Almost Gypsy Soul

I've seen this idea floating around lately, but never took the time to watch the video until a few days ago. How I think of myself: chunky, round red face, stringy boring brown hair, trying to hide from reality, lonely, not quite getting the whole big kid life thing quite right. I wonder what my purpose and place is in life. As I floated over this commercial without watching it and talked to a few people who hadn't seen me in a while, they made comments that made me think.....I'm more beautiful than I think I am, inside and out. Comments like "Do you ever stop smiling?" or "You are the only person who is still smiling after 2 days of training, looking at a 4 hour drive home".  I don't really know about the physical attributes and what others think of those, but honestly I think those physical attributes often are brightened, made shiny, and more attractive by what we have inside, what we do for others, how we conduct ourselves. “I should

I'm not a big Carrie Underwood fan, in fact I'm not a fan at all. Although, I could never really put my thoughts into publishable words.....Mal the Beef Gal......She can and did. Her blog even got a response from Carrie herself.....you can bet I'll be watching to see where this discussion goes...... To read about her Beef with Carrie Underwood , check out her blog! And apparently Carrie read it too, to find out more about that click here Mending Fences .

So to get 2 birds with 1 blog, I'm combining the last part of California Girls with Soul Food Friday. Soul Food Friday is the linkup I will host on the 4th Friday of the month to which I was pleasantly surprised to have 2 linkers for the very first edition! So join the fun, tell us what feeds your soul! Anything that motivates you, speaks to you or generally gets you excited about life.....share it at Soul Food Friday ! (get your badge at the bottom of my page :)) My Soul Food is PICTURESQUE LANDSCAPES + WINE + OLD FRIENDS = SOUL FOOD California Mom, California Sister, California Girl and I jumped into the Mercedes Benz and met California Aunt down at Orfila Winery near Escondido, CA. What a beautiful place! We took a free tour of the 74 acre winery, drank wine on the patio, ate bread and cheese and no visit would be complete without meeting the Head Winer (not to be confused with whiner, I mean who would whine about that job) Ok, so they are actually called vintner bu

After leaving San Francisco, I headed down to southern CA to visit California Girl and her family. Even though the weather was less than desirable, it was what I still considered wonderful! Besides for eating like a queen in southern Cali, we hit up the hiking trails between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach to burn off a few calories and catch a great view of the Pacific Ocean. We knocked out about 3.5 miles with an amazing view of an overcast Pacific Ocean. I can't even imagine how HOT it gets in the canyon in the summer, because it was cool and I was sweatin' up a storm. Sea level yes, but this place had some real mountain hills! 

After getting out of the meetings on Saturday, I was planning on renting a bike and heading across the Golden Gate Bridge, pedal style. After trying to convince a few fellow NASCOE'ers to go with me I was resigned to the fact that I would be pedaling alone. Then Brandon decided that he would like to go too, if I would wait for me....um yeah! way better than going alone! As we were walking down to the bike rental place on the Wharf, I find out he is actually a legit mountain biker.....crap. 20 miles later....double crap. We had a great trip across the bridge and down to Sausalito, CA, a cute little bayside town. We fueled up with some ice cream and a little stroll around town before heading back across the bridge. The bridge was very busy and very windy so we didn't really stop on the bridge, plus the bicycle side of it was the ocean side and just wasn't THE picture. Of course this is the only way that I experienced the Golden Gate Bridge, but in my expert opinion, th

Luckily for me, NASCOE (National Association of County Office Employees) is NOT all work and no play. We make sure to save time for work too as I was in meetings all day on Friday and half of Saturday. The meetings were good and provided some insight on the challenges that we have been facing throughout the last few years and continue to face as we move forward during this uncertain budget climate facing our country. Which brings us to Alcatraz, which used to be a military base and then a federal penitentiary that was closed due to failing infrastructure and budgetary shortfalls. Now this famous island is a national park and gives an awesome tour and history lesson. They have a sweet audio tour, complete with 1990s headphones. The tour includes narration by 3 prisoners and 3 guards that lived and worked at Alcatraz. Alcatraz housed the worst of the worst and included Al Capone. His great niece happened to be at the prison, autographing her book, Uncle Al Capone.....Can you believe th

well......kinda, I'm not exactly the shape of acceptable California girls, but whooo-wee, that warm sun shining on my face when I stepped off the plane in Long Beach......maybe I could do 8 hour Biggest Loser workouts in addition to working full-time. And maybe..... maybe   getting up at 4 am 4.30 am was worth it. Not a mph of wind or a flake of snow in sight....{sigh} I'm one happy girl right now [ignoring the fact I'm stuck inside on a flight layover until my final destination] So just in case you missed it, I am in California for a whole week! The first 3.5 days are for a employees association of which I am the lone Wyoming delegate (and no your federal tax dollars are not paying for this trip). Luckily for me, I found time away from touristing long enough on other NASCOE trips to make some new friends from other states so I won't be on my own all week. My partner in crime had a family emergency and had to cancel her trip at the last minute. After my place of empl

The art of living with style, class and grace. I feel like if you truly have Hepburn tendencies this book is pretty common sense however, its always a good reminder of how we should be acting. Especially in a world that is very much Hilton all around us, its easy to forget Hepburn and fall into line with the Hilton world. A few of my favorite quotes and ideas from the book to get you hooked.... Don't rely on somone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. I often struggle with this. Every year or so I feel the tugging to shake everything up, new job, new location, new priorities etc. The next time we're confronted with a sticky situation, we need to ask ourselves - is this really what I want to be remembered for? Is this what I want my kids to remember me for? My parents? My grandchildren? With the internet and accessibility of information, we need to be even more conscious of this. Mistakes find it much easier to follow us f

I'm Back!  and I know you all missed me like crazy! Remember those shirts that proudly proclaimed the level of unluckiness back in the day? Those ones that said "My so'n'so went to _______ and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" Well, I went on vacation and no one even got a lousy t-shirt. I did however have an awesome time in California, both San Fransisco and Huntington Beach. My week was filled with lots of action and I'll list 'em out for you so you know what you have to look forward in my little vacation series that will be coming up....maybe next week, yep that will be my goal. Gotta ease back into this work thing first. In San Fransisco I was a busy girl. I didn't do to well on the list of resturants that Football Fan gave me, but I didn't have a single thing that wasn't absolutely amazing! I was so busy that when I needed to eat, I needed to eat and I didn't always feel like trying to locate one of the amazing recommendations...

for a minute week. Wishin' I was Knee deep in the water somewhere got the blue sky, breeze and it don't seem fair the only worry in the world is the tide gonna reach my chair Sunrise, there's a fire in the sky never been so happy never felt so high and I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise I'll be going to our employee's assocaition "All-West Rally" meeting in San Fransisco, CA complete with a little sight seeing at a new place. I've never been to San Fran, but I'm armed with the must see lists from Football Fan . Things that are certain on my list are: riding a streetcar Alcatraz biking the Golden Gate bridge running Fisherman's Wharf eating as much yummy food as I can fit in my tummy! After the conference wraps up, I'm off to Huntington Beach, CA to spend a few days with a special family. I met them working at Waunita Hot Springs Ranch, where they would vacation every year. I am so ready f

Apparently I missed the memo when I moved to Rock Springs, but it must be an unspoken rule that one who lives in Rock Springs must rock the blow up yard decorations. I seriously think  I am the ONLY house that doesn't sport these hideous, atrocious creations. One would think that maybe these monstrosities would show their ugly face only at the BIG holidays, but no, not my neighborhood....every single holiday is equally important enough to have its very own blow up decoration! So I challenge my neighbors to see if they have a different blow up decoration every single month for a year! They don't technically know about this challenge because I don't technically even know them, but I don't feel like you need to know someone to challenge them! I actually missed the March decorations with the camera so you will have to wait a whole year to see them! So we will start this challenge now........ April blow up decorations......   I hope that everyone had a

This quarter's collection of Far-away Friends will feature all my far-away families. Even if it started out as friendship of one, it turned into the entire family. I can't imagine my life without every single person that makes up each of these families. If you remember from earlier in my blog, Cowboy family are the ones that introduced me to Stretch , one of my good friends and one of my favorite roommates ever! Cowboy Family are some of the best people you will ever meet! They are hardworking, honest, caring, salt of the earth people. Nothing is more important to them than family (they celebrated 35 years of marriage this week!), friends, ranching, working hard and playing hard. Some of my favorite memories are with Cowboy Family, they live in one of the toughest, most beautiful parts of Colorado. Cowboy Family has grown over the last few years with Cowboy #1 getting married and having a little girl and another on the way. Cowboy #3 got married and have the cutest l

So my new blogging friend, the Prairie Princess , has been doing a linkup lately, and I thought it was high time that I joined up with this one! Its OK Thursday with Amber! IT'S OK................ .....that I was negative my daily calories (as in I ate 2x as many calories as I'm supposed to in one day) in my fitness pal on Saturday. Buffalo Wild Wings and Papa Johns will do that to a girl! ......that all I can think about is the sandy beach and friends that are waiting for me in CA in 6 days ......that I listened to the same 21 songs for my 3 hour drive on Sunday ......that I am not particularly excited about work lately ......that I am extremely frustrated with losing weight ......that my cowhide stool project is totally NOT going according to the plan in my head ......that my house manages to stay a disaster regardless of how many days I clean .......that I'm already looking forward to Red Dirt at Red Rocks concert.....a full 2 months away .......th

You can read about my first house here . The laundry room was pretty much the last priority on the list, but when Momma came up to help finish up a few projects, we got this one tackled on a whim. I had gotten an extra cabinet from when we remodeled my kitchen because they sent the wrong color. Because my laundry room is on the smaller side, I needed some extra room to fold my laundry. I already had my washer and dryer so that saved me a lot of money. I completed this room for about $200 (most of this was carpet). I had to use the carpet because the concrete floor had settled and was too uneven for tile or laminate. Here is my new and improved laundry room! If anyone wants to come try it out it seems as I always have an overflowing laundry shoot!

I've been to Idaho so naturally I felt like I should try out the recipe. And The Retired Guy's wife has chickens. Chickens that lay approximately 28 eggs per day. Yes folks, per day. Everyone that knows Retired Guy and his wife, they have high cholesterol. But this recipe is ideal for folks that have been to Idaho and have an over abundance of eggs in the fridge. I'll warn you that scooping out those taters was not as easy as I thought it would be.....maybe its because I'm not a real Idahoan? Anyway that little bit of info explains the aluminum foil boats that my taters are cooking in. via Our Best Bites blog Yup! I NAILED it! Well maybe I need to practice one more time.

Hello again constant reader/listener.   They say April showers bring May flowers, but if my rain dances don’t start working it’s going to be a long summer, so everyone start rain dancing.   Oh, I’m supposed to do some kind of playlist thing, right?   Ok, ok! I was told that I cannot disappoint this month, because last month was a big hit.   Yet still, I am getting off the red dirt road and heading in a different direction, so don’t hate, just accept. This is the time of year that farmers and ranchers start to think about getting some crops in the ground and praying for rain, unless you live in western Wyoming, we can hold off on that thinking for a few more weeks.   Ranchers have calves on the ground and will soon be heating up the branding irons and sending the cows to the spring/summer range.   So, this playlist is dedicated to the hard working men and women of the agricultural community. First is a song that was written after a Farm Aid concert; The Rain Came Down,