My Secret Identity **Updated

First this one did it. Then someone else. Next thing you know another one jumped on the bandwagon. And how could I have forgotten this one? If they can change their names, then so can I. Someone who shall remain nameless dubbed me with "The K" recently. (How ya like that play on words? I'm so witty.) So I think I'm gonna go with it for awhile.

I'm gonna try to change my profile pic too but stupid blogger isn't cooperating right now. I'm sick of looking at that one. Plus it's not really accurate anymore. My hair is totally different and I've gained a couple of pounds. Hey, full disclosure, right? But maybe since I'm recreating my identity, I'll find a pic of some really hot skinny blonde and say that's me. Wouldn't that be funny?

Any computer savvy individuals (like those named above perhaps?) wanna give me some hints as to what I should make my little icon into? Some have cute little starfish or Chinese symbols or something else. Maybe I don't wanna use my face anymore. Well, for the profile pic I mean. Walking around without a face wouldn't really work, now would it? Plus how would I drink my much adored margaritas without a mouth?

** OMG!! Look what I found! The perfect profile pic. My two favorite things.
Ahhh.. life is good.

And just to clarify here , people.
I'm not K.
Or K1 or 2 or 3.
Or a K. Or some K.
I am "The K".

THE K.
K?
Blame her.

Girl Cousins

I think it was last summer when the girl cousins in my generation decided we needed to hang out more. So we started trying to get together once a month or so for dinner. I have to say "in my generation" because my dad is the youngest of five and there's a pretty good age gap between him and the next oldest. So the generations in our family overlap. My grandparents have grandchildren and great-grandchildren that are the same age. My daughter will be a great-grandchild but will have great-great-grandchildren older than her. Confused now, are you?

On Saturday we met up in Columbus. Sarah was in town from Montana and her parents live there. So we took a road trip to see her. We ate at a restaurant that was supposed to be really great. It was just okay for me. But the desserts were to die for! Just take a look. We each ordered something different and passed them around the table. Now that's the way to eat dessert! Mine was called the "Big Cup Of Chocolate". It was a warm chocolate lava cake with ice cream on top. Mmm mmm! Then there was carrot cake, upside down banana cream pie, chocolate peanut butter pie, apple pie a la mode and strawberry shortcake there in the middle. I can just hear diets being ruined all over the world right now in response to that pic.

Since the gals all read my blog, I decided it was time to give them a shout out. Here they are. You've seen my sister, Carla, before. Hope is in the middle. Yours truly on the end (still rockin the curls as you can see). Back row from the left are Debbie, Sarah, and Lisa. The only one missing is Alicia because she lives in DC. I had a great time as usual ladies. Can't wait to do it again.

Middle Name Game

Connie Jayne tagged me for this middle name meme. She likes to do that. I'm bored so here goes.

You have to post these rules before you give the facts.

1) Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.

2) When you are tagged you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts.

3) At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

L - Loves loves loves margaritas!

E - Effulgent.
What? Okay so I cheated. I looked it up in the dictionary cuz I couldn't think of anything. It means "shining brilliantly". I think it fits my personality though. Plus I once had a guy tell me that I just had this way of drawing people in cuz I had this "light" around me that people wanted to be a part of. Of course, he was drunk and trying to get in my pants at the time. It worked. ;)

I - Is perpetually late.
(Sorry Sandra. Always has been and always will be. No matter how hard I try to be better.)

G - Gift of gab. I can go on for hours.....it's a family trait.

H - Happy. Yep. I'm in a really good place now.

So there you have it. I really hate tagging people but since the rules say I have to, I guess I better, right? I pick Alison, Stacy, Head, Shannon, and Ozi Mum. All folks that I'm curious about what their middle names are. Have fun girls!

Tuesday Stuff

My sister and her family made it back from Wyoming in one piece. Looks like they had a great trip... well, once they got there that is. The getting there sucked. Y'all remember the story right? Scroll down a few posts if you don't know what I'm talking about. Click here to go to her blog, Tales of the T's, and check out all the pics if you want.

I got an unexpected package in the mail today. I was surprised to find this most adorable little giftie inside from my new blogger bash buddy, Maryellen. A woman after my own heart!
It's a little penguin costume. The front zips to stick baby in and the head is really a hood. See? I hope that Mia can wear it someday. I can just picture it now. Adorable. I love it! Thanks for thinking of me, Maryellen! Especially in the middle of all of your own craziness trying to prepare for the trip to China to get your baby Sophie. Can't wait for that.
While I'm thanking people, I owe my Secret Pal also. Sorry SP. You know what a procrastinator I am. LOL! I appreciate your gifts as much as ever. Just a little slow to post them. This month she sent a couple of cute little dolls, some Hello Kitty barrettes for Mia and Hello Kitty socks for Momma. I can't believe HK is so popular again. I remember this from when I was a kid. Thanks again SP. Very cute stuff. We've been at this so long, you're probably having a hard time coming up with ideas for what to send each month. I know I am. But still love the exchange. I'm glad that I stuck with it too.

I've been hovering over the Weather Channel for the past couple of days. Seems that a hurricane was trying to ruin my vacation plans in Mexico. I even called Tracy for advice and opinions. Since she lives in the land where hurricanes are more common. Up north we just worry about tornadoes, ya know. I was trying to figure out just how bad a Category 5 really was. Well, the news wasn't good. She told me to call and make sure the hotel was still standing. But we got lucky. It passed Cancun and Cozumel with barely any damage at all. The last I saw on TV the resorts were pulling the lounge chairs back out. Yee Haw! Only 17 more days to go. Not like I'm counting or anything. :)
On Saturday, Connie, and I had a blogger blind date with the mysterious "M" . She contacted us through e-mail and said she was visiting friends in the area. Then she asked us out. If you follow her blog, Deep Tangents, then you know that this girl is a mystery. She's pretty private, doesn't use her real name, there are no pics (until now) and it was hard for me to get a feel for her. But being the fun, spontaneous, adventurous up-for-just-about-anything chicks that we are, we said yes.

As we were walking up to the restaurant, Connie, wanted to know how we were supposed to know who she is since there had been no discussion of this. I figured she'd find us. I mean she follows our blogs so she has to know what we look like, right? Sure enough, she was waiting by the front door. We had a great time holding a table hostage at PF Chang's for several hours....and on a busy Saturday night, no less. Ha! We have no shame. The waiter was a cutie. And got even cuter with every round of cocktails. LOL! We finally were overcome by guilt and released the table only to walk across the parking lot and camp out at Max & Erma's until we closed them down. You know it's bad when the waitress takes her shoes off. That must be a sign that she's ready to go home.

We had a great time! And "M" is not so mysterious anymore. She's loads of fun! She has a very similar personality as both of us. So, of course, we were gonna get along. She's so cute. And smart, so funny, and has a great sarcastic wit. We plan on hanging again as soon as schedules allow.

Wow. This post was pretty all over the place. If you've hung in this long then kudos to you. Go make yourself a margarita and celebrate.

Curly or Straight?

Here's the deal. My hair is naturally curly. I know some of you may be surprised by that. Cuz you've only seen it straight. I love the straight look. But it's work to get it that way. A lot. My hair is very thick so to get it straight means using special products, blow drying out the curl, and then using a hot iron to flatten it. Very high maintenance and it's time consuming. Here's what it looks like straight. Not a flattering pic of us but it's a good hair shot to illustrate my point. (Yes, that's my homegirl, Melissa, that I so affectionately have my arm around. Even though she trashed me on her blog today. LOL! And there's Alison, too.)

Well, I've been doing this routine for the last four years. The last time I went to the hairdresser she held up a very short patch of hair near my part. She said "What happened here?" Of course, I had no idea. She informed me that I was frying my hair off with the hot iron. Uhhh.... that can't be good. Didn't mean to do that. So I'm trying out a new look. I decided maybe I need to work with what I have and stop fighting it. I'm giving the hair a break from the hot iron/blow dryer for awhile and trying to work with my natural curl. Check it out. I felt like I needed to be holding a number up in front of me when Connie took this pic. LOL!

Here's a close up. It doesn't photograph as well as it looks in real life. The weird thing is that it grows from the root straight. Then starts to get wavy. Then the longest part at the ends is curly.
A view from the back too. Look how curly the long part is. Just weird. The good news is that this is really easy to do. Just wash and let air dry. Scrunch it up a little, spray it and go. I think wearing it like this will give it some time to repair itself. But I may still pull out the hot iron on occasion. I wore it to work like this most of the week. It's a lot easier to deal with curly that's for sure. It can get windblown and still look great. The humidity no longer matters cuz it just makes it curlier.
I took a poll. Ninety percent voted for curly. The other ten percent said they like it both ways. No one voted for only straight all the time. WTF?! Funny though... ALL the men voted curly. Think that's some wild sexual fantasy or something? With straight hair I appear more conservative and reserved? But with the curly tousled look I'm so much more sexy and provocative? Hmmm......works for me! But seriously...what do you guys think? Give me your honest opinions. Even if it's bad. I can take it.
Curly or straight?

My Constantly Evolving Kitchen

Last spring I painted my kitchen. Uh wait. No that'd be 2006. Man time flies. I didn't realize it'd been that long since my kitchen started seeking it's own identity. Well, let me back up a little. The summer before that I'd replaced the floor with a beautiful ceramic tile. I'd fallen in love with the tile even though it didn't really work with the rest of the decor. The color was very rich. Bold and dramatic. My kitchen was more of a cottage style at the time. It had white painted cabinets with stenciled flowers along the edges, sage green sponge painted walls and an ivy border around the top. I can't believe I'm not finding any pics of it saved on my computer so you'll just have to use your imagination. But here's the floor. The pic doesn't do it justice. It's a great mix of mauves, pinks, burgundys, etc. My favorite colors are pink and green (which you regular readers probably already know). So I thought the floor was pink enough to work. Nope. Too dark. I didn't like it. So I decided to paint the cabinets and walls. The first bright idea I had was to paint the cabinets the same color as my couch. Olive green. It was awful. It looked like a row of army footlockers in there. Unfortunately, I didn't realize it until I was finished painting. Well, I kinda did. But I've learned some valuable painting lessons with this project. If it looks bad in the beginning.... it's not gonna get better even if you continue painting. The green didn't even last long enough for me to think to take a pic.

So I took a piece of tile to the paint store and picked something in that color family. It's called sun dried tomato. Looks kinda burgundy, I guess. I loved the new cabinet color. Replaced the hardware, too. But that meant I now had to paint the walls. So I stuck with the pink and green obsession. Tried a green. It looked like pea soup. Luckily, I was a littler wiser now and only did a big patch on the wall before I realized it was hideous. Then I picked a mauve pink color. I thought it was okay. The different shades of pinks and burgundys seemed to work. So I lived with it for awhile. But something just seemed off. So I put an ivy border back up. Nope that wasn't it. Still didn't feel right. So I painted the trim the pea soup green. Hey, I had a whole frickin' can of it. Plus I forgot the rule that if it looks bad... it ain't getting better. I guess I thought I needed ALL the trim pea soup green to fairly judge if it was right. Another error in judgement. As you can see by the pic, the trim was quickly painted white again. One day it hit me. Yellow. Now this is not a normal color choice for me. I'm a loyal pink and green girl. But I thought yellow against those cabinets would really make them pop.
But once it was finished, it just seemed too light. I knew I was heading in the right direction with the yellow though. But I was going for something more golden to pick up the colors in the curtains. They're sage green with some gold, burgundy and pink. I still had half a can of paint left so I went back to the paint store and had them darken what was left two shades down on the color strip. At this point, I'm really sick of painting. But here was my idea. How about a color wash? That'd give the walls some drama, darken them, and be much quicker and easier. So I grabbed an old bowl and ripped up an old tee shirt. One part paint. Two parts water. A pair of rubber gloves.
Instant difference. I couldn't contain my excitement. My goddess! I think I've finally figured it out! It was so easy. Just rub it on the walls. Took about an hour and I didn't even have to tape anything up.

Here's a more obvious pic of the change. You can't tell by the photo but this wash looks awesome on the walls. It's a great dramatic effect. Made them look old. Very Tuscan. So I guess my kitchen wanted to be Tuscan or Mediterranean, huh? It decided on it's own. I never envisioned this. It just kind of happened. But I love it. It's still not quite finished. Still working out some new accessories. All the pink and green just doesn't work anymore so I'm buying new stuff. And trying to figure out the perfect border for the top. I'm thinking some wall words. But probably just on one wall. I'll update the pics when it's finally complete.