Today I’m packing! I’m headed to Long Beach, CA tomorrow to attend the Juice Plus+ Convention. It is my fourth time going and I’m super excited!!! But, I’m a total stress packer. It is embarrassing how many hours I will spend today gathering things to cram into my suitcase. Totally and completely self absorbing and embarrassing as to how many hours I will spend trying to figure out which shoes to take and what outfits to plan. The hardest thing is the time of year. In between seasons is the hardest time to pack. It is warm in the afternoon, pretty cool at night and then the whole air conditioned conference atmosphere to deal with too!!! A girls worst nightmare!

Shoes

I generally start my packing with shoes. A girl’s feet must be happy, it sets the tone of the day for me. So, I must be fashionable and comfortable. That is why I own 7 pairs of Dansko clogs…ranging from cow, to leopard, to snake to mary janes, etc. I can’t bring them all though. I also am still very much into my fab cowboy boots I splurged on this year…

but, they take of precious cargo space in the suitcase. I’m also thinking it t is also time for the toes to be popping out and I did get a french pedicure yesterday to show off….shoe dilemma unresolved…

Layering

With all the elements I will be exposed to I will need to master the art of layering…more things to take up in the suitcase! The good thing about layering is that you can mix and match the pieces. The difficult thing is that I need to stick with a base color of brown or black. If I do both, then I’m doubling my clothes (and shoes!)….ugh! I think I’m going with grays and black as my base color. Speaking of color I can throw white in there if necessary. I did google “white shoe rules” and it seems they are no longer a big deal as to when you can wear them. You can go with white if you need to. That helps a lot!

Food

I must strategically pack my food. I will need some in my carry on. It is a total flying time of over 7 hours and I will never rely on an airline to provide me a morsel of my subsistence. I will have my Juice Plus+ soft chews with me that will provide me a tasty snack packed with fruit and veggie concentrates, and PB&J and a variety of other snacks. I have made my homemade granola bars, trail mix and bought a bunch of healthy snack foods to take. The conference is so incredible you don’t want to miss any of it so you tend to miss opportunities to get food, so I take loads of stuff in with me. So, yet another section of my suitcase must be dedicated to food. I’d hate to get up to eat and miss out on Bear Gryls!!!

Techy Stuff

I am the official photographer for my team. That equal lugging the Nikon D90 with me. I’m a little worried about this because it has been acting funny lately. I need to get it looked at, but did I? No. I hate to drag the thing out there and then have it not work. But, I love taking pictures so I guess it will go. I also go nowhere without my MacBook. I have anxiety being away from it…seriously….sad situation. Anyway, it will provide me about 3 hours of entertainment on the plane. I can watch a movie, organize my e-mail, pictures, delete crap I don’t need, etc. Productive time. OK, it is going. The poundage with the MacBook and Camera and food in my carry on will put me in the chiropractor’s office a few extra times when I get back. Not to mention I’m going for my pre flight adjustment today.

OK, if you have made it this far in my post I may have stressed you out too! One more thing to add to the list is that I have to go color the gray too! So, I’m off to go color the hair, shower and PACK!!!

Have a blessed day my friends….come back next week and visit when I return from sunny California!

Blowing Rock, NC

This past weekend was declared a girls retreat! Trish and I had much work to do on Seek the Triad. Life’s interruptions have really been challenging the Seek to do list. We packed “the show” up and headed for the NC Mountains. MacBooks, iPhones, and chocolate were at top of the list of things we brought to the precious mountain town of Blowing Rock.

the work gazebo

There was a lovely gazebo in front of our little mountain inn, that did indeed have free Wi-Fi. We set up our mobile office in there and got rocking and rolling. {Ok, we might have eaten a fabulous dinner and done a little shopping first!}

The soothing sound of water!

The soothing sound of this little waterfall next the gazebo was so refreshing!

The view from the work gazebo!

The view was great too!

The country look

Our choice of places to stay was limited due to a art festival that weekend, who knew!  We were not going for pricey and romantic. We settled for a comfortable and reasonably priced motel right off the main road of Blowing Rock. It was clean and comfortable {and had free WiFi), but I did almost pee my pants when we opened the door and Trish declared it a state of “pattern overload”. You know we mentally decorated the room several times over during the weekend.  If I could of I would have painted and distressed all the furniture!

the shelf of tchotchkes

Trish was quite fascinated by this little shelf of “tchotchkes”. The word tchotchkes was cracking us up so of course we googled it and found this from the Urban Dictionary.

“A small piece of worthless crap, a decorative knick knack with little or no purpose. Side note: Chotchkie can be pretty, sentimental, or even occasionally useful though it usually breaks easily if useful. If you are having trouble identifying Tchotchke just look around your house or someone else’s and whatever you see that a burgler wouldn’t steal is probably Tchotchke.”

Oh my the stuff we found on Urban Dictionary was pretty stinking hilarious. If you have time to kill take a look yourself!

Coffee and Scones!

We hit the local coffee shop a few times. However, the first morning we were there a town wide power outage occurred for several hours! It was a town wide hunt for coffee for many that morning. If you saw someone with a cup on the street you were instantly bombarded with a “WHERE DID YOU GET THAT???” I knew instantly that there would be no latte or fancy smancy drinks for this chick. boo hoo. It was drip only with water that was heated on a gas stove! But, a girl has to do what a girl has to do for her morning fix, so I resorted to drip.  sigh.

A little shopping!

The glorious weekend ended with written and scheduled articles, answered e-mails, and we even planned our entire Fundraiser Blasting for Boobs scheduled for November 6th!

We then treated ourselves to a few rugs at Capel and declared it a victorious weekend and headed for home!

It is amazing how a weekend away can do wonders for your soul.  Laughing with girlfriends is so important!  I’m so blessed that God has given me the gift of being able to steal away and get time with awesome women friends!

Boring!

How fast can a girl get a Fall Nesting Party post together for The Inspired Room Party? And yuck like anybody is going to click on my mantle looking like this!

Dressed up window!

Yesterday morning it looked like this. All beachy and still very much doing it for me. But, I knew fall is upon us. Plus, I had just scored this fab window frame for $10 and I was itching to get it a home somewhere in my abode.

blue chippy window frame!

We also just had our family photo done for the first time by a professional photographer Moments Captured by Kelly Renee Photography! She did an awesome job and I had a large photo mounted big one to hang somehwere.

Not quite right

So Monday night, in the middle of cooking dinner {am I totally nutty or what?} I hung the frame and then scoured the house for Command Strips for the picture. I stepped back and thought…BORING. I flipped the burgers and headed to the garage for paint and a brush.

LEttErS

I drew a square inside the frame with a pencil and then painted it white. I then remembered I had bought a bunch of letters from one of my all time favorite haunt’s Mary’s in downtown Greensboro. She has tons of letters from all over the place in all shapes and fonts. I spray painted the “Y” red for fall, but the rest are as is. Today I set the letters into the bottom of the frame and stuck the picture back up.

The beginning of a Fall Mantle Makeover

At 10:02 pm tonight I snapped this picture for the  first step in my Fall Nesting plan. The next step is to sit back and click through all the great links on the party and get some inspiration to finish it off!

Be sure to check out all the great Fall decorating ideas with Melissa at The Inspired Room today!!

Stay tuned here as I evolve into Fall!

It is Sweet Shot Tuesday {yes I am a day late!} over at Life with My 3 Boybarians and I don’t want to miss out on the action. One of my favorite things to photo is my 10 month old Shih Poo names Asher aka Mr. Fuggles.

I took this photo with my iPhone! Yes, I said iPhone. I’ve got a great App on my iPhone called The Best Camera by Chase Jarvis. Chase explains how the best camera you have to use is the phone you have with you. So, if you have a photo op and you don’t have your Mac Daddy camera what are you to do? Use your crack phone in your pocket. Come on we know it is attached to your body 24/7.

The Best Camera App is so easy to use!! You simply pull the picture into the app and then start playing with all the filters, jewel, candy, slate, paris to name a few! You can even stack filters on top of each other! With another touch of your finger you can e-mail and publish to Facebook and Twitter! Powerful App I say.

Mr. Fuggles gets lot of photo and video time in our house. He even stars in his very own commercials lovingly produced by my kids. My iPhone is a mutimedia library for the Fuggelstein.

This is how we roll!

He is very spoiled. He goes everywhere with me! The warm weather has been hard because my wing captain in the mom van is missing. It is too hot to leave him in the car during the day. I’ve been missing him terribly.

I said I would never be a crazy dog lady. I know too many of them who I have poked fun at for quite some time. I fear I am crossing the line. But, there are things that I will not do, like breaking out the Baby Bjorn and carrying him around strapped to my body, yes I know some who does, she might be related to me too.

How about you?  Crazy for your pet?