Almost Gypsy Soul

I'm not even positive that this link up is still active, but alas....I'm doing it anyway! What I'm Loving Wednesday! [ONE] Wintertime activities. Its cold, its dark. Its important to find something to stay active in the winter and I learned to ski last year, so this year I'm honing my skills on my sticks and I'm keeping my snowboard waxed for the big dump that has yet to come. [TWO] Butternut squash. Random you say? I concur. I went to the grocery store tonight, on a mission for avocados, which were way over ripe and $1.50 each.....the perfect replacement? A butternut squash. I put a tiny bit of butter with canola oil and Splenda brown sugar blend....even the dog was beggin' for some veggies!   [THREE] Pull-up assist. I know, I know the word assist is in there. I can do a total of 1 pull-up.....on a good day. BUT, with the assist I can do nearly all of them and I feel like a badass. Plus I feel like if I do more than one assisted I'm get...

Remember that old saying "you don't know what you have until its gone"?  Well I feel it ringing true lately. Although my sentiment is more as its coming back into my life little by little I realize how much I have missed it. All those things that can be found at the end of a dirt road makes my little heart go boom, boom. Since I've became a big kid, I've had to live in town thus making me realize how much I miss the country life. Since I've lost weight and became active again, making me realize how much I miss the outdoors. Its the simple things in life that make me most happy. So what has been making my heart go boom, boom the last few months? Branding Jello Shots and all day horseback rides Playing with puppies for hours! Singletrack Shipping calves Spending the day hunting with The Retired Guy

and the best thing in the world. I've never lived someplace where I can "just go shopping" and that is ok with me. Actually its more than ok with me. I have a Wal-Mart now and I just despise the place. I usually choose spending more on groceries just for the opportunity to forego Wal-Mart, which I lovingly refer to as Hell. Since I turned off my tv for the summer, I browse on the interweb alot more. And the other day browsing turned into buying. damnit. but I got some pretty cute things. Etsy and Amazon....pure evil I tell you! This is my first accidental purchase of last week. I've lately become obsessed with arrows and feathers and this is just so dang cute! $20 at MDspark's Etsy shop, I just couldn't pass it up! And then my feather AND arrow purchase. I bought Loretta back in February and we are still sporting the cheesy plastic tab key ring. I thought to myself I could make that...I'll just run to the craft store until I ...

[Linking up with Jamie for What I'm Loving Wednesday] This carpet shampooer that Tylie bought me a few months ago. She musta ate something bad and it was put to good use and that is all the detail I will provide for your reading pleasure. These impulse buy Ariat shoes at the National High School Finals Rodeo trade show....so comfy and don't make my feet look huge......huge bonus points for them! All the fun folks that I re-connected with at the NHSFR and the new ones too. I think next year I might have to take the week off to keep up with them! Sunday afternoon naps after a long week of pretending I'm still a youngin' AND a big kid (going to work). ZZZZZZZZZZZZ What are you loving this Wednesday?

 [Linking up with Jamie for What I'm Loving Wednesday] I'm LOVING my Colorado Transplant Friend and pottery! My Colorado Transplant Friend gave me an awesome 30th birthday gift! We made our own pottery pieces at a cute little place called Pottery From the Heart over in Green River. At Pottery From the Heart you pick your own piece of raw pottery from their collection and then get your creative on and start painting. If you plan ahead you can order in pretty much any piece that you want to decorate. It was pretty hard to even decide what I wanted to make. I finally settled on a casserole dish (I know my OK boys are pretty surprised that I would choose something to do with a casserole, hey casseroles are good for the soul) and Katie chose a really big platter. We can't wait to have a get together to cook in our new dishes!   All finished and ready to be fired. We can pick up our finished pieces in 3-5 days and I.can't.wait. to see the finished product! ...

[Linking up with Jamie at  This Kind of Love for What I'm Loving Wednesday!] One kind word can warm three winter months. ~Japanese Proverb I'm LOVING..........Winter I love winter! but I hate shoveling snow. As it snowed around here (finally AND 2 days in a row!), I thought about my hatred for shoveling snow....I think if it were either light before I went to work or after I got home, maybe shoveling wouldn't be so bad. So snow and winter go hand-in-hand, how can I love winter if I don't like shoveling snow?   Playing in it of course! Christmas markets, throwing snowballs, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, sleigh rides, hot tubbing, cabins and fireplaces, hot snock-o-late, big snowflakes, crisp untouched fields blanketed in fresh snow. It's a clean slate and I love it! Have a great winter and enjoy all it has to offer! Here is a picture I took a while back my way home from snowboarding at Beaver Mountain, Utah (a great little ski area btw). This is...

[Linking up with Jamie for What I'm Loving Wednesday] A few years back, OKTrailerPark Friend and Snowboard Friend and I went to Canyons in Utah for a girls weekend. We had a slope side condo, reduced price lift tickets, wine and the resort swimming pool. Now when we vacation we do it up right. We snowboarded and rode the alpine slide by day and by night we soaked in the pool, wore sweatpants, cooked dinner in our condo, played cards, drank wine and watched this YouTube video....over and over and over and over. the.best.ab.workout.ever. Whenever I'm having a sub-par day, I pull this video out. I mean I do have it favorited on my work computer even! If this video doesn't make you laugh, go to the emergency room NOW! Here is a little note from Ed and Ross's mom, who posted the video. As you can read Ed and Ross were best friends! PLEASE NOTE..... THESE CLIPS WERE TAKEN OVER A PERIOD OF 18 MONTHS.... ED WAS A VERY GOOD BOY MOST OF THE TIME.... I HAVE HOURS ...

[Linking up with Jamie at This Kind of Love for What I'm Loving Wednesday ] I'm LOVING ....... these Super Bowl commercials. You might have to pause the awesome tunes to get the full effect of these commercials!   My first Dodge was a 1/64 scale red single cab Ram 2500. It sat on my dresser when I was 16. My second Dodge was a red single cab Ram 2500 circa 1994 and it still sits in my driveway. I love Dodge and I love this commercial. These are the people that makes the world go 'round. Thank God for farmers and ranchers. Ahh....freaking cute and I love how it shows how close man and animal really can be! Hands down, Dodge's God Made a Farmer nailed it, but Budweiser's Brotherhood commercial is running a photo finish second in my book.

[Linking up with Jamie at  This Kind of Love for What I'm Loving Wednesday!] I'm LOVING ......Pinterest successes, kiddos, friends on the big screen & beautiful winter days These recipes from Pinterest were huge successes! I'll be blogging about them separately coming up, so stay tuned for the cooks secrets! Pork Green Chile, Cinnamon Almonds, and Malibu Chicken....mmmmmm. AND ....babysitting these kiddos. They are so cute and good little guy and gal. Aunt Jen is pretty proud! They are both pretty big fans of dancing around the living room to Cross Canadian Ra gwee d....that B-I- N-G-O doesn't h old a candle to CCR !   AND .......watching an old Sam Elliott flick and seeing Oklahoma Cowboy in it. My friend Oklahoma Cowboy has been in several movies, mostly as a stunt guy for horseback scenes. I still get excited when I see him in a movie that I didn't know he was in......like Rough Riders that I watched this weekend. He's somewhat of a...

[Linking up with Jamie at  This Kind of Love for What I'm Loving Wednesday!] I'M LOVING..................I Brake for Yard Sales (An HGTV show from Lara Spencer, a GMA host) "Hoarders are welcome." ~ Lara, on finding the best yard sales So I might watch too much TV since this is this is the second tv show that I have written about for WILW.....sue me. Lara re-decorates for her friends and family refinishing, reusing and re-purposing yard sale, thrift stores, estate sales and dumpster items. There wasn't any dumpster diving on this episode and I can't even tell you how much disappointment I will have if she doesn't pull something out of the dumpster on this season's show! She loves garage sale-ing so much she wrote a book about it! I LOVE people who are so creative and can turn junk into masterpieces, especially in the name of saving some moo-lah. However, as with most HGTV shows that are all about re-purposing junk....still WAY out of my pri...

[Linking up with Jamie at  This Kind of Love for What I'm Loving Wednesday!] I'm LOVING.......Dolvett and The Biggest Loser "Sometimes you gotta go through hell to get to heaven" ~Dolvett She's back and she has 2 years of pent up rage at obesity and she let'er fly Sunday night in the season premiere of the The Biggest Loser. First workout, kicked 3 people out of the gym. By the end of the show her team was down to 3 players.....out of 5. Jillian Michaels is back! Nikki quit the show and TC was sent home because the white team lost the weigh in and he had the lowest percentage of weight loss. TC was in the running to be one of my favorites because of his absolutely heart wrenching back story. I hope he is successful in his weight loss journey at home. I'm not quite sure that I agree with the kids being on there and there not being any eliminations for them. I believe that kids need to learn to lose just as much as anything that we should lea...