interviewed with gives her an offer as well... but for now.  Being employed is her biggest priority and she did it! WAHOO! Now off to the real world...



Sweet little Katie - That's Nurse Katie to you ;)


Katie's Pins

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Friday, May 13, 2011

Happy Friday

Since the temporarily outage with blogger occurred yesterday/this morning. I thought I'd share two posts to make up for mine not going up last night.

Just something simple for the weekend :)

Have a HAPPY Friday and a HAPPY weekend my friends.  Carmine is ready for a drink, are you?


Now I'm not going to lie.... Carmine DID in fact have a few slurps of Angela's beer.  No harm was done during this photo shoot.

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Cheers

Last night I was so excited to show you all the fun pictures we took at dinner last night before going to Cirque du Soleil with my co-workers/friends... I get home, go to my blog and try to start a new post to find out that blogger was temporarily down. Sad.

Because I've had a little more time to think about the post I wanted to do last night, I decided that instead of showing you only the initial cat picture I took of our awesome drinks we got a Kobe, I also want to give you a sneak peak of us enjoying them before the show.


My drink at Kobe

Me with my Cat

Kristin with her Cat

Carrie (front with her buddha) & Danielle with her monkey (hidden) 

It was all and all a great night! I wish I could show you pictures from the show but they didn't allow any cameras or pictures to be taken with our phones! Kinda crazy if I do say so myself. Thanks Jeff from Centro for taking us there!

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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Down We Go.

I was recently at our other office, 2020, which I don't go to often but I'm glad I did.

I was heading up this enormous staircase that leads people up to the rooftop, and look down, and thought hmmm... this could be a cool picture if I can get it just right.

Although I think I could have done better, but after changing up the coloring to black and white I feel like it gave it more of that "cool" look and feel I was going for when I initially took the picture.




 

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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

I See, You See.

This week's "I See, You See" challenge was given to us by, Angela, our friend at work last week.

Theme: Happy

Of course I waited until the very last day to get my picture but boy was it a good day to wait until.  We celebrated my good friend Kara's 26th birthday celebration tonight.  Her birthday is this coming Saturday but with all our hectic schedules we wanted to get some Kara time to ourselves before the big day.

We celebrated with some yummy tapas at La Bodega.  They have a GREAT happy hour.  We paid $45 between the five of us for 9 tapas plates and one pitcher of sangria.  Crazy, right?

Now for the big reveal.

Here is what I saw (tonight):


Here is what Megan saw, it's her puppy dog Charlie being a happy little pup that mommy and daddy played fetch with him!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Reflection

This past Friday I helped host a work party celebrating Cinco de Mayo.  I thought it was a huge success considering I initally thought we wouldn't use the two rounds of margarita mix (one mix was for 75 people) I had ordered, and we ended up going through BOTH of them AND still had people wanting more.  Note to self co-workers love the margaritas and need to order double the amount next time around.

We have two office locations and the party was held at our 2020 office downtown which has a rooftop deck that overlooks the city.  I love the view and wanted to capture it for everyone to see.  Carrie was kind enough to be my subject for today's post.  We kept trying to get the Western Auto building in focus but unfortunately it was too far away.  Oh well, still made for a good picture with Carrie's beautiful face :)



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Friday, May 6, 2011

ME.

Literally. ME.

I saw this little sign on a bus stop in this area of Kansas City called Westport and loved the colors and the way my new fixed focal lens blurred the background perfectly.

I love walking by something cool and ACTUALLY having my camera to take a picture.  The moments I don't have my camera put me in utter despair and I think about how cool it would have been to have that for my blog post.

Well that was this picture.


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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Tonight Walt and I did some celebrating at a local Mexican restaurant called Manny's for Cinco de Mayo with some friends!

Long story short there was free shots of tequila, a mariachi band, margaritas and 2 for $5 mexican beers! Can't get better than that.

We opted to NOT take the celebration elsewhere and settle in for a low key night which I am a BIG fan of right now....and I'm sure I will be tomorrow when I feel refreshed instead of wanting to smack the alarm and wish for it to be Saturday after too many tequila shots.

Cheers to everyone having a great Cinco de Mayo!


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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Mine All Mine!

So today I have a SPECIAL post!

It's not me behind the camera it's me in FRONT of the camera.  Reason for this is that I got a new car! Well a used one, but new to me! My hunk-a-junk 2001 4Runner with 120K miles on it decided it was time to let go and move on... but not without having over $3K in problems... I IMMEDIATELY decided that it was a horrid idea to keep investing in a car that was inevitably going to die on me, so... I got a new one.

For this being the biggest purchase of my entire life (to date), I feel like it was pretty painless and quick.  I decided on Sunday after having my 4Runner looked at that I was maybe going to have to get a new car.  I looked online with Walt all night Sunday night and decided I wanted to look at the Nissan Murano and Ford Edge. After reading Consumer Reports the Murano got great reviews and I have only heard fantastic things about Nissans.

I have never noticed either of these cars when driving around, but of course because I was looking to buy I noticed them every where, mainly the Edge! I decided it was a little bigger than I wanted so went and test drove the Murano Monday night, negotiated the guy down by $1,000!!! Then I looked online again on Monday to make sure there wasn't a better deal out there (I'm a stickler for getting my money's worth).  I decided I'd at least go see what they would pay me for MY car (with thousands of dollars of problems) before making any rash decisions considering this was the ONLY place I went and the only car I test drove. They said they would give me $5,500... Walt and my jaws dropped! Were they kidding? This piece of crap for $5,500... SOLD! In the meantime I got them down another $800... so total $1,800 in negotiations.  I would say that I am a pretty good negotiator wouldn't you?!?

Drumroll please.... here she is!!!



Don't you just love her! Still thinking of names for my new pride and joy...

Thanks to Meggy for taking my pictures today!

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I See, You See.

I know this is a day late, as my Internet is STILL down.... They won't be there until Thursday which is causing me a bit of delay on my posts. However, today I will be giving you TWO posts to make up for missing yesterday.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Megan from ChasingDavies and I will continue our "I See, You See" posts every week. We are looking for suggestions on theme for pictures. Feel free to post a comment about a topic or email me directly at lmajor9@gmail.com.

This week were chose one of our own.

Theme: Flowers

Who can resist taking a beautiful picture of flowers?

Here is what I saw (in my mom's garden):



What Megan saw:


Once I saw them I was shocked that they were almost the same color and similar looking flowers!

Great minds think alike!

Stay tuned for this afternoon's post.  I have a little surprise!

Monday, May 2, 2011

SURPRISE!!!

First, I have to apologize for my lack of posts the past couple of days.

My weekend was filled with going away parties and engagement showers and NO internet.  I am needless to say, NOT happy with my cable/internet provider (Time Warner Cable), and their inability to provide good customer service.

Now onto the BEST part of my weekend. Mandi's surprise

Three of my friend Mandi's bridesmaids (Myself, Kara, Katie, and Sarah) have been hearing Mandi talk about wanting a beagle puppy SO bad lately and how she wanted to get one this Summer. We thought why not speed up the process and get her a beagle puppy as a surprise for her wedding/engagement shower gift!

After endless hours of looking online for the cutest and best beagle puppy we could find, we found her in Bethany, MO (2.5 hours away from KC). We took her fiance Matt to get his approval (we didn't want to be the ones to blame completely if she turned into a little monster that tore up everything and barked all night...ha! ) He fell in LOVE with her and immediately said this is her. We gave them the down payment, waited two weeks and Kara and I went to pick her up the night before the engagement party.  The puppy stayed with me all night Friday and Saturday, I of course fell in love with her and decided the sooner I can get a baby puppy of my own the better... but needs to be when I am in a house not a box.

Long story short I wrapped a huge box with a lid as a present and we hid the puppy in the car (yes the windows were open and it wasn't hot outside so she was fine) as we waited for the present opening to start.  Anxiety immediately kicked in once word started to spread about our surprise and all of us were SO worried all the commotion would cause Mandi to be suspicious.

Finally, when the last gift card was being opened, I flagged down Kara's boyfriend to go get Katie and Kara who had the dog in the box with a big bow on her neck.

They walked in and placed the box on Mandi's lap and Mandi immediately was asking why the box had holes in it. She started to open our card and Matt and another bridesmaid were asking what the heck she was doing and to just open the box! She pulled off the lid and out comes the puppy! Mandi was FREAKING out.  It was the best surprise EVER.  Her reaction was priceless as she cried, laughed, cried some more (tears of happiness of course).  So stinkin' cute. Now for the photos to show you what all the commotion was about with this cute little pup they named Millie.



Mandi's Suprise Face! PRICELESS

Family

Millie. 
 A little fun fact. The named her Millie to go with the "M's" they have for Mandi and Matt and they are also getting married at Mildale Farm. Cute, right?