Autumn Tag

Howdy!

So, I was on Twitter earlier this week when I found a little comment thread and this little tag was shared by Tea Party Princess (love it, so cute!) and as I read the post I realized I have never done this one. I mean, I know for a fact I have another tag about fall, but I hadn’t seen this questions before so I think this might be a new one.

The Rules!

• Answer the questions
• Link back to the creator
• Tag other people (if you want to!)

Here are the questions!

Hot Chocolate – what is your comfort book?

I was going to say To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han, but that would be a lie. I mean, it’s a great book, but for some odd reason the first thing that popped into my head when I saw this question was a good erotica book! I mean, it’s true in a way. There are a couple of themes that make me comfortable as strange as that sounds, but whenever the weather outside gets a little colder, sometimes all I want to read a book that has a lot of sex in it. #shameless

Pumpkin Carving – what is your favorite creative outlet?

Recently it has been spending hours on Pinterest organizing! Now that you can make little boards within a board is very intoxicating for me! I have three of them that are full of different aesthetics. So, I started out with my new story boards and that has been a really good thing to have as far as figuring out more about my characters. In the beginning, I had each one with their own board, with having little sections for their style, home life, relationships with other characters etc. There is a massive amount of writers that use Pinterest for the same reason and I am basically learning to follow along I guess!

The next one is about colors. I have a lot light and vibrant hues. What’s even cooler (or weirder) is that they all have names for each one! For example, green is Giada Maria, red is called Valentina Soleil, and turquoise is Tiffany Brooke! And lastly, I just started collecting pictures that went with my favorite parts of history and once it got up to 50 pins, I just thought it would be really fun to create one section dedicated for a different important person. As of right now, the list goes..

• Cleopatra
• Bjorn Ironside
• Vlad The Impalar
• Leonardo Da Vinci
• Henry Tudor
• Elizabeth of York
• King Henry VIII
• Katherine of Aragon
• Anne Boleyn
• Jane Seymour
• Lady Jane Grey
• Mary I
• Elizabeth I
• Abigail Williams
• Marie Antoinette
• Jane Austen
• Mary Shelley
• Queen Victoria
• Harriet Tubman
• Beatrix Potter
• Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Molly Brown
• Vincent van Gogh
• Oscar Wilde
• Winston Churchill
• John Dillinger
• Neil Armstrong

Falling Leaves – changes that appear bad but you secretly love?

I am usually pretty good with changes in life, a lot better than some members of my family. I know everything is there to teach you a lesson of some kind, but of course there are some that I will try to dodge but everything happens a reason and there’s no use in hating something like that.

Pumpkin Spiced Latte – something you love that others that tend to judge

I am still a lover of Disney princesses falling in love at first sight–although I have never believed in it, I fall hopelessly in love with these types of movies. I believe a woman can rescue herself but I will always love knowing there’s a man wanting to protect her too. I really don’t see anything wrong with that.

Bonfire Night – what makes you explode with joy?

So, there are two things. I love being around our cats. I haven’t been able to go out and be with them up close for a while, but I can see them through the windows and when I say their names, they’ll meow back to me. It is literally one of the cutest thing ever!

And of course, hanging out with my little nephew makes me happy, unless he is not feeling good and crying/screaming, all that does is make me want to cry right along with him! He has been loving everytime I get on the floor with him though, he knows I’ll play and read books with him. Everytime I hear him say “hi” or give me a hug makes me so happy!

Fright Night – favorite scary book of film

I am not much of a scary film person, but as far as scary books there’s a great short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman called “The Yellow Wall-Paper” we read it for one of my English courses in school and it was so hauntingly beautiful that it became one of my favorites!

Halloween Candy – favorite thing to eat

I love PASTA! After years of being in a house with a father who has described himself as “meat and potatoes” type of guy, I have found myself branching out of that lifestyle and want almost every carbs you can find on this planet! The only second thing I am addicted to is dark chocolate!

Scarves – your autumn ‘must have’ accessory

I don’t really wear any accessories when I go out, but I do believe having great nails is a must! For fall, I think any color you see on the trees of the changing season is a nice touch. My favorites are gray, red and a vibrant yellow that would clearly match the petals of a sunflower!

Fire – a book or film that burns your soul

Hmmm, I’ll go with the movie first, I think The Hours wins the top spot! It is the story of three women in three different time periods going through life. It is a very sad film. It even brought out some very negative thoughts for me, but after I released those feelings, I changed emotionally and mentally, it was very weird but obviously it must have been what I needed at that time and I didn’t even know it!

Now for the book, this is going to sound weird yet again, but at the time I read this, I was still adamant about the fact that rockstars don’t deserve to or fall in life. Yeah, I know, that’s a bit harsh! After I began reading Olivia Cunning’s series Sinners On Tour, starting with Backstage Pass, I really came around that I was being very mean to the whole music genre and I saw their humanity, even if they were all fictional characters, they felt real to me because there are probably a lot of musicians dealing with the same things too.

Toffee Apples – a book or film that seems one thing but really has a different inside

I think when everyone watches superhero movies, they are either a giant fan of the comic book characters and look for the things that make them fall in love with that character, but when I watched X-Men: First Class I didn’t have all of that information, I just had what was given during the previous X-Men films of Charles Xavier and Erik. So, when I was watching this one, I got to see Magneto’s point of view on being proud of your differences, and for me this was very big because I grew up always wanting to be like everyone else and never loving me who I was, so it was really eye opening as a person with a disability.

I am finished! I am also not going to tag anyone special for this. If you want to do it, you can, as long as you link me back to your post so I can read answers! I hope you have enjoyed today’s post!

Do you like these tags or surveys as they use to be called on MySpace? Yes, I went there!

Nolan’s 1st Party!

Hello!

Last weekend we celebrated my nephew’s first birthday with a big party! It’s been a long time since I have been at his house. I told my mom that he had to been around three months at the time, because Brandon and I were watching Black Panther after it just came out on DVD. It was very difficult to keep my eyes on the screen and not on a certain little baby in the pack-n-play! He was surprisingly very good for us, until towards the ending where he wanted to be fed quickly and he wasn’t – he wasn’t very happy! He has yet to grow out of that by the way!

The theme of the party had changed a few times over the coming months, but ultimately they decided on one thing: Llamas! So, in March, my sister found him this cute little llama stuffed toy at the store for Easter and he apparently liked it so much that she set out to find other items to fit in that theme, thus making the entire party about llamas. The only thing that wasn’t in a llama shape was the cake, although she did try to find someone to make one for her back in May!

One of my favorite things that had llamas on it, were our shirts that Blondie found for us. Both sides of the family were given customize T-Shirts of a black silhouette of a llama with whatever we are to Nolan. For example, I am his “auntie” so that’s what I got on mine, but both of his grandmothers have different names. My mom is “Mimi” while Brandon’s mom is “Grammie” to him. I have always had a small stack of tops that fit perfectly on my shoulders and if there was a special design on the front, it isn’t blocked by my hands the whole time the stack was even smaller! I’m very glad to tell you that I can add this to the pack! You can see everything, I love it so much!

My mom and I were the first ones to get there. I was greeted by Chipper and the cats. Chipper was SO excited to see us, but the look on Nolan’s face when he realized that Mimi was the one waking him up from a nap in his crib, was so cute! He was so surprised! He looked stunned when he found out I was there too! We were there about 10 minutes before my dad and our “uncle” Russell came over. Nolan was very happy to see his papaw! He just wrapped his small arms around his neck (and beard) and my dad was all too happy to deny him. Nolan was a little unsure about Russell at first but after a couple of minutes, he actually asked to be held by him and it was so adorable.

They were originally supposed to have 30+ people coming to the party, but since we were under a Tornado warning all afternoon, we were happy with the small get together instead. It was an interesting mix of people though, the best thing was everybody got along perfectly! We ate food, chit-chat with one another, played with Nolan. Our friend Jayde, who is expecting her first baby boy later this year, ate around three cupcakes. She and I made a deal that she could have the cupcakes and I can have the broccoli. I love broccoli! She fully agreed to that! I’m actually shocked on how little I snacked though, because I’m known to eat quite a bit at parties but there wasn’t a lot of room for me to eat by myself or have my mom feed me easily without being in the way of little guy eating his strawberries in his high chair! Honestly, I made myself a deal at the end of the party, I was going to have one vanilla cupcake. I did get my cupcake, but I almost regretted it on the way home…

After everybody grabbed a seat, we decided it was time to open some presents. He got a LOT of interesting toys for his birthday! The first one that “he” opened was from his Grammie and his aunties too. Blondie opened the cards first, which is always a nice gesture even though they are usually the last present anybody ever wants to open, because they usually have a message inside that could make you cry in front of your guests. Nolan was another story entirely, he loved his cards! The one that his Grammie got him had shiny glitter inside the number one symbol on the front, so you could essentially shake it like a snow globe and everything will move around. He literally did not want to put it down! It was in his right hand during the rest of the unwrapping.

These are some of the gifts that I could remember of the party.

• A small red and blue slide (that was wrapped in Batman paper! I loved it, and I’m not a big fan of him either!)
• A large stack of different summery clothes.
• Bubble making lawn mower
• Tool bench and belt full of tools he’ll need to fix my ‘broken’ wheelchairs
• A standing drum set
• A big yellow truck to put all of his toys
• Paw Patrol trucks with characters of the show
• A book for bedtime made specifically for him as it has a blond baby named Nolan.

There were a lot more that you will see at in the gallery below. He will certainly be really busy making lots of noises in the next few months! My sister actually sent mom a picture of him standing at the drum kit in the middle of the pack-n-play without any help of the walls after the party was over! We’re getting closer to seeing cutie pie walking around on his own.

Once we were finished with the presents, we moved on watching him eat his smash cake. For this, he had to become semi-naked and as much as he loves being like this, he absolutely hates taking off his clothes! After everything was off, he was placed in his high chair again. I will be inserting the before and after pictures of the cake itself in a minute, but Nolan isn’t necessarily a messy eater, he likes to inspect things so he was really puzzled by this cake at first. He literally only would stick one finger into it at a time. Brandon quickly realized that we’d be here forever if he continues doing this, so to make things go faster, he literally grabbed Nolan’s hands and planted them right into the cake! Nolan was not sure what to do with all of the icing on his hands so he was literally shaking his arms but he actually accepted the fact that it did taste pretty good!

The part that made me remember that I am still teaching him things without even realizing it, was when he started leaning his mouth into the cake. As everybody was laughing and taking pictures at this, I was like “oh, crap!” Whenever I eat in the kitchen, he is at the same level as me, so he can watch me like a hawk, because I do lean into my plate so my tongue can reach everything. So seeing the now one year old mimicking what I do for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, was pretty cute! He was trying his best to get into it, to the point that my sister actually had to hold the cake up in front of him to reach with his mouth! He’s such a smart cookie!

Once he was done eating the cake–well, actually his mommy had to take it away from him! He wasn’t very happy about that, but after he was basically washed down with many, many wipes, he was rewarded with his new toys! He quickly went back to his tool belt and started waving it around in the air. This was also the time where half of the guests were leaving to go home. Russell and dad were one of the firsts to leave because we needed them to be ready to get back into the house, which was a fun mini adventure on its own!

My mom and I left about 10 minutes later, but we were going to get food from Applebee’s and it was roughly a 20-25 minute wait to pick everything up, we decided to go look at the expensive houses in town. I’ve been watching Property Brothers like crazy lately so this was my jam! However between the two of us, we realized how different our tastes in houses were as far as exterior design goes! I still love my ranch-style houses, but even I started finding some of these larger houses to be very beautiful, especially that Tudor house! Once our 20 minutes were up, we went to pick up our food and eventually made our way home!

I had an awesome time spending the day with a great bunch of people, and what I think really made it better was the fact that after the small storm we had, the sky actually perked up. It was sunny again, which was really nice considering how much rain we’ve had in the last couple of weeks or so! I also had lots of fan watching my little nephew enjoy time with each family and friends as well!

What do you think is the most weirdest theme for a birthday? What did you think of my day too?

Favorite Scents

Howdy!

So I wanted to talk about my favorite scents today. I literally feel at times like a damn bloodhound because I smell so many things! I can literally get up in the middle of the night and smell something my dad is cooking from the kitchen through the vent. Sometimes I can come out of deep sleep because I can smell something so heavenly!

We’re not going to talk about food scents necessarily in this post, however as you will notice quickly, I have nothing against them! I do love the smell of pumpkin, apple and cinnamon in the fall! Even though I’m not into the whole pumpkin spice lattes or apple pies at Thanksgiving! The only reason why I’m perfectly fine with cinnamon in general is that it makes me think of cinnamon rolls and that’s my #1 favorite breakfast item.

My mom and sister do have their favorite baking scents though. My sister got mom into this Wild Berry Cheesecake and the first time Blondie had it going around in the apartment it wasn’t so bad because she has a big living room so it has room to breathe really, but at our house it only has the living room and kitchen, it can get very overwhelming at times! My dad can’t handle very many sweet smells so this doesn’t mix well with him and it doesn’t make me feel good either when she’s put a whole cube inside the burner. The other one that Blondie likes to use is this Brownie Pecan and it actually really good, but mom and dad absolutely hate it!

My mom had a Scentsy burner that she didn’t really use and we have one in living room, plus a couple of smelly candles – those are mostly used in case of emergencies though! This other burner is now by my window. I don’t use it a lot, but every once in a while I like to put it on and it kind of soothes me throughout the day. I actually like the fruit scents. I don’t know why I gravitate towards them so much but they’re those kind of scents that help generate cravings. I have enough cravings as it is, so different fruits are good to keep me and my stomach neutralize, plus it helps my dad as well!

One day my mom was washing my hair and she used this mango shampoo and it smelled divine! Ahh, I was seriously addicted to it. I could have done without the champagne layer it had but you could mostly smell the mangoes. And I’m not really into mangoes, I’ve only just tried them a few months ago! They’re not bad! So when I found out my parents were going to the store one afternoon I had them try and find me a mango scent to put into my burner and they find this Peach and Mango Citrus blend.  My dad was the one who found it as my mom couldn’t find anything that was just mango. Luckily, I do love peaches so it works too!

One of the most used is the Sangria scent. I really like this one! It’s not a strong scent but I don’t try to use a whole cube because I like to close my door throughout the day and since it’ll only get colder I tend to keep my window locked as well, so mom only puts a small chunk of it and it usually lasts about a week before I need to add more in the little bowl. I know it has berries in it, because a regular sangria does have berries, but it’s not over-ly berry, it’s actually kind of musky too. It’s very subtle but I don’t know if it’s just because I don’t use a lot of it at one time or if it’s just a mild scent in general.

On the day I decided to work on this post, I put up a status on my Facebook asking one of the questions I have below and I got a lot of interesting answers. I knew about the good things about lavender but I had a few people say both coconuts and peppermint. I thought that was pretty interesting too!

What are your favorite scents? Do you change with the seasons? Is there a smell that you think companies should create?

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Happy Easter

I had fun yesterday spending time with family and friends for an early Easter celebration, I’ve turned into the quiet and supervisor of all activities like my Papaw, I’ve noticed this about three or four times. I look like I’m bored but I’m not I have a tendency of spacing out easily and I don’t usually get into things. I was basically around little Chevy and her Aunt Chey all evening. When I first got there, I had been thinking about corn on the comb for three days. Literally dreaming about it! I let dad put mom’s alcoholic slushie drink in her cup and then my mom went up and got the both of us one. I’m not that big of a corn lover, but when I get a craving for something it needs to be met and I devoured it too! I didn’t have any butter in it because mom didn’t think we needed it. We didn’t but mine needed something on it, but it didn’t stop me from eating every part of it. It was so good!

After that mom fed me mashed potatoes and then when that was in my belly I had some pineapple upside down cake. I’ve never had that before but I have baked it with my sister and my nana once. I’m pretty sure Theresa converted me to it. I had it twice last night and I have no regrets. Plus two little Krabby Patty’s gummies. One was in an egg and the other was in the Pinata. I didn’t do the egg hunt but I watched Chey and Chevy try to look for all 42 eggs. Once Chevy got the hang of carrying the box (and I say “box” because they didn’t have a basket for them, so they used the next best thing–a beer box) it was a redneck Easter basket and it did what it was supposed to do too! I also had two little packages of M&M mini’s too! All I did there was smile, laugh and eat. One of the things that I was excited about was doing the Pinata. I have this small baseball bat I got when I was in middle school, it’s never been used before until yesterday and I’m surprised of how hard between Blondie and Sammy punched it, that didn’t break as well!

Originally, they were going to hang the Pinata in the barn but they couldn’t risk the bikers inside and so they used the back-end of an old truck and it had a little hole on the side of it, so Rex put it in there to hold it up and he and Marshall had to use their weight to level it down for Chevy, Chey-Chey, and I because we’re the shorter ones. They leveled back for Blondie and Sammy since they’re much taller. See how cute the little egg is! Chevy loved it too! She carried to “Pa” like it was her little purse, when we let her start swinging the bat Sammy tried to show her to swing with two hands but she didn’t want to go that route and everytime she went to hit the Pinata, you could hear her say in whisper “boom” she was giving herself some sound effects.

When it was my turn to try, I was bit weird because I had NEVER 1.) swung a bat before and 2.) the last time I played Pinata I was too afraid to “hurt” it so everybody else instead. So this was something different for me but I did it and had fun with it! Every time I had the bat in my toes I couldn’t get enough grip on it that after I hit it, that it would stay in between my toes. That part was difficult for me, so I switched it up and did something different. When you’re handicapped, sometimes you can’t go the traditional way, you have to do it in another way that’s good for you. My feet are pretty tough honestly and I have a bunch of bones on my left foot so I knew it would be THAT bad for it. So I gave up on the bat and I started using my left foot and it was a good stress reliever! I didn’t make a dent in it, but it do something else…

It did this… you probably can’t see it, which it wasn’t THAT bad but a little bit after, that whole area around those three bones was REALLY red but it never hurt or anything. Even last night, it wasn’t that bad either. Like I said, my foot’s pretty tough so something like this wouldn’t hurt that bad.

Blondie didn’t want to do it, but both mom and dad made her do it. She used to be in softball so we knew this would be kind of easy for her to do. However, she only went twice because after that second time the stick that was holding up the string and Pinata kind of came out of the truck and landed right on her and nobody had noticed it came out so this was probably taken afterwards because Rex is hanging onto it in this picture.

Sammy knocked ’em dead, the boys were supposed to go after her but we kind of figured they weren’t going to even go after Blondie or Sammy. I am too weak to break it open, Chey tried her hardest and Chevy tried too. When we saw the gashing big dent in the side of it, we all like “yup, it’s about to explode.” It did as soon as we noticed the dent, she only had to do one more swing before that candy inside went flying out of there! Packets of M&M’s and Krabby Patty’s everywhere on the ground. For once I actually grabbed a couple off the ground. For my first Pinata experience. I think it was a success!

I hope everybody has/had a wonderful Easter weekend! ♥

Easter Egg Hunt

I have a lot of friends who are parents and so that last week before Easter, I’m expecting to see a bunch of pictures of them painting Easter eggs with their kids. I’ve only seen one family post pictures and it was yesterday. Last year I helped the girls in the activities department decorate  eggs with the residents. After painting that ornament for Christmas and it breaking even before we got it home, I brought it upon myself to bring an egg to the girls or residents who can hold things in their hands. Everybody including myself seemed to enjoy it because my toes have an amazing grip that I can practically hold anything but I’m not wonder woman, considering the four eggs I had accidentally dropped on the floor too! Like I thought that whole afternoon, at least I didn’t run over them with my wheelchair. That’s always a plus!

I think the last time I actually decorated an Easter egg was in 2010, because my mom was depressed that a month afterwards I would be graduating from high school and my sister was going to be starting her second year in high school, so she was feeling down about her daughters growing up and I’m pretty sure I was down to do them, Blondie wasn’t but she never is. I always had trouble with painting eggs there’s denying it here! The food coloring stained my feet in a light shade of blue, red, and green. Thank god you could never see the yellow! For us, especially after I had my surgeries we never did the actually egg hunts because I couldn’t scoot as fast as I used to. I do remember after making them we’d eat them on Easter for lunch. I was the weird one in our family, everybody could get deviled eggs but I couldn’t. You had to take the yellow stuff out for me to eat it and douse it in salt. I have never liked the insides and probably never will honestly! I do remember a few times of going over to my nana’s, making the eggs, and then doing the egg hunt over there with my cousins. That was always fun!  There was a few times where we didn’t want to do the coloring but we still wanted to do the egg hunt, so mom and/or nana got us the plastic eggs and stuck candies inside and they have a medium size backyard and they would put the eggs around there and I’m pretty sure that they hid some in the front yard for me so I didn’t have to fight for mine against my sister.

I am going to an Easter party this evening. One of my friends said that they’re doing an Easter egg hunt over there and I’m kind of excited even though I don’t think I’ll be joining in. I think I’ll be the one attempting to take pictures for tomorrow’s blog post. Like I said they have that, an adorable decorated egg Pinta, and a feast to die for! I’m actually really excited but I hope to charge my phone and wheelchair up before the party starts! I hope everybody has a good Easter in case I have too much fun tonight that I end up sleeping all day tomorrow!