Velvet-Rose.net

Birthdayness

Julie — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:33:03 +0000

Yep I just had a birthday, well, it has been a few weeks now. It was April 13th, yes on a Friday. I turned 29. And I will stay 29 for all future birthdays. No more aging, right? Heh.

My Mom came to visit for my birthday and it was super exciting. She managed to find a good deal on a flight a few weeks before so I went and took a few days off and she came to visit. There was only one ticket left according to that deal but Dad didn’t have the time off anyway so he probably wouldn’t have been able to make it.

Mom arrived Thursday late morning so we (me, hubby, and Mom) went to lunch straight from the airport to a Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant called Cafe 121 right by where I work that I like a lot but rarely end up being able to go to for lunch. I love their honey chicken vermicelli lunch. I also got to show her my lovely drive to work down Chimney Rock Rd and all the nice houses and pretty trees. After that we went home and hung out/relaxed/unpacked for a while. Then we went to dinner at Kublai Khan stir fry and I got to have my free birthday bowl.

Friday we spent the day lazying about and took the dogs to the dog park. It was a lovely day, not too hot yet so we got to enjoy being outside in Houston and the dogs got to swim in the dog pond. Mom seems to really like our new doggie so that’s great. Diesel climbed up and cuddled with her on the couch like he does with me and that is just the best thing ever. Love my Diesel dog. Since Friday was my actual birthday, in the evening we had dinner plans. We went to Aladdin’s Mediterranean Restaurant cause it is awesome. Only two of my friends were able to make it (and their hubby/fiance) so it was the 7 of us for dinner. We were able to get them to clean out their little private room so we could have a little private party when I told them it was my birthday. It was awesome. Their private room is all decorated with Mediterranean stuff. I took some fun pictures so check them out on Facebook. After dinner we went to Amy’s Ice Cream which was also super awesome. Their flavors and mixes are really unique. I had a really awesome birthday. I’m also happy that my Mom got to meet some of my closest friends.

Saturday Mom and I went shopping, cause that’s what we do! Then for dinner we went to Hikari Sushi, which is the awesomest sushi place ever. They have a huge menu and their sushi is usually topped with special sauces (I haven’t seen these options anywhere else). We ended up ordering 7 rolls between the 3 of us. It was insane. But yummy. I took some pictures there as well.

Sunday was Mom’s last full day so it was more low key with eating at home and the only outing was to watch a movie. We saw Mirror Mirror. It was cute and sometimes a little weird but we liked it.

Mom’s flight home was early Monday morning so I dropped her off on my way to work. Only that day the lovely weather ended and we had a hugemongous storm. Visibility was bad and it was kinda scary driving around. The weird thing is after I got her checked in and walked her to security and said good-bye, the storm stopped and it was clear and nice when I left the parking garage. Go figure.

So, awesome birthday, really glad Mom was able to visit, great food and lots of fun. Ok that’s my birthday update

downtime

Julie — Thu, 03 May 2012 13:14:45 +0000

So this website was down for a bit there and I found out it is because the person hosting this space was waiting for someone to pay a bill so didn’t pay her own hosting bill. Can we say ridiculous? If I wasn’t being hosted by a friend (who is buying the hosting from this person who didn’t pay the bill) I’d probably leave and go somewhere else. But I have a really good deal (aka my hosting package is cheap) and moving somewhere else would be more expensive. *SIGH* I just hope it doesn’t happen again.

Making the Front Yard Pretty, version 2012

Julie — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:48:33 +0000

So it seems like every spring we try to pretty up our yard only to have to repeat the process again. Last year we planted azaleas and replaced one dead palm tree. They all died. This year we made an attempt at finding stronger plants that might survive my lack of green thumb and unpredictable weather in the Houston area. Houston tends to stay pretty humid, but since we live west of Houston, our area actually ends up being pretty dry at times. Especially with the drought last summer. So I couldn’t water the azalea plants enough and they still died. Here’s what we did this year – we planted two Julia Child yellow roses and one knockout pinkish rose in the front yard where the azaleas were. Then we replaced the dead palm with a bird of paradise. I don’t know why we had two palms die in the same spot, maybe the the other two palms were not giving enough sun to the replaced third one and that’s why it died. (The first time it died because we had an extra cold winter – actually all 3 palms froze but two of them made a recovery). We also planted a lot of bedding flowers to make the general area look nicer and I put some in planters. Here are some photos

My Fitness Pal

Julie — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:18:16 +0000

So a couple of weeks ago I bought an elliptical machine off someone on craigslist. I’ve been using it almost daily and it is a really good workout. I got a high quality one. I’ve also been tracking what I eat again using MyFitnessPal. I started using it last fall after I quit weight watchers (cause I didn’t want to continue paying for it) and I decided to start using it again since I’m back on the wagon or whatever. Here’s my little ticker that shows my progress. To date I lost 3 pounds already and I just started like two weeks ago

Created by MyFitnessPal – Free Calorie Counter

Twitter

Julie — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:15:11 +0000

So apparently twitter has this thing where you can only follow a certain number of people before they cut you off. This is based on how many people are following you. Some kind of categories. Well, I don’t have that many followers, but I follow tons of authors and book review blogs because following counts as an extra entry to their giveaways! So being cut off is evil and keeping me from extra points. So, if you’re not already following me, would you please follow me? I’ll follow you back @Juliecookies.

SnapIt

Julie — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:45:29 +0000

Calling all bloggers, graphic designers, and other people who use a computer a lot Don’t waste time cropping your “Print Screen” captures. Take a “snapshot” of exactly what you need on your screen, with just a click.

Check out this Screen Capture Software called SnapIt.

Capture anything you see on your PC screen with SnapIt. Its a convenient tool for graphic designers, bloggers who capture and crop images for their posts, tech writers who need to describe menus and interfaces of applications, web designers and those who work with graphics every day. It captures and auto saves images with one click.

It’s easy to use. Go give it a try!

So we adopted a puppy

Julie — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:56:54 +0000

I have a funky story to tell about our recent trip. So every year we go over to Florida for the annual family Christmas on hubby’s side. There’s the giant party with everyone where we do secret Santa and then we go visit people we rarely see and have a smaller Christmas with us, hubby’s parents, and his sister and her new family. Well, this year while we were visiting one of our cousins, we ended up adopting a dog. We’ve been wanting to get another dog for a little while but have been putting it off cause getting a dog from a breeder is expensive and all the vet bills for a puppy are a bit too much for us right now. But Dixie is 6 now and it is a good time to have her help train a younger furry friend. So when Katie told us that a lab mix puppy had been hanging around her house for the past week before we arrived, we thought we’d check that out. She already has 4 dogs and this one was so scared and skittish that she was afraid to have him around her one year old twins. She was planning to take him down to the Humane Society but since there isn’t a huge demand for stray dogs in that small town, she was sure he would get put to sleep. Well, after playing with him for a little bit, we had him up on hubby’s lab and were hand feeding him, so we are sure we can get that skiddishness out of him. We think now that he’s a boxer mix. He is about 40 pounds but he is very strong and solid. We’re pretty sure he’s going to outweigh Dixie pretty soon (she’s 60 pounds). We named him Diesel It fits him very well because he is so strong (and we wanted another D name since both our current pets have D names).

Happy Thanksgiving

Julie — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 19:51:09 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving to all. We have a lot to be thankful for, even if sometimes things don’t seem perfect, when you look at the important stuff you see what really matters. We have each other, our family and friends, a comfortable home and I have a job that helps sustain our lifestyle. I’m hopeful that this coming year will bring my husband a good full time job, but in the mean time we still have a lot to celebrate.

Halloween

Julie — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:03:59 +0000

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love to dress up and to decorate the house with fun and spooky things. Hubby didn’t let me buy the zombie babies from Spirit Halloween but those were awesome. We hosted a party again this year cause last year was so much fun. This year I had some fun with the menu. We made pumpkin chili (theme appopriate!) and a king ranch chicken casserole but for funsies I made some demon eyes. The weird thing is I guess my guests were kinda freaked out by them cause few were brave enough to try them. It was just food coloring and olives added to regular deviled eggs, chickens!

I dressed up as a Saloon girl and hubby dressed up as a Cowboy. My costume turned out to be pretty cool. I bought it online cause I was able to find one non-hoochy costume (where the dress sort of reaches the knees!).

I tortured the pets as well

Angriest kitty vampire ever:

Doggie was a pumkin:

Most of the guests brought dessert, and it was quite awesome. One couple was really creative. Karie dressed up as a hippie and baked brownies with some green flakes in them cause they were “that kind” of brownies. Her hubs Robert was a cop and brought donuts. Fun. More photos are on facebook (not linking it here to protect the privacy of my friends).