I always wanted to be a “Lady who Lunches”

I always try to go to the lunches that support the research of various cancers, those that support pound puppies, the ones that are in favor of a political candidate I support – however Friday was a new one, even for me. I was invited to attend the Poultry Festival Ladies Luncheon – or rather the Ladies of Poultry, which I like better because it sounds like it should be a calendar – next year for sure.

Poultry Fest is a big deal around these parts, since more than 1/3 of our local economy thrives on chicken and their by products. It consists not only of the Ladies Luncheon but also of booths and games and a midway feel of events all weekend long. Instead of a key-note speaker, there was a fashion show, all of the fashions were from the downtown Rogers establishment of Stevette’s and moderating the show was none other than Stevette herself. If you’ve seen the movie “The Sweetest Thing” you can equate this to the store where Christina Applegate and Cameron Diaz perform a costume montage. I must admit that I have lived here for 20+ years and I have NEVER heard of Stevette’s…

One of the finer outfits was this – a full on Rodeo Queen get-up with sequins Razorbacks on the chaps and the back of her shirt, I’m heartbroken to say I have no picture of the back of this.

*note that is NOT me in this wonderful outfit

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Sex and the City known as Fayetteville

Sex and the City 2 opened last week and although my plans to have a repeat of the fabulous watch party we had for the first one failed miserably… I still immensely enjoyed going the midnight showing with 2 fabulous ladies.

Let me start by saying if you only watched the series on TBS you do not really have the level of appreciation I think is needed to truly enjoy the movie. There I said it. Our midnight movie looked more like a late night rush meeting – everyone in gym clothes with blankets and snuggies in tow. {Ewww – really? You bring a blanket to the movies?} As we were walking out I actually heard a group of girls say it was cheesy and that they didn’t get 90% of the puns… pure blasphemy!

2 years ago, we have a fabulous watch party in Denver – every seat in the movie, in which every theater was showing SATC, was donned in a cocktail dress and a minimum of 3 inch heals… I was at best disappointed in the turn out here in Fayetteville.

However, I cannot complain about the movie – Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda completely delivered – the fashion was outrageous (to be expected), the adventures were wild and the story actually kept with the theme from the previous movie on most all parts. I feel like it ended in a way that most likely will not be made into a 3rd – and I’m ok with that. I’m contemplating re-watching the entire series and writing about the crazy antics of which I can relate to the stories of my friends and the way we were/are!

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Wuustahmas

No, it’s not just a holiday – it’s a place!

Some things I learned on my trip to Boston and Worcester:

  • I will NEVER complain about traffic again
  • Hooked on phonics is a big, fat lie
  • {from watching stellar gymnasts} if you stumble in your routine, as long as you pop up and throw your hands up in a solid finish, everything is OK!

Starting with the last point, I went to Worcester to attend the Tyson American Cup – fitting since I work for Tyson. Ha. I couldn’t touch my toes if you had a gun to my head. So you can only imagine my amazement at the flips and twists and other feats of gravity defiance displayed by some of the worlds best gymnasts.

Moving on, the host town of TAC was Worcester, Massachusetts – claim to fame is it’s the second largest city in Massachusetts … really, it’s on their website. I can tell you the place is not to be pronounced war-ches-ter and as I was warned, I will warn you too, you will apparently get shot by saying it that way. Thus it was one of my quieter weekend. I had to strictly refrain from saying things such as “hey y’all” and “jeet yet” and “those biscuits and gravy are so lip smackin’ good, they’ll make you slap your mamma.”

Worcester (pronounced /ˈwʊstər/) is a city in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named afterWorcester, England, the city had a population of 182,596, making it the estimated second largest city in New England.[1]a[›] It is the county seat of Worcester County.[2] Worcester is located approximately 40 miles west ofBoston.

Thanks wiki, for that lesson. As we just learned, Worcester is 40 miles west of Boston. To partake in this 40 mile adventure you must travel on the MassPike – a 4 lane wide parking lot. It took me 2.25 hours to travel that 40 miles = ridiculous!

The gymnastics meet was awesome and I got the added bonus of feeling tall for once in my life.

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40 days

I did this last year and was quite impressed with myself and the results- so I’m at it again… NO SHOPPING DURING LENT!
We’re a week in and I have been quite tame AND haven’t killed anyone yet, so I say that’s a win for us all. I’ll be the first to admit I have a problem, and MZ will be the first, second and third to agree with me. You see I like to shop online and since one can not try things on through the internet {yet} I tend to over order, especially if there is a coupon and free shipping both ways involved! It’s compulsive while watching TV: I sit, I read blogs, I shop for what I see on blogs … I repeat I repeat I repeat

Hi, my name is graciefabulous and I’m a shop-a-holic.

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Snowstorm coming? Don’t forget the carrots!

Well we survived the great blizzard of 2010 with no power outages or other disasters other than gaining about 7 pounds in 5 days.

I was über prepared in that I made 2 kinds of soup and chili and a whole pant load of sweets ranging from peanut butter cookies to rice krispie treats to honey butter biscuits. I had bread and peanut butter and lots and lots of wine. I was READY for the 4-6 days of predicted power outages. I would not be stuck again without tasty snacks and more importantly enough wine to last through it all again. Last year was terrible…

So of course, there were only about 100 power outages total reported in Fayetteville. Yet I still managed to inhale all of the food I made and most of what was in the kitchen that I could lay my eyes on. We haven’t left the house since Thursday… the madness continues.

Our streets in our neighborhood have not been touched – the only reason I can figure is that since we are flanked by schools the city see no need to clear the streets since kids aren’t coming in, no one needs to get out. I’m fortunate that I can and am able to work from home which actually serves as a quiet zone and a way to get caught up on projects etc.

I was featured in the paper and didn’t even leave my house – ah the power of the interwebs! … and knowing people on staff.

I can’t say have gone completely stir crazy – we had a wonderful time playing scrabble with Barnes’ and the Strickland’s. We actually purchased the board game to potentially fill the void of WORDS with Friends should the power actually go out for more than 5 minutes – there would be no surviving that. So Mike and I bundled up and took a little walk through the neighborhood – it was so quiet and still and actually not all that cold since we were dressed like abominable snow people. Upon arrival we opened bottles of wine and feasted on some super tasty extra cheesy and cream chicken soup!!! We commenced to playing Scrabble and all decided that Words With Friends is much easier … and better… there’s no pressure on le iPhone!

On Sunday we finally got around to going outside to “play.” We made 3 snow peopleque items. They were kinda sad which brings me to my title point of CARROTS. I didn’t have anything to make appendages or facial features. I used coke bottle caps as eyes and then gave up searching.

Had I had carrots in the fridge, not only would I have had something to decorate our snow things AND I might have thought twice about eating everything in sight…

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Preparing for Ice Storm 2010

Today is the 1 year anniversary of the Ice Storm of 2009, it’s also the eve of the predicted Ice Storm 2010. The local weather stations are already telling people to be prepared to be without power for 4 – 5 days… I’ve stocked up at the liquor store and figured out a plan of attack on the items in the freezer and refrigerator. The ice cream will get eaten first!

Here are links to my posts during the ice storm last year – be warned – it’s not a pretty sight, me, my dog nor the poor trees on the ground!

 https://graciefabulous.com/2009/01/30/ice-storm-09/

 https://graciefabulous.com/2009/01/27/a-couple-of-weather-letters/

https://graciefabulous.com/2009/05/08/forgot-to-post-last-night/

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Coming soon…

At the very very tip top of not published 30 before 30 items is to launch my business website. I’m about 5/8s of the way there in that I have the name, the logo, the domain name and the legal rights to do it all… and even lots of things to add. I just don’t have the site built … yet. And I’m actually almost finished with that! It will be a site of party fabulousness of all types – baby showers, wedding showers, bachelorette parties, birthday parties for kids and kids at heart, anniversary parties, tuesday parties, political parties, monday lunch parties, etc…. you get the point.

There will, of course, be a “brought to you by” page within the site but I can go ahead and tell you the letters today’s post has been made possible by – MZ, AB and SBJ. It all goes back about 9 months ago when MZ was working stealthily for about 6 weeks with AB to get the legal rights to By Blonde assigned to me within the state of Arkansas which I have to say is by far THE BEST BIRTHDAY PRESENT EVER! I was presented with the paper work on my birthday and I put out feelers for some design work for my logo. Immediately, the talented and willing SBJ came forward, you can check out the sneak peak here on her blog The Dramatic!

So this is the project I’ll be busy with for quite a while and I’m excited to get everything in motion!

…and incase you are counting – 188 days until 30!

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Ask and ye shall receive through social media

A few weeks ago I face book posted about my irritation with Walmart about their packing of wine bottles.

The story is this…

In January, one of our Supercenters were granted legal rights to sell beer and wine – this is a BIG deal being in the heart of the Bible Belt – you can’t by alcohol in any place in NWA except the liquor store.
So with the pending snow forecast I went to Walmart with everyone else to stock up on milk and soup and chips and other junk food when I remembered I could buy wine … WINE – a must have if you are going to be stuck at home. Ok who are we kidding, it’s always a must have but you should double or triple up for a snow day or potential snow day or chance of rain or if the stars are going to be out …

I get to the check out and hand the checker my recycled bags to use to bag my junk food collection.  When she gets to my wine, {which I had nestled in my coat in the child safety seat so it wouldn’t rattle and alert to everyone rationing out crackers that I was just planning on staying drunk through my potential snow day} she wasn’t sure what to do. So she took each of my many bottles of wine and wrapped them in not one, not two, not three but four plastic bags each. I appreciated her care for my precious commodity but that ended up being 20 additional bags that ended up in my recycled bag.

I got home and did what every passive aggressive person does – face book about it. I got quite a few comments about this dilemma and potential solutions. Then to my delight, one of my friends {P} offered to send me some of her fabulous sectioned recycled bags made just for wine!

Well I received my bags today and I just CAN NOT WAIT TO USE THEM!!!

This really is a great bag – I encourage you to suggest your local retailer or liquor store to adopt this type bag. P’s liquor store gives them away for free when you buy 6 bottles – and really that’s not hard to accomplish ever.
Here’s a pic with an already opened bottle – hence why I could not rush out tonight and fill the bag up – there’s always tomorrow!
PS – I didn’t even get my snow day – but the wine still magically disappeared!

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A tale of Christmas past – the most recent episode

It was great and fun filled and VERY busy holiday season which might explain why I’m just now getting around to posting anything about it. The other reason is that I was in such a tizy taking down everything that I forgot to take pictures of anything! Very Very sad – I know!

We had 4 trees in total – our big tree, the little tree in our bedroom, the Razorback tree and of course there had to be a tree in the Bears room…. I had a great time decorating the whole house and I’m having a hard time adjusting to not having bare corners.

I hosted 2 events in the same weekend – Holiday Bunco and the annual Cookie Swap party; and no – I didn’t take pictures at either – I don’t know what this world is coming to.

We’re both looking forward to a couple of low key months which should be just enough time to recover from a great holiday season. Then hopefully it’ll be patio season!!!

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