Fall Sunflowers

I go through ebbs and flows with having indoor flowers, but I will throw down at the farmer's market Trader Joe's for the last bouquet of sunflowers. I don't know if it is because my dad used to grow them for me when I was a kid or it is because I successfully grew my own once from seeds, but I'm completely smitten with sunflowers. 

I'm probably partial to sunflowers because even though they spend all summer chasing the sun they are the unspoken official flower of fall. And I've made it abundantly clear that I love fall.

I do not, however, love 86 degree days and drowning humidity in October. Since Mother Nature wasn't cooperating outside I needed to bring a bit of fall inside. A few faux pumpkins (real ones are coming in next weekend!) and a fresh bouquet of sunflowers did the trick. 

Although even in this brutal heat wave there are a few signs of fall outside. Looks like I'm going to have to break out the gloves here soon and rack up some leaves. 

Anyone else a sunflower fan? I just don't know what it is about those flowers, but I love them. 

Weather Fail

Dress: Quincy (Made in USA!) // Jacket: Anne Klein // Wellies: Hunter // Necklace: Ann Taylor // Umbrella: Coach // Nail Polish: Essie "Mint Candy Apple" (Made in USA!) 

The hubs and I had an awesome date night planned for Tuesday night. It was going to involve a few brews, salt water, and the wind in our hair. I was even going to wear a colorful outfit!

But then another onslaught of rain came through town. My plans to de-black were put on hold. The only evidence of our planned date night was my mint nail polish (I know it says candy apple, but it reminds me of ice cream!). 

Oh, and somewhere along the day I picked up a screw in one of my car's tires. The hubs saved the day, which in hindsight is pretty romantic and date night appropriate :) 

Anyone else have a date night planned for last night and have mother nature foil your plans?  I can't complain too much, we got BBQ from our favorite little place and watched the O's beat the Tigers. Our date night plans have been put on hold until the weather cooperates on a Tuesday evening! 

Well Played Mother Nature

Monday, March 25th the Baltimore/DC region gets its most significant snowfall of year.  Okay, maybe not, but the second most significant snowfall of the year! 

For a quick second the trash in the roadside marsh doesn't look so terrible. Okay, second is over. 

If I could live in a world that looked like this every second of every day I'd be blissfully happy. 

Office fish is not impressed with the snow. 

Hunters & Polka Dots! Best winter combination ever!!!

Monday morning I slept through my alarm, as usual, but then the hubs woke me up.

"Heids, it's snowing outside."

Annnnnd I'm up!  There was a mention of snow in the forecast, but after that whole snowquestration debacle last month I had given up on any dreams of snow until December. 2-3 inches of the fluffy stuff in March?!?!

Best.Monday.Ever. 

All of the photos above were taken with my trust iPhone5 on my way to work. I was like a kid in the candy store and I didn't want to go inside to work any sooner than I had to, but eventually being an adult prevailed. 

What are your thoughts: snow in spring. Yay or nay? 

Daffodils

I'm going to have to give up something during my weekly grocery run because it seems I'm going to buy flowers every other week. I used to think keeping fresh flowers in the house was frivolous, but after the past few weeks of gorgeousness I don't think I can go back to a flower-free house.

I think fresh flowers are able to light up a room even when the weather is fickle or dark.  You might not be able to tell, but it was raining when I took these pictures! The double windows in our living room bring in so much light it's insane some times. I love that just the simple addition of flowers can make the house constantly feel like it's spring outside even through the spring weather changes faster than Taylor Swift's love life. 

Even better - these daffodils were $3.98.   That's less than a decent beverage at Starbucks and these babies didn't add on any calories and have lasted for ten days already.  Your move Starbucks,  your move.

Are you a fresh flower person?  If so, what are your favorites to keep in the house? 

Can we please not repeat last week?

In one week our house has survived a pig roast for 50+ people, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake, and Hurricane Irene. It's been a rough week and thankfully we pulled through just fine.


The hubs and did everything we could do to prepare for the oncoming storm, short of boarding up the house and buying a generator, on Friday night. He climbed the roof and broke out the 20ft ladder to cut down as many tree limbs near our house as he could. We were both terrified that the dead tree right behind our house would come crashing down. So scared in fact that we bunkered down in our living room on Saturday night for a restless night of sleep. We stayed up until 1am just listening to the wind howling outside and hoping that a tree didn't come down on our house. I was worried about our cars too, but in the grand scheme of things I would have gladly taken a destroyed car over a destroyed house.


We tried to be jovial and joke that we had enough booze and water stashed in our house to survive a few days without power, but really we were both on edge. A large tree limb came crashing down at 11:30pm Saturday night and in my paranoid state I threw on my rain boots and slicker to go outside and dragged the limb to the back of the yard. I was certain the wind would pick up the limb and throw it through either our patio door or bay window. If I would have had some rope or a fisherman's hook I would have been a great character on a horror movie set.

My brother was supposed to come over and ride out the storm with us, but unfortunately the high winds came sooner than expected and it wasn't a good idea for him to drive over in 50+ mile hour wind gusts. That was just another thing I worried about, my poor brother stranded all alone during a hurricane.

Thankfully, we're all okay. We were even in the very small minority of people who didn't lose power on Saturday. Sunday afternoon we took a walk through the neighborhood to get the dogs out of the house and see the extent of the damage. I couldn't bear to take pictures because how do you stop and take a picture of your neighbor's house with a tree on top of it? I couldn't do it. One of the great things that attracted the hubs and I to our neighborhood was all the trees. However, this week it looks like a pack of monsters ran through the neighborhood and ripped down every tree and tree limb they could get their hands on.



Jewels needs a vacation because she didn't sleep a wink over the weekend. She was really on edge and had so much to do with all the growling every time our house was pelted with another acorn or tree limb. Both dogs had to be coaxed out of the house anytime we made them go to the bathroom during the storm. We tried to pick times when the rain was less of a monsoon, but it rained for almost 24 straight hours!

I hope you and yours made it through the storm. Irene caused a lot of damage, especially in the Northeast, and people died during the storm. Of course that made me want to cuss out the idiots shown on the weather channel even more.

What the hell was that?

I'm sure you know by now that an earthquake rattled the East Coast yesterday afternoon. Thankfully, it appears that although the 5.8 magnitude quake was strong enough to do some damage it didn't do nearly the damage it could have caused elsewhere.

I, however, failed miserably at all forms of disaster preparedness. The rattling came in two waves with the second being the more powerful wave. At first one of my co-workers and I looked at each other and thought, "what the hell is that?" Then, when the second wave hit most of my co-workers ran for a doorframe and looked somewhat prepared. Like an idiot, I ran to the window to see what the hell was going on. Finally when I looked outside and didn't see the end of the world coming at me, rather that the trees and light posts were shaking too, I figured out what the heck was going on.

I'm probably to blame for the cup of water that was spilled all over my desk. I still maintain that the quake was the sole responsible party for the flipped picture frames.

Then the building was evacuated, no one could get a darn cell call out, text messages were getting dropped, yet I could post on Facebook with zero problems. Note to self: if the end of the world comes, get the word out quickly via Facebook. I really should buy the hubs a smart phone already so he can see my last post. I couldn't get ahold of him for 30 minutes and that bugged me.

While marooned outside everyone seemed in good spirits as news was traveling in that there wasn't extensive damage. Relief overcame pockets of individuals as one heard from so-and-so that so-and-so was fine. But then, we all saw the look of panic on one of our co-workers faces.

She couldn't reach her husband. She couldn't reach her daughter's school. She couldn't reach anyone.

Unfortunately, she'd been in that very same spot before except the last time the world went crazy her daughter was at a daycare facility in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 where she had been dropped off just an hour before by her dad, who worked there. Seeing that look of panic on my co-worker's face really brought everything back together. That's when I felt really bad for everyone in downtown DC, who probably thought something a lot worse was happening. Many people are already on edge because the tenth anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and the ground shaking made people start to think the worst was happening.

Fortunately, cell service came back in. Everyone was fine. The mood quickly lightened and later in the day my formerly-freaked-out co-worker sent this along to cheer everyone up:





I'm happy to report that when I finally got home (note to self: mass transit sucks during any type of disturbance) all we had were a few upturned picture frames and items. The dogs didn't even soil anywhere and Jewels didn't look like she spent all afternoon growling at the ground.

It's snowing!

It's pretty bad when I was scheduled to go to conference in Atlanta and it ended up being canceled because HOTlanta had more snow than Baltimore.




But the white stuff is finally coming down in Baltimore. I hope it lasts until the weekend because this whole taking pictures at night thing isn't working for me! Man I'm envious of those who have a profession that allows them to play during the daylight hours.

(Dear snow, if you come and ruin my upcoming trips to either Los Angeles or Orlando, FL I will be very upset with you. Let's not have a repeat of last year's trip to Denver!)

Lights Out!

We had yet another Thunderstorm and another power outage. Thankfully, I have tons of candles to survive.




Reading by candlelight is so much fun!

Is it spring yet?

This weekend was one of those weekends where the weather wanted you to run to a warmer and less wet climate. Our backyard looked more like a swimming pool instead of a grassy lawn.

Sigh... the only signs of life are the flowers on my side table.



I did manage to sneak in a six mile run during one of the few "dry" periods of the weekend.

Weather forecast = fail

Have you ever noticed that the weather forecast crew can be so off based so frequently, or so it seems, and yet, still be gainfully employed? Then again, if you were a major league batter and you averaged a hit 3 out of 10 trips to the plate over the course of your career, well, you'd have Hall of Fame numbers. Now, I don't know about you, but if I only succeeded at my job as often as professional baseball players and weather reporters, it seems I'd probably be out of my job. So much for picking the right career path!

It just strikes me as odd because it seems so many news channels proclaim that their station provides, "the accurate forecast." I wonder if a weather person's family members even bother asking for a weather forecast at the dinning room table?

There were rumblings at the beginning of last week for a chance of snow this past weekend. Once that rumor hit the water cooler it seemed everyone started playing a game of, "I heard we were going to get *** inches of snow." Seriously, it's like a giant fish story, someone always hears of a larger snow forecast.

By mid-week the rumblings were telling a different story and saying that the storm was going to stay to the south and the greater Baltimore area was only going to receive a dusting of snow.

Enter Saturday, 11am- it starts snowing.

Enter Saturday, 4pm- the hubs takes the dogs outside and cleans the 4-6 inches of snow off of our sidewalks and cars.

Sure, because 4-6 inches of snow might be considered a "dusting" in some areas, but we don't live in one of those areas. I'm only slightly bitter because I've been feeling under the weather (pun not intended) all weekend and I didn't even want to go outside and spend a second in the snow. The hubs was concerned.

At least Jax had a good time:




Jewels, not so much:

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!!!

Everywhere you go!!!

We got a bit of snow over the weekend and that was just the thing to jump start the Christmas feeling in our house.

The arrival of snow means one thing- playing outside with Jax!!!

Stuck in a blackout: by myself

Last night a line of serious storms came in and hammered the region. The power flickered once or twice and then went out for good right before 6pm. I was somewhat prepared: candles, flashlights, blanket, water jug, etc. After I called the utility company to report the outage I looked around and realized, "mmmm, the hubs is at the game and I'm here by myself." My first thought was what I should eat for dinner.

So then it came to me- the things you should do if you're caught in a blackout by yourself.

First, get your lighting situation under control. Thank goodness I happen to have a plethora of candles and two working flashlights (bonus tip, buy batteries the next time you go grocery shopping). I set up candles all over my living room and kept one flashlight handy just in case I had to leave my living room. I nice lantern would have been helpful, but not essential.

Two, eat whatever ice cream is in your freezer. Logically speaking, if the power is off for long enough, the ice cream will just go to waste. You're doing yourself a favor by enjoying it before it possibly spoils. With that in mind, I treated myself to a feast of brownie batter and cookies and cream ice cream for dinner. It was like I was a third-grader all over again. After you've had your fill of ice cream make sure you stay out of your fridge and freezer. You don't want to waste whatever cold air is stored up in there.

Then, if it happens to be summer time I recommend opening as many windows as you can. Central air is fantastic, but it doesn't exactly work when there's no juice running through the wires. Plus, you get an added bonus of listening to the storm and that's somewhat soothing considering you don't have any music available (unless of course you have a boom box).

Normally, I would play board games or cards during a blackout (at least that's what I did when I was a kid), but when you're by yourself that's kind of boring. To add injury to insult, the only deck of cards I could find was missing the Ace of hearts and the King of clubs. That's just not going to work for a game of solitaire.

Find some type of entertainment. Maybe you want to sit out on your front porch and watch the lighting. I tried that for five minutes, but Jewels started convulsing and I didn't want to get peed on, so I went back inside. I picked up a book, but couldn't get comfortable because my two dogs were freaking out due to the previously mentioned storm. Finally, I turned on my laptop and popped in a movie. I should have gone with a chick flick, since I was by myself, but The Dark Knight was calling me. 153 minutes of Christian Bale- sign me up! Unfortunately, my laptop battery only lasted for the first two hours of the movie, so after the movie I went back to my book.

If the weather is nice out, then get outside. It was really weird, the rain stopped and around 8:30pm it was brighter outside than it was inside my house. So I took Jax on a little walk around the neighborhood. Of course it was during our walk that I noticed that it was just my street that didn't have power (that sucked!!!). I had a strong temptation to hop in my car and drive over to the mall, but I resisted the temptation and stayed home. The funny thing was that almost my entire street was outside. Kids were playing in the street, adults were chatting on porches and I met the foreign college kids that moved in down the street.

Call someone. Thankfully, my cell phone was fully charged so I went ahead and called my best friend. I was home alone and there wasn't anything to distract me. Although, we were talking for so long that I may or may not have signed myself up for a girl's trip next year in Hawaii. I may have to figure that one out.

Of course I was making serious headway into my book at 9:30pm when the lights came back on. Unfortunately, the power was just teasing me and went off again and didn't come back on until after 10pm. Thank goodness it did come back on because I didn't want to think about the possibility of not being able to shower. That's gross!!!

Funny enough, the lights came on just before the hubs returned home. So he missed out on all the fun things to do during a power outage. I don't think he would have survived. Take away his video games and tv and that guy is going to crack.

It is way too hot for April

Seriously, 90 degrees in April? This has got to stop. I about melted during yesterday morning's football game. Thank goodness the game was at 10am. I can't even imagine if I had to run around during peak heat hours.

This little weather forecast just shows that Jax and Jewels are not going on a walk today.

Dogs with practically non-existent noses aren't fan of extreme weather conditions. AKA spoiled rotten puppies refuse to walk when it's this hot outside and they prefer to sun themselves indoors, while enjoying the benefits of central air. You think I'm kidding? The hubs had to carry Jewels home on her walk on Saturday because she just laid down in the grass and refused to move.

The hubs is handling the heat wave in stride. There's a snowball stand around the corner from our house and the hubs was counting down the days until that baby opened for the season.
He's totally thinking, "she better not ask to share, she must have figured out that I don't share food." For the record- I prefer ice cream to snowballs, which means if the hubs eats all of the ice cream bars, it's on like Donkey Kong!!!

But back to the point, it shouldn't be this warm in April, right?

Here's something sunny

It's a mess outside. The day started off beautifully, lots of sunshine, cool temperatures, and birds chirping. A picture perfect spring morning. Then, the rain started and now it's dark, gloomy, muddy, and wet.



At least I don't have to remember to water the Daffodils tonight.

March came in like a lion!

I guess that silly old groundhog knew what he was saying. The hubs and I, as with most of the east coast, can tell you that March began with a pretty impressive snowstorm. Yes, I'm insanely jealous of any areas that received eight plus inches of snow, but I'll take the 4-6 inches the Baltimore area received.

Thankfully, because it is indeed March and the days are just a tinny bit longer, the hubs and I were able to give Jax and Jewels a run for their money after work. Here is a valuable piece of advice to any of you who may ever visit: never challenge the hubs to a snow ball fight. You will lose, especially if Jax is on his team.


Hmmmm, I think I might skip running today's run.


Flying puppy.






I'm pretty sure this is when I said, "enough," because Jax kept knocking me over and I was tired of him landing on me.

My snow buddies. *

That's one wet dog sweater!

*Jewels was not neglected during this outing. She lasted a few minutes outside and then was promptly taken inside where she could hang out in her warm and toasty kennel. Trust us, she was much happier inside.

Winter Wonderland???

Like much of the country, the greater Baltimore region is not having the best of weather today. Yesterday was a nice snowy day and today there's a sheet of ice coming down. Not exactly the best mix of weather.

The ice was just thick enough that Jewels could saunter around and not break the ice. Jax, on the other hand, either walks too heavy or he's just that chubby that he broke through the ice and sunk into the snow. It really didn't bother him at all.

This morning was somewhat odd. The hubs and I went outside to clear off our cars and it seemed our entire street was doing the same thing. Our neighborhood isn't exactly Beaver Cleaver, so it was weird that everyone was outside at the same time. The lady across the street from me had her big Chesapeake Bay Retriever out with her and he came over to say hello. I have a giant sized paw print on my pant leg that can vouch for his enormous size. Jax and Jewels gave me a guilt trip when I came back inside. Yeah, I cheated on them.

My morning was made complete by witnessing the sheer idiocy exhibited by my other neighbors across the street. I call these two guys, "the Abercrombie & Fitch model wannabes." Model wannabe A comes running out of his house in shorts and flip flips. He runs across the street and falls square on his butt. It pained me not to laugh out loud. Then, after he picked himself up, he hopped in his Jeep and tried driving away. I think he figured out that he couldn't see out his windows, so he jumped out and used a CD case to scrap off his windows. The CD case lasted 45 seconds before it snapped into a hundred pieces. Model A muttered a few dozen curse words and then ran back across the street into his house (yes, he left his car running the entire time). Model A returned with Model B's car keys and took the ice scrapper out of Model B's Xterra. Model A finished cleaning off his car and then again tried to drive away. He spun his tires for a minute before Model B emerged from the house and helped push the Jeep away from the curb. I was really afraid that Model A was going to slam his Jeep into someone else's car.

Now, Model B is wearing shorts, a snow hat and sneakers. Seriously, what are these two guys doing that they are always in shorts? Anyway, Model B opens his Xterra and looks for his ice scrapper. He starts screaming at his car when he realizes Model A never returned his scrapper. Hilarious!!! I have to give Model B a bit of credit because he went inside and returned with another scrapper. I'm not sure why he didn't give that one to Model A, but that's another point. Model B asked me why I was shoveling off my neighbor's sidewalk. My response, "She's 79, on oxygen, and has two blood clots. I figure I can spend the five minutes and help her out." He mumbled that my reasoning made sense. Hahaha, victory is mine! Model B then drove his Xterra away without spinning his wheels at all. Maybe Model B is the brains of the operation.

What would I do without these two guys. They've provided quite the entertainment over the past year and a half. When they lit their grill on fire still takes the cake, but watching Model A try to run on an icy street in flip flops was still hilarious.

Tropical Storm Hanna

Well it looks like Tropical Storm Hanna has huffed and puffed and blown herself out of the Baltimore Metro area. I sincerely hope that everyone in Hanna's path is safe and sound.

I think we got off pretty easy. Yes, it rained all day, but the rain was nice and steady for the most part. My yard didn't flood and the water level in the street didn't come near the level of the freak thunderstorm we had a few weeks ago. We also lucked out and didn't have any major power interruptions, just a few brown outs here and there.

I did everything I could think of yesterday to prepare for the storm. I refilled our Brita, filled up all our plastic bottles with water, brought out all of our candles, checked flashlights, brought out the new batteries, dusted off the board games, baked muffins (hey, if the power goes out I want something tasty to snack on), cleaned the entire house, wrote down all the emergency numbers, charged the cell phones and checked our gutters for any blockages. I avoided the grocery store because I figured it would be a mad house. Yeah, I used to be in the Scouts... gotta be prepared.

All in all, the only thing Hanna really did was mess up our weekend plans. I was scheduled to meet my aunt and uncle for a fireworks show tonight, but Miss Hanna postponed the show. It's not the end of the world and the show has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Of course Murphy's Law comes into play and as soon as I found out the show was rescheduled to tomorrow, someone called with extra Ravens' tickets for tomorrow's game. Go figure!!!!

Holy pouring buckets Batman!

Yesterday, one of those freak summer thunderstorms fell on my little area of Baltimore. Seriously, areas 15 minutes away from me didn't receive a single drop of rain. The storm lasted for over an hour and the rain just kept coming down. There were even a few pieces of hail tossed in just for fun.

The main road by our house was actually shut down due to flooding. All of the traffic was being rerouted on my street. Basically, it was one big nasty mess outside. My backyard flooded, part of my sunroom flooded and water was seeping into my kitchen. Not pretty at all! Thankfully, nothing is damaged. The carpet in the sunroom will dry out, as will the backyard. This weekend I'll probably re-caulk part of our kitchen wall.

I'm incredibly impressed that all of my plants survived. All of my sunflowers held up, which is surprising because during the last storm two of them bent over. I lost quite a few individual tomatoes, but the plants themselves look okay. This morning while I was walking Jewels I realized how lucky we were. I saw plenty of downed limbs and trees in other yards and on the street. I'm really thankful that nothing came down on our house or in our backyard.