My Happy New Year

As I sit here, Zoe is curled up next to me on the couch, I am brainstorming about our photography, & the smell of my homemade Zuppa Toscana soup is filling my house with amazing smells!  There is absolutely no music or tv on right now and I love it.  I feel like I can hear my own thoughts.  I think I am finally emerging from my burrow and feeling creative again.

TJ & I ended Charlotte Photography's 2010 year GREAT!  But, around Christmas, I crawled into a little comfortable hole and have been relaxing ever since.  I wasn't very creative during that time, though I enjoyed everyone else's creativity. :-)

Today I spent the afternoon making soup and organized a couple cabinets in my kitchen.  It's kinda like my New Years Day, the beginning of 2011 for me. Haha.  I think it's ok to have those times of rest, a time to reset.  If I kept forcing myself to do anymore, I know I would have been burnt out.  I love that the Lord gave us these snow days this week.  There are tons of things I could have made myself do, but instead I spent time relaxing and eating. LOL.  Oh did I snack!

Anyway, here's to the beginning of my 2011 creativity.  I will definitely be blogging about my homemade Zuppa Toscana.  It is my favorite Olive Garden soup!  Pictures & Recipe to come.

All the best,
Me

Snow Days are the best Lazy Days!

At 28 (well, 2 weeks from today at least. ha), I am just as excited at the call of snow as when I was 13.  All week long, the weather channels have been predicting snow.  Well, anyone who lives in the South knows that we usually cannot rely on their predictions.  However, the past few weeks they have been pretty accurate.  On Sunday night I went to bed and was so excited that Monday had nothing scheduled and they we may get snow.  I woke up at 3:45am and looked outside.  My eyes were still very sleepy and fuzzy, so it was hard to tell if there was snow.  After a few minutes I looked out again and saw white on the neighbors roof.  EXCITEMENT AROSE!  I checked fb on my phone to see if others had started talking about snow.  I then got out of bed and checked the window to see snow falling.  What a wonderful, peaceful feeling.  I felt like Lorelei on Gilmore Girls (She can always smell the snow...and gets super excited).  I started singing softly that it was snowing while TJ continued sleeping.

A few hours later we woke up and everything was covered with fluffy white snow and it was still snowing.  I made a few "It's SNOWING" phone calls, turned on Fox News Rising, and sat on the couch with a smile on my face and in my heart.  There is something so great about being home and snowed in.  TJ and I spent most of the day laying around and watching 30 Rock.  I was also in the mood to cook something comfortable and warm.  I didn't have the right ingredients for soup, so I made chicken chili and then a side of guacamole.  We ended up snacking of a bunch of other foods throughout the day and were full when it came time for the chili, so I saved it for today.

Later on yesterday we took a walk around the neighborhood with Zoe.  We walked over to some friends neighborhood to see if any snowball action was going on, but it was an empty street.  So, we walked back to our neighborhood and noticed out neighbors were building a snow fort.  They had cardboard boxes and were packing the snow into the boxes and then made big snow blocks.  TJ got down in the snow with the kids and started packing the boxes with them.  It was great.  They got the wall 3 blocks high and about 6 or 7 blocks wide.  A lot of fun!  It was really nice interacting with our neighbors too.  

It was such a relaxing day.  Snow days don't typically come very often for us in the south, so it's wonderful when they happen.  Actually, today we are iced in now.  I walked outside to the mail box and had to hold on because it was literally a sheet of ice on top of the snow and our driveway.  

Here are a few photos from our day yesterday.  Enjoy!

Here are a few photos from our day yesterday.  Enjoy!