Sunflares!

I'm still visiting Christy in Texas!! On Wednesday we went hiking and she taught me how to take photos of sunflares! I'm still very new to photography, so I was super excited to learn this. So excited that I took A LOT of shots of sunflares. Here are a few I took, I know they're not great, but it's a start! I hope you enjoy!

If you want to see more pics from our hike, go here!

I Captured Love

This week, I'm at Christy's house, and I've been so excited to get to post these captures, so Beth, I'm totally cheating this week. These shots are all ones that I've taken over the course of a few months. It's how I captured love.

Crooked Eyebrow herself said it perfectly when on Twitter she called it the "quilt that blogging love made".

We all chose a fabric, and I took them all to my mom. We put them all together.

And sorted them so they could be washed.

After we chose the quilt pattern, my mom cut the fabric into squares.

Then we arranged the fabric into the pattern and made sure each square had found the perfect home.

After, we organized labeled each row so no square would lose its way.

Each square was sewn...

and hand tied with such care and love.

We may not have all met face to face yet, but we all are friends. We have a bond. And there is love in that bond. As friends, we wanted to do something very special for a very special little girl. So, that's how the quilt that blogging love was made. And that is how I captured love.

Want to see more You Captures? Head on over to I Should Be Folding Laundry!

Thanks to Twitter

I can't even believe I typed that out. Seriously. Twitter can be such a great big pain in the ass sometimes that I just want to stick a fork in my eye. Like, the "Over Capacity" message? What the hell is that? Or how about the time when like 2,000 of my tweets just disappeared. (They did return about a week later, but still.) And I am so totally over blocking these porn people who follow me just because I use the word "hooker" in some of my tweets. Stupid Twitter.

But then I sit and think, if not for Twitter, I would have never written this post. (Or ones about Butt Growls or funny little poems!) I would have never started writing on my blog again. I certainly never would have gone to Chicago to Blogher because I wouldn't be a blogger. I would have never met any of you.

For those of you who may not know, let me explain...

Ten months ago this week, I was doing a live search on Twitter while watching The Biggest Loser. I noticed this one tweet by this user called @shrinkingjeans that said that she was watching the show for the first time. I clicked on the profile and found a blog called The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans. So, I followed @shrinkingjeans on Twitter, and not a minute later, @shrinkingjeans followed me back. We exchanged a few tweets and that was that.

The next day I visited the site again. What a terrific site it was. I wanted to tell these girls (and guy) what a great site they had, but you see, I can be a bit shy at times. And hour later, and many do-overs of my email, I sent the site a message. Within 5 minutes I had responses.

Christy, Melissa, and Crooked Eyebrow all replied, and Christy and I chatted on and off for a lot of the day. (She was the one I was chatting with on Twitter the previous night!) By the end of the week, Christy had convinced me to join them in their challenge and to start writing on my blog again.

As mad as I get at Twitter, I can't hate it. It's because of Twitter, I met Christy, and I joined The Sisterhood, and I became friends with all of you. Some of you I've met face to face already. Some I haven't, but I know we will some day! (Hopefully sooner than later!)

It's all because of Twitter. And because of Twitter, I'm going to visit Christy in Texas this week! Christy, are you ready?! ;o)

Headed to Blacksburg...

You can read all about it over here!! (For those of you who tried to comment last time and couldn't, that problem is all fixed now!)

It's a Shrink-a-Versary!!

Hey you! Did you hear? November is our one year anniversary over at the Sisterhood, and we're celebrating in shrinking fashion!

All month long, we're going to have give-a-ways (um, like EVERY SINGLE DAY), and we have this awesome fitness challenge starting soon, and a brand new weight loss challenge (that starts today!), and maybe a few other fun things in store! But to enjoy the fun, you have to get in the game, so head on over to the Sisterhood. Do it now! Go! ;o)

So, this weight loss challenge...I sure hope it goes better than last challenge. The good news is that there are only two tailgates left. The bad news is that it's the beginning of the holiday season soon. This doesn't worry me too much because I've done really well the last two holiday seasons.

As some of you know, last year I tried the P90X program. I believe that was the hardest fitness program I've ever tried in my life. One thing that the trainer, Tony Horton, said almost every single work out was, "try your best and forget the rest".

I'm so bad about putting pressure on myself to do well. It's a bad habit that began in childhood and I've allowed to carry on into adulthood. I hate the feeling of letting those I care about down. I hate the feeling of letting myself down. Once I get that feeling, then it's hard for me to maintain focus. I let that happen here recently, and shame on me for that.

So, this challenge, I'm going to try my best. I'm going to hopefully shrink, and I'm just not going to worry about it. (Or try to.) I'm going to try my best. Will you join me?

Starting weight: 146.2

A Ghost Story - Repost

Since it's the week of Halloween, I thought now would be a good time to repost a story I told in May when not as many people followed my blog. So for some of you, this is going to be a repeat, and I'm sorry, while for others it's going to be new. Enjoy!

Flashback 11 years ago. I was fast asleep in my nice, warm water bed and was having the most unusual dream ever. I only remember one of the details of the dream. This detail is so disturbing that I do not wish to discuss it, but know that as soon as it scared me, I woke up.

Something was very wrong about how I woke up. First, I was on my back. I never sleep on my back. And my arms were in a position so that my fists were at my chest. I couldn’t move. I was literally paralyzed from the neck down. It was as if a ton of weight was just sitting on my body.

I started to panic.

Then I realized I wasn’t alone in the room. I looked over and I see a pair of sheer white legs. I looked up and there by my bed stood a foggy mass in the shape of a man. His clothes looked like he was from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. He was very tall, and you could tell that when he was alive he had very, very blue eyes. And he was staring down at me.

Now, being a girl that loved the show Unsolved Mysteries, you would think that I would have been thrilled, but the truth was I was scared out of my mind. How I didn’t pee all over myself, I’ll never know. I remembered watching a show once and the person on it said that if you ask spirits to go away, they will.

So, I turned my head and closed my eyes and repeated, “please go away, please go away,” until the weight lifted and he was gone.

A few weeks later my mom and I were visiting my grandparents. We were all at the dining room table and my granddaddy said that he had come across some old pictures that he wanted to show us. He passed one to me and said, “this is my grandfather, Lee.”

My stomach jumped to my heart. There was the very tall man with white blue eyes staring back at me just like that night by my bed.

Did you get the chills?

Kinda Like A Sorority

I once heard this saying that you would meet the best of friends that you'd keep forever in college. I'm sure that's so very true for a lot of people, but for me that wasn't true.

I've been thinking about this lately and a few of you have reminded me of this recently. So, I think I'll talk about it just a bit. (If you don't mind.)

Let's go back to college... I went to a small college near my hometown that likes to think of itself as "the Harvard of the South". Now, I give you that nothing about my four years there was easy, but it cracks me up to know the attitude that some of those folks like to take.

Since I lived literally 10 minutes away from campus, my dad made me live at home. "There's absolutely no need for me to pay $5,000 for you to live 10 minutes from home," he said. Logically, he was right. Now? I wish I wasn't so logical.

So, to try to "fit it", I joined a sorority. Now, if you know me at all, you're thinking, wha?? Seriously?

Yes. I did. And to be honest, without those girls, I would not have made it through college. They helped me to begin to see that I am a strong woman. Not once was I hazed. I never felt like I "paid for my friends." (The dues I paid were to pay for things we did, like dances and t-shirts and parties, etc.) I always felt loved, and we were so amazingly diverse. I loved it. And, without them, I would have never had the fun that I did in college.

But, outside of facebook, I don't talk to very many of them on a consistent basis. It's hard to live with your parents and make the bonds that a lot of people do in college.

So, I spent a lot of my 20's desperately seeking lasting friendships. Some of them were right in front of me, and I just didn't see them until here recently. Others were terrible for me, but I was so hungry for good friends, that I didn't see just how bad they were for me.

I let them convince me that I was weak and ridiculous for being silly and, well really, just not worth a damn. I felt like crap most days. I tip toed most days. I was miserable most days.

Then one day, I had enough. I broke those friendships. I told myself they just weren't healthy for me anymore, and I broke the connection cold turkey. And I felt lost.

I felt like I had almost no one.

Then, one day, I found one person from my childhood. And not only did that person remember me, but she wanted my friendship. She helped me to see that I WAS worth so much more than I was giving myself credit for. And that I wasn't weak, but strong. And yes, I'm very silly, but you know what? That's perfectly okay.

Eventually I became the person that you all know now. I'm not weak, I'm very strong, and yes, I'm silly, but you know what? Who the hell cares? It's fine, and it's fun, so all is good.

I know I still struggle with some of this. I know some of you have seen this, and I know it can be annoying. I'm not asking for patience (because I know it's so freaking annoying) but I do appreciate it. I sometimes feel like the friendships I have made here are the ones that most people make in college.

So many people see a sorority as a bad thing. All you hear about is the bad, so it's hard to know that there is good out there when it comes to sororities. But when I think of a sorority, I think of a group of women who share a common bond in something. In college, it's the actual sorority. The bond that is created exists because because of the secrets you share within the sorority. In life, it can be motherhood or knitting or oh, I don't know, happy hours, or blogging.

So, to me, we're all kind of like my sorority. Diverse and fun and so very full of love. When one blogger meets another, a secret handshake of sorts is exchanged. That "bond" is there. Some you get to know better than others. That's fine. It happens in sororities. Also, when one falls, we're there to pick her up. If she succeeds, we celebrate with her. We just care. We're lasting friends. And I love it.