Life as a Trophy Wife

As many of you know, since moving to Arizona, finding the right job has been difficult. So, I’ve spent most of my unemployed months lounging by the pool and eating bon bons….

 …..Bahahahah ok ok I can’t keep a straight face while saying that!

There have been NO bon bons.

Haha! All joking aside, there has been some lounging by the pool but mostly just boredom. After the house was unpacked and set up for the most part, I ran out of things to do. I mean even pinterest gets old after awhile, especially when you don’t have the money to do any of the projects I pinned. So what has this girl been doing to keep herself busy??

Well, I’ve done some cooking. I’ve never been that great of a cook in the past- mostly from lack of experience. So, I took this downtime to practice! I have mastered quite a few amazing recipes as well a few doozies.

Spiral Pasta Vegetable Salad

Summer Vegetable Crepes

Corn Chowder

Gazpacho

Asparagus Frittata

Mango Black Bean Quinoa

Roasted Vegetable Stacked Enchilada Casserole

All of the above I HIGHLY recommend. They were delicious! Let me know if you want the recipe for any of them.

I’ve also been trying to learn the manual setting on my new DSLR Nikon. I took an introduction to photography class to try and get a grasp on all the different manual settings. It’s overwhelming at first but I’m still learning how everything works together to create the best picture!

There are several blogs I’ve stumbled across that have photography tutorials and they’ve helped as well! Click the link below the picture to go to the blog.

Digital Photography School Blog

I heart faces blog

My next plan is to take a creative photography class. Thanks to a groupon, I have that already lined up as soon as I get the hang of the shutter speed, aperture and ISO!!

So that's pretty much been my summer! 

That's all about to change though. I am hanging up my trophy wife shoes because... 

I GOT A JOB! Yep! I have been waiting to tell you all and now I finally can! My first day is Monday. I will be working as the dietitian for a home tube feeding company and I am SUPER pumped! I love tube feeding so I know I am going to love this job. I'll have to keep you posted =)

xoxo,

What I learned about the desert...

Last week Hubby and I visited the Phoenix Desert Botanical Garden. I bought half priced admission Groupons for us with the intent of attending their flashlight garden tour. The flashlight tour sounded really cool because in the desert most of the wild life comes out at night! But, alas, story of our lives, we waited too long and they ended the flashlight tour. So, we decided to wake up early one morning and visit the garden before the heat got too unbearable!

We were pleasantly surprised, the garden was really interesting!

Who knew there were so many different types of cacti!?

Octopus Cactus

Old Man of the Andes Hairy Cactus

Organ Pipe Cactus

I don't remember the name of this one...but it's pretty!

The iconic cacti that we typically see in Western movies is called the Saguaro (pronounced Sah-whar-oh):

The Saguaros are the cacti with the thick stem and multiple arms. The cactus at the bottom of the picture is called a Prickly Pear. You can eat them!

 Saguaros are only found at a certain altitude in the Sonoran Desert, which happens to be mostly in Arizona!

This is what a dead Saguaro cactus looks like!

You may or may not be able to see in the pictures, but there are little holes in the cactus's body. They are made by Gila Woodpeckers! The birds peck holes in the bodies of the cacti and build nests inside the cacti to raise their young. The holes are well insulated from heat and cold. Pretty smart!

The garden even went as far as educating us on the first Native Americans that made the Sonoran Desert their home.

Oh! And you know how I've been commenting that there are no squirrels in the desert? I was wrong! There are two types of squirrels that live in the desert: Harris Antelope Squirrels and Round Tailed Ground Squirrels. I actually saw one at the botanical garden too!!! (Kane was super jealous when I told him about it...) I wasn't able to get a picture though, because they are amazingly fast. Here's one I found on the internet:

Harris Antelope Squirrel

They're kinda cute aren't they? Like a cross between a chipmunk and squirrel!

The botanical garden was totally worth the price of my half price admission ticket! I learned a lot. Now I can pretend to know what I am talking about when people debate me about desert trivia. Because that's totally going to happen. People debate about desert trivia all the time, ok?

Until next time,

(Your resident desert expert)

Go Take a Hike!

One of the many joys of living in Arizona is taking advantage of the beautiful mountains surrounding the valley! Recently the weather has been bearable enough to venture out and explore the countryside. And by bearable I mean, less than 100 degrees. Hubby and I attended a few Meetup groups that meet at 6 pm on Monday nights and hike Dreamy Draw Mountain. Meetups are great. They are a bunch of people who have similar interests that meet up together to do or discuss said interest. Check it out on Meetup.com! I am a member of a hiking meetup, a vegetarian meetup, and a young professionals meetup! But I have only ever met up with the hiking group so far. Hiking AZ mountains is FUN! And beautiful... Check it out:

Hubby and I have also ventured out on our own a few times and have taken the dog with us as well:

No, we didn't break the rules and go into the closed area. We were going to, but i chickened out...

View of Phoenix from a mountain top

There's Hubby and Kane! can you see that tiny speck in the picture? Yep! That's them!

Not only is hiking fun, but it's a work out too! Poor Kane had to take an entire recovery day after his morning hike! Even though Hubby was moved to second shift this week (boooooo) I still plan to meet up with the hikers on Monday night by myself. We still  have plenty of room if anyone wants to join us!! =) Next time you see me I'll probably have buns and thighs of steel from all this hiking. hahah or maybe not.

xoxo,

What you missed during my blog vacation...

So, I guess you’ve noticed. I took a little hiatus from blogging… all right, all right, a LONG hiatus! My apologies! I guess I just haven’t been in the mood to blog. Moving to Arizona hasn’t been the greatest thing for my cheerful mindset. We moved away from a lot of things (and people) I loved and adapting to Arizona life has been harder than expected. But none the less, Hubby and I have had a TON of fun, even if it is just the two of us!

Here’s a little of what you missed…

4^th of July

Kane still loves the pool!

We went to Vegas for my dad’s pool tournament

We visited the Hoover Dam

 We flew back to Atlanta for an amazing lake weekend with our awesome friends!

We flew BACK to Atlanta again for a wedding

 Kane turned 9 years old!

I went to my first major league baseball game (Go Diamondbacks!)

That's pretty much the highlights! But, I'm back to blog land! No more vacations like that again for a while- I promise! Fall is coming and hopefully we'll start to see some milder temperatures. I'm just hoping for less than 100 degrees! Until next time...

xoxo,

(Almost) Home Sweet Home

I have a serious case of summer ADD. I cannot focus on one thing for very long and I end up with 3 projects going on at the same time. At the end of the day, all I have are various messes all over the house. Its frustrating! Apparently, all I needed these past few weeks was motivation.

My dad came to visit us last week and I wanted to make sure I had the house a close to perfect as I could. That means all the boxes had to be unpacked, all the frames had to be hung on the walls, and all my already started house projects needed to be FINISHED. So, I focused and now we are that much closer to having the house exactly the way I want it! (yay!)

But after all that work, I wanted everyone to see it! The likelihood of anyone coming to visit us in this heat is slim to none. SO, I'm posting some of it here for all to see! (double yay!)

Our first project was to install some ceiling fans in our house. I cannot believe this house has been here this long in one of the hottest states in the country and not a single room had a ceiling fan!! Let me tell you what a difference fans have made in our house. I went from waking up in the middle of the night dripping with sweat to sleeping like a baby to the white noise of our ceiling fan. Neither Hubby nor I had ever installed a fan but everyone tells me how easy it is, so I was confident we could do it.  After trying to install the fans I see now why fans aren't installed in every room.  It was an interesting adventure getting those fans up to say the least... adventure that included trampling around in the attic in 100 degree weather.

Making the hole in the ceiling a little bit bigger...

traipsing around in attic...

finished product!

It works and I'm happy. And not sweaty.

My next project was to recover some particularly awful pillows that came with the couch when Hubby bought it. There are a myriad of pillow cover tutorials online so I chose one of the easiest: the envelope pillow case! (from this super easy tutorial at Rae Gun Ramblings)

 I made the striped accent pillows to go behind our already super awesome turquoise ones (target special!).

I love the look of a million fun patterned pillows on the couch but it makes for a crowded seating area when you're trying to use it for just that: sitting. So, I reluctantly stopped at four pillows on the couch instead of 10.

After the pillow project was completed I went to work on a DIY roman shade for our office window. I am super excited about the way it turned out!

It's an honest to goodness working roman shade made from a super cheap mini blind! Of course from a pinterest found tutorial at 365 days to simplicity blog. Loves it!!

Gallery walls are in style right now and since we have so many picture frames I thought it would be a good idea for us. Luckily, we have a giant blank wall in our hallway that would be perfect for a bunch of frames.

Ours is not 100% done yet, I still want to paint a couple of the frames to make it a little more cohesive. If you attempt to make one, I highly recommend following apartment therapy's recommendations on how to create a gallery wall. The tape measure and masking tape will be your best friends!

Our final project was to figure out what we were going to do with the giant blank wall behind our TV. I had the idea back in Atlanta to decorate with old shutters and we had collected a couple there (Of course we brought them with us!). After showing Hubby some pictures of walls decorated with shutters on pinterest, I had him convinced it would look good to put distressed/weathered shutters on the wall behind the TV. We didn't have enough to cover the wall space so I drove around town to ReStores and Goodwills to find some  more.

We are still trying to decide if we should paint them a color to stand out a little more from the wall. It's a work in progress but I'm happy with how it's shaping up =)

That's it for now but more projects likely to come...

xoxo,