The Harder The Life, The Sweeter The Song

Ain't that the truth? That's the tagline for the movie, "Crazy Heart".  I have been wanting to see it ever since I first heard about it a month ago and it finally started playing yesterday at the Galleria.  I went to see it this afternoon and it was amazing.  Jeff Bridges was absolutely incredible as washed-up, alcoholic country music star, Bad Blake. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a young reporter, a very unlikely match for Bad, but watching them fall in love is so touching that I actually cried TWICE.  Oh, the sweetness!  Just look at 'em!!!!

And Robert Duvall's small part was a nice surprise.  I love him and had no idea he was in this movie.

I did a little research online and discovered that Jeff Bridges has never won an Oscar.  I'd be very surprised if old Bad Blake doesn't change that for him.

**** Oscar Update!!  3/7/10 ****

He won Best Actor!  He sure did.

Ten Things I Love About My Husband

Today is my Larry's birthday!!  I love so much about him that it was hard to stop at ten.

I love when he kisses my forehead.

I love when he sings to me.

I love the goofy gifts he gets for me.

I love that he can still make me all weak in the knees after all these years.  (22!)

I love that he's tough on the outside and a marshmallow on the inside.

I love that he loves me...more.

I love how he makes me laugh.

I love that he's incredibly romantic.

I love holding his hand.

I love that he always thinks I'm the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, even when my hair goes flat.

Happy birthday, baby!!!  May you have many, many more to share with me.  I love you!!

Ten Things

Thanks, Brandy, for giving me some blog topics for today! Aside from Larry's birthday, there's not much going on around here unless you want to count the doorbell-ringing bandits that hit every night about 7:30. Them dadburn young'uns!!

There are a bazillion and two things that make me happy. Here are but ten:

being at the beach

juicy little fat baby rolls especially biscuit feet

listening to the rain on my roof

the smell of old books

bubble baths

being barefoot

taking naps

seeing something that I've planted BLOOM

fixing things myself

laundry fresh off the line

If you're reading this, I hereby tag you.  You're it!

I Swear I Am Not Going To Turn This Into A Cooking Blog!

I tried steaming salmon tonight for the first time and it turned out sooooo good!!  I just put a little water in my vegetable steamer pot, put the salmon steak down in the basket, sprinkled it with a little Old Bay, some salt and pepper and just let it do its thing.  It was so pink and juicy when it was done.  Yum!!  I cooked a little whole wheat pasta to go along with it.  

Wanna see a picture? Here ya go!   

 

This South Beach thing is really easier than I thought it would be.  The easiest "diet" I've ever tried and I have tried them all.  I've been following it, not very strictly at all, for a little over seven weeks and I've lost 22 pounds. I'm up to 45 minutes on the treadmill at a 2 or 3 degree incline (depending on how tired I am when I start!) and I usually stay around 2.5 mph.  What I'm doing seems to be working!

Vanilla Ricotta Cheesecake

• 2 cups ricotta cheese
• 3 packets Truvia
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 vanilla bean 
• 2 eggs

Directions:

• Mix well, pour into baking dish, bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

P.S. IKEA oven mitt says "hi!" 

 

What The Snow Did To My Peace Frog

Eleven

Eleven years ago today, Larry and I were married.  We'd had a particularly long engagement because I was holding out for that church wedding.  One day I just realized that it's not the wedding that counts but the marriage.  And, really, as far as I was concerned, I'd married him in 1988 when I met him.  That's when my heart married him.

We had a beautiful little wedding with all four of our parents in attendance and we had a reception at my parents' house afterwards.  I was so happy to have our parents together that day.  I still remember the huge smile on his mama's face that was just glued there all day.  I was so blessed to have a mother-in-law who loved me.

Since Larry and I have always been a tad counterculture, both as individuals and then later as a couple, we do just about everything outside the norm.  This Mickey and Minnie cake topper sat on top of our wedding cake!

Happy Anniversary, baby.  I love you!!  

What A Beautiful Day!

We don't get snow here often so I sure enjoyed today!! What a perfect way to wrap up a winter vacation.  I've been outside playing in it and taking pictures and making snow ice cream and keeping a fire going all afternoon.  

I would have loved to have had Larry home to share it all with, especially with tomorrow being our eleventh wedding anniversary.  I talked to him on the phone, though!  And we got a sweet anniversary card from Mama and Daddy with some money tucked inside!! God's still in control and His timing is ALWAYS perfect!!

I'm sitting in front of the fire now eating yet another bowl of snow ice cream and when I'm done, I'm gonna take a long, hot bubble bath.

Yep, it's been a really good day.

More Snow!

My daffodils by the front door, out of the snow but still COLD.

Snow Freakin' Way!

It DID snow today!!!!!!  It took soooooooo long but it finally got here about 2:00 this afternoon.

My cozy little house and car 

Snow ice cream!!

My daddy's tried and true recipe:  snow, vanilla extract, a little milk and sugar (I used stevia this time) Daddy always made us snow ice cream every time it snowed. That's one of my most favorite childhood memories.  YUM!!!

Please Don't Tease Me, Ben!!!

Our awesome, cute and absolutely adorable local meteorologist, Ben Jones, has predicted SNOW for us tomorrow.

I have plenty of firewood, lots of South Beach-appropriate groceries, some good IKEA coffee, a new IKEA blanky and nowhere to be tomorrow.  I'm SO ready.  

Do we dare hope???

Oh, I'm hoping.  

One Day I'll Find A Way To Live At IKEA Without Getting Arrested

I went to IKEA yesterday with Brian, Ami and Mama. We had such a great time as always!! 

Brian took some really awesome pictures and I swiped some of them from him to put on my blog.

Hello again, lovah.

My sweet mama

Brian and Ami

Me lookin' extremely giggly

Our lunch!  Our friend, Billy, met us there for lunch and a li'l shopping.

Squeeeeeee!!  

Measuring cups never looked so cool!

Awesomest kitchen evah.

A little lamp I got for my kitchen.

When you see dishes you LOVE, you should buy 'em!!

Super comfy throw blanket I got for my sofa but it's so big, it fits my queen-sized bed!

I also got some coffee and some Christmas decorations (they still had some!) and some new oven mitts and stuff like that.  No furniture this time!  But, seriously, what's the remedy for too much IKEA furniture??  A bigger house!!

We had a most fabulous day.  IKEA wore us slap out but we all left with a big smile on our faces. It would so totally not do for us to live in Atlanta.  It's a very good thing we live an hour or so away.

'til we meet again, IKEA. Keep the meatballs warm and the Nutids cool.  

Milkawhat??!!

It's pretty easy for me to find things funny anyway but this eTrade commercial from last night's Super Bowl was just hilarious to me!!! Hands down, this one was my fave.

Vacation (All I Ever Wanted)

Man, I used to love that song!!

I'm on vacation!!  Yay!!  I'm going to do just as little as I can possibly get away with.  I haven't had a week at home in over a year and I'm tired.  I do have a few things planned to do around the house like cleaning out and organizing my kitchen cabinets and if the weather cooperates, I want to do some yard work but that's about it.

Ami, Brian, Mama and I are going to IKEA this week, too, and I'm gettin' excited about that. I'm not really going after anything this time except for maybe a couple of new bed pillows, I just want to GO.  I love everything about IKEA, from the scent of their freshly baked cinnamon rolls to the scent of that famous unfinished pine.  I even love my first glimpse of that big blue and yellow building sitting there waiting for me.  Ever since Atlanta's store opened in 2005, we have been up there many, many times and our houses are full of IKEA.  Of course, I don't have children or animals around but everything I've ever gotten from there still looks brand new, even a bedroom cabinet that I put in one of my bathrooms.  It wasn't designed to go in a bathroom but I put it in there to store towels and stuff and it still looks new.  Yeah, so yay, IKEA!!!  I can't wait to see you again!!

Yesterday I bought a new electronic digital scale at Target on sale for $25!!  Great deal, I thought.  This one lights up and everything.  And it talked to me sooooooo sweetly this morning.  I only lost a pound last week so I gotta work hard this week.  I was a total slug last week and only walked twice.  But I'm on VACATION this week. The possibilities are endless!

South Beach Diet - One Month Update

Today is one month since I started following the South Beach diet.  I hate the word "diet". They have just never worked for me.  So I'm thinking of SB as more of a lifestyle change, a change in the food choices I make.

So far, so good!  I've lost 16 pounds!  

My favorite recipe from the book that I make a lot are the ricotta desserts.  But I eat them for breakfast!

I just take 1/2 cup of part skim ricotta cheese and add a packet of Truvia, a 1/2 tsp of vanilla and cinnamon or unsweetened cocoa powder or lemon zest or whatever I feel like for flavor. It's really yummy and tastes a LOT like cheesecake.  

Another thing I really like are oven-roasted garbanzo beans.  I eat them a lot, too. 

I walk on my treadmill a few days a week but I'm not a fanatic about it.  I never will be about exercise!  :)

But I think I'm off to a good start.  Larry's been doing Atkins for a week and a half and he's already lost 12 pounds.  If I didn't love him so dang much, I'd hate him. Ha! 

So that's where we are.  I'd love it if anybody else out there doing South Beach would leave me some tips!!

Happy Birthday, Ami!!

There was a little snow on the ground 33 years ago today when my baby sister was born.  But I wasn't excited about the snow, no.  I was excited about my baby!!  I was 9 years old and I had prayed for a little sister from the day Mama and Daddy told me and Ricky that we were expecting.  I prayed every day, "Lord, just give me a baby sister.  I already have a rotten brother. I don't want another one." And back then, they couldn't do sonograms to see if babies were boys or girls so I just had to wait. And wait and wait and wait.  She took forever getting here!

I remember how over the moon I was the day she was born and Daddy came to Grandma's to tell us we had a GIRL and to get us and take us to the hospital to see Mama and the baby.  I don't even remember seeing Mama at all but I remember the first time I saw Ami. When I peered through that nursery window at Sumter Regional Hospital, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen with her pink baby skin and that little bit of red fuzz on top of her head. 

I remember when we brought her home, Mama let me carry her all over the house and I showed her the kitchen, the bathroom, my bedroom, my toys and I told her I couldn't wait for her to get big enough to play with me. 

That seems more like 10 years ago than 33 to me. Brian took this picture of us last night at her family birthday party.  I put my arm around her and said, "This is my baby."

She was when I was 9 and she still is today.

Happy Birthday, sissy!!  I love you very much!!