getting it all together???

so my 6th weekend of being a married women, running a "household", trying to work out, cook, clean and make sure we have clean clothes to wear, I feel like I should be starting to get into the flow of things. aka not like a chicken with my head cut off when i go into work with my sweater on inside out because the wind or the scary raccoons got into the garbage so i was all flustered trying to pick it up at 8AM when normally i would think, "well that's a bummer. sorry dad" and get into my warm car and drive away. but that's a different story for a different day. :) 

how did i do?

let's see, shall we?

1.) we went to the gym.

but then I realized that my wallet/purse REALLY needed to be sorted out. so I did that important job while Drew did box jumps :) 

2.) I made a pinteresty craft. 

second attempt at chalk paint. (do not get confused with chalkboard paint, like i did)

but then apparently my dad needed a tool that I had "borrowed" from their garage. and when my dad is in the middle of a project and he needs a tool, he needs it RIGHT THEN! like i had to turn off the oven and literally jump in the car with my slippers to bring him his beloved handsaw. whooooops. 

3.) i cooked.

well. drew cooked. i was in charge of the garlic bread. but apparently i thought it just had to be microwaved. but i guess it needed the oven? So like 5 minutes before the rest of the meal was done, i realized I still had to preheat the oven and then cook the bread for 10 minutes. psshh... preheating is over-rated. So i turned on the oven to broil and just stuck the bread in. 

and forgot about it until i started smelling burnt toast. 

fine. i conceded that I was a horrid cook and decided to just eat the rest of our meal, and make some butter rolls following the REAL instructions. preheat to 350.

welllll. that would have been fine. except that I forgot to take OUT the burnt garlic bread while the oven was preheating for the butter-rolls. :)

4.) i talked Drew into cleaning my car :) 

well, he offered. 

we got a new shopvac and he was detailing the inside while I ran some errands. I came home to a beautifully clean car but i knew it was too good to be true.

disgusting. 

he probably failed to mention that the chicken was more than likely on the PASSENGER SIDE WHERE HE SITS! :)

so yeah. i got some work to do in this whole wife department. :) but you gotta start somewhere, right? :)

woohoooo.... see ya later #8 in the nation :)

go dawgs :) 

grace

found this from this blog

i  first fell in love with her hair, and now her wisdom. :) 

pink is my thoughts :) 

 1. Marriage is made up of two good forgivers. Because every marriage is made up of two sinners. (Romans 3:23) 

2. At some point, you will have to learn that life isn’t all about you. (Philippians 2:3) 

3. Don’t listen to women that tell you that passion fades…it doesn’t have to! (um…all of Song of Solomon)

4. Don’t give up. Love never fails. (1 Cor. 13)

5. He wants a kind wife, not a maid or another mother. Be nice. (Galatians 5:22-23)

6. Give your husband the gift of your respect.  He needs it more than you know. (Ephesians 5:33)

7. Be mindful of your expectations.

8. Honor the Lord above all things. Colossians 3: 17

9. Find your worth and security in the Lord, and don’t look to your husband to meet all of your needs.

10. Be very careful about reading romance novels, they set you up for an unrealistic view of romance.

11. Real romance is finding that one spot in the crook of his arm to snuggle into, that shared look over the dinner table when the kids are acting crazy, and the way he fixes the leaky sink when he is dog-tired after work.

12. Love is about relationship.  The more I love my husband, and seek a relationship with him, the less critical and duty-bound I become.  It is similar to my relationship with God.

13. Be thankful for the husband you have. Accept him as he is, not for what you want him to be.

14. Don’t compare!! Don’t buy into the game of comparing him with anyone else’s husband.

15.The Biblically “normal” marriage is filled with joy, connection, laughter, and peace.  It’s not free of hurt feelings and conflict, but they know how to process their pain with one another so that they live more often in a meadow than at the scene of a train wreck.  This is not the average marriage, but it normal – -because it is a visible display of Jesus’ relationship with His bride (Ephesians 5:22-33).

16. Your marriage is a testimony! “The #1 evangelistic tool in America (the world) today is a successful marriage, because it’s a living miracle!” – Dr. Joe Aldrich, former president of Multnomah Bible College.

17. Pray for your marriage. Pray hard.

18.I’ve heard that is gets better with age.  I have to say in my short {13 year} experience, that is so true.

19. Where there is God, there is always hope. Even for the most broken marriages. “With God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26)

20.Marriage is commitment and sacrifice. But it’s also the best, most wild ride you will ever have with your best friend.

lovely things

my lovely sister sent us a book of some of our pictures from the wedding. so fun to have something to flip to if someone wants to see a picture from our special day ;) thank you sissy!!

 my favorite corner of the kitchen so far with some lovely colors. 

speaking of lovely, ya'all like the fun cross we got on our honeymoon? i do. apparently drew didn't. it broke in half when he was "unloading the dishwasher." :) 

 my mom made some sugar cookies for our Monday Night Football party last night, in lovely seahawk blue of course. don't even get me started. we won. ;)

hope you all have a lovely wednesday :)

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.  Philippians 4:8 

monday oh monday

lost lake

we are back from our trip to canada :) more later. 

ps. drew and i are are an uncle and auntie! welcome charlotte! we cannot wait to meet you soon!

not yet

trust God's timing. 

"Not yet" doesn't mean "No." 

happy friday and end of summer :(
but onto bigger and better things.:)

hope you have as a weekend as grandma rita had boogy-ing at my wedding. you go girl. :) 

what i have learned in the last month...

a month of wedded bliss is officially in the books for Mr. and Mrs. McDonald. :)

i feel like our wedding was SOOO long ago, not a measly 31 days. 

how have we been? well, its been GREAT. i mean, not rainbows and butterflies every minute of every day (for instance: this morning drew woke me up at 5:30 to help him find his PEDOMETER that he had to bring to work for some reason. really? pedometer? i don't know where that is ya weirdo :) but I have learned so much about myself, about him and we are figuring out this lovely journey of marriage. :)

what exactly have I learned in the past month?

sure, i'll tell ya. :)

1.) CROCK-POTS ARE AMAZING. oh my gosh. you freaking add three things in the morning, turn it on and come home to dinner. 

2.) I also learned what beef roast was. The recipe called for beef roast and I wandered the meat aisle for a good twenty minutes deciding the recipe was wrong and they clearly meant pork roast. whoops. :)

3.) I have learned that my husband is a very, very methodical man. If he starts a load of laundry, he waits until the washing machine beeps, then he moves it directly into the dryer. When it is dry he folds it and puts it away. Me? ehh. i like to stretch the process out over the course of a few days. ;) he may or may not daily complain that the stuff i was smells like mildew ;/

proof? if he is gonna make a fire, he makes a fire. :)

4.) I have also learned to TRUST my husband. just because he does things a little different than I would, he still gets results. :)

5.) I have learned that it just isn't really a good idea to go to Target with Drew. He doesn't like it. I get mad and don't have fun. We fight and argue. No point. :) He doesn't like to decorate, he could care less about the print on the pillows or what colors the nightstands are painted. I have learned that it doesn't matter if the throw pillows don't match the chair in the living room. Home is where we are making our little life. :)

6.) I have also learned that you can do a LOT of things with spray paint. :)

7.) I have learned that just because I got a new last name doesn't mean I am no longer a part of my family :)

and to celebrate this month of things learned:

i embarrassed D with a celebration cake. :)

the baker lady congratulated me on my one month of dating my boyfriend. 

heck no lady. we are big time now. :)

learning every step of the way. 

wedding wednesday: the flowers

it makes me really sad that the average wedding costs $27,000.

i just don't think that more money necessarily equals a better wedding. 

for instance: the lady who we had coordinate things on the actual day of our wedding had recently gone to a wedding out on Orcas Island. I have heard GREAT things about it and ready for this? It cost $800.

while I can definitely say my wedding cost a little more than $800, it was no where NEAR that thirty grand amount. 

that being said, I am not crafty. I am good at copying ideas, but coming up with things on my own?

no way. which is why it was SUCH a blessing I had so much help with my wedding from my artsy family and friends.

Part 1:

our wedding

the flowers

credit: auntie sue, grandma, annie

bridesmaids, the James ladies

Gene from the dahlia farm :) 

DAD!

so. i went and met with a florist, described to her what I wanted and then realized that with 6 bridesmaids and all the centerpieces I wanted, having the florist do all the flowers was going to cost half the budget. and that wasn't worth it to me. 

after throwing a few fits ("come on daddy, I don't understand what the problem is with a $200 bouquet! I am your first daughter! waaaahhhhhh.")

i realized I wasn't getting anywhere. okay, reluctantly onto Plan B.

my dad was getting his teeth cleaned at the dentist when a nice dental hygentist in training started chatting with him. they got on the topic of summer weddings, and come to find out she had gotten married last summer at our same venue! they got talking about flowers and she gave my dad the name of the place she got all her flowers from. 

psshh. a dahlia farm? i do NOT like dahlias. Yellow and purple and maroon are pretty, but NOT for me. 

end of story. 

i don't care that they are 10 cents a stem. 

i dunno how I came around to the idea, but one day we ventured out to visit Gene at her dahlia farm. 

you guys, this place was AMAZING.

we picked a sample bouquet for ONE DOLLAR and I was hooked.

then my dad made these awesome planter boxes. You would think that "whitewashing" is easy.

umm.. it is like the hardest thing EVER to get 25 things whitewashed the same color.

and THEN we tried to figure out what we wanted on the boxes. We tried painting on our initials. we tried taking sheets of copper, cutting them into hearts and etching our intials into them.

i feel like with planning this wedding, I kept trying to make things WAY more complex.

my dad had the brilliant idea of getting a stamp made with a logo we wanted and then use it is a reoccuring theme throughout the wedding.


so friday morning we met at starbucks and then trekked out to the dahlia farm. it was one of the most fun parts of my wedding weekend I thought :) :)

throw in some million packets of that stay-alive flower powder stuff and

then my grandma and auntie sun and my auntie and my moms cousin sat under the deck ALL afternoon and started working away. :) my auntie sue was very nice making sure NO green stems were showing. that is not the look i wanted. i wanted more of the "poof" ball look. :)

ta daaaa

so we hired a florist to make my bouquet and the bridesmaids bouquets. looking back, I wish I would have had my auntie sue make them because she did SUCH a great job and the styles would have matched a little better. you could really tell that the decoration flowers and the boquets were made by different people with different styles. oh the problems of a bride, right? :)

i liked the bouquets i suppose.

we had also ordered some babys' breath(much to my mom's hatred) from a wholesale and were going to use it in stainless steel containers for simple decorations at the ceremony.

now here is where my auntie sue becomes a savior.

this lovely lady took the baby's breath, the dahlias and some other plants she had brought from her yard (including these awesome rustic wooden planters) and just whipped these together.
(because maybe the venue had MUMS that were dead all over the place. my grandma still cannot stop talking about the hideous mums. :)

I didn't even see their arrangements  until the wedding had started and they made me SO happy.

they set some up by where we got married and lined the dock with some planter boxes as well.

so there ya go. our wedding flowers (not including bouquets) were $60 plus the labor and love of auntie sue :)

pays to have some smart talents ladies in the family! :)

love you auntie sue and flower helpers! :)

moral of the story: don't be scared to do a little DIY. :) 

next wedding wednesday we will discuss the venue and decorations.

i know y'all can hardly contain your excitment, but I just have soo many pictures I want to share for my memory :) 

loving me some september weekends :)

we had a bonfire, i worked at our Weight Watcher's Open house and ate these delicious apple pie wontons :), went to the beauuutttiful Hougen wedding and hung out with my sister AKA Miss Hatch when she student teaches in her cute little kindergarten class.

fabulous weekend all around. :)

crisco

it all started this weekend when I used hairspray and a did a little teased hair poof :) ya know, where you "back-comb" I believe is the proper term?

well anyways. that turned into a sweaty messy bun when Drew and I rearranged the house AGAIN this last Saturday.

Needless to sayyy, I was excited to blowdry my hair when Monday morning rolled around.

i showered and started blowdrying when I realized I had a HUGE tangle in one spot on the back of my head. I couldn't figure it out, it was almost like I had gum in my hair, so I threw my hair up in a low bun and hit the grocery store before work for some little kid's detangler spray (ya know, the Fish bottle kind :).

went to work and decided to leave my hair in a bun and deal with the tangle that evening.

got busy, forgot about my hair issue and Tuesday rolls around. I was going to go to the DMV to change my name on my driver's license so I woke up extra early to make sure I had cute hair.

UMMM....

that little tangle? you guys. I had a knot in my hair that was as hard as a ROCK! I tried for about 30 minutes to brush it out (including using an ENTIRE bottle of conditioner on it) and had no luck. THere was NO way I was going to take my driver license picture with a rat's nest on my head so I get ready for work and make a pit stop at Supercuts.

Who knew Supercuts was open at 8AM? not I.

So i walk in, and show them my issue. She plops me down in the chair, and washed my hair with her "intense conditioner". another stylist joined in on the fun.

TWO HOURS LATER, my scalp is hurting soooo bad and they have made NO progress on this stupid thing. I am about in tears, because it is about an inch from the top of my head, so cutting it would give me little alfalfa pieces.

i go to work and i am trying to cover it up with a side-braid thing. i show my friend and she is like, "ohhh Lindsay, I can get that out!"

Then they look closer and touch it and say, "OH MY GOSH! WHAT IS THAT?!!"

guys, it wasn't like a loose matted little ball of hair. see that thing? IT WAS HARD AS A ROCK. I couldn't even get one part of a pick comb into it. not one little bristle.

so then a coworker had a brilliant idea. She suggested I get some lard and soak it in my hair. Umm.. minus the fact that I have no idea where I could get lard, I decided that might just work. 

next best thing?

oh yeah baby. 

i had a plan of action.

got home from work on Tuesday night and let Drew play an EXTRA game of Madden on his PlayStation. He was wondering why I was being extra nice...

little did he know the plans I had for him... ;)

i lathered up some good ole crisco in my hair and then kinda asked Drew to comb it out. 

hahahah. you should have seen us. He had a comb and you would have thought he was stabbing something the way he was handling that thing. 

he would stab the "hairball" and then I would just hear a ripping noise as he destroyed my hair!!

and then he would narrarate, "oh BABE! THIS IS CRAZY! What is this?????"

I thought he was making it worse, but he was starting to loosen up the knot. 

after I saw the pile of hair that he had pulled out, I decided it was time for the scissors. 

He snipped off the knot (how my hair got that that I still do NOT know) and then I SOAKED my head in some keratin stuff. 

ta-daaaaaaa :)

there wasn't even a bald spot. :)

and my hair has never been so moisturized :) 

the trooper that is my husband looked up at me at one point, wearing ziplock baggies on his hands and sticking them in Crisco and said, "hmm. is this how I will be spending my nights now? Is this what married life is about?" :)

but his best remark from the evening: (even beating out one point when he was saying, "oh babe, we are at the BEAST of the knot. We got it made."

"okay linds. you have to wear a Katniss braid to bed so this NEVER happens again."

:) 

girlfrands

MY FRIENDS

remind me, by 

their very 

steadfastness,

 that truth, 

beauty, and 

goodness exist

 in the world, 

and that no 

matter what, 

there are and 

always will be 

people loving 

people through 

THICK AND

THIN. 

praying hard today, and wishing it didn't take something like this or it's anniversary to make me pray hard. 

no timeline

i've always been waiting for something. especially when it comes to working out/eating healthy.

after the holidays I will start eating more fruits and veggies.

oh no. spring break is in two months. I have to run 5 miles a day every day until then so i can look smokin' in that swimsuit.

i have to lose x pounds by x date so that blah blah blah.

i am AMAZINGLY good at reaching these goals (i always told Drew that if they had a Biggest Loser for chubby skinny people I would SO win. :)

the problem? i reach them and then say okay made it.

that was my problem the first few times I did Weight Watchers. I LOVED weighing in and losing weight each week, but when I got to my goal I got bored.

I don't really know how to maintain weight. I am a PRO at losing and gaining. But staying the same? not so much.

these deadlines that I impose on myself are just setting me up for failure.

lose 20 pounds by the wedding.

check.

but this morning at weigh in? Not pretty. and i'm just sick of this.

so for the first time in my ENTIRE life, I have no timeline. 

I already got married and had 123,545 pictures taken of myself. I don't have to fit into a prom dress, impress a boy in my bikini during Spring Break or be a size 2 by the holidays.

i'm not setting a date in my planner when I want to be back at goal weight.

i am going to take one day at a time, and work on healthy life habits that won't come and go. :)

heard this conversation between Leah at Weight Watcher's and the members in her meeting:

leah: "so you guys have dropped your cell phone right?"

"and when you drop your precious iphone, you don't start kicking and stomping on it?

"you don't think, 'well since my cute case got one little scratch in the corner, I might as well smash the rest of the phone and just get a new one later."

yep. sounds silly, but this is the attitude I have with my body.

and i'm done with it. it's not about numbers on the scale or the size of my new jeans.

it's about being HEALTHY, and being healthy doesn't mean losing twenty pounds if you can gain it right back by reverting to old habits. :)

today: our 1/2 marathon training program said we had to do 4 miles. :(

instead of running the entire time staring at my iphone Nike App watching my mile times and cussing John Mayer every time one of his songs comes on my workout mix (when i am exhausted and need to run faster, Your Body is a Wonderland" doesn't help me much") I decided to look around

look at what I had been missing along my running course since I was so freaking focused on distance and time.

not too shabby :)

who knows what else I have been missing? I am gonna find out :) 

sunday night brain dump

my brain is so full.

~knowing that this little cutting cake is in my mom's freezer from our wedding (to cut on our anniversary) is killlling me. it was soooooo good and i drool just thinking about it. it is torture knowing that it will just taunt me for a year. and by the time I actually get to eat it, it will be gross. so i say the only logical solution is to eat it now, right? happy three week anniversary, time to eat cake! :)

~i love this. i am trying to make it my mantra for the week. i don't need to run a zillion errands to be a successful friend/daughter/wife. and it's like one of those things. I don't necessarily think the Kardashian's are the best influence on our society and I complain about their silly antics, yet I stiillllll tune into their show and I stilllll follow them on Twitter. I play into it. I'm working on that. :)

~so remember when I was painting signs for the wedding and this happened?

well. i still haven't been able to get it all off. yep. i got married, went to mexico and STILL have pink paint on my legs. (not near this much of course!) I don't know what to do. i have gone through like three bottles of exfoliator. oh well... ;)

~i got a new purse! I love it. but i did NOT love the lady who sold it to me. okay. i am a friendly person and i get that retail is a hard job.

look at cute display of bobby-pins with cute flowers. want one.

look at price tag prominently displayed with bins. $4 flower bobby pins.

buy one.

rings up as $6

i say, "oh was that not $4 in a polite tone?"

she says, "no, it rang up $6."

I walk over and say, "oh man, the price tag says $4, look right here!"

she says word for word, "that's too bad, the correct price is always in the computer."

rruuuuude.

i should have said I didn't want it anymore. but i did. so i paid $6. but still. that is NOT good customer service, when your sign clearly has the wrong price. right???

~i love these little pumpkins.

~decorating a house is HARD. it's like i want everything all new yet antiquey/ original yet pinterest all done NOW. but it doesn't work like that. it makes me mad. i have visions of what I want different rooms of the house to look like, but I can't actually FIND what I need. it is annoying. Drew and I had a fight in Target today because I compared me needing a desk area to him needing to hook up his video games. He said a desk isn't just something I should get to get, I should look around. I kindly told him that 2 hours into our moving extravanganza he said he NEEDED to hook up his video games before the night was over. That's how I feel about my desk area. I neeeeeed it. and i want it cute and chalkpainty with a cute upholstered chair and a cute rug. ugh. and i want it NOW.

have a great week :)

thanks for sharing, JPJ

happy friday :) 

disposable

i have a fancy camera (that i don't know how to use but still). did i bring it on our honeymoon with us? noo...

so what is the logical solution?

buy some good ole disposables from the resort drugstores.

after i got over the shock that they were freaking a million pesos (i could go to costco and buy a digital camera for the price of my two disposables but whatever that is a different post for a different day)

we got to work. 

it was funny. i would take a picture and then automatically look at where the screen should be to see what it looked like. no such luck.

and then the flash? oh my gosh. we had like a 10 minute conversation around dusk every night about if the flash needs to be ON in the dark, or OFF in the dark. yep, we have come to depend on auto :)


flash forward to the airport.

i made a big fuss at each xray machine making SURE that the workers knew I had film and to make sure the x-ray machines wouldn't ruin it. I loved it; I am sure they thought I was a fancy world-class photographer with all sorts of fancy pictures of the Mexican Rivera on my camera.  Little did they know it was 48 kodak pictures on a disposable camera.

THEN I had to find somewhere that developed the little buggers. COSTCO, the mother of EVERYTHING, didn't do it. I was speechless. Rite-Aid? Nope.

Walgreen's? Yes sir.

Another arm and a leg later (seriously though, after the cost of the cameras and then the film development I could have boughten a new lens for my DSLR camera. after all of that, i was soo excited to get the pictures back today.

totally worth it....

and another...

and like 30 more. of the 48. 30 look just like that :) :( :( :(

but oh wait. the rest? the ones that aren't just gray splotches? pictures I took of beverages. yep. numerous photos of DRINKS. 

 i got one in there of us WITH our beverages, at least :) 

some more of these pretty pictures... look at that beach ;)

the pictures of the freaking ANIMALS turned out. i am so glad. NOT :( why i took this i don't even know. 

 and let's round out the honeymoon pictures with another great shot. 

right when i was about to give up and throw away the disk's of pictures, for some reason I decided to click on the second to last picture. 

and i am sure glad I did :) 

maybe we started to figure out the flash button just a liiiiitle too late. ;)