1.31.2012

Super Bowl Party Prep!

Outside of work, sleep, and saying prayers for Gronk’s ankle, I have spent nearly every spare moment of the last week planning the Super Bowl party of the century!  Why, you may ask?  Two words, one handsome face:

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Tom Brady!

Tom Brady is the driving force behind my love for the New England Patriots, the NFL, and my ESPN radio addiction.  I saw him on TV in a football game in high school about ten years ago, and it was love at first sight.  Nathan & I have a Super Bowl party every year, but this is the most important one we have thrown so far, and may possibly be the most important ever.  We had a big party planned in The Year That Almost Was, But Was Instead Ruined By A Big Goober Named Eli (aka the 2008 Super Bowl), but Mother Nature is apparently a Jets fan and had other ideas – freezing and breaking our pipes, thereby cancelling the party.  So this is the very first year that we are throwing a party for a Super Bowl in which my beloved team & quarterback are actually playing, which requires the Best. Party. Ever!!!!!

Let me share with you the finer aspects of planning the BSBPE! (Best Super Bowl Party Ever! – Duh). 

Step 1: Develop a Pinterest board devoted specifically to Super Bowl foods.  Spend hours when you are supposed to be sleeping devoted to pinning links to said board.

Step 2: Plan a freaking fantabulous menu! We are having a taco bar, trying out the crockpot chicken pictured below.  Sister is making the devilled eggs (how awesome are those?), and we are having bean dip, fruit salad, and veggies as apps.

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chicken via mychocolatetherapy, eggs via myrecipes.com

And for dessert – nothing beats a Super Bowl Sundae:

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I have another (Patriot-themed) dessert planned, but it is a surprise – I will have to post the pictures later this weekend!

Step 3: Develop a bunch of awesome games, then buy some crazy prizes at the Dollar Store! 

For our games, Nathan has a sheet of questions put together for people to answer before the game (winner, MVP, halftime & final score, longest field goal, first player to score, etc.) and whoever has the most right at the end of the game wins.  This year we also decided to play some Bingo! We found an awesome website (Print-Bingo) that lets you create custom Bingo Cards (for FREE, I might add) – you create the format, pick all the bingo square words, and it will generate random cards for you!  It was so awesome.  We made a game bingo specifically tailored to NE & NYG with game related things like pass interference, NE rushing TD, NYG passing TD, etc.  Then we made bingo cards for commercials with things like talking baby, Pepsi commercial, Budweiser, etc.

I am so ready for this BSBPE!  I wish I could stay home from work on Thursday and start getting ready that day!  As it stands, I will have to wait until Friday.  I will leave you with this football related joke that I heard on TV last night (although for the life of me, I can’t remember what show.  Which means it must have been the Disney Channel):

How did the football player break his finger in the telephone booth?

He was trying to get his quarter back.

:-)

1.24.2012

Super Bowl Dreams

I was a bit of a slacker when it came to celebrating.  What can I say?  It was an amazing Sunday!  You would not believe the screams of joy in my living room when Cundiff missed that kick.  I needed a couple days to recover!

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(Clockwise from top left – via Facebook, via Stamford Advocate, via Facebook)

February 5th, 2012!

That Time I Won A Bet

I recently won a major bet with my husband.  We spent all fall betting on each and every NFL game, whoever ended up with the most picks right was the winner.

I had a rough start.  It took me about 6 weeks of losing to finally give up on the St. Louis Rams and the poor Colts.  I also had an unfortunate tendency to let my feelings interfere with my brain – thereby picking the Patriots to win and the Jets & Cowboys to lose every week.

Nathan had an even rougher start, so in an effort to catch up with me he began employing a strategy he phrased “The Coin”.  He flipped a quarter for every game and left the outcome to chance. (Incidentally, his coin even predicted that Kansas City would beat the undefeated Packers – even with repeated coin flips - but he opted to override that one).  Surprisingly, this strategy worked wonders and up until the last two week of the season he was beating me.

However, I got my act together and lo and behold, I was the winner.  Being us, we had not actually established what we were betting on, and he told me to pick whatever I wanted.  So I declared that as the loser, he had to read the Hunger Games!

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I read this book in October and had been trying to talk him into reading it ever since, but I married a stubborn man! His answer over and over, was, “I don’t like to read”.  Which if you know me, is not a good answer.  Plus, I knew he would like this book!  (As will anyone who has not yet read these books.  Buy them now! They are worth your money, you will so thank me later).

So, I was shocked when Nathan grudgingly agreed to read the book.  Even more surprised when he stayed up past his usual bedtime one night because he didn’t want to stop reading (although I was secretly glad that I was no longer the only one in this house guilty of doing that!).  And very surprised when yesterday, after less than a week of reading, he finished the book and sent me this text:

“Peeta’s dumb. Now I want to read the second book.”

Oh, how he makes me laugh.  And I laughed even more when I came home and he explained to me all of the reasons why he hates Peeta.  It’s a very extensive list.  I did try to defend poor Peeta (and all of the girls out there with websites devoted to the guy), but Nathan will have none of it.  He is Team Gale all the way.  I love my husband.  He may hate Peeta, but he was not too proud to lose a bet and read this book.

And speaking of bets, I just realized that I am a Super Bowl pick away from winning the playoff version of our bet.  What do I want next?  Hmmm . . .

1.19.2012

In Review: My Name is Memory

My fantastic and thoughtful husband bought me a Kindle for Christmas, and one of the first things I did was use my library card to sign up for the Oregon Digital Library Consortium, which is a fancy way of saying, “check out e-books for free with your library card!”.  I immediately placed holds on as many books as I could, and FINALLY it was my turn yesterday to check out my very first e-book:

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Ann Brashares is the author of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, along with a few other young adult novels.  It came to my attention while browsing the e-book selection that this was the only book of hers that I had never read, so of course I had to check it out.

My Name Is Memory (read an excerpt of the book here) revolves around the concept of reincarnation, and centers around two people (souls) – Daniel & Sophia.  Daniel is a rare soul in that he has a memory, which in this sense means he remembers all of his past lives and recognizes the past souls he has encountered.  Sophia does not.  Daniel fell in love with Sophia in an early life and has been searching for her again and again in each of his later lives, because he will never stop loving her.  Basically, they are soul mates.  But whenever he does happen to find her, the timing is bad or circumstances prevent them from being together (and the fact that Sophia does not remember or recognize him is also a tad bit of a problem).  Now he has finally found her in present day (as Lucy), at the right time and right place, but the dilemma is whether will Lucy ever remember who he is, who she is, and who they are together.  And of course, it would not be a story without an evil villain who threatens the potential love-fest.

The story is told from both Daniel’s & Lucy's points of view, and alternates back and forth from present day to flashbacks of Daniel’s previous lives.  The flashbacks tell us the story of Daniel & Sophia and how they came to be where they are today.  It was an excellent read.  I loved the mystery of learning about Daniel’s past lives, and how he and Sophia fell in love over and over throughout time.  The reincarnation element was very creative on the author’s part, because she used it to create an entirely different type of world that exists within the world we know. I could not put the Kindle down, and I managed to finish the book in one day.  It is a love story, but the complications of the storyline make it so much more interesting than your average love story.

HOWEVER – my enjoyment of the book came to a screeching halt with the last page.  I will not tell you how it ends, primarily because it DOESN’T really end.  I began to suspect this when I noticed that the progress bar on my Kindle was at 99% and I thought, “How on earth is it possible that this story almost over?”.  A few pages later my suspicions were confirmed.  The ending is a total cliffhanger, leaving a gazillion unanswered questions, and not telling you how the conflict of the story was resolved or what happened to Daniel & Lucy.  For those of you who like to be left in suspense or draw your own conclusions to answer questions, perhaps you won’t mind it so much.  I, however, prefer clear cut happy endings and this so called “ending” was neither obvious nor did it give me any happiness. 

This left me with two possibilities – either the author couldn’t figure out how to end her own story OR she intends to write a sequel.  Based on reader reviews from Amazon, many people seem under the impression that My Name Is Memory will have a sequel or possibly even be the beginning of a trilogy.  However, I Googled for a solid 15 minutes on this possibility and came up with neither concrete nor current evidence of this as fact.  And given that this book was released nearly two years ago, you would think that if there truly was going to be a sequel, there would be some sort of proof or release date by now.  Which makes me sad, because I really love this book and I want to know what happens gosh dang it!

That being said, I absolutely would still recommend this read to anyone who is a fan of love stories or of the Sisterhood series.  But if you think a cliffhanger will leave you as unsatisfied as me, I would wait and see if another book really is coming, and if so get both and read them one after another.

And in the meantime, Ms. Brashares?  I will be impatiently waiting for a sequel.  So get cracking on that.

1.17.2012

A Laugh For The Middle of a Looooooong Week

Once in a while, I have one of those weeks where it seems like it will never end.  Thanks to all this wacky weather here in the Pacific NW, it is shaping up to be one long work week.  At times like this, we could all use a laugh.

So, enjoy the following, courtesy of Eli at the It Just Gets Stranger blog:

Part 1: http://itjustgetsstranger.blogspot.com/2011/12/snuggie-texts.html

Part 2: http://itjustgetsstranger.blogspot.com/2011/12/snuggie-texts-part-ii.html

Hopefully, his story makes you laugh (and even better, keeps you laughing all the way to Friday).  In case you wonder afterwards – yes, my parents did teach me that it is not nice to laugh at the expense of others.  However, I must not be a very nice person, because I thought his story was freaking hilarious. 

1.15.2012

It’s (Not) Tebow Time

The picture below pretty much sums up my weekend:

For those Packer fans out their mourning their loss (my husband and my father included), I offer some consolation: Total annihilation of the Baltimore Ravens is scheduled for 3 PM EST, Sunday, January 22nd. 

1.14.2012

Driving Miss Megan

A demonstration of superior communication skills by two newlyweds.

Scene: 9 PM last night, in Nathan’s car, driving around downtown on our way to get dinner.

Nathan: “American Dream Pizza” (very random comment since this is not where we are going)

Megan: "That’s where the president ate when he came here for his campaign.” (looking around out the window to see where American Dream Pizza is at)

N: “Yeah, by your sister’s apartment.”

M: (Now very confused as cannot see American Dream Pizza anywhere, and we are nowhere near my sister’s apartment) “What? Why did you say ‘American Dream Pizza’?

N: (Clearly also confused) “Because that’s where the President ate.”

M: “No, before that.  Why did you say ‘American Dream Pizza’ back there?”

N: “Oh, that?  Because there was a car that said American Dream Pizza back there.  And now you just made me run a red light! This is what happens when you distract me!”

For the record, I still don’t see how this is my fault.  But I also did not notice the red light, so I guess I can’t argue.

1.10.2012

The Big Metal Machine

My treadmill is broken.

Not beyond the point of repair, but enough that I can’t use it for a couple weeks until the parts come in and the service man can come back to fix them.  Bad bearing and something called a run belt.  If I am reading his handwriting correctly, it says, “run belt is starting to fuzz”.  I don’t know what that means.  The word “fuzz” makes me think of mold for some reason.  Whatever it is, it does not sound good.  His recommendation was that I do not use the treadmill until the belt is replaced, so my treadmill is sitting silent and off, all by itself in the corner of the room.  It sort of reminds me of the movie Wall-E, where all the old machines and stuff just sat silent and unused, except without all the trash surrounding it.

This would not be such a problem, except that my second New Year’s resolution was to get my lazy self back in shape.  I took an extended (read: 3 month) break from regular exercise due to the hectic-ness leading up to the wedding.  Then Christmas came, and then I found all sorts thing to do instead of exercise, such as:

  • Spend an alarming number of hours on Pinterest doing absolutely nothing.
  • Watching seasons 1 & 2 of Modern Family
  • Must. Read. Hunger. Games.  One night for each book.
  • Become obsessed with a free game on my Kindle called Every Word and stay up until all hours of the night playing it.
  • Sit around eating leftover pie, wedding candy, and anything else I could get my hands on.
  • Stalk the aisles of Costco looking for pomegranates and eggnog (to be fair, at least the eggnog was not for me).

You get the picture. . . I am one lazy lady.

So it figures that when I finally got up the motivation (thanks to new episodes of all my ABC Family shows – more TV and laziness) to get off my butt and onto the treadmill, it starts making weird noises and here we are.

My initial reaction was, “Yay! 2 more weeks of doing nothing!”, but that seems to be the complete opposite of my New Year’s resolution, so I am trying to figure out what to do for the next 2-3 weeks.  There are certainly plenty of people in the world who exercise without the assistance of a treadmill.   Running outside is not a great option, between the weather and my lack of daylight hours.  I do have a couple P90X DVD’s, but every time I do the yoga I get an urge to find that super-flexible girl and kick her because honestly?  No normal person can bend like that.  My dad has suggested Crossfit.  I once tried their daily challenge exercise at home . . . it probably won’t surprise you that I was highly unsuccessful.

Then the light bulb (however dimly lit) clicked on in my head – strength training!  I always complain about my serious lack of muscle.  And I have my two secret weapons – 5 lb. dumbbell #1 and #2!  I have found some fantabulous workouts online.  My thoughts are, if I do these for two weeks, maybe 3 miles won’t feel like torture next time I do get to run.  Because I really would like to make it through an entire episode of my shows at some point!

imageUpper Body Strength for Runners               via Runners World                           

                                       

        

 

 

image                                                     Workouts for Pear-Shaped Bodies via Women’s Health Magazine

(On a side note – this is not to knock on pear-shaped bodies.  It’s just an unfortunate hereditary trait of mine that I have grudgingly accepted, and now I would simply like to maximize it to its full potential).

 

Happy workouts! Hopefully you all are not lacking motivation as much as I am when it comes to your fitness ambitions.  Stay tuned!

1.07.2012

2012: Just The Beginning

Welcome! My name is Megan, and this is the first blog I have ever created.

Creating a blog was one of my resolutions for 2012.  I have always been an avid reader, and as a child I dreamed of one day being a writer myself.  For so many years, that was my answer whenever anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up.  As I got older, I realized that may not be a practical or bill-paying career, and I turned my focus in other directions.  The internet was so new, and blogs had not yet exploded into their popularity of today.

Over the past year, I have developed a habit of following some of my friends and favorite authors on their blogs.  More recently with Pinterest, I have been inspired by the crafts, style, and design that we are all able to share with each other.  The more blogs I followed, the more I wanted to share MY inspirations with my family, friends and the rest of the world.

On this blog you will find a little bit of everything.  I have such a variety of interests and an unfortunate inability to focus on just one thing.  Over time, you will find stories of style, inspiration, crafts, design, my opinions, and my life.  I do not pretend to be an expert on any of these areas (except for my life, in which I am the Queen and always right).  I do not know who will read my blog, but that is not really what matters.  All I hope is that everyone who visits can enjoy and find a little inspiration for themselves.  Happy 2012!