Captain's Party

Saturday we celebrated Captain Something Fun's birthday with a Captain America themed party. I'm just going to leave a few photos here for our avid followers. Thanks to The Farmer's Daughter for taking beautiful photos and sharing them with us.

We had a photo booth, played games, danced to some old dances, drank coffee/tea, and ate way too much. It was fun party.

Waiting on the photographer to adjust the settings. We were all kind of in our own world.

We were fighting against the wind and the intermittent sun.

Sunshine attacks and disorganized.

Someone missed the pretty smiles memo.

Oh finally, a decent photo where we all are smiling.

The Cake and Candles

Gotta get all 24 (er 25) of those candles.

Getting Old

I think I'm getting old. Either that or the traffic on the interstate is finally getting to me. I'm finding it much more comfortable to drive at 60 rather than 70. I guess it doesn't make me too old because that's still five over the speed limit on the interstate where there is roadwork. Sometimes I forget to speed up to 70ish when the road work ends. Maybe I am getting old.

Speaking of old, my birthday is in about a month. I'll be really old then. 23. Ha. It'll be a different sort of birthday because this is the first time I've been in Berea all summer. Maybe I'll get to celebrate here with some permanent Berea folks. I'm considering going home those few days before our camping trip in order to celebrate with my mom and just be at home for a few days.

I'm also getting old because I find it hard to stay up past 10. Granted, I get up at 6 am almost every morning, so 10 pm gives me my much needed eight hours of sleep. But still...10 pm. Sheesh.

Maybe it's just the fact that I'm spending more time with those whipper-snappers at school. Aren't they fun? Next week is my last week, so I'm going to be missing them just a bit. I've finally figured out how to manage the rowdy third graders with stickers and a promised reward. I'm trying to think of some fun kid stories, but those just aren't coming to me.

Someone help me maintain my youthfulness! I don't want to be old yet! (ha. kidding kidding.)

Another random update...

So I don't feel like I have a whole lot to write about right now, but I always enjoy reading the other TwentySomething's updates even when they don't have a specific event or topic they are writing about...so I hope you enjoy reading mine too.

First of all, I've started two new books. I bought The Happiness Project (by Gretchen Rubin) and Hearing From God Each Morning (by Joyce Meyer) last week at a thrift shop.

I wasn't exactly looking for these books in particular but I stumbled across them and decided to buy them because I've been wanting to get in the swing of reading something again because I've been missing it. I hope to keep you all posted on how I like these books. I have been trying to read the devotional every morning before I get out of bed which is a way to make sure I remember to read it and it seems like a good time to think about what I've read: when the day is new and untouched. It is still difficult though because I have to really focus on what I'm reading when I wake up early (on substitute teaching days). I really like how Meyer's formats each day's reading and gives you something to think about throughout the day at the end of the daily devotional.
I haven't read much of The Happiness Project yet, but I've really enjoyed what I read so far. It's written in a way that is easy to read and applicable to one's own life.

I'm not sure how well you'll be able to read the page with writing on it, but I hope you can. I really enjoyed this page. It was a list of her "Secrets of Adulthood". A few on the list of things she has learned as an adult are, "'Do good, feel good', 'Bring a sweater', 'You don't have to be good at everything', and 'By doing a little each day, you can get a lot accomplished', among others. I like how I can relate to the author and practical she seems to be. I hope it continues to be as good as the first 20 pages have been. 

On another note, as Miss Ellaneous mentioned in the previous post, it was so much fun to visit and catch up with our fellow TwentySomethings last weekend. I have a few photos from Friday and Saturday that you all may enjoy seeing. I really hope we can all get together again soon!! Granny Eyre was a fun hostess and her Unbirthday Party was very cute.

Granny Eyre wearing the beginning of my folded paper
container (made from re-purposed dictionary paper)

Our delicious Saturday morning breakfast

The spread: farm fresh scrambled eggs with cheese,
pancakes with strawberries & syrup, OJ & coffee

Birthday Girl: Miss Ellaneous

It feels sorta short to sign off already, but that's all I can think of to share with you. Hopefully something exciting will happen soon and I can write about it! 

The Farmer's Daughter 

Life

It sounds like there are a billion fat ants, running across the tin roof above my head. The snow is what is making all the noise...while I'm sitting in my room I'm just listening to the snow on the roof. It must be really wet snow, because it actually sounds more like a light rain. I'd really like to take a walk soon--oh how I love walks in the snow, and when it's snowing! Okay, this was really just a distracting way to start out my blog post, but I really love snow and wanted to share that bit.

This is probably going to be a broad-topic post because I don't have any one specific event or thought to write on today. But I really thought it was time for me to write. Just so that there's some organization, I'd like to make a list of a few things that are on my mind:

• My Beau's Birthday
• My Obsession with Netflix
• Adventures Shooting a Wedding

My Beau's Birthday: 

As you probably all know, this past Wednesday was his birthday. We met up for lunch and I gave him his gift, but we hope to celebrate more this weekend. It's kind of funny, he was wanting to see American Sniper and I kind of passed it off as a guy movie I probably wouldn't like that well but I would see with him anyway. But I noticed all the good press it was getting and I decided to listen to what everyone was saying about it. Now I'm pretty pumped to see it. It sounds like it's a good movie, although it does look sort of depressing. (Hopefully we can do something happy after watching it). So I think we'll see "his" movie and get dinner to continue the celebrating this weekend..and we'll eat lunch with his family on Sunday. By the way...he now has an adorable little niece. Nieces are the best! 

We don't really see movies that often, but we've seen several recently. Last weekend we got to see "my movie". It was The Wedding Ringer. It was pretty crude, but I must say it had me laughing most of the time. Has anyone else seen it? 

I love collages..I wanted to share the birthday collage I made.

My Obsession with Netflix:

One of my Christmas presents from the beau was this awesome little device called Amazon Fire TV stick. It works similarly to Roku or Chromecast. It's a little stick that plugs into the HDMI input in your TV and it connects to Wifi and streams various applications onto your TV..like Netflix, Pandora, Crackle, (of course Amazon Prime shows & movies), and many more. I really love it..and I think I probably get a little too much use out of it. So I've been watching my fair share of Netflix in my room through my TV. I mostly watch shows, but occasionally I watch movies. I know most of you, if not all of you TwentySomethings have Netflix and I'd love to hear your recommendations. Here's a few shows I have been enjoying: 

1. Once Upon a Time. I absolutely love this show! If you know me, you know how much I love fairy-tale characters. It includes most of the fairy-tales we grew up hearing and it meshes them all into one big saga. I've slowed down watching it because there are only 3 seasons and I don't want to watch them all and have to wait until they put season 4 on Netflix. 
2. Gossip Girl. I kind of can't believe I've started watching this show, but I have watched a couple episodes so far. It's like a teenage soap opera but I find it pretty entertaining. 
3. Breaking Bad. I've heard so many people talk about this show and never really knew what it was about. The beau and I watched the first episode a couple weeks ago to try it out. The main character is a middle age man who is struggling to pay the bills with his wife and son so he decides to start cooking meth. He isn't the law-breaking, drug-dealing type, which is what makes the show so interesting- he's just a high-school teacher who is really good at chemistry and needs money. I'm pretty sure the beau likes it more than I do, but I think it's an intriguing show. 
4. Frasier. I think it's my brothers' fault I like this show. It's about a quirky, middle-aged radio psychiatrist and his family. It always makes me laugh, plus I understand most of the psychological references they make which I enjoy. 
5. Switch. The beau and I watched this movie a couple weeks ago and I thought it was a cute romantic-comedy. Jennifer Aniston plays the lead role and I think she's a good actress. Plus, the little boy in this movie is AdoRable! 

You might be getting tired of my Netflix list, so I'm going to stop now. But like I said earlier, I'm interested in hearing what you all enjoy watching on Netflix! 

The Wedding. 

Last Saturday I photographed the Ramsay's wedding. It was my first hired wedding shoot and it was nerve-racking! But it was also great getting some experience with something different than the usual portraits I like to do. Plus..I had help from a very lovely assistant, Martha S. I was so glad she was there to talk to, get advice from and have an extra photographer during the ceremony. It was a fairly traditional catholic wedding and at the reception they had a pig roast with potluck side dishes. Yummy! Anyway...I need to start editing the images so the lovely couple can see them!

Martha S., Photographer

Until Next Time,

The Farmer's Daughter

Mom's Birthday...and all the food!

As most of you know, my mother had a birthday yesterday! I had a bunch of fun fixing her a birthday dinner and an edible gift. My beau and I decided to fix the dinner...we had a sweet, garlicky chicken, green beans from the garden, baked apples from our apple tree, and kale salad with blueberries and strawberries (kale from the garden, blueberries from our bushes, and strawberries from a friend's garden!) And because it was a birthday, and you can't forget dessert, we made a chocolate pie with homemade whipped cream. It was all REALLY good. My beau and I aren't really used to fixing dinner, but it turned out to be quite tasty, and we were proud. Just thinking about the yummy food makes me mouth water. I thought I'd share the pictures and recipes from some of the dishes we made since it all tasted so delicious. You can find the pie recipe here...this recipe was fairly easy and it tasted very good! You can find the chicken recipe here. I would recommend the chicken recipe for it's simplicity and for the ability to alter it slightly to your taste with added herbs or spices that you like.

As for Mom's gift..I had seen a recipe on Pinterest about making homemade turtles. Since this is probably her favorite candy, I decided to try to make them for her birthday. They were fairly simple to put together and turned out really tasty. The only issue I had was with the caramel rolling over the pecans and then sticking to the wax paper (and then causing the turtles to stick together once they were in the container together). I'm not sure how to avoid this, except maybe to make a thicker layer of pecans on the bottom and not use as much caramel on each one. Even with this problem, I would recommend the turtle recipe.

Mom actually made the salad, she also put roasted almonds in it...SO good!

The baked apples were good..but I think we can do better next time!

I had to sample her turtles...and they are yummy!

That's all for now!
The Farmer's Daughter