My birthday festivities

So this year I decided to keep things calm (for once) to celebrate my birth. Usually there is bars, dancing, large groups of people, and a dd that is an expert at drunk wrangling. 

This year I opted to hit dinner with my brother.

He picked me up and off we headed to the casino (it's kind of our thing). We at at the steakhouse above Harrahs.

It was great our sever was sweet and the view was to die for.

For those who don't know you can see the Missouri River and the downtown Omaha skyline perfectly from here. 

We had champagne with dinner. 

And I got to eat one of my favorite food in the entire world, PRIME RIB! It was delicious even though I didn't finish it. 

And since it was my birthday they brought me one of the cutest little cheesecakes.

Once dinner was over my best friend in the entire world joined us for unlimited drinks in the diamond lounge. Apparently I didn't take a picture but the view was pretty nice from there also. 

All in all it was a pretty nice and calm birthday. Cheers to 26! 

Happy Golden Birthday to Me!

      So I have come back and forth over the years deleting everything from my blog and starting fresh or just writing a blog I never actually published. The past few years of my life have been a whirlwind of being insanely busy while still trying to juggle my big ideas. Well thats neither here nor there, this year I have decided I am doing to take a time out everyday to blog. I think it will be a beautiful way to commemorate my golden year of life. I have no plans on limiting my blog to any one topic. The possibilities could include makeup, beauty, fashion, family, food, kids, life with a wounded warrior, or even just interesting stories told to me by my overly dramatic children.

     

      Lets start in the beginning, I grew up with a single parent. My mom had two previous children and my dad had three previous children. I was just like any other little curly haired blonde girl. I grew up in a poor neighborhood in an average sized town. My childhood had its ups and downs but for the most part it was average. 

      These days I am just a mom, starting my 26th year today. I have dozens of interests and about a million creative hobbies. I change my hair like normal people change their clothes. I love getting all dressed up and painting my face however I don't frequently do it. I love my yoga pants just as much as I love mascara. You can often find me running around doing my mom thing. 

      However in other news, I drink too much and swear too much. My humor tends to be inappropriate and a little bit vulgar. Recently I have found a new love of infinity scarves. Shoes give me as much happiness as chocolate. And Im pretty sure my veins are filled with coffee and wine.

      Well heres to twenty-six... Wish me luck and enjoy this witty little endeavor I have decided to take on!

Winter Tea and Reflections

So today was long but bountiful as well. I would like to think that my final day of classes went fairly smoothly. I was able to get my lab stuff done without a hitch. However, I did find myself running like a chicken with my head cut off to my evening engagements.

Once I got out of class I had to run home to shower so that I could attend the One Hope Winter Tea. (Which is a dinner and speaker event that is held by and for Christian Military Wives stationed at and around Offutt Air Force Base.) The theme of the night was joy. I think the speaker for the night did a beautiful job relating the idea. I won’t quote her word for word but I will bring up one of her main ideas.

When you can find contentment in the little things in your life, you will find that you fill your entire being with joy. You know those things that you WANT… The things you thing will bring you happiness. They won’t, we all know that they will only open the door to more want and with that comes more discontentment. I know they sound fantastic but really how happy will it make you. So you lose some weight, guess what your still going to want to lose more. You got a brand new car, well you will always find a newer one you want even more. All these things do is temporarily fill the gaps but eventually they are not enough. The speaker talked about two books she read called “1000 gifts” and “kisses from Katie”. I think I will add these to my kindle. Both sounded inspiring and I love hearing words that empower me to be better.

Also while at my dinner I was lucky enough to be in the company of several extremely creative women and I feel that sharing a few of their personally decorated tabled would be fun.

I felt I had to share this one, however the picture doesnt do it justice. As you walked past this woodsy themed table it smelled delicatly of pine, which filled you with thoughts of christmas trees.

CANDIES!!! Need I say more? they use candy to make all the table decorations. One of the most creative!

Christmas BUTTERFLIES!!! How cute traditional colors with a modern girlie twist

Pastels and chritmas, this beauty included a table wrapped in wrapping paper and ornament trees 

These are only a few of my favorites but there was nearly 20 elegantly and uniquesly decorated tables!

Enjoy!
Tiffany

Finals and an upcoming new year...

So its that time of year. Finals are sneaking up on me quickly. This is my last week of classes and the days are just FLYING by. Next week I have comprehensive finals on monday, tuesday, and friday and then SCHOOLS OUT!!!!

(yep this will be me.... be scared)

 I cannot begin to express how ready i am for these 16 weeks to be over. Considering next semester will be equally as grueling as this one. Physics 2, General Chemistry 2, French 2, General Chemistry 2 Lab, and a Physic Lab.

Honestly I cant wait for the new year. The ending six months of 2011 have been a roller coaster and also very difficult for me and my family. Things have changed and evolved, bumps in the road of life have put us all a bit on edge but I am excited to be able to just turn the page to begin another chapter in this adventure we call life.

I have found new ways to grow as a person this year and made choices I am proud of. However I will have to save all that for a more heartfelt and deep blog post.

So yea thats a tiny update as to whats going on and why i dont blog.. However my goals for 2012 do involve more blogging and homework time. :) so heres to hopeing

Tiff

A movie, cleaning, and delicious food

Tuesdays are usually pretty cut and dry for me. I did get woke up in the middle of the night to my daughter screaming. When I ran to her aid she tells me she had a bad dream. What was her bad dream about? She says she dreamed her bible study (Awanas) was over! Yes you got that right I am sure you can imagine how not amused I was when she said that. If my nightmares were that tame I would never loss sleep.

Last night I did watch a really good movie, well at least I thought it was really good anyhow. I have Netflix so I frequently watch different kinds of movies. This one was Diario de una ninfómana (Diary of a Nymphomaniac). It was a French woman that lived in Spain and since there was so much Spanish I had to mostly read the subtitles. It did make me smile that when she did speak in French I understood at least half of it without reading the subtitles.

Tonight I made one of my favorite new recipes:

Ingredients

• 4 ounces linguine pasta
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, sliced into thin strips
• 2 teaspoons Cajun seasoning
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
• 4 fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 1 green onion, minced
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon lemon pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

1.     Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add linguini pasta, and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until al dente; drain.

2.     Meanwhile, place chicken and Cajun seasoning in a bowl, and toss to coat.

3.     In a large skillet over medium heat, saute chicken in butter until no longer pink and juices run clear, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add green and red bell peppers, sliced mushrooms and green onions; cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Reduce heat, and stir in heavy cream. Season the sauce with basil, lemon pepper, salt, garlic powder and ground black pepper, and heat through.

4.     In a large bowl, toss linguini with sauce. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese.

Other than class, and taking p to therapy, I have been working on cleaning. I find try to declutter to be one of the hardest jobs there is. I know I have TONS of junk that I need to just toss, but I keep thinking what if?!?!?! UGH! So working on it I have decided to create 3 bins; donations, recycling, and trash. So after about an hour I got a ton of stuff cleared away from the basement family room.

Monday Monday!

So I decided to take the weekends off as far as blogging. Those two precious days I attempt to relax and recharge for the upcoming weeks events. I also do my best to spend TONS of time doing different things with my kiddos.

Saturday....

Let’s see what we did? Well the husband had to go in to work at nearly dawn. So the kids and I got up and snuggled on the couch for about 30 minutes and by the time i was getting up to start cooking our usual home cooked Saturday pancakes, my husband got home. This was totally a win for me since I always cook and he is the pancake chef in our house. Once breakfast was over we did some playing. The usual playtime stuff coloring and chasing the kids around. Then we had some uncreative lunch and it was nap time! Thankfully because I was super tired since Saturday is usually mommies sleep in day. So everyone in the house took a nap. After about two hours my little once started waking up and it was time to play some more and thing about dinner.

Sunday…

Sunday I got to sleep in till after noon! I loved that then we did some cleaning and organizing and I got to argue with my family about when we should have what celebration and so on. I also stayed up ridiculously late writing my lab report for one of my classes.

Monday…

Monday was like any other day. I woke up to find out my husband and I had a bit of a miscommunication as to him taking my son to daycare. As P climbed into my bed at 8:30 in the morning I realized he hadn’t gone to school. Which was no good! So I took J to my aunts and she got to stay there fairly late which was excellent for me. I got to take a nap before heading my night chemistry class. Which was long and painful. I was pretty irritated that the test we took last week which was most defiantly the HARDEST 11 questions of my life, had not been graded and we wouldn’t get it back till next Monday! Ugh?!?! Other than that it was just another day.

Twilight and testing...

So the past 24 hours have been long and amazing. I got everything done I needed to last night and when midnight came along I was out with my bestie Ashley. As some of you may know midnight was the time that you could go to see the midnight premier of......

Oh ya.... I am totally a Twilight fan. <3 Let me just says that that was the most fantastic way to spend an hour and 48 minutes of my life. The movie was fabulous. Well done and directed and I am sooooooooooooo excited for the next part to come out next year. We went to a place in two that serve food and alcohol with your movie... This definitely made it better. Upon getting there we laughed and chatted about the books and when we wanted to happen and where it might end. And we also saw a few people dressed.... creatively to say the least. I finally got home at nearly 3 in the MORNING!!! That was rather awful but worth it all the same.

(Awful picture I know however front facing iPhone pictures suck when you're in a dark room. We were waiting for the movie to start!)

Today, I was finally forced to peel myself out of bed at 10 a.m., because thankfully the hubster took the kiddies to preschool and daycare. I had to run to get to class... Oh ya not only did, I have class... I had a French exam! FML. However I feel ok about it. I sucked a dictation... however I always do poorly on is she speaks faster then she should for first year French.

Following French I went to gen chem lab. Exciting I know. I had to run like a million mini reactions to find out what Anion samples I had. One of my reactions turned blood red... I can’t lie... I laughed slightly since I still had the movie on my mind.

Once I got all my school stuff done, I got to come home! (Yay home, I rarely get to be there) On the downside once I got home I had to cook dinner and do some planning because my brother was going to bring my 1 year old niece over for me to spend the night with me. Even though I have two kids and I think to myself how easy one child was I have to constantly remind myself everyone has off days. So to give my brother and his sweet girlfriend a break from the demands of a rugrat I took her off their hands. What’s one more passenger on the Tiffany crazy town express?!?!?! So she’s here all small and cute like a one year old. She waddles around silent, looking at everything with my two, J and P, run through the house screaming, yelling, and fighting. However with little pumpkin here they are both stuck to her like glue. It’s ridiculous... my kids act like they have never seen other children before, or maybe like she is their new toy. I caught my two year old trying to pick her up?!?! Seriously son... you can’t just he-man lift up everything you find interesting, especially not people because when you are ten people will find it socially unacceptable.

So there you have it my day... One thing after another till nearly 9 at night when we waged the dreaded bedtime war and mommy got some much needed homework time.

Well goodnight everyone, dream of cupcakes and craziness!

Tiffany