The Best Weekend Ever!!!

What have I been up to....let's see....SO MUCH!!
My feelings can best be described in a poem...hee, hee..no but seriously, I did write a poem about my day in Auburn....which happens to be another thing on my list...to write poetry. I didn't necessarily mean rhyming poetry about football, I intended to write deeply about my thoughts and feelings, but hey when the mood hits you, you just got to put it out there so here it is....



I rose before the sun to get ready for the trip,

Packed up the car and got my caffeine drip,

Picked up Sean and hit the road,

A short stop in Birmingham for the rest of the load..

A mere 3 hour drive and we would be there,

To Auburn University...the place of Jordan-Hare.

Starting it off right with great company and great food,

A little Coors light put us right in the mood.

It's a little before kick off so we begin our trek,

First stop the Tiger walk and then on to the upper deck.

Up to our seats and were ready to see play,

But we get postponed by a horrible rain delay...

At first it doesn't look good, no defense in sight,

But in the auburn way we fight fight fight!

It comes down to the fourth quarter, we need to pull through,

And of course we do in our orange and blue...

We leave the stands the chant rising like fire......

I say its great to be an Auburn Tiger!!!!!!



The trip was amazing. Natie, me, Sean, and Freiger road down together and met up with the tailgating crew from the good ole' days. Daddy, Debbie, the Kornegays, Frankene, Jerry, and more. My aunt, uncle, and cousin from West Virginia came down for the game too, of course they were cheering for the Mountaineers...which is to bad for them. It was such a long trip to see them lose to Auburn:) It was Sean's first Auburn game and Brit's first college football game ever. We all had so much fun, even though it rained on and off all day! Natie and I figured out that this was the first Auburn game that we had been to in 13 years!!! Way, way to long!!! Can't wait to go back and see my tigers again soon!!!

After the game we headed home, which put me arriving back in Tuscaloosa at 5 am!!! Up for almost 24 hours...needless to say I slept most of the day Sunday. I woke just in time to get ready for the Avett Brothers concert. Avett played at the Bama Theatre here in T Town and they were absolutely AMAZING! It was the best concert that I have ever been to! The whole crowd was on their feet and singing along the whole time! They put on an amazing show, so full of energy! Although I was completely exhausted and worn out from the day before, as soon as the show began, the tiredness melted away! From the time they walked on to the stage to after the encore I was awe-struck and amazed. All in all, Avett is definitely a concert that I want to attend again!!!



Besides my very exciting weekend, I have tried to continued with my painting, reading, and cooking. I finished the second Harry Potter- The Chamber of Secrets, and have ventured on in my cooking some more, making homemade pizzas and sour cream enchiladas. I have slacked on my drive to conquer the list and the go get 'em attitude that I has been pushing me the past few months is nowhere to be found. I feel as if I am getting stuck in a rut, but I am trying to fight it. I hate the feeling of having so mush stuff that needs to be done and that I actually want to do, and having absolutely no will and drive to do any of it. I am hoping to push past this nothingness feeling and continue on my journey. I have slacked on my writing and have not picked up the next book to read yet, but the procrastination stops here, I mean if for nothing else, I can't let the blog suffer because of my limbo, so I am pushing on. Wish me luck, I may definitely need it!











I don't really have any plans for upcoming events in my life, so hopefully spontaneity will kick in and deliver many great and exciting adventures. I do have one thing to look forward to...my 3 year anniversary! October 14 is mine and Landon's 3 year wedding anniversary...3 years married, 8 years together!!! We decided to keep it low key this year since we did the whole Vegas thing last year in October. Anyway, that's what's going on with me, I'm just being Blanki!

Hi from the road!!! We are on our way to Auburn to watch the game!!! I am very stoked...haven't been to a game in probably 10 years! Gonna do it all....tailgating, tigerwalk,...good food...good company....great football! War Eagle!!!! Jordan-Hare here we come!!!!

Chaos breed life......

Okay, so I have been out of touch in the blog world for a few days and after you read this, you will know why. So, you know how I am trying to conquer my list and have all these new and exciting things to try and do....well I think I am drowning in projects, but in a good way. If you were to walk into my dining room right now you would see 6 paintings that I have done and don't really know what to do with and the pile o' crap that is my scrapbook project!!!! Oh, well, who needs a functioning dining room anyway, right, I mean we only use it twice a year anyway so I'm good until Thanksgiving at least. Now, on to what has been keeping me so busy! I attended Olivia's first birthday Saturday in Birmingham and it was a blast! I made her cake and by the pictures I would say that she thoroughly enjoyed it. I also stayed up there and watched the Auburn game with my sis and Sean...my new Auburn crew!!! It's so nice to be able to watch football with people who are for the same team as me!!! War Eagle, btw!

I also have ventured out and started on #53 on the list: to cook one new dish every week...last weeks dish was eggplant parmesan (because I have decided to stick to the vegetarian diet...so far so good). To put it nicely, eggplant parm. was a pain in my ass!!! It took over an hour to prepare and then an hour to cook, but I have to say it was very yummy, but way to much work!!! I printed out the recipe from the internet and it was rated as easy on the difficulty scale, so I figured, hey, I have a degree in culinary arts, this will be a walk in the park for me...wrong. It wasn't necessarily hard, just tedious. I mean who wants to cut and batter and pan-fry eggplant, whilst making a marinara sauce whilst mixing together the cheese concoction that then has to be neatly layered in a pan just so it can bake for an hour and bubble over onto the bottom of the stove and make a smelly, smokey mess! Not me, that's who!!! I also made chicken parmesan that night for Landon because I wasn't certain, but I figured he wouldn't be a huge fan of eggplant and I was correct! It ended up being very good but I think it's safe to say that I will not be making eggplant parm anytime soon!

#46- to write more, I have been doing this too, which by the way has been so much fun!! I am currently reading Living a Literary Life and it has some amazing tips on writing that have been very helpful to me thus far...I'll keep you updated on this one!

For a very exciting one, #45....learn how to play the piano...and ta-da, thanks to Hilary, I am able to start on this one!!! Keep in mind I just got it and I am trying to teach myself, which is more like the blind leading the blind, but whatever, baby steps right. I can already play Let it Be, well kind of play it!

#4- the painting one...I have done two new paintings, one is a Wendy Lovoy original that I painted for Natie and the other is Jessica Lea Mayfields album cover.

As i mentioned before, I have started tackling the huge job that is organizing my photo albums, which for some unknown reason I decided to make even more complicated by not only organizing them, but turning them all in to scrapbooks....why oh why do I do these things?!? Anyway, I am about halfway through my first one, which is everything that happened in 2006...I'll upload photos of my photos when it is complete!!!

After reading what I have just written in its scattered and chaotic form, the perfectionist in me wants to rewrite it all, but I think it represents exactly the jumble of ideas and events that are my life right now, so I'm going to leave just the way it is...ENJOY:)

With eyes wide open, you never know what you might see...

"Now each visitor shall confess the sad valley's restlessness." After tagging along on Lydia's photography practice the other day, I now have a better understanding of Poe's words in The Valley of Unrest. Let me start from the beginning...

I went with Lydia the other day to take some pictures with her new camera. We went to the Riverwalk first and then decided to drive downtown to see if we could find some old buildings that she wanted to photograph. We did not find any buildings that inspired her, but happened upon something so much better! We came across Greenwood Cemetery, the oldest still used cemetery in Tuscaloosa. It was absolutely amazing. I was completely awe-struck. The graves were marked back as far as 1821. The cemetery also housed several unknown Confederate soldiers' graves. The cemetery sent me in a whirlwind of emotions. Sadness, of course, but also anger because the cemetery was not well taken care of. The grass was up to our knees in some places and weeds completely covered many of the headstones. Also, there was garbage sporadically on the ground throughout the area including on the some of the graves. Another almost bittersweet sadness was that many of the headstones were broken and falling apart. I say bittersweet, because to me, it made the cemetery even that much more special and unique, because without knowing anything about it, one could walk through Greenwood and know that they were walking through a part of history. The broken pieces gave Greenwood so much character and the years and time were literally right there in front of my eyes, laying on the ground. However, walking through all the broken pieces and unkept landscaping made me sad because I felt as if these people and this amazing place had somehow been forgotten along the way. Greenwood is filled with so much iron work and stone work that can only be described as art. The details on some of he statues and headstones are absolutely incomparable. I must say that walking through Greenwood that day made all of that pesky history stuff that we all had to learn very real to me. I was reading actual names and date of births and date of deaths of people who fought in the Civil War, names of wives and children who lived in those times. The headstones were so old that many of them were no longer legible, but they were all so beautiful. Some of the graves were even completely surrounded by stone walls. The Greenwood Cemetery was one of the most amazing places that I have ever just happened upon.

Thanks to Lydia's amazing photography, I am able to include some pictures of our discovery!! Hope you enjoy, and if you ever get the chance, go by and see Greenwood for yourself, it really is breathtaking!!!