one more intention

I forgot the most important intention on my list in my last post:

I intend to be on time to work every single day!

Haha!  Actually I have a perfect record {so what if it's only one day} and I was woken up by my roommate coming home last night so I didn't get much sleep.  If I can get there on time today, I can get there on time everyday!

I'm hoping to start a new work schedule next week where I have to go to work an hour earlier than I have been, so that's the real reason for this intention!!  We'll see how my record is after next week!

In 2012, I intend....

Leslie had this great idea on her A Blonde Ambition blog.  She listed her New Year's Intentions.  I like that a whole lot better than resolutions.  So here are my 2012 intentions.

This year, I intend to exercise at least once every week, no matter how busy I am.  Lame- I know.  However, I always have the best intentions, and then something more fun always comes up.

This year, I intend to be the inviter, and not wait around to be the invitee.

This year, I intend to try at least one new recipe every week.

This year, I intend to blog at least once a week.

This year, I intend to tackle a lot of items on my 30 before 30 list.

This year, I intend to be more quick to forgive.

Also, this past week (as in years past) they were talking on K-love about picking one word to focus on for the year.  I was thinking that my word for the year would be joy.  So then last night I was reading Nicolae, the third book in the Left Behind series. {side note: Those books are kind of freaky.  I was talking to my co-worker and she brought up a good point.  She said she intends to be on the first train out of here.  I'm in full agreement there.}  Here is an excerpt from Nicolae that got me thinking:

"Joy, Buck thought.  What a concept in this place, at this time.  The name of the game now was survival.  Certainly joy took on a different meaning than ever before in Buck's life.  He used to equate joy with happiness.  Clearly Tsion Ben-Judah was not implying that he was happy.  He might never be happy again.  This joy was a deep abiding peace, an assurance that God was sovereign.  They didn't have to like what was happening.  They merely had to trust that God knew what he was doing."

That was sure good timing.  I picked that word not thinking of it in that sense at all.  But that seems like a good place to start the year- trusting that God knows what he's doing, with a deep abiding peace.

Christmas: Part 1

So, not only is Christmas the busiest time of the year, but I have caught some disgusting illness and have been sick for the past 9 days!  Hopefully I'm on the tail end of it now, but I thought I had better write a short update before y'all forgot about me!

I made some eggnog cookies with butterscotch centers for my Sunday School Christmas party.

They were pretty good.  I didn't think they tasted like eggnog, and neither did anyone else I asked.  However, I would not be the best judge since I'm pretty sure that I have never tried eggnog since it sounds disgusting.  Yes, I'm one of those people.  :)  At least I tried the cookies.

I had some work training in Hot Springs.  I got this awesome hat.

Now, I can't remember the last time that I actually wore a baseball cap, but I'm pretty sure that you won't catch me in this one anytime soon.  :)

My friend Elizabeth had a housewarming/Christmas party at her new house.  This is me and my friend Ashley:

I don't know why the picture is so grainy.  The best I can figure is that there was not a lot of light in the room when we took the picture. 

After Elizabeth's party, I went to a party hosted by my boss.   That was a strange experience. But, it sure does make you feel good when you come in a place and everyone yells "JESSICA!!!!!!" haha! 

We had snack day at my office.  I made this peppermint twist biscotti and some chocolate candy cane cookies.

See this is taken with the same camera as the picture above with me and Ashley.  I just don't get it.  The only difference is that this one was in a room with a lot of natural light.

Also I almost had a heart attack when I couldn't find my roommate for a while.  Apparently she had a family emergency and went home for a while.  I couldn't get ahold of her and I almost called the police because I thought she was kidnapped.  Luckily, she was not.

My picture was in my sorority's national magazine, The Adelphean.  That was a surprise.  And of course it is not a super cute picture- I have my hair in a ponytail and I'm wearing my glasses.  Oh well.

Well that's enough randomness for now.  Hopefully I'll be feeling better soon and can recap the rest of this year before we hit 2012!

December is here!

I love December!  There is always something going on and somewhere to go.  I think it is catching up with me a little bit though.  I took a long nap (like after lunch until 4) this afternoon so I think I have time to write a quick post since I am thinking that sleep will not come easily today!

Here's what I've been up to:

Last Tuesday, my friend Shannon had a spare ticket to see Fiddler on the Roof.  I have never seen this before, and really didn't know what it was about, but who would pass up a free ticket?  We had a good time watching the show and catching up.

I have officially completely finished my Christmas shopping.  I have 2 things that I am waiting to ship, but that is it.  I have this amazing wrapping paper, and unfortunately the last few presents were too big for the piece that I have left.  I wrapped one really big present, one fake present for under the tree at my office, and my secret santa present in it, and it is almost gone.  I was hoping to get one more out of it, but I guess I can save the leftovers for next year.

I decorated my office at work.  I left up my tailgate decorations and went with a Razorback Christmas theme.  Here are some pictures:

Please ignore the giant map of Arkansas... that lovely piece of artwork is always gracing my office for those times when I am like you want me to go WHERE?!?   :)

And my silver garland and red ornaments.  I have several Razorback ornaments hanging on there too.

I cooked some 3 bean BBQ chili.  It was so bad that the dog wouldn't even it it.  ha!

I babysat my little brother.  My house is not toddler-proofed at ALL.  That was an experience.  Also, here's my PSA:  if someone says a baby is trying to sleep, do NOT go pick up said baby and start playing with him!! ugh!

My church had a potluck dinner tonight.  I was supposed to bring a dessert (it was split by last name).  I bought a gingerbread man cookie pan last year after Christmas, and so I made this for the potluck.  I don't like gingerbread, so I went with a sugar cookie.  I forgot to take a picture before he was eaten up, but he was super cute!

It has been raining like crazy today!  Better now than when it is freezing I guess.  The forecast is 40 degrees and raining for tomorrow morning.  Gross.  Not a good way to start off a Monday morning.  :)

Cupcakes, Cookies, Cold, and Christmas!

This post is brought to you by the letter "C."  ha!

So Cupcakes.  I made some creamsicle cupcakes the other day to take to church.  They looked like this when they came out of the oven:

Six of the 24 exploded.  I'm not exactly sure what happened since I haven't ever had that happen before.  Maybe the batter didn't get mixed well or something.  Anyway, since you can't serve ugly cupcakes, those had to be eaten straight out of the oven.  And they were delicious when they were warm.  I didn't like them as well when they had cooled.

Cookies.   We had a Thanksgiving potluck at work, and I brought cookies.  I tried out three new recipes: heart warming brownie cookies, apple raisin with lemon glaze, and banana chocolate oatmeal.  They all turned out pretty well, and almost all of them got eaten.  I think I only threw away one cookie.

Also last week my office had a "tailgate party" where we brought tailgate type food and snacked all day in anticipation of the big game between Arkansas and LSU last Friday.  Unfortunately the game was a bust, but our party was not!  Here are some cookies that I made for our party:



I also decorated my cubicle with a new border and pom poms.  haha!

I decided to leave the streamers and pom poms up and decorate my cubicle with a Razorback Christmas theme.  I'll try to get some pictures of that once it gets done.  It is a work in progress because I don't want to seem like the crazy Christmas lady since it is still November after all!

Cold.  OK I don't actually remember how cold it was or if it was hot, but for the sake of the title of my post, we will assume that it was cold.  I went to the Little Rock game when the Hogs played Mississippi State.  It was a good one.  We had an extra ticket, so my friend Melissa got to go with us.

Christmas!  I started decorating for Christmas.  This is my Christmas tree when I first put it up.

It looks a little different now since my sister decided that it needed more ornaments, and there are a few more presents under the tree.  Speaking of presents, I only have one more present to get!  I am waiting on a few more to come in the mail so that I can wrap them, but my shopping is almost done.  The only hard part about that is that I have to control my spending now since I don't have an excuse to buy more stuff.  :)

Almost caught up!

I really have been bad at blogging.  If we could just add a couple more hours to the day, it would be so much easier!  Ever feel like you are supposed to be doing something, but you can figure out what it is?  That's me right now!

So one of my co-workers got married on Halloween.  We had a shower for her and I got selected for cupcake duty.  We went with a spooky theme since obviously she likes Halloween.  I made 3 different types of decorations for the cookies.  These were my favorite.  The bugs (there were several kinds but I only took this one picture) were made of chocolate and M&Ms.

Now that I know how easy it is to make chocolate things, there is a whole new world of possibilities!

These cupcakes were supposed to be bats.  I think they look like bowties, and they were a huge pain, so I probably won't make them again.



We arranged the cupcakes on the food table to say "Boo." The rat cupcakes were brought by another co-worker.

Some of my friends and I went to a corn maze that is about 30 minutes away.   Before that, we went to eat at PF Changs.  I like their crispy green beans, but I definitely like Pei Wei alot better!  Here we are waiting for dinner:

It was very muddy at the corn maze.  I took this picture of our shoes to document the muddy adventure!  It actually didn't take us that long to do the maze because Daniel was really good at reading the map.

My church had a Fall Festival and I made some cupcakes for the Cake Walk.  I thought they turned out so cute.

My work had a costume contest for Halloween.  I did not participate in the contest, but I did dress up a little bit for fun.

I went up to Fayetteville for the Homecoming game against South Carolina.  I stopped by my sorority house for an alumni event.  They have so many different set of letters.  Back when I was there, I'm pretty sure we only had one set.  These were decorated for game days.

This is a Razorback statue that was donated to the University by my sorority a long time ago.  I don't think I have ever taken a picture with is, so I thought I would get one.

"U of A" during the pregame show.

And the Big A.  I love this stadium!

And the Go Hogs spellout.  There are so many kids now that they had to add an explanation mark.

The real reason for my trip to NWA was to see baby Graham!  He was so tiny!

I think that is enough for today!  But I have a bunch of other pictures from the past few days.  I have had an extra busy weekend!!!

Happy November!

This post is courtesy of my employer, who let us go home at 3:00 and have tomorrow off in honor of Veteran's Day.  Woot!  I finally have time to write a post...

Let's recap what's been going on!

My friend Ashley's (who never updates her blog or I would like to her...  haha.  hi Ashley!)  daughter had a super fun birthday party at a pumpkin patch about 30 minutes from where we live.  This is me and Ashley.



I carved this awesome pumpkin at another Ashley's house!  (And completely unrelated- another Ashley just texted me.  Too many people named Ashley!!!)  Go Hogs!



Well actually that will just have to be enough until tomorrow!  :)  I forgot that I have to go to the pharmacy before a meeting!