A Night at the Ballfield

This past weekend we had a little fun at the ball field.
It rained all afternoon and I was afraid it would rain it out but the clouds broke away, sun came out and the players removed the field cover.

We do not get into baseball that much but we like to go support our home town team called the Gastonia Grizzlies at least once in a summer.
It was a themed night of "Gaston's Got Talent" so some of us girls from the dance fitness class I belong to did a pre-game performance. We did steps to four different songs. It was fun, and hot. My husband and daughter were there to cheer me on.

Thats me! Far right end, center row.

After our performance the game began. Do you think that meant popcorn and peanuts?

No!

It meant "a waffle burger" and a doughnut dog!"

They can come up with some crazy stuff around here.

The main reason for this post. I just had to share this! So here you have it....

waffle burger- with syrup, cheese and meat

doughnut dog- a hot dog wrapped in a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

As the game went on, I took a few more pictures then called it a night. 

 What is your favorite thing to do or eat at a ball game?

Paint Party 3

I have been to three Madhatter paint parties. You can read about my first class and what a Madhatter paint party is  HERE . The most recent one I attended, I believe was my favorite one so far. We painted a cubism style picture of wine bottles. We had alot of fun. It was a pretty small class this time of only five of us and the two art instructors..

I love to do pencil drawings but Im getting used this painting on canvas thing pretty quick.

The first thing we did was drew a rough sketch of our painting. We normally do not draw the picture first, we just paint it but with this style of painting it was easier.

Eat a cookie, sip a drink....then ....

Eat a another cookie, sip some more....then

Its finally looking like something.

Ya known, when you get several girls in a room painting, you get alot of silly stuff.
While everyone is busy painting, we tell stories, talk about songs, things going on around us and joke around. You may even learn a new word or two like, "swirly dizzle" or dibble dabble".  I even learned what a Tangent was. I also learned that when someone is asked to paint a "woody" they mean a style of car. Ha!

Wah Lah!

My painting is complete.

I'm no Picasso but it goes pretty good in my kitchen along with all my vineyard and fat chef decor so I'm ok with it...all except the black mark on the left hand side where I dropped my brush on it at the end. pfpffhh.

It's Work Until It's Art

My plan is to not talk about work on this blog, that's why its called life away from the office chair. But I did a project for the company I work for and just had to write about it. I mean, really, Its not considered work when its actually an art like project. And after all, I did do this at home.

The company needed a new sign. It was looking really bad. It was short and the bushes have grown too tall for anyone to see it from the road. I was going to redo it but it was too rotten, so I volunteered to make a new sign from scratch. Little did I know this would be a pretty big project to do. I didn't mind though. I love to paint.

The first thing I did was went to the local hardware store for some lumber and then picked out the perfect "yellow"paint, and some brushes.

Thanks to my wonderful husband, he handled picking out the right kind of wood to use and cut it to down to the size I needed. Then I painted it with a few coats of the yellow paint. I wanted to make sure the paint was on good enough to make a good seal. I used the old sign to trace the letters onto paper then cut them out to make a stencil. that was really hard considering I could barely see through the paper to trace. A lot was guessed at and therefore, really, there are different shapes to the letters than the original, but hey, its my design now right?

Anyone that knows me, knows that I have zero patience and I'm surprised I didn't cut my finger off during this process. My daughter was just itching to help so I let her trace some to the letters onto the wood from the stencil once I had them cut out.

Now Its time to paint the letters! Being a lefty, I have to paint right to left so my hand does not smear the paint. Just another obstacles I've had to deal with all my life. If your left handed, you know what I mean.

This is scary! I'm giving myself  ZERO confidence at this point and wondering what in the world have I gotten myself into. I carefully and tediously painted on the letters and the boarder. I was really afraid of messing it up. One wrong mark and its ruined. However, it does have imperfections, but from the view of a passerby, they may never notice.

Wah Lah!. Its finally finished.

The boss seemed to liked it. Can you say 'brownie points"?

I want to also give thanks to the mechanic here at the company for making a taller signpost and hanging it for me. I'm sure that was a job in itself too.

Diet Plan/Game

Everyone in my household is always trying to diet cut back on eating so much. We are going on vacation in a month and would love to get down a size. We have found that breads and sweets are our weakness. After different plans and ideas that have never worked, we have come up with a new plan that we hope will be fun like a game.

The first idea was to cut out ALL breads, pastas and sweets. That's seemed a little drastic all at once for everyone. We figured we would not last long doing that so we started with just saying NO SWEETS.

Here's the plan...If either of us eat something sweet, we have to put a dollar in the jar. At the end of 30 days, the one that has lost the most pounds, gets to keep all the money in the jar. I'm hoping this works. My daughter was all into the idea once money was involved. ha, ha.
However, my personal plan is still not to eat any rice or pasta and only eat healthy breads but still lighten up on the intake.
This is pretty much how my meals have looked so far.

Breakfast-English muffin and southwestern omelet

(OK, so  may need to cut out so much butter too. ha)

Dinner-Homemade chicken salad in a romaine lettuce wrap with tomatoes.

We have been making trips to the farmers market for a healthier choice. We will be doing a lot of veggi grilling and any meats we want!

Note: There are some sweets we consider healthy, such as breakfast bars, honey, jello, or sugar free desserts.

Wish us luck and check back next month for an update on our success.

Update: Its a month later. This didnt work to well for us. I only lost 2 pounds, my daughter lost 1 pound. My husband did not loose any pounds and hes the one that stayed away from the sweets the most! There was 23 dollars collected. Guess i'll try something else.

Sea Shore Treasures

When people are walking on the beach, most of them have a handful of tiny sea shells and will look so diligently for the perfect one to pick up and keep. I always wonder what they do with them or what particular shape and kind they are actually looking for.

I love finding things on the beach too, but I'm not that hard of a "looker". I usually have to stumble on something to see it. We go to the beach quite often since we only live 4 hours away and have a camper.
Here are a few things found while me and family have took our daily walks on the beach. Enjoy.

 We found blackberries on the sand dunes.

I'm sure they don't tastes as good as the ones in my area.



 I have found a total of about 15 sand dollars.

 Makes me feel rich. ha ha.

 We found this in a tide pool.

When I picked it up, it had a creature inside and it spit water on me

so I put it down, snapped a picture, and left it alone.

 Bottle washed up on the beach.

There was nothing in it except for maybe memories of someones crazy night  before. haha.

Now this was found on our walk far away from where people are. We took it in and opened it up. We could tell it was not old. It contained several little hand written letters of what

appeared to be from children that lost their mom in a tragic accident

and one note asked if anyone found this bottle to please put it back to sea.

So, later that night, my husband tossed it back out to sea as far as he could throw.

We have found other things but I didn't have my camera with me. Like the time my husband found a live starfish. And we had a sand crab come up from a hole between our beach chairs once and spent the day with us in the sun. yuk, and the Jelly fish.  I could go on but without pictures, its no fun.

What are some interesting things you have found on the shore? And if anyone knows what people are really looking for out there, please share it. 



Cucumber Lime Salsa

The temperatures are soaring high again today here in North Carolina. With the thermometers rising above 100 degrees this weekend, I decided to make something refreshing and cool.
My husband went to the farmers market again today and came home with some beautiful squash, tomatoes, peaches and, YES, cucumbers!So, I gathered together all the things I need to make this tongue tingling cucumber lime salsa.

One ingredient in this recipe is cilantro. We love cilantro at our house. I honestly believe this stuff could go with any meal. It also calls for one *jalapeno pepper, but it does not make it to hot to enjoy. Its just right.
  
The salsa turned out DELICIOUS and will go great with meat, tortilla chips, and atop your favorite Mexican dish. If you’d like to make some for yourself then just click HERE for the recipe.
*Be careful when chopping jalapenos. Be sure to wash your hands before touching your eyes.

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Cappuccino Hazelnut Cream Cheese Brownies

My husband told me about some “butt busting” brownies he saw on the Dr. Oz show. Well, these are NOT them.
 
I had recently bought some cappuccino mocha hazelnut spread from the grocery store the other day to try.
  
It was delicious but too sweet to eat alone and to many calories to eat on toast every morning. I remember hearing the word brownies and that was all it took for me to come up with a recipe to use this creamy Jif spread.
To be quite honest, these things do not tempt me that much because I am not a big fan of brownies but I could not wait to see how they turned out.

Here is how I did it just in case your out of those energy drinks.

Cappuccino hazelnut cream cheese Brownies
4 oz. cream cheese, softened (half block)
1/2 cup Cappuccino mocha hazelnut spread
2 eggs
1⁄8 cup canola oil
1 box fudge brownie mix (I could only find family size)
Using a mixer, whip together the cream cheese and the spread. Add in the eggs and oil and continue to whip until well combined.
Scrape down the bowl, then add the brownie mix. Fold the mix in until just combined, then whip an additional 1 to 2 minutes.
Pour batter into a 13x9-inch pan coated with nonstick spray.
Use the other half of cream cheese by softening it in the microwave and swirl it into the top of the batter.(optional)
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until a pick inserted in the middle comes mostly clean. Allow to cool 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

I gave them a thumbs up and then gave them away. I just cant handle all that sweetness.

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A Visit to the Farmers Market

You always know its summer time here in the South when the farmers market opens.


























I am ready for some fresh vegetables to throw on the grill, make some casseroles, or throw in a salad. So, this morning my daughter and I stopped in our local farmers market before heading to our workout. We thought we would never get in this place because the line of cars going in was crazy. But we managed to get a good parking place and get in and out in a jiffy.
As we began to walk in the first thing I saw was one of  my dance classmates selling her hens eggs. But that was only the beginning. While walking  through the metal building filled with vendors selling their products of labor, we saw a variety of many delicious  vegetables, homemade sweets, honey, flowers, birdhouses, fruit and more. 

       



























 I was actually on a mission to find some nice tomatoes and squash.











 

There were no tomatoes that caught my eye but I did buy some squash and peaches.




The peaches were so good. They were soft and just sweet enough. I would love to have spent more time looking around and plan to go again soon. Until then, I have a squash casserole to make.

Windows Live

Oh my gosh! Call me dumb and slap me silly but I have just been introduced to Windows live writer. I know, I know, most of you are probably laughing because I have just realized what I can do as a blogger.
I noticed at how nice one of my friends blog looks and just had to send her a message to ask her how she got her pictures to look so good. So she told me about a great option she uses. Its called windows live writer. I also learned that I can blog anytime!  I was so excited to know that I did not have to actually be online to post. I can just type away my day as I'm on the road, or anywhere I don't have internet access then I can just publish it to my blog when I do have online access.
I just down loaded it to see how it works and this is my practice post so I can see if I am technically capable of doing this.

I was getting anxious waiting on it to download so I could get started. So I tested out a picture while I was at it. Its not a good picture because I took a screen shot from my phone. I know I only post when I'm away from the office chair (work) but I just couldn’t wait till after work because I will be heading straight to zumba class afterwards and I had to sneak and try this now. Oh, and something else really cool. I just added the word “Zumba” to spell check dictionary. Now I don't have to worry about always ignoring the fact that I know how to spell ZUMBA.

7 Pringle Can Ideas

I know everyone gets the "fever for the flavor of a Pringle" at some point. Its the perfectly shaped baked potato chip in a cylinder can. We eat a lot of them in my home because they are less greasy and less expensive than regular potato chips.
I was looking around on Pinterest and happen to see the cutest little fourth of July craft idea using an empty Pringle can ( I cant wait to try). This made me look further at other crafts with this cylinder snap lid cutie. I may have to try a couple of them and since my daughter works with children, she could use some of these ideas as well.
I have each picture with a link to to the website it belongs. Check them out and find how to do each one.
Enjoy, for I am just being lazy.

Dynamite!-  lilluna

Great way to store spaghetti-  itsalmostgenius

Great way to give away or store cookies - jengrantmorris

Wow check out the cute bracelets! - erinshakespear

Ok little artists, store your tools! - cleanandscentsible

Bet this would work for yarn or ribbon too! -

oops, couldn't link. too bad, great idea whoever did this.

Great teacher/student gift idea- gluesticksandtape

Do you have any other ideas for Pringle cans? Just curious! There are so many creative people out there.

Dad and I

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there! I just want to say I think I have the best dad ever. He is a great christian man and is very special to me. My dad always set a godly example for me and my siblings and I am thankful for that. Ive learned alot from him and we are same in many ways. Here are just a few ways I am like him.

•  We are funny and share the same humor.
•  We like quick cars
•   I have his nose
•  We both suffer hay fever and allergies
•  I have his knees
•  We like blue grass music
•  We are emotional
•  Impatient
•  If I'm not mistaking, I think we have the same birthmark
•  and neither one of us will turn down a piece of chocolate cake.

I will be heading to church today and honor not only my father here on earth but also my heavenly father.

After church I will be spending time with my husband and daughter as we celebrate his well deserved fathers Day and later we will be celebrating all the dads in the family with a cookout at my house.
I smell the grill already!

Happy Fathers Day .

New Art Experience

One day me and my husband visited a new art gallery in our town called arts on main.  It's full of art displays, a gift shop and artists studios. I have always had an interest in art and when this opened up, I knew I had to visit.

I put my name on a mailing list so I could keep up with events and news the gallery had to offer. And guess what, I started getting emails inviting me to attend a MadHatters Paint Party. Its held every Wednesday for anyone to come paint and they supply everything needed to accomplish the "painting of the week".

The first one I attended was on a night that evidently was a busy night for returning partiers because I was the only one there. It was pretty funny but it ended up being a wonderful experience (even though I chose not to paint and wait until the next week.). What I did get to do was probably more exciting to me than actually getting to paint.
There are two fabulous ladies that host the party. They both have an art studio at the gallery one is Rachel Cotton studio and one is Anastasia happy trees studio. Instead of painting, I got to take a more in depth tour of the gallery than the time I went with my husband during the opening. They showed me around at everything it had to offer. It was amazing! I had no idea there was so much talent in my town. I also didn't know there was a really nice gift shop that anyone can purchase everything from jewelry to greeting cards made by the person that will probably be standing right next to you. It was really a treat.

So, the next week I went to the Madhatter paint party and we all drew a Lotus flower.
Every ones painting looked so good. We had a really good time laughing, talking, sipping wine and nibbling cookies all while painting in the presence of two wonderful artist to help make it all happen. I cant wait to try it again soon.
Thanks Anastasia and Rachel!

New Look

If you visit my blog regularly, you will notice some changes. I have been pondering on what would express me and found that there is alot of themes I could have used. I started out using a photo that expressed just about all of my hobbys but then it I thought it was to busy and messy. However, I did end up using that photo for my "Button" and I have to say, I like it!

This is what my button looks like. Feel free to grab it anytime from the sidebar.

I'm pretty satisfied with the new background of my blog. I have to get used to it. I'm used to the drab and plain looking empty office chair scene that has been on there since I started my blogging. .....Ok, I really liked the chair template but It just was not my own. I wanted mine to be original. The main thing you will notice is the shells. I love the beach and if I could have it my way, I would be living there. You can also see some paint brushes representing my love for art and even a crochet needle. I had to throw some fake Daisies in the picture too because that is my favorite flower and can you find the zumba bead?

Something else new....I added a Facebook page for lifeawayfromtheofficechair. Come find me and be one of my first fans!