Friday, December 27, 2013

Christmas Confessions...........

Merry Christmas

~I love Christmas. I can articulate just about anything, but my love for this season?? can't even begin to express it.

 ~channel surfing the radio during my commute to work left me annoyed because there was nothing but Christmas tunes playing on every station. Appropriate, I guess, but I'm all christmas-musiced-out and I want my jams back.


~I worked Christmas and I volunteered to do it. Not for the Holiday pay, not for the double portion of the goodie trays left at the office (although they help sweeten the shift, pun intended!) or the brownie points from the boss for taking the shift. I did because my coworker has toddlers and I wanted her to make pancakes and open presents in her pajamas with their sweet little faces.


~ the breakfast that our family has enjoyed every Christmas morning since I was born tastes every bit as good microwaved for supper. because it's not the cheesy-oniony-hammy-eggy goodness that makes Christmas special, it's being sandwiched between my brothers and sisters.

~ I've heard that appliances are a no-no for girls at Christmas, but let me go on the record right now and say this; dear future-male-in-my-life; I will not be upset if you give me a blender, pan set, kuerig or an apron for Christmas.


~ it's a white Christmas in Kansas this year. pretty much ridiculous how happy this makes me.

~the 'worst' Christmas I can remember involved waiting until after 8pm to open our Christmas presents. In the life of an 8 year old, it felt oh-so-traumatic. As an adult looking back over years of happy, healthy Christmases............I am truly blessed.

~chocolate and Christams go hand-in-hand. I will arm wrestle you for the peanut clusters.

~Christmas is the hardest day of the year for scores and scores of people. I don't want to be oblivious to this. How can I stem the pain and agony in the lives around me?? I don't want to be so wrapped up in my celebration that I miss the hurting around me.

What's your Christmas confession?? 

Friday, December 20, 2013

Six things Saturday.

It happened again! Friday got away from me so my five things Friday turned into Six things Saturday. But hey, means I get to talk more so I'm down. :)

1. 'Tis the season to slooooow down! After a super aggressive these past few months, I had some extra down time this week which was amazing. I probably should have gotten more things crossed off my non-work-related to-do list, but when there is coffee to be drunk, twinkle lights to admire and Ellen to watch on youtube, who has time for laundry? 

2. Extra time off works also means extra time to hang out with the littlest brother..........who is growing up way too fast!! We were celebrating his last day of school before Christmas break..........and planning fun things to do while he is school free these next two weeks. 

3. My fb newsfeed has been blown up all week with commentary on the Phil Robertson debacle..........am I the only one who is completely disinterested in joining in the online debate of such subjects?? I'd much rather sit down with a friend and have a mature (i.e. loving!) conversation pertaining to a controversial subject than stir the pot on social media. 

4. Gingerbread addiction meets Christmas ornament love. Can you believe this little maid even smelled like gingerbread?? Gosh, I need one to hang in my house tree or no tree.


5. My coed volleyball team played for the championship this week.............and we won!!! It has been a blast to get to play regularly lately and the season ended without any of my teammates wanting to strangle me.......at least not that I heard. :) I tend to live in blissful denial of my competitive streak but this season has reminded me just how strong it really is. 

6. Last week was  particularly difficult in that it brought the sale of our family farm. My eldest sister, who is an amazing writer and photographer wrote a beautiful tribute to our home place and her photos are unreal. I loved her thoughts -so beautiful and fitting! it wasn't just any place- it was ours

Favorite Christmas ornament??

Yay or nay for team sports? 

Monday, December 16, 2013

beautiful Monday.

another beautiful day is here. 

Beautiful because it is new.
Beautiful because it is a gift. 
Beautiful because it is ours to enjoy.

there is beauty to be found everywhere. start looking for beauty and you will find it. 

Today I find beauty in..........

random conversations with my sister.

family, and the privilege of being an Aunt. 


snowman humor.


super delicious snacks.


best friends who never cease to make life 100x better, even if they do have to leave too soon.


God's Word, perfectly applicable to each new day.

What's beautiful in your Monday??

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Happy Birthday................to Me.

Dear Curly Pink Runner,

 Happy Birthday. 

That was one crazy year. 

 I can think of some other adjectives that would also apply, but let's keep this positive.  Do normal people write letters to themselves? Probably no.........but screw normal. Let's be fabulous instead and fabulous people always write letters to themselves. 

You're becoming a really beautiful person. I see growth. I see diligence. I see honesty. I see second chances given and second chances taken. I see joy. I see a passion for life, an unwillingness to be mediocre. I see amazing things in store for you this year. #getafterit. 
You're 22, but not feeling it. At least not in the way TSwifty does. Enjoy it. You only get to be 22 once, so keep these things in mind as you celebrate today and look forward to another year. 

1. You can always find a reason to quit. Don't. And if perhaps, in a weak moment, you give up; START OVER.

2. Don't assume that just because you give the best of yourself to someone, they are giving you their best. Yes, that can be as painful as it sounds. The goods news?? You will never regret honest, selfless investment in any friendship. 

3. Always try to see the situation from the other person's perspective but be prepared to find that A. you are wrong or B. you really, really hate their perspective.

4. There is a difference between working hard and over working. Working hard makes you productive, motivated and inspired. Over working erases your vision, drains you and leaves you  feeling hopeless.

5. Always have a Plan B, and when in doubt, start working on Plan C. 


6. Sometimes all you need is a good long hug. Don't be afraid to ask for one.

7. A little bit of love can go a long freaking way.

8. Your recorded voice is honestly the worst possible sound on the face of the earth. Kudos for choosing a profession that requires you to talk virtually non-stop on the radio or phone. Repeat after me; "if only they could see my face."


9. Keep a real spoon in your car, because chobani tastes better off of real metal. Or more honestly; some days you are just going to need a pint of chocolate cookie chaos on your way home from work and trying to eat it with a plastic spoon is infuriating.

10. Those texts that you wanted to send at 3 in the morning; I'm so very glad you didn't.

11. Your 'no button' is just like a muscle. The more you use it, the easier it is to use it.

12. There were weeks that you cried every single day. Those weeks made you a stronger person. Tears are not a sign of weakness, they are an invitation for greatness. 

13. When you leave work after a 13 hour shift, and STILL wish you  could stay just one more hour; that's when you know you're in the right profession.

14. Never ruin a good apology with an excuse.

15. Start keeping a spare pair of running socks in your gym bag, because you ALWAYS forget them when you're prepping for the day. Socks are a deal breaker for running.

16. You ate too many doughnuts this year. Shall we keep it in the double digits this year?? Yes. Definitely yes.

never let a problem to be solved become more important than person to be loved
17. Thank you for always putting people first- before work, before pleasure, before 'being right',  before success. You will never regret that priority scheme. Keep it up.

18. If you can't resist using the internet to unnecessarily compare yourself to other people and forthwith feel condemned and sub-par, I WILL suspend your internet privileges. Take note! 

19. 60% of your decisions are made based on your selfishness disguised as goodness. Don't fool yourself.

20. Sometimes you just need to zip your lips and stop talking. 9 times out of 10, you're not going to solve the problem with your babble, so mums the word.  Stop talking, stop thinking; just be. 

21. It's probably time to retire the sparkly eye-shadow. (Translation; you're old.)

failing
22. Failing is only forever if you quit.

This year was absolutely nothing like you thought it was going to be..........no, indeed. 
It was so much more. Sometimes our best laid plans and ideas can't hold a candle to how life happens. It has not been all roses and butterflies. Life threw some cannonballs in your path, but you kept going. I'm proud of you. 

Let's kick some 22 year old booty this year.
 Less expectations, more enthusiasm. Do all things with love. 
xoxo Curly Pink Runner

Friday, December 13, 2013

Five Things Friday.

1. I cannot take credit for this snowman, but I have a major snowman crush on him. This guy may or may not make an appearance in my yard before the snow melts.

2. Any Vine addicts out there?? I browse through them when I need a laugh and sooner or later will happen across a real gem. I saved you some time and found the best vine for you. If you never watch another Vine-- watch this one first!!! I tried to embed the video and unfortunately am entirely too technologically challenged to accomplish this task........follow the link and laugh until you cry or we cannot be friends!! :)


3. I had to update some passwords on my workstations last week, which seemed totally harmless until after the fact. I realized that I traditionally turn these passwords over to my supervisor..........and I immediately had to go back and change them all to be work appropriate. Word to the wise; do not create passwords that reveal who you love, who you hate, and what you plan to do with their bodies.


4. What?!??! Gingerbread m&m's??!?! shut the front door. Someone tell me where I can find these! 


5. This song was written before I was born but I LOVE it. Oh my gosh......on repeat from Thanksgiving to New Years with tears every time it comes on!! Sometimes a song says it better than anything else could. 

Do you use the same passwords for multiple accounts or create a new one each time?

When was the last time you made a snowman? 

Monday, December 9, 2013

Honest Monday.


honestly.............on a scale of 1-10, my breakfast this morning was a -6. I had oatmeal, which is my ultimate favorite but apparently I can botch a bowl of oatmeal like a boss. Glad that's over. 

honestly.........kindness is underrated. Do small things to bring joy. Go the extra mile. Think twice before you speak. kindness if never a waste of your time.

honestly....I had my fingers crossed that K-State would get Nebraska for their bowl game, but no such luck. watch out Michigan- we're coming for you! 

honestly........yesterday a male coworker of mine posed the question "since when did someone decide it was cute to wear cowboy boots with sundresses?" which lead me to believe I'm not the only one who is not on board with that trend. If  "I'm going to ride a horse" and "I'm going on a date" had a baby, that would be it and clearly some people should not reproduce. 

honestly...........I've been drafting a post for the past several weeks and I'm too chicken to post it. Send me some brave, courageous vibes please and thank you. 

honestly........am I the only person who gets lost on the Huffington Post. I swear it's a worse time suck than Facebook. According to my lengthy perusal this morning; pessimism can add days to your life, 97 year olds write really thought provoking birthday cards to the world, breaking a sweat can boost your creativity and I'm not the only person who thinks Gavin DeGraw's "Best I Ever Had" is a super workout tune. 


honestly......................I love Mondays. too much love to contain. so I'm sharing. go forth and be merry. 

honestly.......procrastinating on my car purchase is starting to get embarrassing. On the bright side, I'm getting more miles out of my current wheels than I anticipated.  

honestly.......I haven't started my Christmas shopping yet. not one single purchase. This may not be all that unusual, except I'm typically done by October 1st. 


honestly, even I get stunned by my OCD sometimes. It's not enough that I use tabs instead of windows so that my computer isn't cluttered up..........I have to organize my tabs alphabetically. google chrome you enabler you. 

honestly.........I wasn't thrilled when the owner of the consignment shop told me she was rejecting my contributions because they were a 'more mature style' than they wanted to sell. ouch. I will take my across the street to "Grandma's Closet" instead.

honestly.......I don't like to toot my own horn BUT- I've been setting all kinds of records for the most time spent on Instagram. I'm not sure if I should expect a medal or free stuff for Instagram or an intervention from my family into Instagrammers Anonymous. 
honestly................this is what my Christmas tree will be looking like this year......if I don't eat the cherry tomatoes first. Thanks to the buckets of photos of stunning trees flooding my facebook and instagram feeds, I don't even feel like I'm missing out on setting up my own tree. 

honestly...........this post reminds me of my kitchen junk drawer. Just all the random bits floating through my mind that don't really belong anywhere else. I'm uncommonly attached to my junk drawer because it holds all the goodies that I use most often and more often than not, spare pieces of dark chocolate which are applicable in any situation. 

honestly..........I'm feeling nosy about YOUR Monday. What are you feeling today?? 

be brave & smile often. 
xoxo Curly Pink Runner

Sunday, December 8, 2013

start the celebration.

I'm guilty of rushing. And since I don't play pro football, this has no advantage in my life. 

Scarfing down meals so fast I couldn't tell you what I ate 6 hours later, and if I can it would be solely because I'm a food lover; not because I took time to inspect, chew and swallow.

 Speed texting to the point of countless auto corrects  in every other message.

 Skimming pages for the bare minimum information instead of actually reading.

Forgetting things that I would normally never forget. For example; whether or not I brushed my teeth.....thankfully I have my breath to remind me. (ew? tmi? you tell me.)

Watching a football game only to completely forget the score the second I flip the channel. Who was I watching?? New England who?? 

:)

At the end of our lives it's the big letter moments that we remember and hold dear.
Relationships. Achievements. Victories.
It's like a real-life version of connect-the-dots.
The dots are the milestones.

graduating from college.
your first boyfriend.
the hard earned promotion at work.
your summer spent studying in Spain.
your wedding day.

But the picture isn't made up of the dots. The dots alone tell an incomplete story.

The dots are the skeleton frame of our life, the meat and muscle to the body are found in the connections.
The mundane, trivial pieces of our lives-- the daily trips to the gym, our 345th bowl of oatmeal for the year, random text message conversation between you and your sorority sisters, quiet moments spent with our loved ones, bad jokes over the water cooler at work,-- that's how our lives are spent. We can rush and barrel our way through life, hopping from task to task but if we do- we'll arrive at the end of our days having lived just a fraction of what our life could have been.



I eat countless snacks and small meals a day. It takes no brain and no time to throw it down on a paper towel and make that food disappear.


Or we can create beauty.
(Plates are a nice touch, especially because they allow for mustard for dipping.)

We can make the most of the simple.
We can stop the glorification of BUSY and start the celebration of LIVING.

Do you slow down to make the most of the little things?

What is one mundane activity you can find beauty in this week?

Friday, December 6, 2013

Five things Friday.

1.  I don't wear orange. No coral, no peach, no tangerine. To quote one amazing woman-- "I will not wear that gaudy orange.......it's not in my color wheel". (holler if you know who I'm quoting!) It's hunting season, which means I bust out the blaze with pride and glory but at the end of the day; I HATE WEARING ORANGE. 

2. The words  "look at me, I've survived cyber Monday without spending a dime"  were leaving my mouth while I hit up Instagram. Famous last words. Quest bar deliciousness for a steal of a deal........I caved. 2 boxes of Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars for the win. Still not easy on the wallet, but certainly better than normal.

BHAHHAHAHA this is so true...
3. Own it- we've all do it. I have won so many brilliantly scripted arguments in the shower, I should get a medal. It's just freeing. Unfortunately, my memory can't always remember the difference between the real-life argument and the fake arguments.  A friend of mine and I have an ongoing argument, completely in jest in which I am almost always the loser in person, but come back and utterly dominate in my reruns. In this weeks installment, I confused my (fake) winning round with real life and 1/2 way into the argument had to eat even more humble pie when I realized my previous 4 or 5 statements were formed in between coats of conditioner. Uh, uh, oops. 

4.  My niece is the sweetest 3 year old ever. While celebrating Thanksgiving with them, she shared her bed with me while she slept in a nest on the floor. She went to bed before I did, but when I went in for the night, I found that she had turned down the bed and left me with a selection of her favorite dollies. Melt. my. heart.

5. I've been getting lost on pinterest this week searching for a couple new recipes to try when I make my Christmas goodie trays. It's good thing browsing pinterest is calorie free because the treats I will be making are NOT. 

What color(s) do you never wear?

What was your best cyber Monday deal?

Any must make goodies I should include in my 


Thursday, December 5, 2013

Did someone say December?

December has arrived!! the 12th month = the best month!! This year flew with lightening speed and it's difficult to believe that we're closing in on the end of 2013. As we get ready to usher in a new year, I'm excited for the things this month will hold! 

Things I'm looking forward to this month:

~snow

~starbucks holiday drinks

~freezing runs

~Josh Groban's CD on repeat

~deer hunting 

~holiday baking (and eating)

~extra hugs from friends and loved ones
~crazy shifts at work thanks to bad weather & trashed roads
~my birthday (holler all you December babies)
~Christmas cards
~extra family time
~work parties 
~setting new goals for next year

Things I'm not looking forward to this month;
~taxes
~scraping my windshield
~wearing socks
~working on Christmas
~ slush and mud and a perpetually dirty car

What are you looking forward to this month?

What is your favorite month of the year?