overflow {mind dump}

As I got into bed last night my thoughts went something like...
'if life was a ship, I'd be ready to jump overboard just about now'. ☺

Nothing major, just some self-imposed high expectations/frustrations, which I know you all know about. Life's little gnats biting at us, forcing us out of our comfortable routines and into the world of hurdle jumping. Everything breaks down at the same time, everybody shows up at the same time, everything has to be done and planned at the same time, nobody will respond, too much to organize, not reading with your child every night mom guilt, ...blah blah blah, you get it.

Good riddance little pests, there's far worse things that could go wrong in this world and I won't let you pull me overboard!

Try as I might to send my anxiety off into the universe last evening before catching some zzz's, I failed miserably and have the eye baggage to prove it today.

Today I vow to only see the good and stop focusing on the little annoyances currently surrounding me. What better place than pinterest to seek out the beauty in the world from my 16" computer monitor?!

By simply typing in the world 'overflow', I am whisked away to a far lovelier place than the images of chaos and disorder cluttering my mind. Who knew that overflow could look so pretty?

Source: betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com via Between Naps on Pinterest

Source: dressdesigndecor.blogspot.com via Barbara on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Gabrielle on Pinterest

Source: dailycrushes.blogspot.com via Shara on Pinterest

Source: littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com via Jacqueline on Pinterest

Source: ohthelovelythings.blogspot.com via Nicolle on Pinterest

Source: paloma81.blogspot.com via Nicole on Pinterest

Source: Uploaded by user via Caitlin on Pinterest

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one
thought over another."
-William James

I choose to no longer be weighted down by irritability and stress~ I am letting go right here and now and moving forward with a clear mind. I dumped my camera pics on you last week, this week it's time to dump the self defeating thoughts and frustrations.

There~ it's done. I feel a bit lighter already. ☺

Hugs~
Tricia

dreams interrupted

Dreams of a small, budget friendly kitchen re-do {VERY similar to this},

Source: maisonboheme.blogspot.com via Tricia on Pinterest

...and an exciting Spring Break getaway.
Along with warmer weather, spring fashion, girls softball games etc...

Source: google.com via Bethany on Pinterest

...came to a screeching halt when I opened my car door to take my kiddo to school this morning.

What the? Wait a minute. Was my husband out here rummaging around in my car last night? Everything had been rifled through. What about his car? Same thing, car doors left slightly ajar, glove compartments wide open with all of the contents spilled out over the car seats. Our garage door was wide open and a few things were noticeably missing. My poor daughter was so scared to even ride in my car to school today.

EEK~ both of our cars were rummaged through AND our garage as well. Nothing was damaged and nothing of value was taken {sunglasses, ipod, bike missing in garage later found in neighbors yard}. It's such a scary feeling to know that a stranger sat in your car which was sitting in the driveway right underneath your bedroom window, and went through all of your stuff. They even moved the seat back a bit to get comfy! We are wise enough to not leave anything of value in our cars or in our garage but it's still unnerving. While filing a report with our local police this morning they mentioned that crime has spiked quite a bit in/around the Houston area and in our neighborhood in particular. Come to find out a few other cars/garages on our block were targeted last night as well.

By 2pm today we had motion lights installed in our porte cochere and a new lock put on the garage door. The strangest thing of all was that I woke up early this morning after having a horrible nightmare of a home robbery. In my dream I was protecting my daughter and tried to scream for help but nothing would come out, over and over. It felt so horrible and I was shaken for awhile after waking up. Only to find out we really were violated.

The police are out in full force, driving the streets so hopefully this was a one-time event and again, I know we are SO lucky. It's funny because we live in one of the smallest houses on the block so we always figured we're not that attractive to robbers.

Well here's to a save and drama free weekend everyone and getting back to living in our worlds of 'pinterest' dreams!! ☺
xo~
T

camera dump

I tried to catch the sunshine as it finally arrived on Sunday morning, after a rain-filled and gloomy Saturday. As seen through my lens, coming in from my {dirty} windows, to you~

A jar of flowers from my garden to take to my mom on Sunday morning:

The current colors in my kitchen windowsill: New mason jar salt and pepper shakers on my stove:
New utensil holder on the kitchen counter:
New/old metal fragment from Belgium {via Urban Market}:

The most delicious whole wheat and flax seed pancakes:


New/old clay pots on wine fridge {via Urban Market} :
Self portrait done in charcoal and watercolors by my baby girl:

Another switcheroo in the sun room {removed white shelf unit and moved server here for TV} and one of three of my sunburst mirrors {Christmas gift from mom}:
Hope you're having a great week out there!

Big hugs~
T

Vancouver, BC

Good morning and happy Monday all! Unlike many of you, not only do I have to work today our schools are all in session, despite the holiday. Oh well, no sense in dwelling, I'll skip right to my somewhat overdue post on the initial leg of our long weekend in the Pacific Northwest. Be sure to catch up and read about the Seattle leg here.

We started the long weekend in Vancouver, BC. If you'll recall from this post, I met my sweet hubby up in the PNW area about 12 years ago and hadn't been back up there since. I was so excited for this trip but I will tell you now that we never made it into downtown Vancouver. That's where we spent most of our time together back then, but we decided to stay in the burbs and spend time with close friends and family instead of dealing with the city traffic and hustle and bustle.

We arrived late at night on Friday so we didn't get to see any scenery at all during the long drive in from Seattle. First thing Saturday morning I opened the blinds (we stayed at good friend Jeff''s home in New Westminster area) and this was the view.

Ah, white capped mountains in the distance and signs of a bright blue sky overhead.

Brr was it chilly in the morning! The ground was covered in a thin layer of ice so walking a few blocks into the main part of town for breakfast was a bit tricky. This is Jeff~ hi Jeff! ☺ He's tall, but hubby is a bit height challenged which makes Jeff look even taller. My husband and I are the same height and this bothered me for years, but I'm much more secure about it now and even wear my 4 inch heels out at night, whereas I used to only wear flats.

OK, I digress...sorry. Daddy and little one walking to and from breakfast on Saturday morning. We ate at the The Waffle House which is a local favorite and we all loved it.
The main drag of New Westminster, BC above and a cool tree spotted on our stroll below.
After breakfast we hopped in the car and drove to North Vancouver to visit hubby's family who live in a fabulous area just at the base of Grouse Mountain. We stopped for flowers along the way.

After our visit with his family we drove up to Cypress Mountain overlook to get a view of the city. It was gorgeous with low lying clouds right over the water and pinkish skies.
You can just make out the mountains in the distance.

A closer shot ~ anyone know what mountain this is?

The Vancouver skyline.




From there we caught up with Jeff and his sweet (and gorgeous!!) girlfriend and her adorable kiddo, along with some other friends for lunch at Szechuan Chongqing (hubby's favorite in the entire city). We took the kids to a park/playground after lunch and they really hit it off.
A gelato stop was in order before the long drive out to Steveston for dinner.
Jeff and the girls walking towards gelato shop.
We squeezed so much into this day as we also hit a local mall (H&M stop) and visited with Jeff's parents during the afternoon.

A quick stop at Tim Horton's and Superstore on Sunday morning before the drive back into Seattle. Lucky for me there's a Milestone's right at the border so I had to pick up my favorite cheeseburger for the road/45 minute wait at the border.

We really lucked out with the weather up there that weekend, it was phenomenal!

Happy new week everyone. ☺

Cheers~
T

the big picture

I love playing around with my camera and can't wait to finally take a photography class at a local studio next week. The lighting in my family room is much more natural than my dining room, where everything looks yellow due to the overhead light. Is there a certain light bulb I should be using in my dining room fixture to give off more white light versus yellow?

I haven't spent enough time with my camera (Nikon D7000) yet to take it out of auto mode, but I have managed to at least turn off the auto flash, ha! Baby steps...

It helps me to load my photos in blogger and blow them up to see what part of the subject ended up 'in focus' versus not. I thought I had managed to get the flowers in focus here, but was aiming too low and got the leaves and vase.

The cupcake made it into focus here. I've eaten about 3 of these in the past 2 days by the way, thank you very much, ugh! Who buys 6 cupcakes for one 7 year old child? My husband. And who ends up eating them all because she can't stand to see them go to waste? ME!! Crave cupcakes are like crack I tell you. Linsey tipped me off to the gluten free variety and they are absolutely irresistible. We've compared them to the other big cupcake places around town and Crave continues to win, hands down. OK, back to my struggling photography skills. ☺

The red tulips for our little Valentine and Shakespeare's Love Sonnets for daddy. The big red box of chocolates were for me (along with the fabulous pink hydrangea) and yes, I've managed to down quite a few of those this week as well. Major chocolate hangover!

See how much more yellow the photos are in this room? Same time of day but the sun has shifted enough that I need the overhead light, which casts the yellow light.
Jenny recently asked me how I get my photos so large on blogger. I do it the manual way by deleting the following section in the 'edit html' version of the post,

WIDTH: 265px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px;

and changing the photo size from s400 to s800
She was able to adjust by right clicking on her photos and selecting extra large, but I believe she has the newest version of blogger. I don't seem to have that option but please let me know if I'm missing something.
This is the size of a photo loaded as 'large' in blogger without alteration:
Much better to adjust into the larger format.

Improving my photography skills is one of my goals this year and I'm excited to finally get into a studio with a professional photographer and get to work. I'll be sure to share what I learn after class next week.

I hope you've had a ♥ filled week!

xo~
Tricia