Did I say I was back?

Perhaps I spoke too soon.... computer is still a little messed up and we are in the market for a new one, so it might be few and far between for posts... but I promised to tell y'all about something cool I did.... so here it is!

So every now and then, something comes your way that is both fun and makes your life easier. This month, I had the opportunity to join in a "Supper Swap" with some girls from my office. Here's how it works....

You pick a day/time/place to meet up. We met in the back of a Wal-mart parking lot on a Sunday evening. Each person in the group picks a freezable/storable meal to make. Then, depending on the number of people in the swap (it's 4 in our case), you make a dish for each family. So, you have a dish of your own to keep, 3 to give away, and you get 1 dish from each other person!

I ended up with 4 fantastic meals, and only had to buy the ingredients and prepare one! It may seem like a lot of work, but since I made enough of the same meal for 4 families, I was able to buy the ingredients in bulk, thus saving money. Also, the time I spent to make 4 of the same recipe was much less than it would take for me to make 4 different recipes.

Since it's only me and the hubby, each of these meals makes for great leftovers, or a great night to have over family or friends since we have plenty to share. I'm joining in the swap once each month which will give us about 1 pre-made meal a week. This works great for nights when I know we'll be busy -- and the other girls in the swap say it makes cooking with children around MUCH easier, too. The other benefit for me is exposure to recipes that I've never made before and might shy away from on my own. If we cook it and like it, I'll get the recipe and make it again some time!

I encourage you to get together with some friends and have a supper swap of your own... you won't regret it, PROMISE!

Hopefully more posts coming again sometime soon...
Lockslie :)

I'm ba-ack...

Wow, I was all gung-ho when I started this blog and I've been a total SLACKER for over a month now. The main reason I haven't updated is due to my sweet dell laptop that is SLOWLY dying. It's time for a new computer, but I'm a giant penny pincher, so I've got to just bite the bullet. We're considering the mac book. I've always been a total PC girl, so bring on the encouragement to make the switch!

We'll be attending 3 weddings this month (our friend & my college suitemate/housemate Elizabeth, my cousin Emily, and our friend and Locks' college housemate, Paul - who we fondly refer to as TheDon). With our wedding just 5 short months ago, we are SO excited for all of them to get married. It has been such an amazing time in our lives and we can't wait to share with them in the beginnings of their marriages. I'm hoping we will have lots of pictures to share when we get back from each one.

The summer is my absolute favorite season, after a beach trip last weekend for Elizabeth's bachelorette celebration, I'm all geared up for the wonderful season of beaching, baseball, grilling, swimming, and sun bathing! There's even more exciting stuff happening this summer in our family, too! In July, we'll be adding a puppy to our family, and my sister and her husband will be welcoming a new baby boy!

I think that's enough updates on our plans.... hopefully in the next few days, I'll write a little bit about something really cool I got to be a part of this month and am planning to do the rest of the summer.... is the suspense killing you? Too bad, you'll just have to wait!

Love,
Lockslie

Easter Weekend

This weekend we have a LOT of things going on, but the most important is celebrating Easter, the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, who died that we might have eternal life. What an awesome time to reflect on this wonderful gift. What a mighty and powerful and loving God we serve. We'll be celebrating the day by going to church and then having a big Easter lunch with my family.


Happy Easter!
Love,
Lockslie

Have you missed me? Well, I bet all 4 of you who read this maybe have missed me. Where have I been? Well, remember my last post about thank you notes? THEY ARE DONE! I met the deadline of 3 months except for a few stragglers for which I had to find addresses. All my free moments for the last few weeks were filled with thank-you-note-writing. Wow, what a relief! Now, I can get back to real life without that long list hanging over my head!

This past weekend marks our 3rd month of married life, and my husband celebrated with a new haircut. If you didn't already know this, the whole reason I got the name LOCKSLIE is because of my husband. Have you ever called someone by a nickname so long that you don't even remember their real name? Well, that's what it's like with LOCKS. That's what all his friends (and his friends' parents) call him. The minister even called us Locks & Lockslie during our wedding ceremony. As one friend once told him, "Even your mother will call you Locks." That is, until he got a new haircut. Now some are jokingly referring to him as BUZZ instead. He hates the new name, but is loving the new haircut. I'm adjusting to it slowly.

We are excited about the next few months as the weather warms up, we are looking forward to lots of cooking out, baseball, time at the beach, and there might be one of these in our near future, too! (a goldendoodle puppy!)

Precious, right? Hopefully we'll be getting a puppy sometime during the summer months. So right now I promised to get to work on remembering to put away my shoes (so they won't get chewed) and finishing up a few things around the house.

So needless to say, spring has sprung, and we have some projects to get done inside the house (painting, finishing the daunting task of unpacking and finding a place for all our wedding gifts) and outside the house (painting the trim, painting the shed we built last fall, planting flower beds, and fighting the never-ending war of the weeds!) Can you envision my "honey-do" list growing? Spring has always been a favorite season for me, and after this long cold winter, I couldn't be more ready for it!

What are you doing this Spring?

Love,
Lockslie

A new week....

Wow, it's been a whirlwind the last few days around here. I took my second tennis lesson Saturday morning (yet another new hobby I'm picking up -- more on that some other time), raked up a whole bunch of leaves, and planted the daylillies my grandmother gave me last year. Sunday after church and some mexican food & siesta-ing, we finished raking & bagging most of the leaves in an attempt to start getting our yard ready for spring.

I LOVE spring and I am so excited to see what we can accomplish around our yard this year (we have LOTS of big ideas, especially for the back yard) and hopefully I'll tell you all about our progress once we get started. This weekend was our first touch of warm weather -- (funny, seeing as it SNOWED last weekend) and I am LOVING it! I'm hoping that this is just the boost I need to get back on track after this cold has had me down for a while!

Saturday night I went shopping using the lessons I learned at Southern Savers' Extreme Couponing 101 class and was able to save about $1/3 of the money that we usually spend on groceries. As I collect more coupons and get better at planning out both shopping and menus, I hope I'll be able to spend about $1/2 the money. I also had what I would consider a super successful trip to CVS, and I can already tell I'm going to be addicted to getting things for free there. I think Jenny from Southern Savers' said it best, "It's like CVS is its own country, and they don't take American dollars, just paper CVS currency. The whole store is FREE!"

So this week, we've got some good stuff on the menu
Sunday - Breakfast for Dinner *grits, eggs, sausage, toast*
Monday - Chick-fil-A (free sandwiches with your church bulletin!)
Tuesday - Soup & Sandwiches
Wednesday - Birthday Dinner out to celebrate my husband's 26th year on earth!
Thursday - New York Strips & Baked Potatoes
Friday - Sunday School Social
Saturday - Family Birthday Cook-out -- Chicken Wings & other goodness

I'm also looking forward to getting back on the work-out wagon this week, might have to back up a few weeks on the running plan to catch myself up to speed again!

Hope you have a great week!
Lockslie

The Lady Quote - First Edition

In college, of all places, a new found freedom often makes girls forget some of the manners they've been taught. Independence, self-sufficiency, and feminism are preached by all types of media -- professors, books and magazines, television, music.... etc ... you get the picture. It is a time if your life where you're redefining yourself and learning who you want to become. It is a time where you have MORE than your fair share of voices pushing and pulling you in various directions and you decide that being a lady isn't really a priority.

So, you might be wondering what "The Lady Quote" has to do with any of this.... and I won't hold you in suspense any longer! In my college sorority, there was a tradition we called "The Lady Book" where a sister would share quotes from a book about being a lady. I suppose this was a subtle way of reminding the girls in our chapter that we had a certain image to uphold, but it was always fun to hear what the weekly quote would be, and learn every one's opinions --- there would always be someone who had something to say!

I'm hoping to do something similar to that here with "The Lady Quote"... just share some simple quotes I find about being a lady, let you know where I found them, what I think about them, and give you a chance to say how you feel as well. And, I'll be the first to tell you that I have a lot to learn in this department, seeing as I flat out refused to take part in our local cotillion classes when I was in middle school, and my mom is constantly reminding me of the "proper" way to handle certain situations. I've learned a lot in the last year or so and hope to learn some more as I write each edition of "The Lady Quote".

Without further ado, I give you the first edition of "The Lady Quote", inspired by my recent quest to write Thank You notes for all our many wedding gifts.

"A lady is prompt in writing thank-you notes -- within ten days of receiving a gift if at all possible. Writing a note lets the giver know in a tangible way just how grateful she is for his or her generosity. The extra effort to write a thank-you note speaks volumes about a lady's courtesy."

How to Be a Lady - A contemporary guide to common courtesy

by Candace Simpson-Giles

I was quick to write all my thank-yous after our wedding showers, but it has been quite a daunting task to complete the wedding gift thank-yous. So if you're out there reading and you haven't gotten yours yet, don't worry, it's still on its way! I definitely have NOT made the 10 day deadline, but I'm hoping to beat Emily Post's 3-month deadline. (Speaking of, how many of you have heard the rumor that you should have a whole year?? I only recently learned about the 3-month rule, and that means time is QUICKLY catching up with me!) Of course, I still believe in the better-late-than-never rule, so if I fail to make the deadline, I'll keep plugging along until they're all done. The most important part to me is making sure the notes are heartfelt and meaningful. As soon as I start to feel like I'm not personalizing what I'm writing, I give it up and save it for another day. Hopefully some day REALLY soon I'll be able to post that I've completed them all! I can't wait!

*Lady Lockslie*

So, it's been a while...

Well, it's officially been two weeks since my head cold began, and so I've been slacking off in a lot of areas of life since then. The first thing to go was exercising/running. If you've ever had a case of sinusitis like I have been battling, you know it is nearly impossible to get through everyday activities, much less run or do pilates, anything that requires balance, deep breathing, or quick movements.

Second to go was the menu planning/cooking. Each day it got easier and easier for me to say, "why don't you just pick us something up". This was a little more difficult once my husband caught the awful illness, too. It just really seemed backwards to me to spend time cooking meals I could barely taste, much less finish. Chick-fil-A got a lot of business from us this week.

At the end of the week though, we both started feeling better, just in time for the biggest snowfall in our town since I was born. Wow, was it fun to see the excitement in my husband's eyes as he watched his first "big snow" at home ever.... (he spent the first half of his life in Florida, and we haven't seen snow like that since his family moved here). The snow reminded us both of our recent honeymoon trip to Park City, Utah where there was TONS of snow. We snuggled in for a warm night and watched as the snow piled up in our back yard. Of course, Saturday morning the snow quickly melted away as the sun came up, but not before a couple of snowballs were thrown.

We went on our first mini-vacation Saturday & Sunday to Savannah, GA. It was by mere coincidence that this happened to fall on Valentine's day, too! We explored the city on foot, checking out the historical sites and even visited the bench where the famous bus stop scenes from Forest Gump were filmed. We searched out some local restaurants, ate some wonderful food, and relaxed a lot! Savannah is a really beautiful and eclectic town, and we enjoyed walking through the historic squares. We especially loved the incredible live oaks and grassy areas preserved all around town.

We came back to Columbia on Monday and celebrated Valentine's by going out to a movie, doing a little shopping, and dinner. Here's hoping that we'll get back on track with everything the rest of this week!

So that's the latest.... hope everything is well with y'all :)

Lockslie