Sunday, January 30, 2011

It worked!!

So I must apologize for being absent so long but for the last week or so every time I went to upload photos my upload wouldn't work! It got very frustrating since I have limited time to blog as is. However it decided to allow me to upload a few tonight so I'll try to begin catching up! Here are some of the "365 of Me" photos:
Day 16

Cooking. Something I LOVE to do (when I want to of course)
Day 17

You will be seeing this photo in an upcoming post! I decided I loved the blueberries so much though that it had to be my picture for the day. I adore berries!
Day 18
(will have to wait until the next post - it's still on my phone, lol)
Day 19
CrossFire Youth time!!! I love our teens and especially my girls I work with! I grabbed one of them, Michaela to do a fun pose with me - we're jumping off our stage! Life must be fun! I think so anyways!

AND it won't let me upload again... I'm trying guys I promise. I guess the suspense will have to hold you for now. Until my computer works again, bye bye.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Tinkerbell Birthday Party

My daughter's 4th year birthday is one to remember! And all it took was some creativity and elbow grease on my part. So here is a complete breakdown of the Tinkerbell Birthday Bash:

You start with (of course it IS me you know) CUPCAKES! I chose a very simple yet VERY time consuming decoration idea - flowers. Birthday girl wanted Strawberry Cupcakes so that's what we started with. The next step is cutting mini marshmallows in half diagonally and then, if you so desire, dipping the middle part while it's still gooey into any color of sprinkles you desire. I did white, pink and green for our particular fairy party. Then simply place the "petals" on in three tiers. Each cupcake averages about 17 marshmallows, or 34 pieces. The result is a beautiful "Mum Flower"!



My daughter spotted the cupcake tier stand at Walmart and it comes with the Tinkerbell cupcake wrappers and the toothpick inserts you see in the center of my flowers. for about 9 dollars it looked great!
Next we added all the decorations! I printed out all the Tink Friends from the newest Tinkerbell movies, cut them out in detail and then laminated them. These adorned the edge of the breakfast bar where all the goodies were stashed.

I also printed out a cute picture of the fairies and decided to tape up a quick welcome note for the arriving guests on our front door.

Then when my bestie arrived to help I quickly gave her orders to help me hang up ALL the streamers and banners all over our living room! I had hung paper lanterns the night before. The lanterns and streamers gave it such a festive feel!

Who could forget the best part?! I printed in all the invitations for the girls to come dressed in "fairy attire"! Here is my little fairy - who went as Rosetta (since she just got the costume for Christmas).
Here is a sweet friend of ours daughter dressed as Tink herself. (Most of the wings had been ditched by this time)
May I also suggest for any little girl birthday party that you buy sidewalk chalk. My goodness I found a 52 piece chalk set at the Dollar Store and the kids had a blast! First thing the girls wanted was of course a Hop-Scotch board of which I quickly obliged.


Okay on to the games:
1. Ring Toss - for this game I took 3 paper towel tubes and painted them lime green (excuse me fairy green) and even added some glitter while the paint was still wet to give it that pixie dust look. Then my husband cut a piece of plywood into three rectangles of which we just duck taped the bottom of the tubes onto. They were extremely stable and cute to boot! And guess what I made rings out of? Weed eater wire! Hehe, yes I did. I made 3 rings the same size with our weed eating string, wire...not sure what it's called and even duck taped the ends together as well. Did I mention the wire was lime green in color? I love my ingenuity. I gave bubbles as a prize for making a ring.
2. Can Explosion - this one required painting 15 empty coke cans lime green (and adding pixie dust as well). After that you just stack them up pyramid style, find a cute small ball and mark a line about 8 or 9 feet back (more feet for older child) and let them go! Obviously they must knock the cans over with the ball. Knock them all down and Tinkerbell sticker sheets was your prize! This game was actually their favorite and they wore me OUT wanting me to continually stack cans over and over!

3. Pin the Wand on Tinkerbell - this one is self explanatory however with much trouble over trying to blow up a photo to poster size for this game my mom had to give a last minute ingenuity idea - cut the front out of a Tink gift bag (which I DID have). So that's what we did and it looked cute!

Last tips are never forget party hats, noisy horns and yummy punch! (recipe at bottom)
After the party was over and my bestie helped me tear everything down we had to celebrate with our own photo - for surviving the whole ordeal AND cleaning it all up in one day's time!

That's all folks!
Sherbet Punch Recipe
1 - 2 Liter 7-Up
1 - 2 Liter Hawaiian Punch
2 Tubs of Rainbow Sherbet
Pour in drinks first then scoop sherbet on top of punch. I like to drizzle a little punch over each scoop to give it that foamy look. You can also adjust to taste by adding more 7-Up or Hawaiian Punch - whichever way you like it best. Enjoy!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

365 of Me - Days 11-14

I have officially missed my first day of photos. I'm very sad but at the same time I was sick, felt miserable, wanted the day to end and my head to meet my bed and that's about all I was concerned with. So with that mentality I'm not surprised a picture didn't happen. However on the good side, my other photos have suddenly sparked inspiration for a couple of future posts here on the blog! So I can't wait for those! So here we go...





DAY 11






Nothing.






DAY 12
I wear neon socks almost everyday. It's a huge trend right now and sadly one where I thought how cute! And fun! And went to Academy and bought like 12 pair.


DAY 13

Like previously stated in a previous post I have started boot camp at Gold's Gym. This was a photo of me right before I headed out the door to the gym. This day also reminded me of a not-so-cool disease that I have. It comes and goes and always creeps up at weird times if you ask me. What is this horrid disease I have, that even my mom is wondering what in the world could this be, right now??? Hair-Boredom Disease!!! EEK! I know. It's bad. I will wake up, look in the mirror with a defeated look and then think to myself - let's try something new today. So I end with hairdo's like this one. I've included a close-up of the back of my head just so you can actually see the whole effect here.

Yep. Not only am I diseased but I have horribly sun-bleached ends!



DAY 14
This one was especially fun because this is a picture of me finding (and writing my name on the log) my very first CACHE! As in from Geo-caching!! I know most of you have no clue what I'm talking about (neither did I four days ago) but this will most definitely be on a near-future post!

Mt grip looks so strong! It's the boot camp. Uh-huh yea.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

My favorite eye-makeup application

Today is a first time post on this blog - a "How-To" Makeup post. Yep that's right. Yesterday I applied my eye makeup in my favorite way possible. You can take this application technique and use it with any color combination you want and always get an amazing eye! So here we go!


The leading actors are:


1. Loreal Paris Pencil Perfect Self-Advancing Eyeliner - my particular color was "Espresso"

2. Covergirl Lash Blast Fusion Mascara - again my particular color was "Very Black"

3. Almay Intense I-Color Powder Shadow - my color was "Trio for Browns 001"

4. Clinique Soft-Pressed Eye Shadow - color was "Ivory Bisque/Brandied Plum"


Okay first off let me explain reasons why I chose some of these particular items. For starters I have dark brown eyes and so will always use a dark eyeliner to bring them out. Light colors just look odd on my eyes. Black eyeliner is over-pronounced and makes me look gangster or goth. And although soft black does work I love the softness of using a dark brown color to match my eyes - this way I just outline my eyes but don't draw attention away from them. Now on the other hand it is the opposite with my eyelashes. Girls always want attention on their long lashes and with a dark colored eye I must use a VERY BLACK mascara to make them pop and not blend in.


Onto the eye shadows I love smoky eyes or similar colored trios instead of going with opposites attract sort of thing. 3 different shades of the same color is my favorite and makes an eye look so classic and sophisticated. Being olive skinned with dark eyes a color that will always look good on me is Plum. (and no I'm not just saying that because I think so I have had probably three makeup artists or stylists tell me so and all articles read on the subject have agreed.) So it's just me but I either go with a neutral palette - browns and beige's to match my eye color or with a variation of plum. This is typically speaking. Other colors I love on my eye are burnt orange, olive green, and grey - again all with different shades of that base color. Anyways on with the application technique.


One of the first things I was taught by a make-up artist (and trying several other ways just to see if she was right) was when applying eyeliner to apply it under lashes - not on inner lip of eyelid as some do to bring drama to the eye, and to apply from outer corner to the invisible line of your inner eye circle. In other words the circle of your eye that has the color of your eye - stop your eyeliner before reaching the inner corner at the edge of that circle. It's about 3/4 of the way in. Repeat the same thing on top lid.


Next is mascara. Here is a handy tip when applying mascara - do your lower lashes first because when you open your eye wide to apply to lower lashes often your upper lashes hit the skin above your eye causing you to have to go back and wipe it off and also losing some of the application off your top lashes. By doing the lower lashes first you eliminate this problem.


Okay so to the good part - eyeshadow. You will apply the lightest shade to the top of your eyelid - this starts at your brow and goes down to the crease in your eyelid. Next take your middle shade color and apply just to lid. Last with a thin application brush apply darkest shade to just the crease in your eyelid. For an example with the colors I used:

"Shimmery Beige" from the Almay Trio was used on upper eyelid. the "Soft Plum" color also from Almay Trio was used on lid. Then in the crease of my eye was the Clinique "Brandied Plum". Here is a picture of the finished product:

Obviously showing someone something in person is always much easier but hopefully you got something from this. The key to an eye like this is blending. The easiest for me is to take the tip of my finger and gently smudge the dark color upward toward the lightest color. The lid to crease doesn't usually need blending as you want the distinction there. By doing a quick browse I found a great picture guideline (but I know nothing of the site or makeup - it was a quick search - I just know the picture guidelines are the same as I described. Click here for link.

Oh and one last thing, the Clinique color is SUPER old because I use small amounts of it so you may not be able to find that exact color anymore! But I'm sure you can find something close.

Monday, January 10, 2011

365 of Me - Days 7, 8, 9 & 10

Wow I'm so excited I just found some fellow Project 365'ers!! Quickly I'd like to add their links in case any of my readers are interesting in joining this fun quest!

1. Sara Bowyer @ Make music from your heart to the Lord - this blog includes a link up to fellow Project 365'ers and also a button of Project 365 for your blog sidebar!!

2. Barbie @ My Freshly Brewed Life - I have followed this blog for quite some time and my jaw dropped when she included that she was also doing a Project 365 in her Miscellany Monday post!

Okay on with my photos...
Day 7
The night before my daughter's 4th birthday party I stayed up until midnight hanging paper lanterns and painting empty coke cans Tinkerbell Lime Green! Oh AND adding glitter...of course!
Day 8
My hubby can be SO stinkin' creative with the camera and I am always amazed at the unique eye he has through that lens. I wish he would do more because he really does have natural talent. Anyways enough bragging here was a "Down the Streamers" pic he captured of me right before the party started!
Day 8..still
Okay sorry but I LOVED this picture of my best friend, Julie, and I that we took after all the guests had finally left and we both sighed a sigh of relief. *Sigh*
Day 9
This picture I giggled when I took because it was me sitting in my car on the drive home from the restaurant on Sunday afternoon. But I thought, "this is interesting and unique to me -what is on my lap and at my feet in the car" So here is what is on my lap: my bible - a small cute leather one I like to haul to church because it's lightweight and well cute, and my kindle - my Christmas present from my honey!! At my feet: to the left is my new purse that a teenager and his mom from our youth group gave me for Christmas and to my right which you can barely see is a plastic bag which holds our leftover sushi and my son's chicken strips. Oh and did I mention because it was DOWN POURING for like 24 hours I had on my black and white "oh so cute" rain boots??!! OK well now I mentioned it.
Day 10
This is by far my favorite so far! I was home already (realizing it was pajama day at my work which is also my daughter's school and SHOULD have taken a cute picture of her and I at school in our jammies but with the realization that I'm not as good at capturing moments in life as I once believed and my daughter in bed I grabbed my camera and just started thinking. This is what I came up with - one of my favorite features of myself. And back off I'm not egotistical or anything like that I just know that God created every single person beautifully and creatively and that I should like His creation and appreciate it. And I do. I love the deep brown eyes God gave me and my whole family and now my children (being that brown in a dominant eye color)! And I also love close up photos of just about anything. The above picture used the Pioneer Woman Photoshop "Colorized" Action so I actually posted the original colored photo below too.

I loved the eye picture so much I will actually be doing a "first-time" post on my blog tomorrow using a similar photo I took while getting this one. Maybe it will help someone or perhaps it will just serve the purpose of keeping things completely random on this blog! Either way I'm happy!

Friday, January 7, 2011

Psalm 122: Beth Moore Assignment

So the assignment I had yesterday was to rewrite Psalm 122 making it about my church and my town instead of Jerusalem. It was just that a homework activity to get us to think about something in a different way NOT to take anything away from the beautiful scripture itself which we had spent the last two days studying it of course as it is! With that being said here was my rewriting:


I rejoiced with those who said to me, "Let us go to the Lone Star Cowboy Church." Our feet and hooves are standing in your gates, O Montgomery. Montgomery is a melting pot all its own, knit together as a single unit. This is where the cowboys, the lake-goers, blacks and whites alike go up - all the Lord's people - go up to praise the name of the Lord according to the law of the Word. There the arena stands, the fishing hole if you will, for our community. Pray for the peace and prosperity of Montgomery. May all who love this city (it's people) prosper. O Montgomery may there be peace within your town and prosperity in your government and economy. For the sake of my spiritual family and friends, I will say "peace be with you." For the sake of Lone Star Cowboy Church - the house of the LORD our God, I will seek what is best for you, O Montgomery.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

365 of Me - Days 4, 5, & 6

Since beginning this journey of 365 of Me I have already re-learned something about myself: I am bad at remembering! It is so hard to remember to take a picture of yourself although I'm hoping after awhile it will become an easy habit. That being said on the 5th was my daughter's birthday and, as horrible as this is to admit, I still forgot to take a picture! All DAY! Mainly because her party is Saturday so I wasn't thinking about my camera yet but seriously how pathetic huh?

Okay moving on... Day 4 was a forgotten day so the picture is my legs about to climb into bed! Hehe...


(I have to add that yesterday I read a post at Pioneer Woman about converting pictures to Black and White
and so of course being inspired I had to try one today)

Day 5 was a long day being the first day back to school for my daughter and me to work. I took cupcakes to her class, ate lunch with her, treated her to Smoothie King (her choice) after school and then took my kiddos to the movie "Tangled" that evening! Phew...see why I didn't have time to remember a photo? So literally two minutes before I crawled in bed I told my husband to snap a photo of me. However since I was make-up-less by this point I had him take a picture of my hair. So yep this is what my hair looks like after being in a side braid all day long. I know you were just so curious to know right?!

Since I had done so poorly the last two days I was determined to take a picture on purpose today! So in the morning after dropping off my son at school I got my daughter and I a mid-morning snack and sat down at my favorite spot (by out kitchen window that looks right out to our lone tree in the backyard with the bird feeder in it - which is always FULL of little birds this time of year!) with my Beth Moore bible study I'm doing right now. I actually will have a post tomorrow about a cool assignment she gave us in my daily homework today! I found it pretty powerful - perhaps you will too. However this was a photo I let my daughter take all by herself.


She's pretty good huh? I think so too.

Monday, January 3, 2011

365 of Me - Day 3

Tonight (once again in scrubs from working church nursery) I spent a couple hours on my computer looking up ideas for my daughter's birthday party! She will be 4 years old on Wednesday and is wanting a Tinkerbell Birthday Party on Saturday! So I'm sure you'll see a Tinkerbell post soon enough too ;) So I spun around on my computer chair stuck my Canon Rebel out in front of me and snapped a photo! I have a feeling tomorrow's picture might be buying Tinkerbell supplies, lol.

"365 of ME" day 2

So for two hours last night and another hour and a half tonight I have been trying to upload pictures for a wonderful post of my DAY 2 Picture along with a huge feast I cooked for our Sunday Dinner with no success. So finally out of desperation I tried to JUST upload the day 2 picture and FINALLY had some success. I do not know why it is not working and I promise I will add more later (because seriously you don't want to miss the dinner post!) but here is my Day 2 picture which was taken Sunday afternoon. I am wearing a scrubs top because I work our church baby nursery a couple times a month and had worked this particular Sunday. Also on Thursday of last week I signed up for a month long boot camp at Gold's Gym - they had an INCREDIBLE deal that I couldn't pass up! Along with getting back on track with my exercise after splurging over the holidays on food, food, and more food (mainly starches and sugars) my acne has FLARED up like no other! So I started eating my Anti-Inflammatory Dr. Perricone diet again. I had done SO good all week but it was bittersweet because I had gotten the Pioneer Woman cookbook for our book dinner this Christmas (see previous post on Book Dinner). So I thought I would just look through it and write down future recipes to try. My above picture is me doing just that after church - pouring through her hilarious and well photographed cookbook! As you can imagine after a couple HOURS of pouring through a cookbook like this I could about smell the cooking buttermilk biscuits and taste the juicy steaks! So what did I do? I cooked a FEAST for dinner throwing all diet no-no's out the window! We had Beef Tenderloin, Buttermilk Biscuits with Honey Butter, Grilled Zucchini and a Mini Apple Pie for dessert! Whenever my picture upload starts working again I will let you have the visual from my decadent meal! In the meantime...I'll try to at least keep up to date on my daily photos! Ta ta ya'll!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

"365 of ME"

What: 365 pictures
of Who: ME

When: throughout the year of 2011 - one per day

Where: this one will be fun to find out!

Why: so that I, Ivy Morrison am chronicled throughout the year and not always behind the lens of the camera but in FRONT of it!

How: I will take one picture (at least, lol) every day of this next year and will post them on my blog so my friends, family and fellow readers can join in on my fun!


So here it is the VERY FIRST official post of my "365 of ME" project:

OK I know it's pathetic for my first picture but on the contrary, I said I was taking a picture of myself, but I can be creative with it as long as I AM in the photo. Plus I wanted to remember my first time making this Southern New Year's Tradition! So yes my first photo is my hand showing off my Black-Eyed Pea Soup! (Unedited and everything so it would be on time! Just for you guys)

I feel so SOUTHERN!

Happy New Year everyone!! I'm especially glad to see last year behind me although I treasure SO many good times and blessings from it! But I love the feeling of a new year and a fresh slate. Which technically it is only one day away from yesterday but something about that number changing on the calender date just makes you feel like it's miles away from yesterday. Or maybe it's just me. Anywho...

I have been DYING to share with you the surprise I mentioned in a previous post about something I had for the coming year!! It is technically, I guess, my New Year's Resolution: to take 365 pictures of myself (one per day) throughout 2011. Crazy - perhaps. Sound like total fun to an avid scrapbooker AND photographer - YES! I heard of it from some friends of mine. The idea behind it is that scrapbooking mommas are always taking pictures and never end up IN any of them. And even though my hubby is a GREAT photographer and I constantly make him photograph me (actually I take back that statement - my husband will usually take the camera from me to make sure I get in some photos) I still think this is one step further. Okay yes it's a giant leap but when I heard about this it was just SO up my alley! So I will take ONE photo of me for one whole year and yep, I will share them on this blog!! WOOHOO! You're as excited as I am aren't you? I knew it! So have I taken my photo yet? Yes! Is it uploaded on this post? No :( right after I snapped my one photo my camera gave me a direct order - CHARGE BATTERY. So it is charging right now unable to upload :( :( I know. I'm sorry. HOWEVER I will TRY to get it done before sleep comes to my eyes. And at this time I would like to issue a warning. If you are a regular follower of this blog you know I lead a very busy, hectic life and can get inconsistent about my posting. So I have also told myself I WILL upload photos of my "365 of Me" Adventure at LEAST once a week. I made a reasonable goal OK.

So in the meantime to quickly explain my post title (because my hubby is waiting to watch a movie with me) I just found out through the Pioneer Woman blog that the Southern New Year's meal is Black-Eyed Peas! Most of them make a soup and even add a dime to see who will get the dime in their bowl of soup which grants them luck for the coming year. Now as I am COMPLETELY opposed to putting nasty dirty money that has passed through numerous sets of hands I opted to leave that part out BUT I did make a big pot of Black-Eyed Pea Soup today! I'm so proud. Although with this meal I must send out a huge apology to my dad. You see he is a true northerner from Ohio where it is a downright SIN to not eat Pork and Sauerkraut on New Year's Eve. I grew up holding my nose and taking two to three bites to say "see dad I ate it" right after midnight stroke year after year. But being a whole state away I figured I would at least be physically safe from any repercussions from skimping the sauerkraut for soup!

It was absolutely delicious and actually the first time I have ever made a Black-Eyed Pea soup AND it is what my first "365 of ME" photo is about!

(you can find the Black-Eyed Pea recipe on the "Tasty Kitchen" part of her blog)