I Should Be Studied...

Hope you all had a fabulous Valentine's Day. I had a great one. First this weekend, spending some time with my Valentine, David and then yesterday spending some time with my other "valentine" my cousin Stacey. If you want the scoop on why I should be studied, check out her post about it on her blog. Let's just say, I wanted to make her day special. And coming from me it was "special" bless my heart. Ha! I even made Stacey a special card. You can check it out here. And for reference, she is my cousin but I like to joke around with her about the fact that we live together, so I call her my domestic partner. :-)

Happy Wednesday!

Happy {heart} Day!

Wishing you lots of love today.

~From Ashley, Oscar, Brutus, and JR


I'm also feeling the love today. The boyfriend did good.

He totally surprised me with these today because he had already given me a dozen this past weekend. Needless to say, he got me good :-) I'm one lucky lady!

February Birchbox

Guess it's a nice way to start your week and your Monday morning with a little products package waiting on you from Birchbox. Let's see what all I got this month.

• dermalogica - Daily Microfoliant This product looks cool. It is an exfoliating powder that you add water to create a paste that will buff away dead skin cells.  
• EYE ROCK - Designer Liner This really caught my attention. I can't wait to get home to try it. Just because it looks super fun to try

From what I can tell, you peel off the liner and stick it to your eye. Don't know how it will work, but for the pure novelty factor, I like it ;-)

• Jouer - Luminizing Moisture Tint Apparently this is an "award winning" tinted moisturizer
• Juice Beauty - Blemish Clearing Serum I'm all about some blemish clearing products

Then for fun, they threw in a heart shaped nail file and a digital download for Green River Ordinance, some indie rock band "poised to hit the spotlight" so they claim.

That's whats in this month's box. Ready to get home to give them a spin!

A Sneak Peak

Because I know that David doesn't read my blog, I can share with you a little sneak peak at one of his presents for Valentine's Day. I wanted to get him something that he could keep for a very long time. So I thought about it and decided to find something for either his house (which needs a woman's touch) or his office (which also needs a woman's touch). I decided to get him a picture/painting of this place:

Photo via

This is the Citadel Military College in Charleston, SC where David (and his father) went to college. You can get a glimpse of the famous checkerboard floors.

Photo via

David spent many hours marching on this floor in the India Company in this lovely uniform (hehehe)

He looked really cute in his little outfit. So in honor of his time spent at the Citadel, I found a local South Carolina artist who has a lovely pen and watercolor of Bond Hall.

Bond Hall @ the Citadel
Photo via

This is what I purchased and luckily it came today just in time for David's arrival this evening.

Pretty close to the real deal, right? The print came pre-matted and the artist signed the piece again before he sent it off to me. But I wasn't really digging the white matting. So I found a black mat with a navy accent. I thought that would go nicely with the light blue, since the Citadel colors are blue and navy (imagine University of North Carolina colors).

I popped it in a frame that I found at Hobby Lobby. Which after I got it, I realized that it did have any hanging hardware on the back...which really ticked me off. So I will have to go and grab some to attach to the back so he can hang it. Grr...

The frame is a dark wood with just a hint of black at the edges. It shows up more black than it really is in these poor quality iPhone photos.

A little about the artist. His name is Lon Calhoun and his website is www.moegans.com. I think he could do some wonderful gifts for just about anyone on your list. And his prices seem to be very reasonable. Take a look at some of his work. (these pictures are from his website)

 I would love to have a painting done of Oscar, Brutus, and Jr. I think that would be perfect!

 A lovely present for your parents or in-laws - a watercolor of their house.

You can send Lon a photo of anything and he will make a drawing/painting out of it. It's absolutely perfect. And the funny thing about that cowboy graphite drawing is that it looks exactly like my brother Brad!

Ok, so hopefully you are feeling the love this weekend, now that I have shared with you part of my gift to Mr. David. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Welcome to My World

Riding into work today, I realized that I may have a problem. I mentioned in this post about my hatred with my ear lobes. That might explain why I have this situation going on in my car.

This is a little compartment in the center console. Every day I attempt to wear earrings other than studs, this is generally where they end up. I leave to go to lunch or run an errand and take off my earrings and stick them here. Right now I have at least 5 pairs in there. There could possible be more hidden that you can't see (And I don't leave without my Dunkin Donuts card. I can hit it up for some coffee in Tallahassee or more importantly in Thomasville, since we are big time now with a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins now). I really think its time to gather up my little earrings and take them inside and place them in my jewelry drawer to never be worn again. Turns out, my car isn't the only random place I stash my discarded jewelry.

My desk drawer also gets some love in this regard. And actually, I think this necklace is actually broken, so I guess I need to throw it away. (hoarder alert!) And speaking of stashes, I always have something hidden away in my purse. Today this is what you would find in my hiding spot.

I've got some SweetTarts, a Twix bar and a Nutrigrain bar chilling in there in case I have a candy/breakfast emergency. Maybe I should go complete old maid and start keeping butterscotch and peppermints in there as well. You never know when you need some candy in church to unwrap very loudly ;-)

And I want to apologize. This is some riveting stuff today, right? I really need to get my act together blog-wise. This is ridiculous. Ha!

So...are you gonna take my picture, or what?

My little nephew Barrett is a trip. I love this little kid to the moon and back. I'm always a happy girl when I get to see my little buddy. He really cracked me up this past trip home. I went over to my sister-in-law's sister's house (does that make sense? lol) on Friday night and Barrett and his little cousin, Rendi were in full form. Nicole had bought Rendi a new bathing suit, which she promptly wanted to try on, which is why she is wearing one in February. The kids were happy that Sissy was in town, so all they wanted to do was play with me and for me to take their picture, or fix my hair. Barrett cracked me up with the picture taking. He got up in front of me just standing so serious and so funny waiting on me to take his picture. Here is a little video of how this commenced. And you will notice that Rendi is a bit less camera shy!

And after that, this is the picture that he wanted me to take.

So serious. And with his hands on his hips, he totally reminds me of my paternal grandmother, Bernice. He has a lot of mannerisms just like my daddy, which is amusing to see.

On Saturday night, we went over to celebrate my friend, John David's birthday. We mainly hung outside while the men cooked then we headed inside to go eat. I guess Barrett decided to make himself at home because he promptly stripped out of his shirt. Here he is with the birthday boy.

It was good to spend time with Mr. Barrett as well as JD and Stacy and to celebrate JD's birthday. I miss being home and seeing all my friends and family on a regular basis. But it also makes those times that I do get to spend that much more special.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Memory Lane

This post might not interest anyone but me. Because I am taking a little stroll down memory lane. Some memories that I had really forgotten about. So it was fun for me to remember a much simpler time of being a kid and enjoying life. This past weekend I journeyed to my hometown to go visit my parents. This is always a welcomed sight when I drive into town.

Blountstown, Florida

This was taken as I was just getting into town on Hwy 20. Not much to look at, but I couldn't get too carried away taking pictures while driving. (oops...) So I went on through town and headed out to my parents. As I turned on the road my parents live on, I noticed a strange piece of equipment out in my father's field. Turns out Big Mike has got a new big toy.

My lovely father has gotten the farming bug after his cotton crop last year. So he has decided to get rid of his cows and clear the cow pasture to make more room for crops. That's my father, he always has to have something to do and piddle with. My mother, however, isn't as enthusiastic about his newest endeavor. I got to go watch her throw a Cathy-fit on my father. I was quite amused by the whole thing.

My mother doesn't want her house to be able to be seen from the road and she thought daddy was taking down too many trees. So in typical fashion she marched up to where daddy was working and informed him that he better not cut down too many trees, which of course my father responded to in typical Mike fashion with a shrug of his shoulders. I think his nonresponse infuriates my mother more. I love it. (and I might have egged my mother on to go get onto him, but I'm not fully admitting to that!)

He's making a lot of progress of getting out the trash trees before they come and get the merchantable ones. The area behind my parents house where all of this is going down used to be a thick forest of pine trees and live oaks. Walking through the cleared field made me remember things about this area that I had long forgotten. Like there used to be a road that ran through the property in the woods that hasn't been there for a long time. My brother and I used to spend countless hours back in those woods playing. It wasn't until I stumbled upon this pile that I remembered a special hang out of ours.

It may look like a bunch of junk but at one time it was part of a "treehouse" of sorts. It's what remains of a few ladders and some other metal that we had attached to an old blown over live oak that took a fall during Hurricane Kate in 1985. It was a huge tree that looked something like this, but on a much bigger scale.

Brad and I had ladders going up to different limbs and metal rails that went from branch to branch. We even had a vine swing that we would swing on. I found this and quickly remembered why it was there

It is what remains of a dumbbell from an old weight set that we used to have. Brad had that out at the treehouse so he could "work out" back in the day. (we were in elementary school, so he was doing some major working out. ha!) While this stuff means nothing to any of you reading this, it brought back a flood of memories of lazy summer days and things my brother and I would come up with to occupy ourselves. Mainly because my mother would lock us out of the house and demand that we play outside ;-)

Moving on in our journey I can across one of my father's creations that he made.

My mother ran a baby's breath farm on this field way back in the day. And this creation was my father's solution to planting the flowers. Those trays held the seedlings and there were seats attached to the back so you could sit close to the ground and lean over and plant the flowers while the tractor pulled you across the field. Funny story about this contraption was that one year we were all out in the field planting flowers and our springer spaniel, Heather was with us. She then decided to give birth to her litter of puppies right there in the field. So she would run along beside the tractor, plop down, have a puppy and keep going. As we passed the puppies, we would scoop them up and place them in the trays. Poor Heather never had a litter of puppies the normal way. Her first litter she was so freaked out about what was happening, that she jumped in my mother's lap and tried to have the puppy right there in her lap! And her puppies were always mutts. Half springer spaniel and half german shorthair pointer. They were gorgeous if you can imagine. Those two breeds shouldn't be mixed!  

After this, I walked to where the original cow pasture has always been. My father is notorious for never throwing anything away, because "he might can use it one day" and if his flower planting contraption shows, he can make anything out of some scrap metal. One thing that never got used after being discarded was this:

At one time this was attached to a combine and it is used to cut wheat. I don't ever remember daddy growing wheat there at the house, but he must have if it was out in the cow pasture. It was placed in the cow pasture never to be moved again. If you can tell a few trees have grown up below it in the years since it was placed there.

Yeah...100 points to Mike if he can get that thing out of the field now!

Speaking of childhood memories, I found this going through some boxes.

I can't believe I still have the birth certificate to my first Cabbage Patch Kid doll. I'm sure any other girls who grew up in the 80's can remember the craze that was the Cabbage Patch Kid. I think my mom had to fight some ladies off in Woolsworth to acquire this doll for me. HA! And my doll went by Tobie. Manfred was a little too weird to name a baby doll.

I also found this random piece of Ashley history:

Look a little bit closer and you will see why I kept this old FSU registration guide.

There I am in the green sweater concentrating really hard by the looks of my mouth. Ha! Why I kept this I don't know. But it has been kept safe and secure since 2004, so I guess I will keep it around for a few more years :-) Going through some of my old boxes of stuff, I realized I am a major pack rat. I found all kinds of napkins from restaurants that I assume had some significance back in the day, old movie stubs, rodeo tickets, concert tickets, notes passed around in class, old school papers. Name it, I kept it. One of my favorite things I came across was this picture. Maybe I am just being extra sentimental about old David these days ;-)

That's David and me back in August of 2000. This was his last night in Blountstown before he left for the Citadel in Charleston. Just looking at this picture also makes me cringe. That haircut I had. Wow. I can't pull off short hair, but I tried! During that time, I was working at a pharmacy in Panama City and was driving back and forth to work and thought having short hair would be quicker and easier than long hair, so I could save some time getting ready in the morning. That line of thinking got me a hideous haircut! 

Ok, I've probably bored you all to death with my random reminiscences! Thanks for indulging me!