Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Allergies?! Since When...

Since I moved to Memphis.

I was warned that allergies pop out of nowhere when you live here. Now I know.

I woke up this morning and wondered when the train hit me. It feels like I'm having an out of body experience...like my head is not connected to the rest of me. I hate allergies. I'm glad I've never had them before. I'll gladly get rid of them now. Hope it doesn't last too long.

I've heard Memphis allergies are mainly caused by this:
Chickweed (apparently it's actually an herb)

Whether or not this little "weed" is my problem, I don't really know. Or care. I just want my newly found allergies gone.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Playing Catch Up

Oh what to say...what to say. This year has flown by, I can hardly believe it's mid-April. Life is busy (not complaining) and I feel like once I grasp thinking in terms of "this week" I already have to start thinking in terms of "next week". Anyone know how to freeze time?

Work has been busy (as usual) and we have 2 fun events coming up that we're working on right now. They are trunk shows for some of our local artists and we've been busy designing the postcards and invitations etc. to get ready. Last Saturday I was in a video for the company that designed our website. They tell me I did great...we'll see. (Don't forget to ask for my autograph next time you see me...) I had to talk about how I use the site, how I create new products etc. etc. During filming I could feel my face getting hotter and hotter. Ha, I'm sure it looks great...

Last Wednesday Steph, Meg, Brent and I went to the opening night gala for the Decorator's Showhouse. It's for an English Manor style 10,000 square foot home in Memphis that was built in 1923. About 20 decorator's/designers in Memphis decorated parts of the home and the public is now viewing it until the end of the month. It's a fundraiser for the Brooks Museum League. Bella Vita did the kitchen/sitting area and butler's pantry. We've had great reviews! The gala was fun, we were able to tour the house, eat some good (and not so good) catered food (some of it was a little too "fancy" for my taste), and schmooze with the"Socialites of Memphis". They thought they were pretty cool. There was a massive rain/thunderstorm that night, so good thing they had huge tents set up! Meg, Steph and I ended up running down the huge long curving driveway from the backyard all the way to the street barefoot in our "cocktail' dresses to meet Brent at the car. The police officers at the end of drive offered to carry us over a huge knee-deep puddle blocking the last 10' or so of the driveway...but we opted to run across the lawn!

In other new...I'm as out of shape as I've ever been. I biked to work today and it was emotionally traumatizing! We'll see if the biking lasts- it's getting too hot (86 degrees today), even at 9 am. It's like they don't have Spring here...it's automatically Summer. Not cool! (no pun intended)

A mini highlight of the week was making perogies on Sunday afternoon. I did the usual potato/cheese filling. I was aiming to try a cinnamon/sugar/apple filling but never got to it. Next time! They were really good, but I think I filled some of them too full because the dough was stretched too thin and some came apart during cooking. I'll have to adjust my filling amount/dough round size next time. There are still a bunch frozen in the freezer waiting to be eaten!!

Ready to be folded and pinched



First tray ready for the freezer!

Sunday night we went to our friends Courtney and Jay's house for dinner. They are in our ward and we first started hanging out with them at the Wingert's for "game night" (we love game night). We ate excellent enchiladas and mud pie, watched Amazing Race and had great conversation. It was a fun night :) It will be nice when we get a kitchen table so we can actually have people over...they probably think we are anti-company! The only people we have over is the Missionaries because I figure they should just be glad for dinner and not care about sitting on the couch!

That's the last week or so in a nutshell. Tomorrow I have a day off. I'll be spending it choosing new health insurance and getting some groceries. Woo hoo! I do actually have a photo shoot for work tomorrow night which I'm looking forward to. B&S probably think I'm crazy, but I enjoy our photo shoots. I'm in the photos tomorrow so I'm painting my nails tonight...you can watch for my blog debut when I post about creating a Spring centerpiece.



Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Mourning The Loss

Today I finally registered our car in the state of Tennessee. It has taken at least the last month to get to this point. There have been people that did not believe me when I showed them what my title looked like (Heaven forbid not everything is EXACTLY the same and the US of A does it)... there have been people who have asked if Canada was overseas....and when I finally got the title (because they did not believe what I had was the title- refer to above) they wondered if it would be in Spanish, not to mention those people that told me I had to drive to the boarder to import the car. Hello Detroit!

Well...eventually I found people that could help me- or at least lead me to people that could. Thank you Mike at Sunrise Chevy, the very nice import specialist at the Memphis Port of Entry and the nice lady at the G'town DMV.

I took off the Alberta plate this morning and screwed on the Tennessee plate. It's sad. I never wanted to get to this point, but to my credit I have made it 5 years in the US with Alberta plates and have never been pulled over and questioned. Not bad. On my way to the DMV (again) this morning I was driving behind someone with an Ontario plate. May he have the same good luck I did.

Bye bye Alberta....

(photo credit: anon. person who posted this online)

 Hello Tennessee...

(photo credit: anon. person who posted this online)