Top Two Tuesday!! Top Two Dream Kitchens!!

It's that time again.  Time for Top Two at Tay's. Head over to Tay's to see her Top Two pics and many other Mamas and Ladies HERE!!

I LOVE beautiful kitchens. MY ABSOLUTE FAV cabinent design is "Antique White" cabinents. That is my dream kitchen with a light colored Marble. Maybe with some stone. Def with the fancy wood designs/sconces etched into the wood.  My dream kitchen has to be open.  I LOVE big open kitchens were lots of people can gather.  perfect for parties, and big family celebrations.  I want a kitchen that people WANT to be in.  I see Dream kitchens all the time in magazines, but I had a little difficulty finding some on line. I found one link, but you will have to scroll and click on the numbered picture to view them.

1.  #1 Fav-"Antique White" Cabinent, Feminine Inspired Kitchen

Page 2, #57

http://www.kitchen-design-ideas.org/pictures-of-kitchens-traditional-antique-white-02.html

2. My seond fav would be a "French Country" inspired kitchen. I keep telling the hubs I want to move out to the country and live on a ranch with some acerage. That is my dream for us as a family. To live off the land, to have a pond with ducks, a goat, some chickens. Took Nik to a pumpkim patch this weekend, and she went nuts chasng the chickens around. She was born to live on a Farm. She threw a fit when they started to close and I told her we had to leave.  Our black lab def needs the room to run.

I couldn't find a kitchen to exactly replicate my French inspired Country kitchen design, but something similiar to the one pictured on Page 3, #78.

http://www.kitchen-design-ideas.org/pictures-of-kitchens-traditional-antique-white-03.html

Here are a couple other photos of French Inspired Country Kitchens. They are not exactly what I was looking for, a little darker, but the inspiration is similar.  If we do move out to the country and had a French Country kitchen, I would be okay if it were a little smaller than my big open design for the Feminine Antique White design.

Here are some other pics I found that I like.

I like the "masculine" aspect/feel of this kitchen (kitchen table/dark wood/TV-ha!) offset by the sconced hood above the stove and the feminine chandelier.

I LOVE the wodden cubbies in the back, the antique kitchen table/chairs, the island and the wood floors. 

The ceiling has etchings too.

Love this sink.

I love Breakfast Nooks with couches.

I like the yellow country cabinents offset by the dark counters.

Love this Top Two. Ahhhh, these kitchen are heavenly. I think I would just sit in my kitchen and look around all day, like I was in dream land.

Can't wait to see everyone's picks!

8,500.

8,500. I just had to write it, so that it would be real to me.

8,500 photos of the pumpkin restored.

About 6,500 left to go the hubs says.

Do you think I need to stop taking so many pictures, ha!

Hopefully, next week, I will be able to upload some new photos of the pumpkin. I have a few fun ones to post form a couple photo shoots we had.  Some worked out, some didn't, but I had fun trying.

Nik is starting to catch on to my photo shoots though.  I am trying to make an effort to make them more fun for her, instead of all just about gettting the shot. Make them more relaxed, less fussed, less rushed, and less busy.

I can't thank her enough for helping me to hone my photography. The only inexpensive, un-time consuming, fun, raw, way I know to get better at photography is to simply shoot. Shoot every chance I get. I don't want to always be behind the lens to her.  I don't want it to consume me, and to take away from our time together.  Sometimes, I have to tell myself, enough is enough. Just put down the camera and laugh and play.  Just be.  If you got the shot, than you got it, if not, then not.  Maybe the shot will present itself later in different form.  It's so hard, bc I want to hold it every minute. I want to capture it all. I don't want to miss a thing.  I want to get that one shot that makes it all worth it.  And that one shot is enough to make me know why I love this art form so much.

I hope one day she'll understand. One day, I hope for her to look at me and say, "Mom, it was totally worth it."  That is my goal.  So, that she'll look at me and my photos will inspire in her a love of photography like I have, and maybe one day, we'll pick up a camera together.  And go exploring.  I would love that.  If she discovers the passion and excitement, that I have for photography,  for any one thing I would be happy. First, I'm just working on getting her to wear bows and hats. One small step at a time, ha.

Love to all,
Lindsay

My New Obsession.

The Apprentice.

I don't really watch TV. Obvs you all know that we don't have cable which makes that pretty easy, I guess. Though we never much watched it anyway. Or we'd watch it too much and hate ourselves for it, ha!

I LOVE the office too, but I usually miss some of it taking care of Nik. I also have not found it to be as good this season so far, maybe I'm just coming into the episode in the middle/end and I get lost or something. Anyway, is 30 Rock not on anymore?  Haven't seen that.

Well anyway, I think Apprentice used to be on Sunday night, right??  Well, it's on Thursdays this season, and I LOVE it. It's on kinda late, but I'll stay up to watch it. Gives me a chance to clean the kitchen and pack Nik's diaper bag before the next day. Then, I can settle down to watch it and relax.

This year, he has hired people that lost their job in the economic crisis, and I have to say I think it has made it that much more Fab!  Literally, these people are all struggling, and on edge bc the have lost their career, and they are passionate and hungry, that's for sure. I have never seen people claw at each other like this. They turn on each other at the drop of a hat. And, they're brutal and so unforgiving!  It's horrible, but fascinating at the same time. Kinda sick, I guess. But, I'm hooked.

The other part of it is, that I have to give Donald credit. I think what he's doing for these individuals is great.  Simply amazing. These individuals, I admit all come from great educational backgrounds and career  experience/resumes, obvs, would he settle for anything else??  So, they prob would have eventually found jobs, but I still think it's great that he's trying to help them.  The great part is though, even if they get kicked off, he'll try and set them up with a contact/interview indirectly, or through a company that he manages.  And if they win the challenge for that week, he's also offering them assistance furthereing their education, mentoring with a successful individual/company. 

But, literally these people, since day one have been like Cats and Dogs, or shoud I say, wolves and well, wolves. It's been brutal. Really makes for an interesting show. Much more so than the celebrity apprentice, I think, anyway. They are really people, struggling, vying for a position bc they have to support their family.

Check it out. I can't wait each week to watch it, as long as it comes in with our bunny ears that day, ha!

I wish I could watch it all in one day on a dics set.  Love it!

Josh and I also like that "Undercover Boss."  I think it's a great concept that these bosses/management get down to their employees levels and handle their job for a day. Makes them appreciate their staff/job more. Last week, this CEO gifted all these things to his employees-Choice Hotel episode. Education, vacations, paid their rent, etc. It was amazing!  I started CRYING. I was so touched by his generousity and compassion.

Hope you all have a Great Weekend!

Happy 18 Months.

I have a couple photos that the pumpkin and I took last Saturday that I want to share with you all. Since our computer is on the Fritz, I will be sure to show them to you all later. This photo is from a month ago, but it's one of my favs.

My 17th month list was so long. I can't imagine posting one that long again, phew...and since most of it still applies, I'm just going to share a couple things the pumpkin has been doing lately.

What you are about right now.

1.Mondays are hard for you. You cry, scream, and attempt to throw a fit every Monday when I drop you off at Daycare for the day. It breaks my heart every time, and I usually cry the rest of the way to work.

2. You slapped a little boy at daycare when he wouldn't give you a toy you wanted.  You had your first time-out.  The next day another little boy shoved you when you tried to take a toy he was playing with.  Hopefully, he had a time out too.

3.We think you may be ready for time-outs. Is 17 Months too young to start time out?? Since you turned 17 Months, you seem like you are needing them. The tantrums are beginning. Mostly when you're tired/hungry.

4. You are MILK crazy lately.  You want MILK all the time.  You will go to the fridge when you want milk.

5. You are still really into sticking your finger in your belly button. Which is just wierd and kind of grosse.

6. You LOVE to dance whenever you hear music. You went crazy to Brittany Spears yesterday. "Oops I did it again," and "Toxic."

7. You have a little buddy at daycare. You're second daycare boyfriend. I came to daycare early and caught you flirting with him during story time.

8. Caught you running around and playing with friends at daycare, when you didn't know I was there.

9. You are really into sitting in the Car pretending to drive, and pointing out trucks when we see them on the road. You make the steering movement and a "vrooooooooom" sound.

10. You know which items are the bed, dresser, lamp, table, chair, pillow, book, teddy bear, blanket, cup, diaper, wipes, etc.  You like to read the book so we can find the items.

Still signing. Cookie is the newest one.  Making "squirrel eating nuts" gesture is your most recent animal action.

11. Love to play with Daddy's tools and stuff in the garage.

12. Still love slides, hitting balls with a bat/golf club.

13. You LOVE playing outisde.

14. LOVE to be swung around, held upside down, and to spin around.

15. YOU LOVE RING AROUND THE ROSY, and everyone that is in the room has to participate. 

16. You love to sit in the computer chair and pretend to be on the computer, banging on the keyboard and spinning in the chair.

17. You have started making a "Cheese" face and say "zzzzzzz."  Obviously as an aspiring photographer, this is a nightmare for me. Hubs thinks it's funny.

18. You are really into saying please, which also sounds like how you say cheese, "zzzzzzzz."

19. You will stand on your step stool, look in the mirror, and pretend to rub lotion on your face like Mommy.

You also like to put lotion on me and you.

20. You love to brush your teeth.  You have to repeatedly have more training toothpaste and you like to suck the water out of the brush.

21. You like to sit in your booster seat and eat dinner. You don't like to sit at your own table as much anymore.

22. You like to play under a blanket like a canopy/tent.

23. You LOVE when I smell your feet and say "Peeee Yewwww, Stinky Feet" and make a face, hold my nose, and move my hand back and forth across my face.  You haev me do it over and over again.

24. I was driving and heard you sniffing in the back seat over and over followed by a little cry each time. I looked back, and you had your baby's feet to your nose, and you were smelling her feet and making a noise like Mommy does to you. It was too cute.

25. Lately you have wanted to be rocked to sleep, and you are really into running up to me and giving me big hugs/snuggles.  It's the best!

Well, that list also got a little long, but a Mom can't help it I guess.

Time is going by so quickly.

I'm sure 2 will be here before I know it.

Love you Baby Girl. Happy 18 Months.

Love you, Mommy

Top Two Tuesday!! Top Two Songs!

Hey y'all, it's that time again for Top Two at Tay's.  You can see Taylor's and many other Mommas and Ladies picks HERE!! Head on over there and tell everyone your top two favorite song picks!

I LOVE (yes, I say LOVE a lot) music, I love all genres music, and throughout my life, I know that I can say that I have had many "favorite" songs.  Music, to me, defines a generation, a time period, and age, and a lifetime. It can define a moment, an experience, a feeling, a time in your life.  I have many of these moments, and everytime I hear a song that relates to a feeling, and emotion, a memory, a time in my life, I am transported back to that feeling, that moment, that place.  Music is amazing that way.  I'm sure that I could find many favorite songs, and I'm probably forgetting about some really great ones, but these are my two favorite songs now.

1. "Dream" by Priscilla Ahn. Obv, this is the opening song that you hear when you access my blog, so this probably is not a shocker to any of you. You probably get tired of hearing it. But, I never do (okay after awhile, I will usually mute the sound if it plays too long, but...). IT drives Hubs nuts, and he'll scream, "turn that off," while I'm blogging.  I first heard it while watching this movie, which I loved.  My fav thing about this movie is Jennifer Anniston's character. I LOVE that she is a quirky, eccentric florist. I LOVE all the hats she wears, and the gloves with the finger tips exposed. I also have tons of hats and a couple pairs of those gloves.  She loves beautiful things, beautiful words, antiques, and well, hats.  Reminds me of me a little.  I LOVE that she writes unique words behind paintings, that she saves sweet greetings attached to flowers, and that she pretends to be deaf/mute when she first meets him.  Basically, I also just LOVE Jennifer Anniston.

2. "In My Arms" by Plumb

This is also on my blog playlist. I get chills everytime I hear it. I stumbled across this while I was pregnant with Nik, and looking for Nursery music.  I used to listen in lullabyes when I was pregnant before I went to sleep so that Nik would get used to a "bedtime" while in the womb.  The song always made me cry..still does. It emulates everything I feel as a Mother and a provider. And, Nik was born with blue eyes, no curls though. It is on their album of Nursery Rymes.

You can find the lyrics and video on line. Happy listening. 

I can't access the links here at work.

Have a Great Tuesday. Can't wait to see all your picks!

Hey y'all.

Happy Monday everybody. I don't have any pics to share today, or maybe for a couple of weeks, that is. Let me explain, see Friday night, I was on the computer (and hubs was asleep). I had actually already laid down, but got back up, bc I was having trouble sleeping. I was on Facebook (which I don't actually even use that much) when something popped on my screen. It said that my computer had been "infected."  The screen shot to a menu page, and these scanning bars came across my screen as if the computer was scanning my documents. Percentages were hiking in numbers beside the red bars. It said that if I didn't back up my work immediately that my information would be corrupted and destroyed. Of course, these red bars are going across the screen, and I'm reading these words, and I'm watching Nik's entire first year and a half in photos go down the drain. Against my better judgement, I clicked on the security icon that popped up, saying that I should back up my work. I knew I shouldn't do it, I almost just turned off my whole computer and ran into the room to hurriedly wake Josh. But, I didn't. I got scared, frantic, and was trying to save him from having to wake-up, I took matters into my own (incapable) hands, and clicked on it, several times. Then a huge red box came on my screen saying that there were "trojans" infecting our computer, and I would loose all our data/documents if I didn't back it up-telling me our computer was "infected."

I stopepd clicking on the pop-up security boxes and per the pop up box instruction, I went to "programs" I went under "control panel" and then on to "security panel."  I don't recall if I clicked on anything there or not. I was looking for an anti-virus program somewhere on the computer, so I could run it and stop the "trojans" and the "infection."  I closed all the windows on my computer, and when I couldn't find a anti-virus under programs anywhere. I viewed the desktop and found one. Hubs is really into security on the computer and he is always installing and running security programs. I clicked on the anti-virus icon, and watched it scan all my documents.   I watched every photo of Nik from the first year and half of her life get scanned for viruses, and after several minutes. It stated that "nothing was detected," no viruses found.  I shut down the computer, feeling shaky, and rattled, and worried, but hopeful that everything was okay. All of Nik's photos were still there.

In the morning, I told hubs what had happened, and hubs told me that he would look into it. I asked hubs if he thought that we should take the hard drive to a tech person to look at, bc I was really worried about Nik's photos, and hubs said that "if he couldn't fix it, no one could." After looking at it, hubs said that I may never get any of the photos back. He said that he has never seen a virus this "impressive" and "intelligent" are the words hubs used. When it comes to thieves, believe me, we roll with the best of them. No second class hackers for us, ha.

You know I take a lot of photos.  Apparently I have upwards of 14,000 photos uploaded on the computer. Hubs says that he has saved 178 of them so far. He says that he has to move really slow, so he doesn't loose them. He worked on it for a very long time this weekend.  He apparently had to completely reverse the whole virus.  It seems like he must be exaggerating that I have that many photos, but I guess, it could be possible. I dont delete photos of the pumpkin, I just can't. It's hard to explain but DSLR's sometimes take imperfect photos, bc a setting is off.  On the flip side, with a DSLR, a good lens, and the proper setting, you can capture many great photos that you could not capture with another camera.  Most of the times the ones that don't come out perfect, are ones that she got excited and moved, or made a big smile.  I just can't bring myself to delete those. I keep having this hope, that one day, I will sit down and attempt to correct those imperfect photos through an editing program. I may not be able to, but I know that I have to try. 

And the answer to your next question, is "no," I don't have them backed up somehwere else. Ironically, early last week, I decided that I was going to purchase another hard drive to back up the pumpkin's photos, but I was waiting till I got paid last Friday to purchase it. It is something I have been thinking about, but have not gotten around to.  As, I attempt to decide if I am going to start shooting in Raw and using photoshop, I have looked into the fact that I am going to need a very large hard drive to store and edit the images, and want to be sure to back-up our photos in the case of a system crash. I do use a 3rd party source, Flkr to upload photos, but I didn't nearly have all the photos backed up there, just some.

The reason I am sharing this with you all is so that you can be aware and informed in case this happens to any of you. I obviously, am not computer savvy, and I knew better than to click on this "anti-virus" link/window site. I did, I really did. But, I got flustered and nervous, and I made a rash decision when faced with the possibility of losing all Nik's photos.  I feel like I miss a large part part of her life as it is, and now, I am faced with the possibility of losing the only way I knew how to attempt to capture and retain the life/time that I feel I miss. Photography is how I try and give that time back to her and and I. 

Please be wary of the sites that you go to. I'm pretty sure I probably encountered this breach while logged into Facebook, but I could be wrong. And, be very careful of the anti-viruses that you install on your computer. Hubs says that by clicking that "anti-virus" icon, it probably allowed the source to gain access to my computer, where they installed the icon to my desktop, and I basically gave them free access/entry to our computer and all our information/documents.  Who would think that a 3rd party could create a desktop icon on my computer?  We're not sure excatly how it happened, but either way, all of it was corrupt. And, people do it in an attempt to steal your personal information like credit card numbers, bank information, etc. I bet they're sorry the tried me, they just got 14,000 random baby photos on their harddrive now, ha.  I'm just praying that hubs can get the pumpkin's photos back, at least most of the ones I don't already have backed up.

Also, hubs revealed to me that he is my "surprise mystery gifter" of the Pevonia products. I think I suspected that all along. Guess, I have just about the greatest hubs ever. Still scolded him for spending the money though, ha.

Hope you all have a Great Week.  Love ya.

No Day at The Park.