I've Never....

I have never entered to win giveaway I've read about, but I really want to win the binder from mylitterofsix.com I've recently started couponing and I am SO disorganized. I think the organization part is holding me back a little from couponing more. I've tried a few "systems," without success so I really want to win this binder and get organized!

Garden 2010

Well, it's that time again for our annual garden. I love getting my garden ready, I love even more watching my plants grow, and then eventually producing vegetables. I have a slight problem when it comes to eating them though. I love veggies, but when they come from my garden I feel really bad eating them. I don't know why. This year I have a goal to eat everything my garden produces. I only grow stuff I like, so this shouldn't be a problem.
This year Al made me a larger garden box and we decided to let it go into the ground. Our old garden box had a ground cover so things couldn't take root in the ground. I planted 2 tomato plants, one bell pepper plant, 2 onions left over from last year. I am also going to try growing things from seeds this year, so I planted corn, green beans, peas, and carrots.
Hunter has taken it upon himself to "water" the garden for me and Curly has decided to "help with the weeding." Now, I have to stand out by the garden whenever they are outside so they can learn to leave the garden alone since it is no longer growing just weeds. Wish me luck. I'll post pics later.

Date Night

One of our goals this year is to get out of debt or at least work on it. So we have decided to start living like there is a recession (just a little late). It is killing me. I used to be perfectly content to sit at home on the weekends and relax, but now I feel like I am being tortured in some fashion.
At work I have A LOT of free time to explore on web and I recently came across a really cute blog http://loveactually-blog.blogspot.com I've been using my spare time to find cute, creative ideas for cheap date nights. Most of them are too cutsie for Al, but I found a few that will work for us.
So this weekend was our first "at home" date. I got home from work, did a quick clean of the downstairs, started dinner, and moved our king-size mattress from our room out to the family room. After I moved the mattress I was exhausted, it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Al came home on time for once, so I wasn't completely finished with dinner. I was hoping to have everything done by the time he got home, oh well. We ate a delicious dinner and then we watched romantic movies in the front room on our bed. I set up a little movie theater concession stand for our treats. Overall, it was a great evening and it cost less than $10. Hopefully, we can make this a monthly thing and my recession will be a little more bearable.

Want To Adopt A Puppy?

Well I guess the need to "mother" something has been getting to me lately, so I started volunteering with a local animal rescue. Animals have always been a passion for me and I love having them around. As I have gotten to know people in the rescue community I have learned the awful truth about people breeding thier animals and what happens to a lot of innocent aniamls, so I have decided to help out in a small way.

Pals for Pooches is a rescue agency in Houston. They usually get their animals that are on "death row" in the animal shelters. 90% of animals in shelters in Houston and the surrounding areas are put to sleep. Houston area has the highest rate of animal euthanasia in the country. Anyways, I am now fostering an adorable puppy named Curly. She is available for adoption, fully vetted, spayed, and microchipped. She is fully grown at 35lbs, the perfect size. She is a lab mix, but she is really short and they think she may have some hound in her. There were 4 pups in the litter and they all look like a different breed of dog. One of the rescuers found them after listeing to the owners complain about the price of $50 per dog to put them down, so they were going to take them to the shelter. The rescuer saw how sick they were and took them in (two had to have blood transfusions). Curly is a really calm puppy. She can be shy, but she is really friendly too. She loves other dogs, cats, and kids. She is potty trained and crate trained. She is also learning her basic commands. She is just a great puppy and we've enjoyed having her. I am not keeping her because I would like to keep fostering and helping other dogs and unfortuantely Al doesn't want to move to a farm and keep 100 animals (I'm not sure why). If you are interested in adopting her or know someone looking for a puppy let me know and I can give more information. Remember 1/2 of all shelter dogs are full breed dogs, so look to a shelter for your next animal and save a life.

Someday I'll get around to updating my blog with some of our events.

Weird Story

So I am an office assistant at a small commercial construction company. I really like my job and most of the people I work with. I do have some interesting encounters with people, but none like the one I had today.
We are getting a new security company and today they stopped by to finish up some paper work so they can install it on Monday. It was a husband wife team that came by. They seemed friendly and were up in the waiting area with me while they were waiting on my boss. I am pretty bad about entertaining people. I usually have them sit while I continue on with my work. Well today this did not happen....
I was filing some paperwork and the man comes up to me, inches from my body, (definitely an invasion of personal space) while I am standing (luckily) at the filing cabinet and he says to me, "I have a weird question.....then he proceeds to put his hand in front of his crotch wave it around like he is peeing and makes a "PPIIISSSSSSSSSSSS" sound. He is practically touching me and I am speechless. Am I really watching this? He says nothing else and I make some sort of sound and point down the hall. I felt so violated, it was the weirdest thing. He never asked for the restroom. My friend was standing up there watching this whole thing and asked me did he just do what it looked like. I nodded silently and she left me to go laugh outside. It has been a big joke all day here in the office. Seriously who does stuff like that?

NOLA

Well I finally made my first trip to New Orleans. It was a really, really quick trip. Our friend was meeting his mom there to pick up his dog. So he invited us to ride along with him. We left early Saturday morning and we had terrible rainy weather the way there. It took about 6 hours to finally reach the city. We got all checked into our hotel and made our way down to ACME Oysters. Everyone raved about the chargrilled oysters and poboys. I ate 3 oysters and that was plenty for me. They weren't as bad as I had envisioned, but they definitely won't become a staple in my diet. While we were at ACME our friends from Houston happened to be in town so they met us for lunch. After lunch we had plans to visit the aquarium (I can never pass up an aquarium, something about them I love), but it closed at 5:00pm and the last ticket was sold at 4:30pm so we would have never been able to make it. So instead we took a much needed nap at the hotel.
We decided we needed a nice dinner out so we made plans at Emeril's New Orleans. It was delicious. The cheesy grits were to die for and I don't even like grits. After dinner we hit up Harrah's so I could get my gambling fix. I was doing pretty well for awhile and instead of cashing out while I was ahead I ended up loosing all my money. I tracked Al down and he was up about $15 so he let me take over for him. I ended up loosing all his money too. Good thing we set limits or I would have gone crazy and lost a lot more than $40. We ventured down the street to Hard Rock to get Al a shirt and a hat. We saw some drunk guy get arrested, so that was interesting.
The next morning we headed to the world famous Cafe du Monde for beingets (french donuts). They were delicious. We wandered around the Mississippi River and back into town and met up with Ron and his cousins and took the street cars up and down St. Charles street. The old homes were absolutely gorgeous. I could have looked at them all day. After that we had to leave good 'ole NOLA. I definitely want to go back there seems like a lot more to do to see. Also, we managed to escape with out being mugged. We probably had 30 people tell us to take taxis everywhere and watch everyone around us. Overall it was a really fun trip. I'll post pics when I get home.

Happy Anniversary to Us

September 4, 2009 brought our 5th anniversary. I can't believe we've been married for 5 years. It seems the older we get the more time flies by. The night of our anniversary we went out to dinner at Carino's. It wasn't very exciting, but we brought our friends Marianne and Blake with us. We did a small dinner because we were leaving early, early the next morning for our cruise. I LOVE you tons and tons and millions, Allen. Here's to many more years together.