By the time you read this...

I’ll be a married man!

I know, I know…I already refer to T as my husband. But that’s just because that’s what all of my friends and family have called him for so long. We got engaged last December and will be married this week — officially. Like for real.

I’ll be back before too long to share some wedding pics. But I wanted to share this with because, when we jump the broom, my name will be changing too. Which means my social media and this website will eventually change too.

Admittedly, it won’t be a huge change from…

….to…

We just dropped an arrow. 😉

We are overjoyed and excited and so ready. ❤️

Summer 22: The Catch Up (So Far...)

Oh hello there! Here is a random straight-out-of-the-camera pic of my hubby’s car out at my mom’s ranch from last week. The colors were unreal y’all!

…and, honestly, that’s what you can expect from this post. Just kind of random stuff. But I wanted to check in, share a little of what we’ve been up to and say hello.

Speaking of that man of mine…I got him a griddle for our last anniversary and he’s had a blast cooking up all sorts of yummy things for dinner. It’s come in really handy when we’ve had guests - you can feed an army relatively quickly with these suckers.

It was planting season at the lake.

Shortly after these pictures were taken, we had a days long, sustained high-wind event that shredded my elephant ears in the pic above. I was so bummed.

Gotta have the occasional snow cone break! My fav has been creamsicle so far this summer.

I picked up an iPad Mini a little bit ago. The smaller size makes this much easier to tote around and quickly sketch with. I love my 12” iPad Pro but it’s a little unwieldy, especially on planes. This little guy is so handy to have with when inspiration strikes or I’m trying to finalize a project on the go. Highly recommend.

My mom won a lifetime achievement award recently, which resulted in the a house full of guests as we celebrated her. Our guest room had become a storage room so, the week before, we scrambled and got it guest ready.

We celebrated the nugget’s 12th birthday at the lake. We bought a bunch of decorations and decked out the family room. Wal-Mart put a 5 in a 2 package but we made it work — mostly! :)

Last - and kinda least - we got the nugget new bedding for his birthday because….that’s what he wanted. I will never fully understand him but I’m glad we got him something he loves!

That’s the bring-you-up-to-speed pic dump. How’s life out there?

Weekend in Kansas City

It’s wild to say but our kiddo turned 12 last week. It’s hard to believe that time has gone this quickly, but here we are. As his birthday approached, we were struggling trying to figure out what to do to celebrate him big. He doesn’t really need anything (other than some summer clothes) and he’s not the kind of kid who asks for things. He makes you get creative every Christmas and on his birthday. 😂

We landed on taking him away for a surprise birthday weekend. We decided on Kansas City and off we went.

Our first surprise was stopping at Yaya’s Alpaca Farm outside of Kansas City. What an absolute perfect way to start the weekend! Our animal-loving kiddo was so excited to get to spend some time with these gentle beauties. We learned about Alpacas, we got to spend some time feeding and petting about 50 of them and then we learned how to weave their fiber into textiles. If you’re going to Kansas City, I would highly recommend the farm! We loved our time there.

The next day, we went skydiving! Well, kind of.

We went to iFly in Overland Park, Kansas and did indoor skydiving. I was a little worried this might be too intense for the nugget, or that he might be a little scared. I was wrong. 😂 He took the training class super serious and, when his turn came, he dove into the flight tunnel. He was a natural.

By the time his flights were over, he had decided that he wanted to get certified as an instructor.

Later that night, we were in REI buying the kiddo some summer clothes. Out of the blue, he said “4 hours in the car is worth it for some air time”. He’s already planning his next trip to the flight tunnel (luckily there’s an iFly in OKC, which is just a couple hours away from us).

Throughout the trip, we had delicious meals all over KC as we explored and saw the sights. These are just a few pics of the food we enjoyed.

We spent our last full day in Kansas City at Worlds of Fun amusement park. This was the kiddo’s first time in a real amusement park where he was old enough (and tall enough) to start riding the bigger rides. Again, I was worried that he might be scared of the rollercoasters.

And he proved me wrong again. We immediately hopped on a coaster and I could see that he was overwhelmed and not sure what to make of it. He was definitely afraid. But the second the coaster came to a stop, he yelled “THAT WAS AMAZING!” and got back in line to go again.

We spent 6 hours at the park, walked over 7 miles and he rode every. single. ride he could — most of them 2-3 times. I was so proud of him. He was fearless and made the most of every experience we planned for him,

“I’m not sleepy.”

- The Nugget, 5 minutes before falling asleep in a restaurant

When we headed home after 4 days of fun, we were all beat. Kansas City treated us right. Our hotel, Hotel Kansas City, was super nice and the location was amazing. It was in the middle of the Power and Light District and was an easy walk to bunches of delicious restaurants, grocery stores and other activities.

Creative Space

We’re doing some work around the house and shuffling rooms so that my creative space can grow a bit. I’m going through and organizing all of my supplies, editing things that are old or I don’t use and identifying things I still need to pick up.

I grabbed my trusty Fuji and snapped some pics of my most-used supplies for fun.

We have a local friend who is building the frame for a standing height table for the my studio now. Once that’s done, we’ll drop a piece of marble on top of it and call it good. I can’t wait to have it finished and home so I can get it messy! 😂 More pics soon!