The Day I Found My Sunshine

It was the beginning of August 1995 and as an early birthday present my parents took me to get my dream dog: a golden retriever. I was so excited! We went over to Ohio where there was a breeder dad found in the newspaper. There were only 3 puppies left - 1 boy and 2 girls, and the breeder was going to keep the boy. So, I went into this fenced in area and two of the puppies were not interested in me at all, but this one sweet fluffy red girl puppy ran up to me and started giving me kisses! I knew I had found my dream dog and she had picked me!

On our way home, we were thinking up names and the song "You Are My Sunshine" popped in my head and it was perfect! Mom wanted to name her Britches for some reason (must be a Wayne County thing haha!), so I let that be her middle name.

My cousins met her when we got home and decided they were going back tomorrow to get her sister! The next day I went with them and they got the last puppy and named her Sugar. And since my cousins lived right next door to me, we got to raise the sisters together. My cousin Zach and I used to sit outside with a puppy training book and taught our pups all kinds of things.
My Sunshine was around until early August 2009 when we had to put her to sleep because she had cancer. She was definately my dream dog in every way possible, as well as my best friend and I miss her so much.

You are my Sunshine,

My only Sunshine

You make me happy,

When skies are gray

You'll never know dear,

How much I love you

Please don't take my Sunshine away

My New TV Pick

Picture: History Channel

So, I have a new television show that I am in love with: American Pickers. This show is about two guys (Mike Wolfe & Frank Fritz) and one gal (Danielle Colby Cushman) that make up the business named Antique Archeology. Mike and Frank are the pickers that drive around the U.S. in their van going to people's houses, places of business, barns, run down sheds, and pretty much anywhere they see trash treasures laying around in people's yards. Alot of the time they just show up and introduce themselves to people and sometimes they have a lead from Danielle (back in their home of Le Claire, Iowa) who finds these places for them. One place can lead to another, so they are self proclaimed "treasure hunters".

They find all kinds of things that people collect that they can negotiate with them and buy, but then they clean it up and sell for themselves for a profit. Generally the kinds of things that get them excited are oil cans, old bicycles, movie posters, old cameras, etc. They have a good eye for things and are pretty funny and entertaining to watch! It's sort of like Antique Roadshow meets Hoarders!

This show is on the History Channel at various times, so go to their website for show listings. I usually just let the TiVo do the work for me and watch it with my parents in the evening! It kinda makes me wanna give up dental hygiene and become a picker!

Rainbow Cake, Hotdogs, and Friends, Oh My!

**Warning! Food Coma Alert! Long Post with Lots of Pictures!**

On Friday, before my friends arrived for the weekend, I decided it was time for me to make the colorful RAINBOW Cake that I have been wanting to make ever since I saw Dorothy's post about this cake on her blog, Kitchen Koala. She got the idea to make this cake from the recipe at Brooke's Cheeky Kitchen blog. I took some pictures of my process, but the colors in my final result are not nearly as vibrant as Dorothy or Brooke's cakes. My problem is that I did not use the Wilton® or Americolor® food coloring, but opted for the cheaper and more accessible one at my local Kroger. My cake is about 6 1/2 inches tall! And it would have been taller if I'd used the recommended 8 inch pans instead of the 9 inch ones I had. My cake also does not nearly look at professional as their's, but it was fun and gave me other baking ideas to use in the future! I'm pretty sure my cake ended up being shorter than it started out to be cause you can see from this picture that the bottom purple layer has been squished!

My friends loved it, which made me feel good!

We also had a great time at the Hotdog Festival! I had a hotdog and a corndog, some of Phil's crazy fries, and some delicious kettle corn! Yum! We only got to see a little bit of the weiner dog races because there was such a huge crowd.

After the Hotdog Festival, I took my friends on the grand tour of Huntington since most of them had never been here before. After that we went up to the mall to meet a couple more friends and have an eventful dinner at the Olive Garden (a waiter shattered a glass on our table next to my friend Holly, then she found a hair in her food!). We then saw the movie "Dinner With Schmucks" which I thought was hilarious!

Sunday morning they wanted me to take them to Jolly Pirate where we got us some donuts.

After that, they left for home! I had a fantastic weekend with my DH girls and hope we can all get together again soon!

The Day I Became Afraid of Spiders

This is not particularly a happy memory but one that I will always remember!

I was in the clarinet section of the Marshall University Marching Thunder 2000-2002! Sometimes we would have our sectional rehearsals in the stairwell of the Cam Hendersen Center. Creepy crawly critters live in stairwells and one of the girls named Genna who was in my section got "bit" by a spider there. This is when it alllll started.


The next day after the incident, we were on the practice field and Genna could hardly walk on her leg where the spider bit her and was starting to not feel good. Me and another clarinet took her to the ER to have them check her out. We had to describe the way the spider looked to the doctor. I'm sure he gave her something to put on it or something to take, but don't really remember that part. All I know is that she came back the next week and said she had to go to the doctor again and that doctor told her the spider laid eggs in her leg! This is only what she told me but ever since then I have been super scared of spiders! I don't even know if it is possible, but I don't really care cause I wanna stay as far away from them as possible! I am actually writing this post because tonight one was on my arm and I threw a fit by flinging it off of me and running away!

Hot Dog!

Man, I love me some hotdogs! My personal favorite is a hot dog with mustard and slaw! Yummy! For all of you non-Huntingtonians out there, Huntington is a hot dog mecca! There are so many original places you can get them, here are a few:

1. Sam's Hotdog Stand
2. Stewart's Hotdogs
3. Frostop Drive-In
4. Midway Drive-In
5. Bowincal
6. Hillbilly Hotdogs

This weekend I am having two of my DH friends coming to stay with me and we are going to the Hot Dog Festival in Huntington! Phil and I have been going for the last couple years and we love it... so before graduation I dropped some subtle (or not so subtle) hints for my friends to visit me so they can go to this!

I'm super excited to see my friends! I'd been used to seeing them every single day in every single class we had + when we'd hang out outside of school too. So I had been going through a withdrawal from them! They requested that I take them to two places while in Huntington:

1. Frostop for their delicious rootbeer
2. Jolly Pirate for a delightful donut treat

I will try and take some pics to post for y'all next week! Have a good day!

• Do you have any other suggestions to where I should take my friends while they are visiting?
• What do you like on your hotdog?
• Do you have a favorite hotdog place?

I ♥ Fairies!

Last week I discovered another blog on my quest to find the perfect new background! You must go see Karen at *The Graphics Fairy*! She offers tons of free vintage graphics that are to die for! She also has free backgrounds, as you can tell by new one! I picked my background all around what I was going to do with my new header that I made using one of her graphics. Do you think my "Mariah Smile" header turned out okay?

Here are 4 of my favorite graphics I found:

Aren't they lovely? I spent FOREVER on her site looking through so many! And if you can't find something, Karen has a Request Day every Thursday where you can comment on that day's post and she will try to find an image for you! Make sure you try out her search option first! I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did!

The Day We Didn't Attend Jeff's Crawdad Boil

This installment of "The Day..." is a continuation of "The Day Jeffs Got Married".


The day we didn't attend Jeff's crawdad boil was also the day we unfortunately had to be out of our hotel room early and also the day we were driving to San Antonio for a couple days. This did not go well with the day after Jeffs got married as well as the day Sars and I were the most hungover we had ever been in our lives.

I think Sars was a little worse off than me so she lay in the back seat of the unmoving PT Cruiser while I sat up front wondering how we were ever going to get out of hotel parking lot without the world spinning and chunks flying. Fortunately, Ad was not bad off and was able to take the wheel. We got out of the parking lot slowly and did a lot of just driving around. The crawdad boil was something we could only dream of in the past 9 years in getting a reunion with the Burch family, but now because we wouldn't be good company, did not make it to the event. We did make it to the Sonic though, and somehow randomly found the house Jeff and his family lived in when they first moved to Houston but had never showed us how to get there. It was a weird thing.

After the crawdad boil was over, and Jeffs, Jenn, and their friends were ready to caravan, we left for San Antonio. I thought this was a little strange cause it was like we were on their honeymoon with them, but not really since they went on it a couple weeks later. The night we got there we went down to the River Walk to eat dinner, then we stayed the night with a friend of Adam's, and the next day went to the Alamo and shopped around the River Walk and went shopping for some cowboy boots.




We went back to Houston that evening. We ate at a fantastic sushi place, cause sushi is our thing, and stayed at Jeff and Jenn's house so we could get up and leave early the next morning.
The whole trip was so much fun minus the hangover part, but I would do it all again in an instant!