Thursday's Thru the Lense

A day late on posting...

And testing posting photos from the phone/app.




This was from driving around for work last week. It's somewhere in Riverside County!

Enjoy....

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Last Week's Adventures

This should have been posted yesterday...or even Friday.  I want to try to put more on here than just SWW and TTtL.  I'm just not sure what else to do.  I did come up with an idea:  Monday do a weekend review and tell you what the plans are for the week with a follow up on Friday on what actually got accomplished.  There's always the Mid-Week Mania (as I like to call it) that I was doing on Wednesdays that was, more or less, an update on all things Steph & Mr S & life in general.  But I don't really know who wants what (from my whopping 8 followers).  And some days I barely have time for one post on Wednesdays and Thursdays, let alone two!  Oh, and Foodie Friday was a Flop!  Too much trouble uploading all the pictures...and I didn't cook as much or as often as I wanted.  I may bring it back in a month. For now, I'll just give you an update on what's gone on the last week, or so.

Last week was fairly uneventful.  For those that don't know, I'm a rep for an online college located in the South (I work out of the guest room in our apartment in CA).  Part of what I do is travel to departments, city offices, and business to talk to people about going back to school, especially departments/businesses that we already have some sort of partnership/relationship (i.e., students already enrolled) with.  I did that Monday through Wednesday of last week.  It was fairly local, but enough of a drive to justify a rental car over miles on my own old gal (aka, 2000 Malibu pushing close to 200,000 miles).  I love meeting our students and talk to guys about enrolling and getting the process started for them.  I do not, however, enjoy driving the CA Freeway systems!  There are some that aren't so bad:  15, 10 (in most areas), 71.  There are those that I know I will get stuck on at some point (or more) on the drive:  91, 5, 210, 10.  Then there is the 215.  I forgot how much I DESPISE the 215.  There really are no words to describe what you go through as the 215 and the 60 (another one I hate) converge then separate again.  And the paving, oh the paving!!!  It is in DESPERATE need of a re-paving.  All of it (the 215 that is)!!  Thankfully nothing exciting happened while I was driving the chaos and all my meetings went well.

After this, I was looking forward to a semi-relaxing day in the "office" on Thursday.  But SCE (Southern California Edison, aka power company) had other plans for me!  At about 10:30 am the power went out.  My first thought was, "it'll be back on in no time."  Oh how wrong I was!  Mr S left for work at 12:15 leaving me home alone without power.  I was, thanks to a great laptop battery, able to still get some work done...but not much.  According the SCE website at 1 pm, power was estimated for restoration by 4 pm.  HA!!  Let's try 5AM on Friday morning!  That's right...our WHOLE SIDE OF THE STREET for about a half mile was dark.  As in pitch-black-not-a-light-in-sight-creepy-horror-movie dark!!  Once you turned off the main drag, you were in a black hole.  Talk about creepy/scary!  And the best part, we had no flashlights!  Just the little tea-light candles left over from the wedding.  Those do not do for lighting a house in the pitch black.  (About 6 pm I learned from the SCE web that they were looking at an 4 AM restoration, so I was slightly prepared)  So I headed out to Target, Home Goods, the Post Office (hadn't checked the box in a while) and Joann's to kill time so I wasn't sitting at home in the dark with nothing to do (battery on the iPad was long gone at this point...and driving around gave me the chance to charge my phone).  Also on these trips I invested in some better candles and a couple OttLites (Joann's and here).  Let me tell ya...if you don't already have an OttLite I highly recommend investing in one!  These little boogers are AMAZING.  The two I got (on sale for half off) look like little cell phones.  When you flip them open there are three rows of three little LED lights that make a Maglite hid it's bulbs in shame!  (There are different styles and sizes to choose from.  Mine are one of the smaller and run on three AAA batteries)  I got home after my shopping trips and got to lighting a fire candles and opening an OttLite and feeling a little more secure in my not-so-dark-anymore surroundings.  And with a newly charged phone I proceeded to watch Netflix for the night.

Friday rolled around, with full power in abode, bright and early as if nothing had happened (which, by the way, the power outage was cause by equipment failure).  Catch up on work missed and I stayed in all night and vegged.  It was quite lovely!  Saturday started lazy and then a cleaning bug struck me about 3 pm.  I organized my work stuff (as in threw out what I wasn't using and was outdated materials anyway), took a trunk full of stuff to Goodwill (that had been clogging my trunk and dining areas), and cleaned the guest room bed off (it's kind of the place I throw stuff to "sort later").  My office/guest room is looking G-O-O-D, good!  Sunday was another lazy day with a side of laundry, kitchen, and bathrooms.  I also tried a recipe from Pinterest (which I didn't take pictures of) that was a hit with the hubs.  I'll be making them again, so I'll try to remember to document everything.  And yesterday was back to the M-F grind of things.

And there you have it, folks.  Last week's events at the S&S house!! 

Hugs...

Testing the new signature

Testing the new signature...

Thoughts??  :)

So What Wednesday

 So What If...


* I'm doing this at 10 pm instead of going to bed.

* I made my hubby take me to see Beauty and the Beast in 3D tonight for date night.  It's my favorite!!!

* I really just want to take the rest of the week off.  Who doesn't??

* The office/2nd bedroom bed is still in shambles.  No, really...there is no way ANYONE is sleeping on that bed anytime soon.  So it's a real good thing no one does!!  It was truly become the catch-all!!

* I wish football season wasn't almost over.  It's really the only sport I like...and right now the other option is basketball.  YUCK!!!

* I haven't worked out at all this week and have eaten like I'm not on a diet.  Everyone needs a break now and then, right?!

That's all for this week!

Hugs...

Steph

PS...my sig was giving me issues with using the new blogger posting page, so I took it down in a fit of frustration tonight.  Thinking it'll get a change up soon anyway.

Thursdays' Thru The Lense

I have to admit, aside from the street and Abbot's parking lot, we've got a pretty sweet view from the windows of our apartment: 

And, with my new camera, I can zoom enough were you really can't see most of the "eye-sores" (with the exception of a few power/light poles).

One of my favorites to watch, when conditions are right, is the marine layer coming in.  It looks like smoke drifting over the hill tops (this is rare to see it this low).  It's so cool to watch!!

Or sometimes it just looks like another hill/mountain has sprung up behind the one that's already there.  :)

Enjoy...

So What Wednesday

Here is this week's installment of:






* So What If I "forgot" about my homework last night.  Hey, I got it in before the 10pm deadline!! (And I made an 85 on the quiz!)

* So What If the bed in the office/guest room has been accumulating stuff on it since the wedding (November).  No one stays the night and it's easier to clean hide by closing the door on the RARE occasions when we have people over.

* So What If I'm dreading joint accounts with the hubs.  I make less and brought more debt into this union and the though of his money going to pay my bills drives me crazy and makes me cringe all over!

* So What If I kept avoiding the dirty dishes in the sink in hopes the hubs would have pity and do them.  It worked!!

* So What If I DESTROYED my good behavior with Weight Watchers yesterday by going to Five Guys Burger & Fries.  It was AMAZING...and a first for the hubs & I.  It was worth it.  Besides, isn't that what those extra weekly points are for?!

Check out Shannon's site for more great posts and join the party!

Hugs...

Thursday's Thru The Lense

This will be my "Christmas Edition", but I'm not going to bore you with the details of my day or pictures of the tree and such. I am, however, going to show off my favorite gifts that didn't come from my hubby (because he has his own category and the Pandora charm was definitely the favorite from him). No, this gift came from my in-laws!

My SMIL (step-mom-in-law) and her mom took a lot of pictures at my wedding shower (that my SMIL hosted), the rehearsal, and the wedding. Honestly, I'd forgotten about all the pictures taken on those three days. Well, they showed back up Christmas afternoon!!!

A PHOTO BOOK!!!!!

With pictures from the shower...

And pictures from the rehearsal...

And, of course, pictures from the wedding...

I was STOKED!! The book was done on the website MyPublisher. I've not had a chance to delve into the site but you can create your own pages and add captions and things like that. With the exception of a few misspellings and one person given the wrong name (which SMIL told me about...I've yet to find them), it's AMAZING!!

And to top it all off, LB & LS (with the help of the in-laws) got us two ornaments celebrating our engagement (the date is off by two days, but it's ok)...

and our wedding...


Here's a pic of them all together...

I am truly a blessed gal!!!

Hugs...


*all pictures on this post were done with the iPhone camera

So What! Wednesday

This week it's So What if...

* I'm doing this at 11:04 pm. It's still Wednesday for me!

* I studied while watching The Sound of Music tonight. At least I studied/read some!

* I've only worked out twice this week. It's better than last week when I did nothing!

* The only reason I caved to taking the Christmas tree down is because it wasn't taking water anymore and was very quickly becoming dry and brittle. If I could, that baby would still be up!!

* I proved last night I can spend my husband's money better than he can on a shopping spree to a "man store". (Long story short, we went to Best Buy with some extra money we had in celebration of his new schedule - woohoo for weekends off - and I had an easier time of blowing the wad than he did!!)

* I should be in bed right now!!

And, because it's so late, that's all I've got this week. That and it's been pretty uneventful around here.

Hugs...

Resolutions

I know I've already posted about what I want to do this year...but I edited that post and decided to make them one of their own. I've really been thinking about what I want to accomplish this year and the few I listed the other day just really weren't enough.

1. Eat better, lose weight, get healthy
2. Focus on School and get at least 5 classes successfully completed off my evaluation
3. Work on getting rid of debt
4. Start saving WHILE getting out of debt ($25 a month is better than nothing a month and that's $300 more at the end of the year than when I started)
5. Get a house cleaning schedule going so I'm not scrambling to clean when we have visitors
6. Be more consistent with church attendance and maybe even get more involved
7. Work on my cooking skills (Mr S is the cook in this house...I do the easy, meal from a bag stuff...or pasta. I can cook pasta!!)
8. Better time management! Now that I'm taking a class I need to make sure I'm doing that instead of planting my butt on the couch in front of the TV after work every day.

That's all the big stuff. There are also little things on the list that I'd like to do: be more thorough on my crafts; finish what I start; hang with friends/family more, etc. I'm also thinking of joining with a Direct Sales (like Scentsy or 31 gifts) company to help supplement the income some. But I haven't fully decided which one, or two, I want to invest in. It's a fairly decent initial investment and I want to pick something that I'll have good returns on. I'm also not sure if it will fit in with my new schedule now that I've added school. It may be something I wait until the spring to do so I can see how I do with school, work, wife duties. So, the jury is still out on that one. But stay tuned, because you'll see it/them here when I do decide.

Most of what I want to accomplish this year. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it will be some changes for me. I am a procrastinator at heart...so a lot of this (cleaning, cooking, school work) will take more effort than what you would think, for me at least. Which is why time management is on the list.

Well, here's to a wonderful New Year! I'm looking forward to all this year has in store!

Hugs...